Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about a research-backed way to make dad jokes funnier,

how animals use principles of economics in the wild and how quickly an AI taught itself to solve a Rubik's Cube

would satisfy some curiosity.

New research suggests that when you hear a dad joke, you might find it funnier if it comes along with a

laugh track which is why we have a new podcast theme song baby got track

you thought that was hilarious, didn't you?

Oh yeah, I mean, as you could tell from all of the multiple people I became laughing there.

Yeah.

Researchers from University College London published a paper in the July 2019 issue of current biology,

and in it they showed that added laughter actually enhances the humor of even the worst jokes.

Laugh tracks were first used in radio back in the day to illustrate

that a show was recorded in front of a live studio audience and to make the person

listening at home feel like part of that audience. TV show producers started using them in 1950 and they became

wildly popular since they could shoot their shows in places where it would be impossible to have a live studio

audience like Mash.

These radio and television producers also knew that laughter is contagious,

which was scientifically backed up by a 1992 study.

But for this recent study, scientists wanted to take things a step further and see

whether canned laughter affected the funniness of the joke itself. So the team assembled a list of

...