The other replies: Really? Are you sure? The first replies: Yes, I'm positive.įLATOW: Brian, is that a common sort of joke? One stops and exclaims: I think I lost an electron. And she says: So two atoms are walking down the street. Let me read that joke, and I'll take Tara Kresge Summerfield's(ph) version of it. A lot of people - and one of those themes was the great jokes also were the worst jokes, people thought.Īnd there was one recurring theme having to do with atoms and charges. And a lot of the jokes had a similar theme. I want to begin this, because we asked everybody on Facebook and Twitter to send in their jokes. I'm your tough crowd.įLATOW: She is in control. LICHTMAN: But I do have control of sounds like this today. She of course is our multimedia editor, and we brought Flora in because she's got a great sense of humor and will help judge. NORM GOLDBLATT (Physicist, Comedian): How are you doing? Good to be here.įLATOW: Thank you. Norm Goldblatt is a physicist and a science comedian.

It's great to be here.įLATOW: You're welcome. TIM LEE (Comedian): Well, thank you so much for having me. He joins us from NPR West in Culver City, California. Tim Lee is a former scientist and now a science comedian. Now, send in the clowns.įLATOW: There you go. I like the way you stacked the whole first part of the show with as much tragedy as possible: cancer, radiation, global warming.

BRIAN MALOW (Time Magazine): Great to be here, Ira. Brian Malow is a science comedian and a freelance science video correspondent for Time magazine. It's not Comedy Central here this afternoon, but hopefully we'll get close to it. So please keep them clean, if you know what we're talking about. And as I say, you can tweet us, and that's And as I say, we don't want to have to push the dump button on your jokes today. Our number for your joke, if you want to call in a joke, is 1-80, 1-800-989-TALK. You can tweet us a joke - can you make a joke, 140 characters? We'll find out today, even a science joke. And we thought that would be the best way to call our jokes.Īnd also you can go to - you can send us a tweet. Click on the Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar link. Or you can go to our website,, and add to our joke list. You can go to our Facebook at Facebook/scifri and join in. And if you still have a joke you want to share with us, you can still add that joke to our list. Some of you may not want to quit your day job, though, so.įLATOW: Ouch. And we'll be sharing some of them this hour. And hundreds of you contributed your favorite jokes. We asked you to tell us your favorite jokes, science jokes, good ones, the worst ones. If this proves not to be the case, then you can all consider this show part of our April Fool's joke.Īnd during the week, we asked for your help too, on our Facebook page. I guess those props always do help, Flora.

We've gathered a panel of science comedians and our own Flora Lichtman to test the hypothesis: Can science be funny? We're going to see if we can prove that's true, science and comedy do go together - you don't need a bow tie and a propeller hat or a bubbling flask to make people laugh. It's historic because today is our first annual April Fool's Science Comedy Geek-a-thon, trying to answer that age-old question: Can scientists, mathematicians, geeks be funny, not just to themselves but to everyone else?

Funny walked into a bar jokes