The funniest thing about studying the science of humor is that you’re essentially watching a bunch of nerds try to explain a joke. Then people get to watch you, as a writer, awkwardly trying to explain how those nerds are explaining the joke. As you know, this is how every truly great comedian in the history of the universe has ever won at “being funny.” You may recall the great George Carlin (rest his soul) who, in humble self-reflection, always held marathon question-and-answer sessions in public schools where he performed his famously family-friendly stand-up routines — which, of course, concluded with a group prayer and Pledge of Allegiance led by the pope.*
If you still want to see a joke being smothered to death (and this column somehow doesn’t get the job done), you can always do a speed-run through the methodology section of any scholarly research on the psychology of humor. I suggest starting with a recent Oxford University-led study which gauged 3,380 museum visitors’ reactions to 38 yellowed, hardly legible political cartoons, drawn as long ago as 1930 and in some cases offering such esoteric commentary on long-forgotten events that researchers had to include little captions explaining the jokes.
