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(drum roll)

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(audience clapping)

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Carmen Lynch everybody.

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(audience clapping and cheering)

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My boyfriend snores.

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What are you supposed to do when they snore?

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I think you're supposed to like roll them...

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Off the bed and

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(audience laughing)

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down the stairs and into traffic.

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(audience laughing)

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(festive music)

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(bellowing laughter)

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(baby laughing)

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They say laughter is the best medicine.

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It can reduce pain,

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send more oxygen to your brain and heart.

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And even strengthen your lungs.

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(background laughter)

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A good sense of humor is considered one of the most prized

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qualities when looking for a romantic partner.

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But for something so valuable little is known about humor.

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Is it genetic?

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What makes someone funny?

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Can anyone learn to do it?

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(monkey noises)

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Hey welcome, guys, to class.

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Thanks so much for coming.

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Ed Malone thinks that answer is yes.

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I'm really bad myself.

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Okay, great.

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(audience laughing)

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He teaches a clown class

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in New York City.

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This is going to be a template for the evening

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to see us duos who can be the funniest with the trashcan.

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Yes I totally believe that anyone can be funny,

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anyone can be hilarious.

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(trashcan banging)

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(audience laughing)

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My class is a clown class and when I say clown,

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just to be clear, I don't teach circus,

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I don't teach magic tricks, I don't teach you know,

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people how to do gymnastic type things.

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What we do in the class is we just get people in touch

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with their stupidity, their idiocy.

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William, you're up.

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Gobble gobble gobble.

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[William] Gobble gobble gobble.

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Left hand outstretched.

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Gobble gobble gobble.

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(audience laughing)

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Gobble gobble gobble.

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The clown's philosophy

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is you can make anything funny.

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Crystal.

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Woof woof.

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We don't want, like, intellectual humor,

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we want beautiful stupidity.

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Wow

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Happy Thanksgiving.

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(man laughing)

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But on the flip side, you have to be very smart

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in some ways to tap into that idiotic side

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and it takes a lot of vulnerability and openness.

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Maggie, the bliss.

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(maggie bobbling)

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(audience laughing)

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It's good, embrace the bomb.

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(Maggie laughing)

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When you're bombing, just embrace it.

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Surf the flop, ya know.

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(audience laughing)

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Yeah, very good.

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(drums Beating)

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(uptempo music)

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Another term for a clown is a beautiful idiot.

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You can have my baby.

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And that's a compliment.

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I know some people don't like to be called idiots but,

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if you can show an audience your stupidity,

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show that willingness to laugh at yourself.

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(audience laughing)

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Great job.

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Then you're on the road to being a good clown.

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(audience laughing)

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I'm not married.

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My boyfriend and I aren't married but we like it like this,

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we're fine, we're cool with it.

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Good standup comics make it look easy.

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Do you know how you know dating

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is more fun than being married?

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People who date, don't have married night.

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(audience laughing)

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When I first went to a standup show,

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I got really jealous because I was like,

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"wow these people on stage are so naturally funny."

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Like I thought that's what they were like 24 hours a day.

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I didn't know that this was like a writing thing

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and there was like a joke, you know that

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you build a joke and a punchline and all that.

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(upbeat music)

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Carmen Lynch is a regular guest

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on late night shows

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and performs standup all other the world.

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I hate those people who sleep all night,

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they always show off, they're like

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"I can sleep through anything."

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(audience laughing)

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You know what, you're gonna die in a fire.

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(audience laughing)

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And I'm gonna watch because I'll be up.

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(audience laughing)

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I mean some people out there are like, I am so funny

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or I was told that I should do standup,

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because I'm told I'm so funny.

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For me, it's something internal.

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Do you ever just want to kill a cat?

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(audience laughing)

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Just to see what life it's on?

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(audience laughing)

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No? Too dark, alright.

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For me, the biggest thing was sharing my thoughts.

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Cause I always had journals, I always wrote in diaries.

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So I was like, what frustrates me?

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Oh, that I am actress

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or trying to be one and I'm so tall

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and I can't get any roles.

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I'm very tall. I'm 6 feet tall.

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Oh you can't say tall anymore, it's offensive.

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It's...

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vertically obese.

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(audience laughing)

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So I just started taking all that material that I wrote

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in my journals and trying it on stage.

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And it would get laughs because everyone knows

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your tragedy is other people's comedy.

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(orchestra music)

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Becoming an idiot, embracing tragedy,

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there's a thin line between laughing and crying.

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Charlie Chaplin encapsulated that idea saying,

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"to truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain

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and play with it."

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Chaplin's signature character, the Tramp,

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came from his own tragic childhood

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sent to a London workhouse at the age of nine.

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For something so central to the human experience

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comedy hasn't been scientifically researched, until now.

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So I'm going to tell you some neuroscience

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jokes if that's okay.

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(woman cheering)

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Appropriately, by a scientist

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who also performs standup.

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So as you can tell by my accent,

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I am a neuroscientist.

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(audience laughing)

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I'm Ori Amir and I study the brains of comedians.

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(piano music)

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I was interested in comedy since I was a kid,

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since my father was a comedian.

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What's the deal with the cerebellum?

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I enjoy doing comedy and I'm also intellectually curious,

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I wonder what is humor?

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What is the magic sauce that makes things funny?

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I like her sister Margaret better.

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(audience laughing)

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Unrelatedly, I was curious about the workings

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of the brain.

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So how is this lamp of interconnected neurons

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give rise to thought?

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Yeah my dream is to become a professional comedian

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and am amateur neurosurgeon.

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(audience laughing)

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I decided to conduct a study

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to see what goes on in the brains of comedians

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when they come up with funny ideas.

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(guitar playing)

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Keep your shoes outside.

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Shoes are bad too?

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Ori conducted the first ever study

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on comedians and brain activity.

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So just get rid

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of my personality as well?

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(laughing)

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By observing the creative process

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in action.

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To understand the neuro-basis of creativity,

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you have to put people who create expertly inside this tube,

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this fMRI machine and look into their brain activity

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as they engage in their creative process.

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Most creative processes

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are very hard to do inside a tube lying down.

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This is why comedy was an ideal topic to study

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because it's relatively easy to have them

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come up with a funny idea

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and then see what it looks like.

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Ori put three groups of people,

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professional comedians, amateur comedians

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and a control group in an MRI machine

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and asked them to come up with captions

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for a New Yorker cartoon.

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Not ideal conditions for humor.

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The machine is very noisy, they can't move much.

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Some of them were a bit claustrophobic,

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but nevertheless, they did well.

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Looks pretty good, huh?

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Yeah

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It's a nice, solid brain.

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Ori found that the brain scans

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of the most experienced comedians looked very different

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than the other two groups.

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What we found was that there are certain regions

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in the temporal cortex where professional comedians

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show more activation than amateur comedians

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and amateur comedians showed more activation than controls.

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The temporal cortex is the place

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where links from all over the brain converge,

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sort of a central computer

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where the brain makes it connections.

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Temporal cortex is the source

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of the funny ideas.

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It's the engine of the creativity.

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While the professional comedian's

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temporal cortex's were lighting up,

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another part of their brains were not.

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You see actually less activity in the prefrontal

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cortex where a region that is essentially the conductor

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of the orchestra is controlling the cognitive process,

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but is not the source of the ideas themselves.

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So what does it mean?

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What our results prove is that amateur comedians

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and controls needed more top down control

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of their creative process,

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whereas professionals could more spontaneously

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generate the funny ideas.

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So I wasn't always a foreigner.

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(audience laughing)

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So for experienced comedians,

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being funny is more reflexive.

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It happens naturally in the part of the brain

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that does things without really thinking about it.

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That supports Ed Malone's beautiful idiot theory of comedy.

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Oh well then, you're part of the clan?

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(man laughing)

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Are you part of the clan?

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[Man With Green Jacket] I'm not part of the clan.

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(laughter)

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It's just about being willing

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to let go of wanting control.

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Just play, just play, just play.

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Don't think so much, get out of your head,

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and just be a goofball.

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But I'm in therapy.

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That's my religion, therapy.

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And explains why, when Carmen

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is having an off night, she can still do her job.

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I'll go on auto-pilot and I'm like

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"how are these jokes coming out of my mouth right now?"

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And I'm thinking about something completely different.

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You know, like why is that couple kissing,

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they're in the front row, or you know,

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why is that waitress talking so loud like,

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you know or something or this mic sucks, it's too low.

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But it takes a long time

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to get to that point.

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You see that most successful comedians

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need at least 10 years to become successful

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and it requires a lot of work,

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a lot of honing of jokes and experimentation.

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It's an acquired skill to a higher degree.

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Like when I first started and I bombed

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I was like I don't want to leave my apartment

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for three weeks.

274
00:10:30,710 --> 00:10:33,071
We should be eating no range chickens.

275
00:10:33,071 --> 00:10:33,904
(audience laughing)

276
00:10:33,904 --> 00:10:37,398
No range chickens are tramps and they want to die.

277
00:10:37,398 --> 00:10:38,550
(audience laughing)

278
00:10:38,550 --> 00:10:42,140
After awhile, it's not that you don't get nervous

279
00:10:42,140 --> 00:10:44,090
I guess you get more confident

280
00:10:44,090 --> 00:10:45,670
and you trust it more.

281
00:10:45,670 --> 00:10:47,120
They should put it right on the packaging,

282
00:10:47,120 --> 00:10:49,373
no range, suicidal chickens.

283
00:10:49,373 --> 00:10:50,833
(audience laughing)

284
00:10:50,833 --> 00:10:54,010
You learn what's funny by doing it.

285
00:10:54,010 --> 00:10:55,362
You can't skip that.

286
00:10:55,362 --> 00:10:57,750
You have to go on stage all the time.

287
00:10:57,750 --> 00:11:01,660
Whether it's a pizza place or whatever.

288
00:11:01,660 --> 00:11:02,991
Alright, that's it for me, thanks.

289
00:11:02,991 --> 00:11:05,991
(audience clapping)

290
00:11:09,530 --> 00:11:11,083
Play with your pain.

291
00:11:12,140 --> 00:11:13,517
Get out of your head.

292
00:11:13,517 --> 00:11:17,180
And do it for at least 10 years.

293
00:11:17,180 --> 00:11:19,550
Oh, and maybe, Ed's clown class.

294
00:11:19,550 --> 00:11:21,790
Are you like going wow, wow, wow.

295
00:11:21,790 --> 00:11:22,960
That's inspiring me...

296
00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:25,316
I pity the fool that doesn't want success.

297
00:11:25,316 --> 00:11:26,728
(audience laughing)

298
00:11:26,728 --> 00:11:29,070
I don't care how hopeless you are.

299
00:11:29,070 --> 00:11:32,743
All you have to do is be a human being to be funny.

300
00:11:32,743 --> 00:11:35,576
(whimsical music)