Best of Summer: The 100-million-year origin story of laughter and humor

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted the joke in March, thousands of people attempted to decipher it to no avail.

Yet, as cryptic as the bar joke may be, it offers clues into humor’s role in human civilizations and raises questions about when humor — and its sibling laughter — first emerged.

In this episode, the second of two parts, Endless Thread continues its journey attempting to deconstruct the beginnings of humor and explain an unexplainable joke from the forgotten tablets of the past.

Transcript

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0:00.0	WBUR Podcast, Boston.
0:09.0	Then do you think you're funny?
0:12.0	My kids and my wife and my co-host all have given me a lot of proof that I'm hilarious.
0:16.0	Oh no!
0:18.0	I've done too much laughing at your jokes.
0:21.0	That's fair. Well, it's time for a summer jam.
0:24.0	Remix, part two.
0:26.0	Remix.
0:27.0	Beside, whatever it is, it's the second installment of our Sumerian joke series.
0:33.0	Let it rip before my hilarious co-host tries anything funny.
0:49.0	Hey folks, you're listening to part two of our story on the origin of jokes and humor.
0:55.0	If you missed the first episode, go back and listen to that or don't, but you may not get the joke.
1:01.0	Anyway, enjoy the show.
1:07.0	Last time on Endless Thread.
1:09.0	So can you read it for us?
1:11.0	In Sumerian?
1:13.0	Yeah, let's start there.
1:15.0	So in Sumerian it reads,
1:17.0	In English that means something like a dog entered into a tavern and said,
1:25.0	probably I cannot see anything, I shall open this or this one.
1:33.0	I don't get it.
1:35.0	I don't get it.
	...

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