(upbeat electronic music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Rhett. – And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, man, we are going to tackle a deep, dark issue. (chuckles) We’re gonna seek to answer the question, or at least explore it in detail, with a scope-like device of conversation. That question is, are farts actually funny? – Are they actually funny? – I want this to be– – I’m gonna start echoing. I think we should do that because I’ve heard that, in order for people to remember things, you have to say it multiple times, so from now on– – I don’t think anybody needs to remember that, are farts actually funny? – Are farts actually funny? – You know, I don’t wanna just be a bunch of, like two school kids being idiots. I wanna be sophisticated– – I’ve got historical data. I’ve got information about the first joke ever recorded. I’ve got information about the attitude, historical attitudes towards farts in media. I’m gonna blow your fartin’ mind. – And I have a lot of experience. – With farting? (Link chuckles) You know, the average person farts 14 time a day, and everyone will deny that it is that many. – You said what, 10 to 20? – 14, well, 10 to 20 is– – I read 10 to 20. – Yeah, 14 is an average. I think I probably farted 14 times just today when we were talking a little bit about farts earlier. – Oh, well a wise man once said, laughter is like farting from your mouth. – Yeah, that was you, Link, you’re a wise man. – A wise man once quoted himself in the third person saying something about farts. – Did you notice that as we were talking about this and looking at the research, that we were standing in our office, and there was multiple audible farts– – Coming from you. – Yeah. But it was– – None from me. – None from you today, maybe. But I was just getting into the spirit of this whole thing. You know? But then I started realizing that it’s typical that that’s how it is in our office when no one else (chuckling) is in our office, is that, it’s an open farting policy. – I wanna get back to this. I don’t wanna get into it right now because I’m glad that you admitted that you have an issue. – An issue, no– – I want to explore it. You don’t think it’s an issue. – I had the vegan– – So you think it’s funny. – Sunset bowl from Grain Lab or whatever it was. – When the sun sets, the tides rise. – There was quinoa, beans, broccoli. – All right so we’re gonna get into farting, but it’s gonna be sophisticated. It’s gonna be adult, and it’s gonna be– – You just made the word adult sound– – It’s gonna be life-changing. – I don’t know what it was. It made me think more about farts. I have to say that I’m gonna have trouble, I’m doing the Batman thing that I have to do sometimes. – The Batman swivel where the shoulders turn with the nose? – Because I earlier today, when I was at thought gym getting my pump on– – It’s not a thing, what you just said is not how it’s said. – I hurt my upper back. Now, as you know– – Upper back? – I got lower back issues that I’ve dealt with on and off and I have a recurring upper back, like everybody, I assume, I know you’ve got your shoulder thing and you kinda know when it’s about to happen and you know when it’s happened and it’s very specific and it’s in a certain place and the pain radiates in exactly the same way every time. – Well just as a side-note for those of you who don’t know, my shoulder– – There’s an ant in my cup. – Will pop out of socket and then pop right back in. It’s like thought ligament’s got… Did you get it? – There it is. – He’s flinging it on the floor, and now he’s drinking a big gulp of the drink. – Without the ant. Okay, go ahead. – Residue. Ever since attempting to bench press as a middle-schooler, my right shoulder would just (clicks tongue), pop out, pop back in, but anyway– – Very disconcerting. – Yeah, now I have issues from how I slept on it. – But I’ve actually, in trying to take care of my body and watch what I’m eating and doing pilates and now I’ve been going to the gym and meeting with this personal trainer who’s like focusing on my back health and posture and things. – Wealth of knowledge, those personal trainers. – I haven’t had the upper back issue in quite some time. It’s something that would happen, even in college, I remember the first time it really happened and I thought that I was down for the count is when we were watching UFC. We got into watching UFC in college, and we would watch it and then we would wrestle. And other guys in the dorm room would come in, other people would sometimes join in on it. It’s very strange now that I think about it, but I was trying to guillotine you. – Like a headlock? – Almost like a suplex kinda thing but we never really did any real moves, it was just kinda like grappling, like sparring. But in pulling up (clicking tongue), I felt this little snap right in between my shoulder blades, just to the right of my spine, and that was when I thought that I wasn’t gonna be able to make it to class the next day– – Oh. – Because it hurt so bad. It’s not nearly that bad, but I was not doing a pull-up, I was doing something short of a pull-up. – So you’re saying that’s when your upper back injury originated? – I’ve had the upper and the lower back since like high school, college– – I didn’t know you had an upper back thing, but go ahead. – Yes, this sharp pain. Anyway, and then when I get it, turning both ways causes this really sharp pain in the middle, which is much better ’cause I’ve been like, you’ve seen me massaging myself all day? You didn’t offer to help, by the way. – Nope, somebody’s gotta do it. – I’ve been sitting here massaging myself. I was doing a pull-up, but not a pull-up, the exercise was just jump up and hold yourself up like you’re doing a pull-up and hold it for five seconds, then let yourself down gently. – Like a reverse chin-up, a chin-down. – The third one. (clicks tongue) Felt the snap. I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no. – Thanos. – And then I’m like an old man at that point and I’m like, I don’t know what else I can do. – Oh was the trainer there? – Yeah, and then I’m like, also my knee’s kinda hurting and my lower back was already hurting from earlier, and I was just like, I think I should just quit today. – And, did you? – She ended up giving me some modified things just to fill the time. – She had to make that money! – I ended up being– – She’s like, I know you’re decrepit and you’re falling apart here, but I gotta get that money! – Ultimately what I’m saying is, if you see me touching myself during this podcast, it’s just because I’m trying to comfort my own spine. And I’m gonna be fine, don’t worry about me. Your sympathy’s appreciated. But when I turn to you like this, I might use the swivel in the chair and it’s just because, this hurts more than normal. – I don’t mean to look at you with a blank, un-empathetic stare, but I just can’t conjure up anything else right now. I think somehow this is, you deserved this. I didn’t wanna say that out loud, but– – You know what would be a great superpower? A great superpower would be able to snap your fingers and make someone else feel exactly what you’re feeling. – Oh. – And so I could be like, (snaps fingers) and then you’d be like. Oh, I’m gonna take it back now. – Well speaking of Thanos– – Perfect empathy. We’d be like a USB port. – There is the empath superhero in Guardians. But she can feel your pain, she can’t make you feel her pain. That’s pretty self-centered. – You keep saying Thanos. – I said Thanos earlier, and then I said, speaking of Thanos later. – Oh, oh. – I’m talking in the Marvel universe. – And what is that superhero’s name? – She’s the one with the antenna and the big eyes. – Oh, and the weird bald head thing? Oh no, yes, oh– – Yeah. – Part of the crew, she’s like pink-ish. – Yeah, she was on Thanos’s head, man. – Yeah yeah yeah. – Remember Thanos? I spoke of him. – You keep speaking of Thanos. – The snap, you said the snap earlier. – I did. – I am really sore myself. But I have not sustained an injury. Because in my gym experience yesterday morning, I had to do some pull-ups. – Oh, real pull-ups. – Oh my gosh. Man, you haven’t done pull-ups. If you wanna get sore, do a bunch of pull-ups having not done pull-ups for like a couple of years, and it’ll just ransack you, man. Everything underneath my armpits is just like, just a tender place of emotion. Just poke anywhere and I’m liable just to start crying, man. But something feels good about it. Last week you were talking about, “I can’t walk ’cause they had me doing one-legged squats.” – Yeah, it was awful. I had just recovered. That was the thing– – Did you like it? Was there an aspect of liking the soreness? I actually feel like I have some muscles because I’m sore. – I like soreness in general but it was extreme. It was like I couldn’t go upstairs, it was that bad, and it was that bad for, I mean I did go upstairs, but I had to really use the arm rails. It was like three or four days, and I had finally gotten over it and then I frickin’ injure myself. – You gotta watch it, man. – You gotta be more careful. – Do you let any farts out? Like when you’re straining so much to do a pull-up or do some of that pilates that you do, I mean, to get back to the farts, to just start to whet our appetite for the– – Oh please don’t use farts and then wet right after it. – It was an H in there, I think it’s whet. – No, I think about– – You don’t wet an appetite, you whet it. – I actually think about it quite often– – You’re holding them in? – Oh yeah, in the morning time? That’s like prime time, man, that’s like deflation time. (Link chuckles) You’re like equalizing, like a scuba diver for the first two or three hours that you’re awake, at least for me, maybe it’s just ’cause I’m six foot seven. – Do you eat something before you go into the gym, because I think, I actually don’t have a fart problem, usually. I have a stink problem, like if I eat garlic the night before. – You mean not from the farts but from the– – I will stink from my whole body, but I don’t have a fart problem usually. – I had oatmeal today before I went in. But I mean, definitely there were a few times when I was like, if I was in here alone, I’d let it go right now but I’m not going to. However, during the end of the workout, what happens in my gym is after you work out, your trainer stretches you. Makes you feel like a professional athlete. – Oh. – And they line you up, there’s like four stretching tables, and usually they’re pretty full, weekday morning, around 7 a.m. or whatever, and so– – Oh on a table. Not even on the floor. – You’re on this table– – Like a physical therapy table. – Yeah, and they’re stretching you. – Oh wow. – And someone– – They don’t do that at my gym. – Someone next to me, the people, the trainer and the patient, what do you call them, client, over here to the right of me, one of them farted and it came over towards us– – Was it audible? – No, it went in my right nostril so I was able to echolocate the fart so I knew where it came from, and I knew that it wasn’t my trainer and it wasn’t me, but I was like, she might think that it’s me, ’cause it definitely smelled like a dude’s fart ’cause there’s just a difference. – Well hold on now. (Rhett chuckles) There’s just a difference. – Well, it’s like– – That’s so sexist, man. – Ultimately– – Women’s farts stink, man. – No what I’m saying is– – It smelled like a dude’s fart. – If there was a bear that got into my house and there was a deer that got into my house, I kinda feel like, ultimately, I’d be able to tell you if it was a bear or a deer (chuckles), and I feel like men have like bear farts sometimes. Not all men, but some men. So then I was like, should I say something? Like, “It wasn’t me.” No, you can’t do that, so I just began to stretch a little more in an effort to waft it away. – I definitely would, I don’t know, would have said something. But now that I’m saying that, I’m like, I have been hit with the opportunity to explain that it wasn’t me but then I’m also worried that it’s them and I’m putting them on the spot. So then it’s like, I’m putting them on the spot to lie if it was them, and then if they don’t lie it’s extremely embarrassing. So, the reason why I don’t do it is for that reason. To not make the other person feel like I’m backing them into a corner. – Don’t even acknowledge it. – But if you had echolocated the thing, then I think you should have let that rip. “Hey, it wasn’t me.” – Yeah, it was that guy over there, it was one of them, two feet away from us. – You should have done that, man. – So we’ve already gotten into farts a little bit here and I think that– – Was there any comedy in that? – I think me saying the term echolocate a fart probably made some people laugh. That wasn’t my intention necessarily but the way it came out, just like a little (makes little fart sound). – But that’s for them to say. Not you. – But was it funny? I don’t know, you be the judge. – I was asking, was it funny for you to experience it, not did you just say something funny. – No but are farts funny? Are farts actually funny? – That’s fair, so us talking about that. Yeah I think we talked about it for comedic effect. We were fishing for some comedy. – And I do think we’re gonna be talking a lot– – I don’t know if we echolocated it. – Farting specifically being incorporated into purposeful comedy. – Oh. – I think is a big part of the discussion. I don’t think it’s just like, is it funny when someone farts and why is it funny? We’ll get into that, but is it funny to them make fart jokes? Is it funny to have a fart joke in your pants, ready to flip it out and impress somebody? – Let’s get into that, but first, let’s take a moment to draw your attention to this Ear Biscuit jar. – I got one too, look at that. – You need to get one of these at mythical.store because once you get it, you can drink out of it, just like we’re doing right now. – Even if there’s an ant in it. – Feel like us by drinking out of an Ear Biscuit jar. When you drink out of something and you have a personal connection to it that would be to us, it makes whatever you taste better. – I don’t believe that we can say this according to like the FDA. – It makes what you drink out of it– – Or the FCC. – Psychologically taste better be you’re gonna remember what I’m saying to you right now. And, well, you’re gonna open your cupboard and you’re gonna see this Ear Biscuit jar up there, and you have other options of what to drink out of and you’re gonna choose it because it connects you to us. – FTC, actually. – And to this moment. – Federal Trade Commission. I think I need to legally say– – And it’s psychologically gonna taste better because you’re tasting not only the taste of the thing you’re tasting but you’re also tasting the experience of an Ear Biscuit. – These claims have not been proven, in a lab, and this is just what we put on the label to make you feel better about drinking out of the cup. – I’ll tell you something that is 100% true. We have less than 1,000 of these. – Hey, that is true. – And then once they’re gone, we’re not making any more, so be a part of history. If you want this to sit in your cupboard– – Oh gosh, wow, how did you do that? – This is it, I’m spilling it everywhere. – It was magic. – Cupboard. – Don’t try it again. – [Together] Mythical.store. – All right, I thought that we could… We’ve got a few things, right, we’ve got personal farting stories, but I don’t even feel like we should get into those because we don’t even know if they’re funny yet, because we haven’t even explored if it’s okay for farting to be funny, for fart jokes to be funny. Which is kinda what we’re getting into, so there’s the stories, there’s also our personal philosophy with like our comedy and how we view farts in our comedy repertoire, but then also, kinda like the history of farting in comedy and people’s viewpoint on it. What do you think makes the most sense in terms of getting into first? – Let’s set the stage with some cultural analysis of farts through the strata of comedy. – Okay, good idea. Now, I got some of this from… Do we post sources anywhere? We don’t do that? – Oh, do we? I can tweet an article if you’d like. #EarBiscuit. – I’ll do that when this comes out, I’ll talk about it, but right now, I have this article from the Pacific Standard which talks about a few of these things and then there’s another article that I’m not remembering at the moment, but, you can get this information in multiple places. First of all, one of the things I found really interesting is that Jimmy Pardo, you remember Jimmy Pardo, we were on his podcast– – Yeah, Never Not Funny. – And then we did his– – His fundraiser. – Charity thing. – His marathon fundraiser. – In this article in the Pacific Standard by a guy named Rick Paulas. He was talking about how some comedians really hate fart jokes and Jimmy Pardo was quoted as saying, “I don’t think there is a topic I hate more, “and you can quote me.” He’s like really, really adamantly against fart jokes. – Really? – And you know who’s also just against bathroom humor in general is Jimmy Fallon. Another Jimmy, maybe if you’re a Jimmy. There’s a good theory. – You don’t like bathroom humor. – But my dad’s name is Jimmy and he’ll fart up a storm. – But does he make jokes about it or does he do it for comedic effect? – Both, so it doesn’t hold true, bad theory. But Jimmy Pardo and Jimmy Fallon, neither of them are into fart humor, but interestingly, the first joke ever recorded in Sumeria 1900 BC was, quote, “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; “a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” Seems to get lost in translation a little bit. – That was the entire joke? – Yeah, that was it. “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; “a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” – This is ringing a bell, I think you’ve told me about this. This has come up before. I’ve heard this. – Yeah. I don’t exactly understand what the joke is there. – We didn’t figure it out then and I don’t think we’re gonna figure it out now. – I can say that my wife didn’t necessarily fart on my lap but she did fart on a dude’s lap in high school and she tells that story as a funny one. – Well. – Yeah. – It’s a funny one? – Yeah, well I mean– – How did that happen? – I just told you. – You said there was a story. Tell me the story. – All I know is that she sat on a dude’s lap, and shortly thereafter, she farted, and everyone started laughing and it’s a story that is told time immemorial. (both chuckle) And apparently it was funny in Sumeria. But I think the bottom line with that is, as far back as we can go to people recording a joke, it was a fart joke, so this is something that, this isn’t a new thing, I don’t think anybody thought that, but it’s interesting. Also, did you know that Shakespeare was– – Had diverticulitis. – He was not above a fart joke. There were multiple ones to choose from. They were a little bit subtle, almost like a silent fart. – That’s ’cause we don’t understand Shakespeare. – But in Othello– – That’s a board game, right? – The clown says, “Are these, pray you, wind instruments?” And the first musician says, “Ay, marry they are, sir.” Clown says, “Oh, thereby hangs a tail.” First musician says, “Whereby hangs a tail, sir?” and the clown says, “Marry sir, “by many a wind instrument that I know.” (laughing theatrically) He’s talking about the anus. – The butthole. – Yeah, it’s like a wind instrument. – The fart tuchus. – And this is just, again, one of many examples that you can find of bathroom humor, they might even go as far as to call it scata-ta, scatacolodge. (chuckles) Can you say that word for me? – Eschatological. – Nope. It’s scato-tological. Scato-tological? Yep. – Like ology of the scat. – Of the scat. And Shakespeare had made a lot of these, and then, and we actually talked about this guy on the show, on GMM before, this French baker who was known as Le Pétomane, something like that, is a guy who his whole act, he was an early, late 1800, early 1900s, his whole act was farting– – Yes! – Through a cone. He was a baker. – Through a megaphone? – And at first, he had people who would come to his bakery and hear him fart impressions of musical instruments. – What? – Which is an interesting thing to happen in a bakery. Really, don’t really want a carb load after that. (Link chuckles) Then he took his act on the road and became this national treasure of France that people like Sigmund Freud would actually pay to see while traveling Europe. – But this wasn’t comedy. This was an exhibition. – It was comedy. – Oh it was? – Yeah, it was, I mean. Yeah. – It wasn’t just like– – He would do impersonations of people, of animals, of musical instruments, he would blow out a candle from across the stage. – Yeah but at a certain point you’re no longer laughing and you’re just clapping. You’re in awe, it’s a trick. It’s an exhibition of talent. – No doubt there are elements of that, without a doubt, but I definitely think that people thought it was funny. A French baker farting? It was at least light-hearted. – I think it was more the– – But then, for most of the 20th century, in media, farts were off-limits, it was kinda this last taboo of something that you couldn’t talk about, that you couldn’t do in movies. The early film movement, no farts, no bathroom humor really. Until– – No scenes in a bathroom. Nobody sitting on a toilet type of scene probably. – I just know that directly addressing the fart or somebody farting was not something that happened. Until 1974, Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, which was a sort of revolutionary comedy film in a bunch of different ways. – They had the first fart in a film? – Well, multiple sources that I looked at said that this was sort of breaking the seal, so to speak, on incorporating farts unashamedly into media, into comedy. – Well incorporating is an understatement. That verb undersells how many farts they put into that farting scene. – We watched it a second ago, and the cowboys are around the fire eating beans. – Oh yeah. – And it’s a slow zoom out and there’s burping as well. There’s a burp and then there’s a fart and then there’s a bunch of farting. – Yeah. – And then the guy comes out of the tent, and– (flatulence ripping) (belching) You probably won’t find it funny just because it hasn’t translated very well, at least that particular scene, but it was revolutionary in the sense that it was like, Mel Brooks was taking a chance and saying, I’m gonna do it, we’re gonna have all these actors fart. – And you know what it makes me think of, just to flash forward in time a little bit, in terms of great points of flatulence in cinema. I think about that frickin’ Eddie Murphy movie where he plays all the different characters at the dinner table. – Nutty Professor. – Nutty Professor and is it his mom or his dad, or does the whole family start farting? – There’s a dinner scene where multiple, I actually have Nutty Professor written down because I wanted to use it as ane example. – Yes, I just thought about– – Case in point. (loud farting) – Who there called my name? – I just remember dying. That was so funny, man, because, one fart will catch you off-guard, and that checks the box of a certain type of comedy which is surprise, you take somebody by surprise, you add a little bit of embarrassment into the mix. And then all of a sudden, you’re laughing, but then I remember with that scene, it just kept happening. They just kept farting, and I just remember belly laughing, I couldn’t stop. It was so funny. – The first time. – Of course the first time. – Watching it again, would you laugh in that way? Probably not, right. I don’t know if I would crack a smile if I watched The Nutty Professor right now. – I mean speaking of bathroom humor, it’s like, when I re-watched A League of Their Own with the kids a few months back and I remember the Tom Hanks scene where he starts peeing in the women’s locker room and the whole team, he’s been on a drunken binge, and he pees, and it just keeps going and going and going and I remember in the theater, there was like rolling laughter. – It hits you again. Second wave. – I’ve talked about this scene multiple times in my life because it was very formative to me as an aspirational pee-er. – Right, ’cause you haven’t been at a pee very long. – And it stopped and then it started again. But then when I re-watched it with them, because I knew that it was going to end at some point, I didn’t have just the big question mark of, I can’t believe this is still going, when is it gonna end? Same thing with all the farts in Nutty Professor. Once you know it’s just a bunch of farts, you kinda roll your eyes. – And you kinda got at this a little bit, to why farts are funny, and there’s a number of theories, first of all, theories of humor, theories of comedy are super complex and there’s lots of disagreement, but I do think that farts have two things: number one, they’re relatable. So there’s a relatability to farts that across all cultures, all times, because everyone’s got to get rid of the gas in their butt at some point. – It’s like the gross version of saying everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. – Right, but it’s even more relatable than that. – Everybody releases air pockets– – Because not everybody wears pants. – From their anus. – There are cultures that don’t wear pants, but everyone has a butthole– – It’s better than that. – And gas comes out of it. – The butthole is like the pants of– – The galaxy? – The galaxy. – Pants of the galaxy. But the second thing besides relatability is what you called surprise, which when discussed in theories of humor is called pattern disruption. – Mhm. – And that’s what makes, a fart has those two things in full supply, right? Not just the gas but it’s got the relatability, then it’s got the pattern disruption, and it causes a sense of surprise, which elicits laughter and we don’t know exactly, but that’s why when you put a fart into church. That would go over like a fart in church, the old euphemism goes, when you put a fart into something that humans have dressed it up to be formal and to have a certain level of expectations that we’re not all thinking about each other’s buttholes at the time, like we’re doing the least think about each other’s buttholes thing that we can come up with, like be in church, or a newscast or a formal dinner or something like that, and then all of a sudden, somebody farts, there’s no question as to what it is. You don’t have to speak any particular language to know that was a fart, that came from that dude’s butt, and that surprised us and disrupted this pattern that we’ve got going on up here and everyone begins to laugh. And that’s why it’s universally funny, so I think the first part of the question is, are they actually funny? Well, yeah, they’re funny. – I think it depends because, well, I’m curious if our upbringing and how we interacted with farts over the course of our lives has primed us to find farts funny. Because I don’t think it’s any secret that we find farts funny, right? But not in every instance, but– – Not all farts. – We have a general predisposition to find farts funny. And I think at least for me, it has to do with my upbringing. And I’m curious about yours, but for me, both of my granddads would just, when I would go visit my grandparents, they would just do these reverberatory farts that we would just all get a kick out of. My mom’s dad and my dad’s dad, they would just rip ’em and everyone would immediately laugh. They were so expressive. When you get a laugh in that way, you start to know how to harness that pocket of air for maximum effectiveness. – It becomes a tool. – But my Nana, she’d also rip ’em. But now she’s at a point, and you fast forward to this point in her life, great-great-grandmother, just walking around, doing whatever she wants farting, just doing the walking farts, every step. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. – God bless her, let her do what she wants. – It’s not even for comedic effect anymore, but we laugh at her, we kinda snicker because it’s happening and sometimes she’ll cut her eyes, but it just comes from a long line of, a fart is followed by a laugh in the Neal household. Now, in my house, I operate that way. I fart, I expect to get a laugh. But you know what, it doesn’t happen. – Mm, mhm. – And my kids will say, “Well it’s gross. “It’s gross,” so I think that, I don’t know, they just haven’t been around enough people laughing at it. And they’ve only experienced the negative parts which are like the smell part. That is an aspect. – I have a theory. I have a theory for why your kids don’t find it finny. But I don’t wanna get there yet. – Okay. – So I’ll kinda give you, my background’s very similar. I didn’t have… My grandparents didn’t live in the same town, and so honestly, I know that my Mama Nell’s husband, my step-granddad we called Pop, he definitely farted. I remember him sitting in like a recliner and farting, but it was just like a handful of visits. And it was funny. There was absolutely no shame associated with flatulence in my immediate family and also the families that we were related to, which is usually, you say extended relatives (chuckles). I said families I was related to. – Did you grow up with your parents farting? – Yeah, yeah. – Like both of them? – Both of them, yes. Now, my dad would do it for comedy’s sake. – Comedic punctuation. – And there might be like, “Well you know what I think about that.” (Rhett blows fart sound) (Link makes toot sound) Well-placed fart. With my mom– – Those are great. – I think it might have been like, it wasn’t always on purpose, but when it was, it was immediately acknowledged and diffused with a laugh. So we weren’t one of those families that was ashamed of farts, unless it felt like more than a fart happened. – There was certainly a glass ceiling– – If a shart happened– – Oh gosh. – At that point, there’s some shame involved. It’s still very funny, but it’s a different kind of laugh. – I think there was a glass ceiling for my mom. The men in my life, it seems like they would hold them for the perfect moment and just like let ’em rip, just force it out in the most reverberatory way. But I don’t think the women were expected to do that, which is a shame. – Right, there’s a double-standard. – So for them, you’d laugh at them because something slipped out. But the man, it was like, “Good lord, what have you done?” A few Christmases ago, we spent the night at my dad’s house and all the kids slept in the sun room which is like at the back door, and Lincoln tells the story of my dad, who he calls Granddaddy, coming in and saying, taking his dog Gypsy out. He’s like, “Gypsy,” and that made Lincoln stir a little bit. And then my dad, I don’t know how you could have this much gas inside of your belly. It can’t be healthy. And he let out this fart (chuckling) that was like, it was like a huge deposit. I mean it could have filled up the whole sun room. It’s like– (makes long flatulence sound) (Rhett chuckles) – It started again. – And then, it woke up Lincoln. It woke him up, it was like an earthquake was happening. And (chuckles), and my dad said, “Gypsy!” and then he let out the fart, and then he was like, “Good lord!” (Rhett laughs) And then he just walked out the door. – Yeah, you gotta walk out after that. – Good God almighty. – You don’t wanna sit around and discuss it after– – And it scarred Lincoln. – It scarred him? – It scarred him, I mean it didn’t literally leave a scar on him, he wasn’t that close to it. The only farts that my family likes that I do are the ones I do with my mouth. They’ll ask me– – “Do that farting with your mouth, Daddy.” – Do that fart with your mouth, ’cause I got one– – “Gather round, kids.” – It’s not like (blows raspberry). – It’s like The Waltons. – It’s like (imitates flatulence). – “Good night, Daddy.” (imitates flatulence) – That’s it, that’s it. They love it when I do this fart, it comes out of the lower right part of my mouth. (imitates flatulence) – It’s pretty good. – They love that. – Yeah. – But when I really fart, from my anus, they don’t like that. – Oh where’s it from? – And I think that’s why– (Rhett chuckles) That’s my theory. I’m just gonna skip to my theory and you can wait for yours, I just think they know that they smell something, I mean, this is gross, I’m sorry, but I think they just think, there was air in your anus and now it’s in my nose. – Yeah. – I don’t care how funny it sounded, that is gross. And you know what, it is. And I think comic relief is the only way to get over that reality. That’s my argument for it being funny. – I think there are two reasons that your kids don’t find it funny. And this goes back to the theory of humor, right, so one aspect of the theory of humor is, or someone’s theory of humor is that things that are funny involve something going wrong but no one getting hurt. – Mhm. – Right, so somebody falling down the stairs– – Sometimes it hurts. – Somebody falling down the stairs and dying is not funny, but somebody falling down the stairs and not dying or not getting hurt is funny. – Yeah. – It’s just the outcome. So when your flatulence is stanky and is experienced by your kids in a negative way, they’re getting hurt. – Yeah. – It may start as funny, but then when it’s like, oh that actually stunk, this is unpleasant, it’s no longer funny. But I actually think an even bigger part of it, and this is why I wanted to use The Nutty Professor, because I remember laughing at that, but I would not laugh at it now, is I think that because a key to a fart being funny is this pattern disruption, but when the fart becomes the pattern, it’s no longer funny. So if you go to the fart too often, as I do believe Eddie Murphy does too much in The Nutty Professor. – In that one scene, or– – And potentially you may do too much as the farting dad in your house. You’re wearing out the fart’s welcome by going to it so often and now it’s no longer disrupting a pattern but the pattern has become dad farts for attention (chuckles). – Yeah, yeah. – And if you’re farting on a regular basis. In other words, if you had a friend and it was like the first time you ever met this guy, you walk into the room and he farted, you would laugh and you would tell the story, but if every time you walked into the room, he farted and that was his thing, you’re like, I don’t wanna go into the room anymore. It’s unpleasant, it’s also not funny because I’m expecting it, and an expected fart isn’t funny. – I also think that it’s really hard in a cinematic setting to make a fart funny, because, everything’s calculated, so if you’re deciding to go with the fart joke in that moment, it better be really good and surprising and original in some way. It just can’t be like adding a fart sound effect when Jar Jar Binks runs off scene, which I do have a memory of that being a part of the Star Wars movie, that Jar Jar Binks, they put a fart sound in at one point. – Is this true? – I believe it. – There’s a fart noise? – Yes. I’m pretty certain of it. And that’s just, okay, that’s just cheap. Won’t the kids find it funny when this character farts? – And also, who’s the most likely character to fart? Jar Jar Binks. Don’t give him the fart. Give the fart to the most unexpected character and maybe you’re getting somewhere. – Darth Maul. – Yeah, if Darth Maul farts, I’d laugh at that all day. (Link chuckles) But Star Wars isn’t a comedy, shouldn’t have ever tried to be one, and that’s why that dude’s life was ruined. – The fart sound. – You told me about the Jar Jar Binks guy– – Yeah the guy who played Jar Jar Binks, awhile back he– – He had a horrible life. – Yeah, he came forward saying it screwed up his life. – So it is a thing, Jar Jar Binks farts. – Yeah just Google Jar Jar Binks fart, you’ll get it on YouTube. – All you want. – But in real life, farts can be hilarious. I mean if I search TV fart bloopers, I can watch videos of newscasters or people in like a talk show setting accidentally farting and– – It’s hilarious. – I looked at those before I came in here and I thought to myself, as long as I’m seeing a fresh clip I’ve never seen, the laughs are not gonna stop. Because you get the facial expression, and the beauty-ful thing is, you don’t smell it! You don’t smell it, so– – Nobody gets hurt. – Nobody gets hurt when it’s on the other side of a screen. Matter of fact, speaking of somebody getting hurt, it can get you fired but it can make a career. I’m sure many Ear Biscuiteers have heard about Paul Flart who has an Instagram account. (chuckles) He was… He’s a security guard at a hospital, and he would, the story is, he would fart when no one was around at the entrance to the hospital and he realized how good the acoustics were, and he started turning on his, well the shot’s the same exact time so it’s almost like a webcam shot, I don’t know if he’s doing it with phone, but it’s his face and the top of his uniform and you can see the hospital sign behind him. Not all of it, just a little bit of it. It’s mostly his face. (farts) And he just kinda– – He’s like in an office or something. – He blinks, no, he was in the reception area. – Okay, reception. – Each Instagram video is just one fart. – [Rhett] Mhm. – I watched all of them. And you saw me over there cackling. – Yeah and when I looked over your shoulder, it was definitely very, very funny. – Because it’s just his face, like blinking and twitching. Then his reaction to his own fart, and then whatever caption he might put on it. Like, “Ferocious. “Felt that one in my chest.” (Rhett chuckles softly) Anyways, he starts getting big on the internet. People put compilations on YouTube and whatnot. He’s got 74,000 followers on Instagram as of this recording, but that was plenty to get him fired. – Oh wow. – Which he then livestreamed as it was happening. – Getting fired? – Getting kicked out of the hospital, yeah. So now he’s trying to make a living– – As a farter? – As a farter. He’s got a Patreon, you give him $5. “I got fired, you’re really paying me to fart. “Thank you,” that’s what it says, $5 a month. Or you can give him $1 a month. – It seems like he could– – Paul Flart. – He could still get a job somewhere. Like a glue factory. We actually knew a guy– – Oh ’cause of the stink. – Who worked at a glue factory which just smells absolutely horrible because of the things that go into glue, and he said that the best thing about it was, if you had one that you knew wasn’t gonna make any noise, you’re in a board room and people were just constantly letting them fly because it was masked by this. I think that he needs to be a security guard at a glue factory and then it’s the best of both worlds, and everybody’s happy. – If you’re in a plane and all of a sudden, someone sawed a log… – Mhm. – That sounded like a snore but I was trying to come up with a fart euphemism, I don’t find that funny. ‘Cause the pain thing, you’re exactly right about that. – Because we’re trapped. We’re trapped with you in that place. But a video of you not on that plane, watching other people on that plane, you would laugh at it. Even if you felt bad for the people. – Remember Tommy G.? The story we tell, I don’t wanna say his last name anymore. – G. It starts with a G though. – Sitting on the front row of Miss Ennis’s history class. I was sitting in the middle, you were sitting somewhere over to the side. All of a sudden, you hear a fart. (imitates elongated flatulence) – And it was so loud and so long that everyone in the class had a chance to stop what they were doing, Miss Ennis stopped talking and everybody turned and locked on him and– (Link continues fart sound) Echolocated it directly to the one seat, the one butthole that was emanating this fart. (Link makes fart sound) Tommy G. – It was like when an earthquake lasts so long that you can start to try to keep things from falling over. – [Rhett] Mhm. – That’s what was happening in the room. – It was like a game of Marco Polo except the person just holds out Polo until you touch them. You know, (chuckling) it’s like, it’s just so easy to figure out where they’re at. Pol– (imitates flatulence) Lo. And you know what? No one was laughing in the moment, but because it was so, it was unbelievable. But then as soon as it ended, it was like, the room didn’t erupt out of reverence for, I mean that would have been cruel, but we laughed about it a lot later. – But Miss Ennis actually addressed him after he did it. – Good gosh. – She said something like, “Well, Tommy.” She knew too – (chuckles) Yeah. I mean you gotta say something. – I felt bad for him. You gotta have a back pocket line for that because this is a serious thing, how brutal kids can be. You’ve gotta have a back pocket line, like, while that fart’s coming out and you’re like, oh no, they’re gonna echolocate, they’re gonna know it’s me. You gotta stand up and bow. You can’t let your face get red. You gotta stand up, you gotta bow, you gotta own it and people will be telling that story forever. Kids are mean and ruthless. – So do you fart? How do farts go over in your house now? – Well. – They get a laugh? – You know, I feel like, again, not to continue the sexist commentary but I’ve got two boys. And at least in my experience they tend to be a little bit more fart-friendly. And yeah, so there’s a shaking of the head of my wife. Now she’s not uptight about it at all. We didn’t have like a no fart policy. There are many relationships where there’s a no fart policy but we don’t have that in our relationship, but pretty much any fart in any context gets a laugh and there’s no, “Oh come on, Dad,” situation, thus far. That’s the experience, but also, based on what you’re telling me, I don’t feel like I’m doing it as much as you. (both chuckle) – Or that yours aren’t as potent and stinky as mine are. – I have noticed that you do often smell like something has died inside of you. (Link chuckles) – I will say that. – Okay. I’ll take that note. – I don’t know, I’m not exactly sure what the cause of it is, you might have to see a doctor, but I gotta say, I can have significant volume and I can have significant force and I can have significant frequency, but I don’t often have significant stink unless I’m sick. (both chuckle) – I envy you, man. I don’t know what it is. I stopped drinking regular milk. Drinking the almond milk. – Yeah, well, and oat milk. – Yep, and oat milk, I think that helps. – (chuckles) Yeah, yeah, ’cause dairy does contribute to it. – So you don’t have an issue under the bedspread. Where you like– – I’m not saying I haven’t ever Dutch ovened. Dutch ovened my wife. (chuckles) Yeah, I have. – I try to seal it down, like I put my elbows on top of the covers and like hold it down. – Seal it down and then flap your foot so it goes out the bottom. – (chuckles) Yeah, that’s right. – Okay I see the plan. – That doesn’t work too well. It’ll seep out. – I think we’ve established that we personally find farts funny in real life and also, in media that is depicting real life. – Mhm. – But, to get back to what you were talking about a second ago which is the scripted fart. The scripted fart joke. Bathroom humor. I’m gonna widen out a little bit into bathroom humor in junior, in general (chuckles). – Don’t call me Junior. “And Junior, let me tell you this.” – So this is a little bit about our philosophy of humor in the way that we’ve approached our comedy. So very early on, we kinda made a conscious decision to not go into certain places with our comedy, right? You may have noticed that we don’t really do political jokes, we don’t really do religious jokes. We don’t really get into controversial things as a policy, I mean, every once in awhile we may hint at something or break the seal on something. – There’s no intentionally shocking humor. – Right. – Like the shock jock stuff. – And we’re also not cynical. Our humor is not cynical. I might get a little cynical at times, but in general, we don’t have a cynical point of view when it comes to our comedy, and then also, we don’t get overtly sexual. Obviously, you watch the show, you know there’s a lot of innuendo that happens naturally that we kind of embrace and have embraced even more as the years have gone by. But it’s not overtly sexual, it’s not overtly blue, it’s not R-rated, and so, when you sort of box yourself in, you then have to think to yourself, well what am I going to do? What lines am I going to cross? And so you naturally end up, because humor is about crossing lines, first of all. A big part of it is about defying norms and crossing lines, so you’re going to offend someone. – Once you build a box, like you described for us– – It’s gotta fart its way out from one corner. – If you squeeze the box. (makes fart sound) It’s gonna– – Like an accordion. The box that we put ourselves in, a little nod to Weird Al, is like– – Squeeze out the comedy. – And so the comedy often comes out in the form of bathroom humor, so not necessarily fart jokes, but there are, we get into bathroom humor. And some people are like, that’s not my thing. I wonder sometimes when people are like, I’m not into bathroom humor, I’m not into blue stuff, I’m not into sexual humor, I’m not into religious humor, I’m not into political humor, I begin to wonder, well what makes you laugh? Where else do you go? – We do have other stuff in our– – Yeah yeah, I know. There’s some people who are like, I don’t like bathroom humor. I’m grossed out by it and I never find it funny. That’s their prerogative. I honestly would want to talk to that person and be like, “Okay, well what is the funniest thing for you?” And is it something thought doesn’t cross a line, because that doesn’t compute for me. But we’ve tried– – I would ask that person, if you’re watching Jeopardy, I’m not assuming they watch Jeopardy just ’cause they don’t have a sense of humor. But let’s say you pass by a television, Jeopardy’s on, you’re not even intending to watch. Alex Trebek’s asking, he doesn’t ask a question. – He gives the answer. – Gives the answers, man. – Yeah. You gotta get that right or else you get it wrong. – He’s in the middle of an answer and he farts. (Link makes toot sound) – Would you find that funny? – Would you find that funny? – I think most people would. – That would be like top 10. Like if I told you that was on YouTube and that I found it hilarious and honest, you’d search it, right? – Yeah I’m searching it right now. Because if it’s happened, I wanna know. – Can you Google Alex Trebek fart, see what comes up, because– – Well okay– – I feel like I might be onto something. Like my future. – I’m sure it’s one of those, you remember the, who’s the preacher? – Probably somebody adding it to like– – Who’s that preacher, the televangelist who like makes the (exhales), he makes the faces. – And she proved God. (flatulence sound effect) God– – And then they just put a bunch of fart noises every time he made– – Tilman, Robert, nope. – What’s his name? Farting preacher, if you Google farting preacher, it’ll probably be the first thing that comes up. – Now that’s an edit joke, of course. He’s not really farting but his face looks so contorted and it’s timed so well that it’s just– – It’s so great. – It’s splendid. – But let’s talk about the times when it hasn’t worked for us because the prime example of this. Yeah, that’s him. What is his name? – [Crew Member] Robert Tilton. – Robert Tilton. – Tilton, Tilton. When it hasn’t worked for us is when we leaned into it so heavily on this thing that we did called first date farts. I’d really like to– (farts) – Did you just fart? – No, it was a notification. That was awhile back. It was within the context of a GMM, but it was like a short two minute sketch where we’re in the car, you’re playing a woman on a date with me. – And you’re covering up the fact that you’re farting. – By saying that it’s my– – Ringtone. – My ringtones and my text messages and stuff. – Yeah. – I’m pretty sure that that idea came from a conversation that Cassie was having with Stevie. My memory– – That sounds right. – Is that Cassie has an idea that Stevie relayed to us (chuckling) and then we turned it into that sketch. And it’s, again, I think– – Did you re-watch it? It doesn’t work? – I don’t know, I don’t like leaning into it that much because that’s when I believe that you are getting into a place where the surprise is taken out of it. That’s my best assessment of that is that when you get that joke, and then you just run it into the ground and that’s the whole sketch, the pattern disruption element is gone because the fart becomes the pattern. And at that point, that’s why, if you watch a movie that relies too much on it, and it becomes the pattern itself, it’s not sacred anymore. There’s nothing unexpected about it. – Keep the farts sacred. It could be cheapened but we can reclaim that. – Do you remember Sundance, two years ago, when Swiss Army Man premiered? – Mhm, oh yeah. – At Sundance, and we were trying to figure out what we were gonna go watch. We were trying to figure out what things we were gonna go– – And the way Sundance works is, you’re in line with people, you’re talking to people, so you end up asking them what they’ve seen, and there’ll literally be a buzz around movies. – Chatter. – Chatter around movies that you have to see. – And all the chatter about Swiss Army Man, at least from the people we met was, we heard it’s not good and it’s really gross, and there’s this scene at the beginning where, like, there’s a dead body that’s farting and it’s really, really gross and it was weird and you shouldn’t see it. That was the sentiment from multiple people and I was like, what, this sounds stupid. – We’re like, is Alex Trebek in it? – And then we didn’t end up seeing it at Sundance, and then we get back home and of course at that point I see, well months pass, however long it took from Sundance to the film actually coming out in theaters, which could have been a year, I don’t even know how long it was. I see the trailer for this thing and I’m like, this looks like an incredible movie. I have to see this. This looks right down my alley. – Hm, or right up it. – And then, we went to see it and saw the whole scene where the dead body is being propelled by farts like a boat, like a frickin’ jet ski, and we loved it! – But it was taking a fart joke to an absolute extreme, like an appalling, surreal extreme that, a place that had never gone before. – It was completely innovative and so it wasn’t a pattern. – And it was rooted in science too. You have a dead, bloated body– – Propulsion. – Which by the way, it wasn’t a gruesome dead body, it was Daniel Radcliffe who then was the star of the movie playing a dead guy. So it wasn’t morbid. It was endearingly comedic. – I absolutely loved it. – Magical. It was magical. – And it was one big fart joke that in my mind worked, but I think it’s an illustration of, if you’re gonna do a fart joke, and it’s in something scripted at this point, you’ve got to do it in a way that it hasn’t been done before. You can’t just come out with Nutty Professor 5 and expect people to still care about it. I mean, I didn’t see Dumb and Dumberer. Most people hated it. And I think one of the reasons, and I’m talking ignorant ’cause I didn’t see it, is that they kinda went back to the same well in a lot of ways. – There’s a lot of farts in the well. – I think they never should have remade the movie ’cause it’s one of those things that you can’t… You can’t win, it’s a lose-lose situation when you wanna remake a movie like that, because they go back, there’s so much gross humor, okay we’re gonna go back to the exact same well 20 years later, is it still gonna work? No, it’s not gonna work, but if they were to suddenly do it differently everybody would criticize them for doing it differently. Why are you guys trying to get intellectual with your fart jokes? It wouldn’t work, so just don’t make the movie, just let the original movie stand on its own. So in other words, if you’re gonna bring farts into comedy purposefully, now we’ve done it accidentally, we’ve both independently farted accidentally on GMM and it made it into the cut both times. (groaning) – Did you actually fart? – I think I did. – I actually heard you fart. – I think I just felt it. (Link laughs) Get it today. (Link farts) Trashbagboys.com. Did you actually just fart? – Yeah, it came out, man. I’m sorry. Yeah, that really worked, that was funny. – But if you’re gonna do it on purpose, you’re gonna write a fart into something, you better do it right. – Yeah, that’s like threading the needle. If that needle– – I don’t like to think about needles. – The eye of the needle were your sphincter, and the (clicks tongue). – Yup. – The fart joke was… – Mhm. – I don’t know, the enema. Did I lose the analogy? Does it matter? – A little bit, but I think we all know what you mean. So our position on are farts actually funny seems to be yes, they are intrinsically funny for all the reasons that we covered. But it is the context of the fart that determines whether or not it wears its welcome out. – Now, I have a decision to make at this point. – Okay. – Because I’ve worked one up. – Oh gosh. – And I’m like, if I just, of course I’m probably, by talking about it, I probably spoiled it. Well, I didn’t work it up, I find myself in a position where I could fart, I mean… I think I’ve already made my choice, because I think the alternative would have been, don’t say anything, Link, play it cool. And then at the very end, as we’re ending this episode, I get this, just, punctuate my last sentence with a fart and get your honest reaction. – Okay. – But I guess it’s too late for that now that I’ve– – I mean, I don’t know. It depends on where you work it in. – Well I’m not working it in right here ’cause you’re expecting it. – I can’t be looking at you when it happens. (Link chuckles) It needs to be able to turn my head like Tommy G. and I need to be able to locate you and where it came from. – I’m not gonna do it. – Well, Leslie Nielsen of Naked Gun fame, and a lot of other things before that, who died in 2010, had written as his epitaph. Epitath? – Epitat. – Epitat? – Gravestone engraving. – Let her rip, because he was so… The fart joke was his thing and he had like a fart machine that he had with him at all times and there’s actually a clip that we were watching earlier that I don’t know if it was a real fart or if it was the fart machine, but he’s like being interviewed on Australian TV and he– – Let it rip. – He just lets it rip. He’s talking about comedy and he pauses at this certain time and this fart noise comes. People don’t know how to interact and he moves right along. He was the genius at doing that. – ‘Cause he didn’t know– – You’re getting into some– – You didn’t know if it was gonna– – Epitaph. Epitaph. – Yeah, I know. – Did I say that? – Yeah. – Okay. – You didn’t know how they were gonna respond, so he wasn’t making a joke, he was pulling a prank on them, and the joke would be how they responded. – Right. And so– – But he died like he lived. He let it rip. – So if you’ve got a fart that’s been– – Well I don’t know how he died. – He died of pneumonia. – Oh. – Which is not funny at all. – Oh. – It’s like the least funny way to die. I don’t know maybe it was a funny pneumonia. – I’m sure he had a sense of humor in it. Wow. – What I’m ultimately saying is, if you start talking about potentially laying a fart into your conversation, you’re standing on the shoulders of giants. (both laugh) – Which is a perfect place to let it rip, actually. – Yeah, so, I’m totally fine with just waiting it out and seeing what happens. – What do you mean, waiting it out? If I’m gonna fart right now? – Yeah waiting for like a gopher to come out of a hole. – Oh, oh. I’m not gonna do it, I think I’m done with the whole thing. I’m moving on, no more fart humor for me. – I think you made the right choice. – It’s not funny. Wow, you’re still here listening. Thanks for doing that. Thanks for hanging out with us. – Let’s continue this conversation online. – Yeah, can we talk more about farts on Twitter? #EarBiscuits. – I’m sure that many of you have strong, this is a polarizing issue. Some of you made a decision to quit listening awhile ago and why am I even talking to you? Those of you who are still listening probably either just gave us the benefit of the doubt, or you actually think farts are funny too. Let’s talk about it and come to a collective conclusion. Are we right, are we wrong? Let us– (Link farts) Oh gosh. – There it was. (Link farts) Two of them. – Oh. – You have one too? – Yeah. The first time it was bigger, but you laughed in the middle of it. (Link farts) Oh gosh. See, it’s not funny anymore. – It’s over. – It’s ridiculous. – We’re coming for you, Eddie Murphy. (Rhett laughs) – [Rhett] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your Mythical best.