0:00

Why did the chicken cross

0:02

the road known for and

0:04

famous for. Getting to the other

0:07

side, nobody thinks much about that joke.

0:09

so let's have some fun. Let's find

0:11

out why. Why did the chicken cross

0:13

the road? Is secretly

0:15

incredibly fascinating. Hey.

0:33

There folks, welcome to a whole new podcast

0:36

episode! Our Podcast All about why being alive

0:38

is more interesting than people think it is.

0:40

My name is Alex Met are not alone

0:42

because I'm joined by my co Katie Golden

0:45

Katy Hi. Hello! Yeah

0:47

hi lo. And we're joined by

0:50

a thrilling, wonderful guest. He's been on

0:52

the show before and he's a comedian.

0:54

He's also a Tv writer for shows

0:57

like Spirit Rangers on Netflix and among

0:59

many things were going link Gone Native.t

1:01

V where he has assembled amazing comedy

1:04

shorts and more. Please welcome back Joey

1:06

Clift Joey Hey. Everybody

1:08

thinks I'm into our me a

1:10

bit on secretly. incredibly fascinating A

1:12

couple times and something I've realized

1:14

his. If. It's supposed to be

1:16

a secret. Why is this podcast by

1:18

publicly available? Are we Are We ruined

1:20

by the Federal. Cj

1:23

Two hundred Cupboard Way incredibly fascinating. What

1:25

if I tried to keep it secret

1:27

every week and there's just a devious

1:30

hacker rate? Obey Just keep running into

1:32

hell. Yeah, I'm here in my but

1:34

you gotta know somebody. Somebody posting these

1:36

conversations online. Alex: This isn't a secret

1:39

It before it. It's a

1:41

secret with our closest

1:43

x thousand friends. Yeah.

1:45

Actually in the canon of it, Katie is

1:48

probably the hero hacker, right? They. I

1:50

try to keep our conversation secret and then Katie

1:52

is putting it out. For. The people

1:54

like Robin Hood. Let. Me do

1:56

some quick hacks right now. pac

1:59

man I just hacked the system.

2:03

I hacked the database. I'm in. I'm

2:06

in. Yeah, I was about to say. We're in. I

2:09

love it. And we have a

2:12

question selected by many listeners. Hey, Kayla suggested this.

2:14

A lot of support from Wig in the polls

2:16

as well. We always start

2:18

by asking what our relationship to the topic is

2:20

or opinion of it. And Joey, why don't you

2:23

go first? What's your relationship to the

2:25

joke? Why did the chicken cross the road? I

2:28

would say that I respect it

2:31

as a monolith

2:33

of comedic achievement in

2:36

that it's a joke that kind of everybody

2:38

can quote, right? Like, I feel like it

2:40

would be, you know, and,

2:43

you know, as somebody who is like, you know,

2:45

comedy writer professionally, as you know, everybody on

2:47

this episode is, I would

2:50

not say it's something that I laugh at, but it's

2:52

something that I respect as a

2:54

building block for everything that came before it.

2:57

So like, I

2:59

think you should leave the

3:01

that like that show should

3:03

thank how the chicken crossed

3:05

the road for us getting Tim

3:08

Robinson's screaming. Ninety nine

3:10

tacos, ninety nine burritos, ninety nine

3:12

hamburgers, et cetera. Like

3:15

like joke evolution wise. It's

3:17

a yeah, like, yeah, this is it's

3:19

that's the it's like that's the primordial

3:21

ooze that we've crawled out of. I

3:24

like it. We all stand on the shoulders

3:26

of chickens. I

3:31

love that. Yeah. And Katie, what about

3:33

you? How do you feel about this? Well,

3:35

you know, it is it is

3:37

a joke and it

3:39

involves chickens. So I do like

3:42

chickens and I like jokes. So

3:44

you would think this would be

3:46

a favorite joke of mine. But you know,

3:49

I feel like it is

3:51

too repeated. It's like when

3:53

you repeat a word over and over again, it no

3:57

longer means anything. Right. covered

4:00

that on our Deja Vu episode.

4:02

Yeah, where it's like the kind

4:04

of opposite of Deja Vu where

4:07

it's like happens so much and

4:10

you recall it so much, it's like

4:12

it loses all meaning at a certain

4:14

point. And that's how I

4:16

feel about this joke. There's no way I can appreciate

4:19

it in any objective

4:21

way because I've been,

4:24

we've all been overdosed with the

4:26

chicken joke. And

4:28

I'm saying, yeah, this joke is

4:31

officially comedy and yet not comedy in

4:34

my head. Like it's just, it's a

4:36

thing that is in the file cabinet

4:38

of comedy and is not funny. It's

4:41

so interesting to me about comedy is

4:43

like comedy is ultimately like what a

4:45

laugh is, is it's like a biological

4:48

response on your body reacting to

4:50

a surprise but with no danger present.

4:53

So that's why like so many jokes are

4:55

like surprising in some way. And

4:57

when you have a joke like this that's just

5:00

so in a zeitgeist, the set up and punch

5:02

line of the joke isn't surprising. So you acknowledge

5:04

that it's a joke as the structure of a

5:06

joke and probably when this was first told, I'm

5:08

sure it just like killed at the King's

5:11

castle it was set at by the

5:13

court jester or whatever. But

5:16

now it's like you kind of have, the

5:18

joke has to be like built or twisted

5:20

in such a way for it

5:22

to like even, you know, feel funny.

5:25

And like that's something that you see I think

5:27

with like the the meme-ification of things like Garfield

5:29

where it's just like, you know, like Garfield is

5:31

something that like we understand that Garfield is funny,

5:33

but like because like we all understand like Garfield,

5:35

you know, like hits Mondays, levels on ya, you

5:37

kind of have to do a little bit more

5:40

to it to have it like track as a

5:42

joke. So Garfield is like, you know, a horror

5:44

villain or something like that. The

5:47

joke itself stops being surprising. So you have to

5:49

add stuff to it for it to be surprising

5:51

again. I feel like

5:53

that's happened, though, with the dark Garfield

5:56

now sort of the horror version of

5:58

the horror version of Garfield. has been

6:01

done so much that now we've got

6:03

to bring it back around and have

6:05

boring quotidian Garfield for it to be

6:07

funny again. We

6:10

almost need just the strip now. We

6:12

almost need just the strip now for it to

6:14

be funny anymore. Wait,

6:16

let's do a quick writer's room. Okay, so how

6:18

can we punch up how did the chicken cross

6:20

the road? Oh,

6:22

okay. The chicken is mad at

6:25

Odie. Nope, I'm in Garfield mode, shoot. Can

6:29

we label the chicken as a

6:32

political party we don't like and the

6:35

road as taxes? I

6:38

don't care how the chicken crossed the road. I

6:40

want to know where he's going and the answer

6:43

is to storm the capital. There

6:45

we go. Yeah, now it's- Make

6:47

it topical. Topical as of a couple of years

6:49

ago. And perhaps the year

6:51

to come. No. Okay.

6:55

The humor increases with the number of

6:57

labels that we put in the comic.

6:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because

7:03

for one thing, researching this, Googling

7:05

the joke is somewhat difficult

7:07

because there are a lot of sort

7:10

of random blog posts where people have done this

7:12

joke but with famous scientists or this joke

7:14

but with politics and they just made up

7:16

versions. Yeah, it's like why did

7:19

Einstein cross the road? Because

7:21

energy equals mass equals whatever.

7:24

Yeah. Right. But

7:26

Salvador Dali melted a clock

7:28

on the road. Yeah, yeah.

7:30

Stupid. Yeah. I

7:32

have the urge to give someone a wedgie now. Me

7:36

too. I like how

7:38

mad Alex was at just the

7:40

idea of Salvador Dali. You were

7:42

just like, it's stupid. Yeah. The

7:46

clock don't melt like that. So passe.

7:50

You know what doesn't persist? Salvador

7:52

Dali joke funniness. Oh,

7:56

roasted him. Boom. Got

7:59

him. Got got him. Got him. This

8:04

topic, we're going to get into like

8:07

cultural trends, historical trends, bird science. This

8:09

was really wonderful to research. The fascinating

8:11

set of numbers and statistics about the

8:13

topic this week, that is in a

8:15

segment called But If

8:18

I Count Stats With You All.

8:21

Do do do do do do do do do. Things

8:24

just couldn't count the

8:26

same because I'm as

8:29

free as numbers now

8:31

and these stats you

8:33

cannot change. And

8:39

that name was submitted by Willow Tanager. Thank

8:41

you, Willow. Keep going. The song's like 12

8:43

minutes long. Do the guitar solo. Yeah. I've

8:47

played Guitar

8:49

Hero. I

8:56

know how to play that song. Sorry,

8:59

Alex, you were mentioning who wrote that.

9:02

Thank you, Willow Tanager. We have a new

9:05

name for this every week. Please make a

9:07

mausoleum back as possible. Submit through Discord or

9:09

to [email protected]. The first thing

9:11

is instances of a chicken crossing a

9:13

road. OK, I'm sure it's

9:15

happened. It turns out the first number

9:17

is 2015. That's the

9:19

year when a chicken tried to cross

9:21

the road at the San Francisco Bay

9:24

Bridge toll plaza. I

9:26

feel like that's the only chicken that

9:28

we've caught doing it. It

9:30

turns out it's not. But also there

9:32

are a lot more stories of it thanks

9:34

to social media. That's a

9:37

weird thing about this phenomenon is that

9:39

newspapers, TV books, I guess, they didn't

9:41

really record this. They have limited bandwidth and

9:43

page space and they're kind of serious. And

9:45

ever since social media got going, there's

9:48

a lot of these stories of people being like, oh,

9:50

like the joke and taking a picture with their phone.

9:53

That feels like the human response to

9:56

that joke is if you

9:58

see a chicken. crossing a road

10:01

you have to take a picture of it

10:03

and then post something on social media that's

10:06

like he did it or got him or

10:08

like something. Is social

10:10

media ruining our chickens? Are

10:13

the chickens crossing the road just

10:15

to get famous on TikTok? Are

10:18

chickens engaging in a dangerous new

10:20

TikTok trend crossing the road

10:22

just for likes? Yeah

10:26

and this chicken it got

10:28

on social media first around 5.50

10:31

a.m. there were traffic alerts due

10:34

to a social media post about

10:36

a chicken running around the fast-track

10:38

lanes of the San Francisco Bay

10:40

Bridge toll plaza and then

10:42

a couple more Twitter users got pictures

10:44

of it just standing in lane lines

10:47

and from there this got passed on

10:49

to multiple California state agencies. There

10:52

was Caltrans which is the Department of Transportation

10:54

for the state. They said they couldn't

10:56

put a crew member in the harm's way to collect the

10:59

chicken and Alice is curious. So they

11:01

just let it get obliterated

11:03

by a truck? That

11:08

was probably their fallback idea but their

11:10

next idea was

11:12

to pass it on to

11:14

law enforcement the California Highway

11:16

Patrol. Chips yeah yeah

11:19

like the show chips and the

11:21

chips deployed officers in neon yellow

11:24

high visibility jackets to pursue

11:26

the bird on foot and

11:28

capture it after a chase across multiple road

11:30

lanes then the officers took

11:32

a photo with the quote felonious foul

11:35

before putting it in a patrol car and bringing

11:37

it to a veterinarian. Did

11:40

they do like a high-speed chicken

11:43

chase that resulted in a bunch

11:45

of like city infrastructure damage and

11:48

pedestrians cuz you know I wouldn't

11:50

be surprised. Yeah, apprehending

11:53

this chicken probably cost the state of

11:55

California 12 million dollars.

11:57

That's where our schools went. Yeah,

12:00

we don't need more teachers. We

12:02

do need cops chasing chickens. Yeah,

12:05

but what's this chicken breaking any laws?

12:08

Basically not breaking laws because there aren't laws

12:10

about it. It was more of a let's

12:13

prevent Like a truck would

12:15

just barrel through it, but a car might swerve or

12:17

cause an accident or something Yeah, truck

12:19

drivers are merciless Yeah,

12:22

that's my point. Yeah Yeah I

12:25

mean to be fair if a truck driver

12:27

tried to swerve to avoid a chicken it

12:29

would probably kill like 20 people So that's

12:31

probably the right call Yeah,

12:33

it's like the trolley problem or something. It's weird.

12:36

Yeah, so I was gonna say is like it's

12:38

like a trolley problem I'm of like, okay. Do

12:40

I mean one chicken or 20 humans? I Eat

12:44

chicken. So I feel

12:46

like that trolley problem is pretty easy

12:48

And if it's not there's something wrong

12:51

with me like how can

12:53

I eat chicken? But be like I will

12:55

sacrifice 20 people to not run over this

12:57

chicken That's true. I also

12:59

eat chicken. So any Issue

13:02

that happened here. It's not that different from how I operate

13:04

the world. I Over

13:07

the past year have gotten really into like personal

13:09

training and like strength conditioning and stuff like that

13:11

and my personal trainer He

13:14

has me follow like macros. So I've used an amount of

13:16

like protein and stuff like that every day So

13:18

I become like such an eater of

13:21

chicken in a way that I'm embarrassed

13:24

like Like I was the

13:26

number one cause of death for all chickens

13:29

I think I might be like I was I

13:31

was like I was in an airport yesterday And

13:33

I was panicking because I was

13:36

trying to find an airport kiosk that

13:38

sold like pre cooked chicken I could

13:40

eat just on the plane cold. I

13:44

Have a problem. So I guess what I'm saying is

13:47

If that chicken regardless of whether that chicken got hit by

13:49

a truck or not, I probably would have eaten it Sounds

13:52

more like a chicken addiction than like Like

13:56

I don't know man. Look I'm

13:58

okay with you eating chicken, but

14:01

like, do you have like a

14:03

chicken fix? You know what I mean? Like,

14:05

I mean, I do start

14:07

shaking when I don't. Right. Chicken. Yes. You

14:09

start sweating. You get nervous. Right.

14:11

I mean, this is, this is, this is, we're only

14:14

recording the audio of our private zoom chat, but I

14:16

am eating a full rotisserie chicken while we're talking. Just

14:18

with my bear hands. We

14:20

bedded it out. These sort of like

14:22

squelching sounds. Yeah. Squelching sounds and

14:25

just the very, the very quiet, like me

14:27

going like, Oh yeah. This is stuff. But

14:29

yummies, there's a lot of yummies

14:31

happening. Yummy chicken. Ooh, man. Yeah.

14:34

I have a big studio magic dial

14:36

for that kind of stuff. Yeah. Just

14:38

labeled yummy. I turned away yummy dial.

14:42

So this chicken, I, so the

14:44

chicken was retrieved without incident, um,

14:47

apprehended what happened to it after this? Do

14:49

we know? Did like the, did

14:52

the chip, did the

14:54

California highway patrol have like a

14:56

mysterious barbecue the next day? With

14:59

these stories, they tend to only report

15:02

who the police gave the chicken to. So

15:05

we don't know what the veterinarian did and,

15:07

and chickens don't have a huge lifespan either. It's

15:11

2015 chickens probably not around. I

15:13

just swallowed it, right? Like, you know, I mean, it

15:15

was the, the veterinary, it was me in a mustache and I'm

15:18

hastily made no tarrant coat. Yes. You

15:21

turn your back and look back around and he's got

15:23

feathers around his mouth. I

15:25

just swallowed it whole. Joey's like, it's

15:27

the only way to get a chicken. And people are

15:30

like, no, there's a lot of ways. Yeah. I

15:32

just, I just hang out by roads in California and

15:34

I wait for a chicken to cross. So

15:37

chickens, chickens crossroads routinely, or

15:39

is this a rare occurrence?

15:43

I found multiple stories and we're going

15:45

to highlight three, including that one, but

15:47

they're all social media era. The next

15:49

one is 2016. 2016

15:52

is when a Scottish police department made

15:55

a Facebook post about apprehending

15:57

a chicken crossing a road. This

16:00

is Kara Giamo, wonderful writer writing

16:02

for Atlas Obscura. She

16:05

said, Tayside Police asked the community

16:07

for, as a joke, information

16:09

on why the chicken crossed the road in

16:12

the East Market Gate area of Dundee, Scotland.

16:15

And they say they delivered the chicken to

16:17

the SSPCA, the Scottish Society for Prevention of

16:20

Cruelty to Animals. So... That

16:23

sounds like a cover for Chicken Jail. I

16:28

imagine being the social media manager for like

16:31

a police station is probably a really

16:33

like not fun job. But do you

16:35

think that if a chicken crosses

16:37

the road in a town, that town

16:39

social media manager for that police department, it's like the

16:41

best day of their life? Because they're

16:44

like, oh, it's like slam dunk a

16:46

joke. Like, oh my gosh,

16:48

work was good today. Like running home? Like can

16:50

you do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah,

16:52

yeah, yeah. Or they just they

16:54

just lean back in a chair and they do

16:56

that switch like layup noise. Len,

17:01

this is the most extraordinary one to me. The year

17:03

is 2022. An

17:06

animal welfare group in Arlington, Virginia, used

17:08

Twitter to post about a

17:10

chicken crossing roads and at least

17:12

one security perimeter at the Pentagon.

17:15

Wow. Wow. Oh, interesting.

17:18

Wow. Was

17:21

this chicken investigated for ties

17:23

to foreign governments? The

17:26

Pentagon spokesperson went up this high. They

17:28

said that the chicken was, quote, nervous.

17:30

They also called it sweet and said

17:32

the chicken calmed down enough to allow

17:34

at least one person to pet her.

17:36

Oh, that's nice. This is called a good

17:39

cop, bad cop. The good cop pets the

17:41

chicken, offers it corn. The bad cop shows

17:44

it an empty KFC bucket. And this is how

17:46

we figure out where the chicken

17:48

has hidden the bomb. Oh,

17:50

yeah. I

17:53

mean, the chicken was strapped with explosives for

17:55

sure. I mean, this chicken

17:57

is clearly an infiltrator, a spy.

18:00

It's just fun to have a chicken try to

18:02

enter the Pentagon by crossing the road because it's

18:04

the joke and also what's by mission

18:06

as a chicken on. Yeah,

18:08

I thought that the CIA tried a surveillance

18:10

thing with pigeons back in the day. So

18:13

who's to say a chicken

18:15

couldn't be deployed in some kind of... Like

18:17

did they examine the chicken for

18:19

mechanical parts or electronics? Them

18:22

petting the chicken does feel

18:24

irresponsible. Right. Chicken

18:26

could have been covered in anthrax. Yeah.

18:31

Yeah, and this got posted

18:33

by the Animal Welfare League

18:35

of Arlington hashtag PentagonChicken. And

18:38

then that worked its way up to the news

18:40

organization The Guardian, who then talked

18:42

to a Department of Defense spokesman who

18:45

was willing to confirm that a female

18:47

Rhode Island red chicken crossed a road

18:49

and went into the first layer of

18:51

Pentagon security. However, quote,

18:53

we are not allowed to disclose exactly where

18:55

she was found. We can only say it

18:57

was at a security checkpoint. Hmm.

19:01

Chicken just walks up to the booth. It's

19:03

like this looks all in order

19:05

to me. Oh, with a badge? Yeah.

19:09

Yeah. Ah, Mrs. Buck.

19:11

Yes, of course. You're here for your 10

19:13

o'clock. Buck, buck, buck. I

19:16

like that they're being secretive about what room the chicken

19:18

was found in when it was probably just like the

19:20

lobby. Yeah, it

19:22

seems like it was still outside. It

19:25

was just one of those gates way out at

19:27

the front. Yeah. Yeah, it

19:29

wasn't found in like, you know, like a Roswell UFO

19:31

or something. It was like, nah, it was only in

19:34

a garden or something. Yeah,

19:36

this like, thanks to The Guardian and others,

19:38

it becomes national, if not global news. Jimmy

19:42

Fallon did a parody song about it that

19:44

night on late night TV. And

19:46

we know the chicken got adopted by a staff

19:48

member of the Animal Welfare Group who has a

19:51

small family farm in Virginia. I

19:53

think we always love a story about

19:55

an animal breaking the rules, like when

19:57

that possum went on the football field.

20:00

recently. We just love animals

20:02

being where they're not supposed to be.

20:04

And do you think that is because

20:06

we deep down sort of are

20:09

straining against the rules and regulations

20:11

of our society and wish to

20:14

be unrestrained like a chicken? It's

20:17

true. It's sort of like a lot of

20:19

humor to some people. I think it's like,

20:21

oh, I can break the bonds of norms

20:24

in society. Right. So it's fun in real

20:26

life when a chicken is just like balking

20:28

around in the Pentagon. Great. I can't go

20:30

in there. There are rules, but the chicken...

20:33

No triumphs. Yeah, but the chicken don't care.

20:37

Yeah. And more with

20:39

this joke. The next number is another year, but it's 1847,

20:41

back in 1847. That

20:46

is the year when a humor magazine called

20:49

the Knickerbocker published the oldest

20:51

recorded version of the Why Did the Chicken

20:53

Cross the Road joke. We think that's the

20:55

earliest publication or recording of Why Did the

20:57

Chicken Cross the Road. Okay.

21:00

You got to tell us, what was the

21:03

exact writing on that joke? Was

21:05

there racism, Alex? Please don't tell me there

21:07

was racism. Yeah, I was about to say, yeah, you guys

21:09

are filled with blurs. As soon as you

21:11

said 18 something, I was like, it's going to be

21:14

racist. So

21:16

yeah, perfect question because no racial

21:18

or weird component to this joke,

21:21

but 1847... No

21:24

cancel culture got to it is

21:27

what you're saying. The

21:30

Wokes in 1847. Yeah,

21:32

wow. So it was too woke. There's

21:37

a 200 year old listener like, yeah, I read the

21:39

Knickerbocker all the time and then it got canceled. Now

21:41

I can't anymore. Yeah,

21:44

I guess you can't say any jokes

21:46

anymore. But yeah,

21:48

what was the original incantation

21:51

of the joke? To

21:53

me, it's very 1847 because it's

21:55

too long and wordy. Right?

21:58

Like comedy is tighter now. So

22:00

here's... A chicken, a member of

22:02

the family Gallus Gallus, commonly

22:05

a domesticated farm animal, was found

22:07

crossing a road when used by

22:10

automobiles. Great,

22:12

great pull of the chicken's scientific name,

22:14

Gallus Gallus. Great. And

22:17

it's essentially that. Here's the

22:19

text, quote, there are

22:22

quips and quilets which seem actual

22:24

conundrums, but yet are none. Right?

22:27

It's a terrible setup. Here it continues.

22:29

Yeah, yeah. Of such as this, why

22:32

does a chicken cross the street? Are

22:34

you out of town? Do you give it up?

22:37

Well then, because it wants to

22:39

get on the other side. Well,

22:42

we did have a lot of lead in our paint

22:44

back then. Yeah. Like,

22:48

it's pretty much exactly the joke, and then

22:51

just with a lot of framing and puffing

22:53

around about, here comes a joke. Pretty wild.

22:56

Yeah. You can't tell yourself, find a chair

22:58

and get comfortable, for I am about to

23:00

regale you with a bit of a witticism.

23:03

Yeah. Do you

23:05

think that they workshopped that? Was

23:08

that the first draft of the joke, or did they have a writers

23:10

room for it to punch it up? What's

23:13

the longer version of that? They

23:15

had the gaudiest of writers room.

23:18

The most

23:21

gaudiest of writers rooms to come up with that

23:23

one, where the pipe smoke was as sick

23:25

as a pea soup. And

23:29

they're all like, why do we all have

23:31

gout and consuming nothing but mutton and bourbon?

23:33

I don't get it. Only

23:36

mutton. Yeah. Yeah. I

23:38

feel like the reaction reading that in the 1840s

23:41

was probably just one hearty, oh. Yeah.

23:44

Yeah. And then back to

23:46

the cards. A bit of a twitch air

23:48

flowing quickly over the mustache. Yeah.

23:50

To signify amusement. Yeah. I

23:54

feel like now I want to, I want to see

23:56

you standups do that a little bit more of like

23:59

really queue up. joke is coming

24:01

just like exactly what Katie said.

24:03

I'm just like, hey everybody, are

24:05

you ready to laugh? Here comes

24:07

something real funny. Steady yourselves. Okay,

24:09

here we go. How did the

24:11

chicken cross the road? Oh, well,

24:13

here comes the punchline to get

24:15

to the other side. Oh, like

24:17

everybody enjoy that yourselves. Yeah,

24:20

I do like comedy

24:22

shows get confused when a joke

24:25

happens because I don't understand.

24:28

I just think that they're talking to me

24:30

about stuff that really happens. And

24:32

so when they say

24:35

something that doesn't really fit with reality and

24:37

then other people start making weird noises around

24:39

me, it's really scary. Yeah,

24:43

that is actually a really interesting thing about so

24:45

I write a lot of different stuff, but I've

24:47

written for a couple of like preschool shows lately

24:49

for just kind of like younger audiences. And

24:52

a lot of people ask me like, what's the difference

24:54

between writing for like, you know, adults or writing for

24:56

like young kids? And like it

24:58

really is. It's exactly that for young

25:00

kids of just like really having to

25:03

like shine a light on just like,

25:05

Hey, is everybody ready? Something funny is

25:07

gonna happen. Like is every okay, everybody,

25:09

the funny thing is gonna happen. Oh,

25:11

the funny thing happened. Hey everybody,

25:13

wasn't that funny? Oh, that was so great,

25:15

right? It's like a pay. It's like not

25:18

just like a two liners set up punchline.

25:20

It's like a page of like ramping

25:22

up for the joke, then the then the

25:24

punchline, then all the characters laugh for like

25:27

30 seconds. And then the characters reflect on

25:29

the laugh for like 30 seconds. Basically,

25:33

everybody in the 1800s, since a few

25:35

more was preschoolers that have preschool. Yeah,

25:39

yeah, like even there's

25:41

no way to quantify it. But I've heard a theory

25:43

that people just consumed far

25:46

fewer jokes before we

25:48

had more mass media like day to day

25:50

you just heard a lot less jokes because

25:52

you didn't have TV, radio, even newspapers

25:54

like broadcasting jokes to you all the

25:56

time. I don't know. I'm so

25:59

skeptical of that. though. People must have

26:01

just talked to each other and had a

26:03

sense of humor with each other. Maybe

26:06

they weren't used to the

26:08

certain joke formats, like knock-knock jokes

26:11

or certain specific

26:13

formats for jokes, but there had to

26:15

be a lot of humor. That's

26:18

true. Also, what else do

26:20

you do if you don't have humor

26:22

and you're trying to winnow some

26:24

grain? You

26:30

know, we're all like

26:32

millennials who grew up loving comedy. So it's

26:34

like we kind of like we

26:37

like our like language to each other is

26:39

comedy and jokes and bits. And it's like

26:41

Simpsons quotes. Yeah, Simpsons quotes, you

26:43

know, Garfield, things like that. And it's like it

26:45

would be I just

26:47

can't imagine like walking

26:50

through the world and being like, I heard

26:52

my one joke for the month and they explained

26:54

to me that it was a joke before they

26:56

gave it and then I laughed once. Like

27:00

the earliest, I thought like one of the

27:02

earliest jokes was kind of

27:04

animal related and

27:06

how what is it? It's that ancient Sumerian joke.

27:09

Let me actually say the joke. So

27:12

people punchline is either garbled or doesn't make

27:14

sense. A dog walked

27:16

into a tavern and said, I can't

27:18

see a thing. I'll open this one.

27:21

And so the idea is that already on

27:24

board. Either the translation

27:26

isn't quite right or

27:28

that there was some

27:30

context. Like maybe there was a previous

27:32

joke that this joke is building on

27:35

like a meta joke or

27:37

some common understanding of something or like

27:39

a pun, like a kind of an

27:41

idiom. To me, this is

27:43

evidence that we've always had like

27:46

animal jokes where like, you know,

27:49

animal does something expected. So I

27:51

can't I don't know. I think

27:53

there was just something wrong with people in the 1840s

27:55

is what I'm saying. I feel like humans have had

27:57

jokes for a long time. In

28:00

jokes are a thing that have

28:02

been studied somewhat, but but not

28:04

all the time. Sometimes they're just

28:06

not treated a significant pay anchors,

28:08

clues, raiders, publishers. So this joke,

28:11

it's the earliest writing down of

28:13

Light of the Chicken. Cross the

28:15

Road is from eighteen. Forty Seven

28:17

could be older than that, but.

28:20

Not. Or number there is. The south is

28:22

at least one hundred seventy seven years olds.

28:24

It was also well known enough that am

28:26

nineteen eleven. Some. More than a

28:28

hundred years ago. Nineteen Eleven. The cover of

28:30

Park Magazine. Was. An illustration.

28:33

Over by a car Referencing this joke.

28:36

Why does the chicken cross the road

28:38

as a caption? So that's that's like

28:40

this joke getting the house Snl. But

28:42

and Nineteen Eleven like being the cover

28:45

of the very popular humor magazine Pack

28:47

magazine. I saw

28:49

the and and it's not a graphic

28:51

as you might be imagining. The chickens

28:53

are not of this or a that

28:55

they don't look like what a chicken

28:57

would probably look like having been like

29:00

bisected by an automobile. They are just

29:02

chicken salad days or on their backs.

29:04

Sell sell can act. Know

29:06

chicken gore in this episode? I don't

29:08

think I'm hoping. Yeah they look

29:10

like they got like knocked out by the

29:12

car but not just like exploded by this

29:15

from a her race riots. Also. Had

29:17

several sir terms and not just one. Yeah.

29:19

I guess so. I guess my questionnaires are the

29:21

people like are trying to hit those search terms.

29:24

Of what we have, multiple seconds and those

29:26

chickens are like not in a straight line

29:28

with each other for. To

29:30

me it looks like they had a bunch

29:33

of chickens in the car and they're like

29:35

passing on. How. Did the car

29:37

as they driver along like it doesn't read

29:39

to me like the hardest hit all these

29:41

seconds. It looks like they're just passing seconds

29:43

as a car like they're tossing rubbish or

29:46

something. Now that I know that not the

29:48

intention, it's just the luck of this magazine.

29:50

Have a lot of explaining to deal with

29:52

your poorly constructed art. The have a just like

29:54

sucked all their eggs out of it. sickens like the

29:56

were like if you were like didn't toothpaste out of

29:58

it's just. on her shoulder. Just

30:02

directly squeezing the kaloa ika.

30:05

Yeah, yeah. And I was like,

30:07

oh, this one's out, Chuck. The

30:10

very last number this week is two. It

30:12

turns out there are two potential meanings of

30:14

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? And

30:17

we're going to make that takeaway number one. Why

30:23

Did the Chicken Cross the Road is

30:25

either a meta joke about comedy or

30:28

a dark joke about a chicken choosing to

30:30

die? Yeah,

30:34

that makes sense. That's actually my

30:36

two interpretations of the joke. So,

30:39

yeah, I agree. Yeah,

30:41

like both would explain its

30:43

popularity. And before researching

30:45

this joke, I had only thought it was

30:48

a meta joke and not funny. I didn't think

30:50

of that second meaning. And I'm sure some other

30:53

people didn't as well. Yeah,

30:55

I guess that I always took it as like an anti-comedy in

30:58

that it's like setting up for a

31:00

twist that doesn't exist and the setup for the

31:02

twist. It's like the, you know, Why

31:04

Did the Chicken Cross the Road, to get to the other side,

31:06

is such an obvious answer to that question. But

31:09

if you're setting it up with five minutes

31:11

of like, prepare for a witticism, young one.

31:14

And then you basically have kind of

31:16

a limp punch line. It's sort of

31:18

like... Heed by chicken riddles. Yeah, yeah,

31:20

totally. It's like it kind of feels

31:23

like the setup is the joke and

31:25

like the lack of a... The

31:28

lack of a fulfilling twist is what's funny

31:30

about it. I've considered

31:33

both options have occurred to me and I

31:35

simply have not ever attempted

31:37

to figure out which one

31:39

it is because my desire

31:41

to do so has not come

31:43

up until this podcast. Wait, explain

31:46

the... Explain the chicken wants to die

31:48

take on the joke. I've never heard

31:50

that but... To the other side is like... Oh,

31:54

the other side of... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

31:56

Being dead, right? Like the other side, the afterlife.

32:00

So, like, and crossing the road is tricky

32:03

for a chicken, you know, you could get

32:05

hit, and then why did the chicken cross

32:08

the road to get to the other side,

32:10

like, to die, essentially. I

32:13

didn't necessarily interpret it

32:15

as, like, the chicken wants to

32:17

die, it's that the chicken will die as a

32:19

result of crossing the road, and so it's like,

32:21

why did it do this? Well, to die. Not

32:24

that it wants to die, just that it will. I don't

32:26

know. Okay, so hearing

32:29

that, that does make me feel like,

32:31

you know, that that take on the

32:33

joke was immortalized in the Bone Thugs

32:35

and Harmony song Crossroads. I don't know.

32:39

It was about their take

32:42

on their take on this joke. Not

32:46

the Britney Spears film Crossroads,

32:48

and I'm trying to think of things named Crossroads.

32:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be all, it could

32:52

be like, sure, all of them are canon in

32:54

the chicken verse. Do

32:57

we have any answer as to which is

32:59

correct, or is it that just gonna be

33:01

lost to time as the ancient Sumerian joke

33:04

has been? It's

33:06

simply that both work,

33:08

and it probably explains the

33:10

popularity that this can both be, like

33:13

we've said, an anti-joke with no real

33:15

joke to it, or this dark joke

33:17

where there is actual joke construction, like

33:19

there's the double meaning of a

33:22

chicken crossing the road to get to the

33:24

other side of the road, and the chicken

33:26

crossing the road being killed by the danger,

33:29

and then crossing to the afterlife, and then

33:31

the other side. That

33:33

version actually has a joke

33:35

joke. It's not a joke about jokes. No.

33:40

Ow, my head. So they just

33:42

both coexist. My brain. You

33:44

could picture somebody from the 1800s delivering

33:46

the joke, and then following it up

33:49

with like, car screech, or

33:51

something like that. Like an act out,

33:53

or something like... In

33:55

that case, is this the

33:57

perfect joke? Could

34:00

be I like the idea of is this the

34:02

perfect joke? It's it's almost the

34:04

perfect joke For the purpose

34:06

of becoming a popular and well-known joke Because

34:09

you can tell it to anyone as an anti

34:11

joke or you can pass it around as this

34:13

dark joke where people are like Oh this darker

34:16

than the average joke like that helps explain why

34:18

everybody's heard of it and why it's like a

34:20

stereotype of a joke It's

34:22

also a good cautionary tale for chickens

34:25

to learn good traffic safety. I Mean

34:28

to me all all good

34:31

jokes have to be cautionary tales like

34:33

the one about the man from Nantucket. Oh So

34:38

I I visited Nantucket Island

34:41

like I had like a like a film I was working

34:43

on that it was a screening at a

34:45

festival there last summer and The

34:48

amount of things in that place

34:50

named the man from Nantucket

34:52

or like some version of that is

34:55

insane It's like yeah that

34:57

entire that entire island is like every bar

34:59

is named like the man from Nantucket or

35:01

something or some version of that There are

35:03

shirts that you could buy there. They're like I'm

35:05

the man from Nantucket like, you know Or

35:08

like I married the man from Nantucket, you

35:10

know They

35:12

really really yeah, they're

35:14

really milking that limerick which now that

35:17

I've just said that it's unfortunate phrasing

35:19

for that specific limerick Yeah,

35:22

it's like basically Nantucket Island

35:24

it's it's things out things named after two

35:26

things it's that limerick or Moby Dick because

35:28

the the ship that Moby Dick is based

35:30

off of apparently like Landed or

35:32

took off from Nantucket Island. Yeah,

35:34

our two greatest cultural works guys Don't

35:37

have anything else going on there in Nantucket.

35:39

No, no hobbies not wailing

35:41

and limericks Yeah,

35:43

well when you can do what the

35:45

guy can do what other hobbies do you need right? Come

35:47

on? Come

35:50

on dirty. Anyway, yeah

35:52

this this joke It sort

35:54

of illustrates a lot of the logic and

35:57

cultural role of jokes at least in the

35:59

United States because, you

36:01

know, jokes are fun to ruminate on. One source

36:03

for this is a book called Stop Me

36:06

If You've Heard This, a History of Philosophy

36:08

and Jokes by New Yorker magazine contributor Jim

36:10

Holt. He says that

36:13

jokes fall into the category of

36:15

folklore along with myths, proverbs, legends,

36:17

nursery rhymes, rhythms, and superstitions. And

36:20

he says that we pass them around because we find

36:22

some meaning in them. He also

36:25

points out that jokes can indicate

36:27

neuroses or compulsions or guilt. He

36:30

cites an amazing survey of jokes being told

36:32

in New York City in 1963. Somebody went

36:36

around New York City in 1963. They cataloged

36:39

more than 13,000 jokes

36:41

that people were familiar with. And

36:44

they found that the number one topic was

36:46

sex. And then the

36:48

number two topic was what the surveyor

36:50

called Negroes. What? Because

36:52

there was just like the civil rights

36:54

movement going on and all American racism

36:57

going on. And so people did jokes

36:59

about that. Oh, no.

37:01

And so the anti-humor meaning of this

37:03

joke, it helps explain its popularity because

37:05

you can tell it to anyone. It

37:07

means nothing. In some

37:09

situations has probably been one of the

37:12

only safer work jokes the teller knew.

37:15

You know, right now, like I think for a

37:17

lot of people, like quoting movies and TV

37:19

shows is sort of their end point to

37:21

humor. So it's like they might

37:23

not necessarily be crafting a perfect joke themselves, but

37:26

it's like, you know, quoting Rick and Morty or

37:28

something like that gives them like a shorthand to

37:30

be just like the funny person at the office.

37:33

And I wonder if like jokes

37:35

like this were kind of the, you know,

37:38

1800s early 1900s version of that, where it's

37:40

sort of like, this is an opportunity for

37:42

you to like, you know, be the class

37:44

clown at your job. But like, you

37:47

know, and this is this is a joke that probably everybody's

37:49

kind of heard. You know,

37:51

it's sort of like it's like a plug

37:53

and play. Yeah, it's

37:57

the my wife of the, like, 1800s

38:01

early 1900s where like everyone was

38:03

quoting Borat during that time. Foreign

38:07

people funny was basically the

38:09

joke in Borat and every

38:11

office loved it. If

38:14

there's ever like a short film or a documentary

38:16

or a book written about this joke, I want

38:19

the quote in the back of the book to

38:21

be Katie Golden. It's

38:23

basically the my wife of the 1800s. Yeah,

38:29

like I said, not by the my

38:31

wife joke, just by the comparison. Yeah,

38:36

it feels very wet and Borat cross the road

38:38

to get to my wife. It's as everyone could

38:40

just do it. Oh, it took me zero breaks.

38:43

Yeah. Yeah. Why

38:46

did the Garfield cross? We've just elevated the jokes.

38:48

Why did the Garfield cross the road? Because

38:50

it wasn't a Monday. Swish. Right.

38:53

Just a bit easy. Yeah. If

38:56

we combine all the bad jokes together, they

38:58

become good. This is the math. Yeah. We've

39:02

learned why. Why did Alex Schmidt cross the

39:04

road to stop people from listening to his

39:06

secret podcast? No,

39:09

that's so me. Oh, yeah. And

39:13

yes, so then it has spread far

39:15

and wide that way. And then the

39:17

whole nother way, there's this afterlife sense.

39:20

And I'm going to link three different

39:22

examples of the Internet, either thinking

39:24

of it or finding out about it. Like Esquire

39:27

UK, the Indianapolis Star buzzfeed, they each

39:29

grabbed a Twitter or Reddit post that

39:31

blew up because someone said, oh,

39:34

my gosh, this joke is also a real joke

39:36

about death. Isn't that amazing? And

39:38

it is amazing. And so it's

39:41

probably the other way this has spread. And

39:44

when we were talking about publication of it, that

39:47

1911 puck magazine cover

39:50

is probably kind of referencing that. Like why

39:52

did the chicken cross the road and then

39:54

a bunch of chickens depicted as dead run

39:56

over by a car is

39:58

one example of people. long ago

40:01

noticing this can have a dark tone

40:03

and a real joke to it if you want to. This

40:06

is why you had to warn people excessively

40:08

that a joke was about to happen because

40:10

they would be shocked and horrified to learn

40:12

of these chickens dying on the road. Too

40:16

shocking. And folks, we have

40:18

so much more to say about this joke

40:20

and also the reality of chickens and roads

40:22

and we'll dig into it with more takeaways

40:24

after a quick break. Sounds

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Thursday on Maximum Fun. And

41:49

we are back with two more takeaways for this

41:51

main episode because takeaway number two,

41:57

the joke about a chicken crossing the road.

42:00

might have tapped into early 1900s anxieties

42:02

about the dangers of car

42:05

culture. Oh, I know about this.

42:09

I wrote a, there's a some more

42:11

news episode called, do we

42:13

really need all these cars? It's about the

42:17

history of how the

42:19

US was basically designed around the

42:21

automobile. And there was a lot

42:23

of resistance at first to that,

42:25

because people kept getting killed by

42:28

cars and people were not

42:30

happy about that. They're like, oh my God.

42:32

Like you, because like before, like even with

42:34

like horse carriages, to some extent, like

42:36

people were upset when horse carriages

42:38

became common on roads because like

42:40

people walked around the roads, but

42:42

then cars just amplified that problem.

42:45

Pedestrians used to have a lot of

42:47

privilege in terms of being on the

42:49

roads. And so this idea that now

42:51

you have to like give up all

42:53

of that area to cars was unwelcome

42:56

at the time. And it had to

42:58

be lobbied against like the car

43:00

industry really lobbied to change public

43:02

perception from being that roads are

43:04

for pedestrians to roads are exclusively

43:07

for cars. And if

43:09

you use the roads as a

43:11

pedestrian, you are an ignorant backwater

43:13

buck tooth dum dum. Yeah,

43:16

that's all dead on. It also

43:18

like it helps explain why this joke is

43:21

the joke, if that makes sense. Because like

43:23

there's all kinds of ways to do an

43:25

anti-comedy. And there's a lot of ways to do

43:28

this to the other side kind

43:30

of double meaning. The early

43:33

1900s, especially in the US and the UK

43:35

and a few other countries like that was

43:37

a time of new and major motor vehicle

43:39

danger and possibly the

43:42

historical peak of cars specifically running

43:44

over chickens. Yeah,

43:46

when isn't that where the term like,

43:48

specifically like jaywalking? I mean, I think

43:50

jaywalking is like, I'm sure probably some

43:52

like slur or something like that. But

43:55

like, it's well, yeah, it's a

43:57

classic sort of thing because yeah.

44:00

It's meant to say like, I think

44:02

it's like referencing more rural people as being

44:04

J's like people who come into the city

44:07

who aren't from the city. And

44:09

so you're basically calling them a hick. Like

44:11

you're saying you're a J walker, meaning like,

44:13

like you're a hick walker, like you're an

44:16

ignorant, you know, and the reason I

44:18

said that was not to malign

44:21

people of different regional origins.

44:23

It is because that was

44:25

how people were depicted in

44:27

these cartoons, these car

44:29

industry cartoons of like people who J

44:32

walk. Yeah,

44:35

that does bring up a really good point of like

44:37

the popularization of this joke was

44:40

like probably at peak chickens getting obliterated by

44:42

cars time. So maybe it did start as

44:44

a dark joke and maybe it's just kind

44:46

of weirdly become kind of an anti comedy

44:48

joke just because it's like I mean, nowadays,

44:50

so few chickens get obliterated by cars. Like

44:53

what, four or five times a day when it used to be

44:55

just constantly. Yeah, it's

44:58

from a few things, mainly motor vehicles and

45:00

then a little secondarily just

45:02

that there were a lot more small

45:04

family firms back then. So like an

45:06

individual farmer, yeah, chicken and now we've

45:08

mostly industrialized and large scaled that now

45:11

we don't let the chickens outside so they won't

45:13

get hit by cars. Really

45:15

nice. And

45:19

the key sources here, there's amazing

45:21

digital resources from the Theodore Roosevelt

45:23

Center at Dickinson State University in

45:25

North Dakota. Also a

45:28

piece from the Detroit News by Bill Loomis

45:30

and then a book called Car by Gregory

45:32

Vodalato about the history of cars and car

45:34

culture. I was going to link Katie's episode

45:36

of somewhere news about cars and car culture

45:38

because that's a great source for this to

45:40

plug in our own stuff now. So

45:43

I have a question. How many chickens do

45:46

we think Teddy Roosevelt personally obliterated with

45:48

his car in his life? I

45:52

feel like the answer is like, no, he

45:55

rode horses and lots of chickens with the

45:57

horse. Just constant hooves over chickens. It's

46:01

like you know the answer is greater than zero.

46:07

He did it like a military hat like, oh, look at

46:09

me. Yeah. Yeah.

46:12

It's almost impossible to understate

46:14

how much the United States suddenly

46:17

was full of cars in the first two decades

46:19

of the 1900s. The

46:22

main stat from Gregory Vodalotta's book is

46:24

that in 1900, there were 8,000 cars registered

46:30

with motor vehicles departments in the US.

46:32

In the year 1900, 8,000 cars. By

46:35

1912, 12 years later, there were 1 million. So

46:40

just suddenly the country was full of

46:42

cars, mainly driven by

46:44

new drivers and in a time of

46:47

no traffic or safety laws and

46:49

heavy drinking. Like no seat

46:51

belts. No seat belts exactly.

46:54

And it was just like an

46:56

incredibly suddenly dangerous time. Yeah.

47:00

And there were attempts to limit

47:02

speed so that it wouldn't kill

47:04

so many people. I don't know

47:06

that people cared about the chickens

47:08

being mangled, but yeah, it was

47:10

labeled by the car industry,

47:12

which sort of did a campaign against

47:14

these very low speed limits in towns

47:16

by saying like, look, this is just

47:19

like China because they have a great wall

47:21

of China and this is like the great

47:23

wall of car

47:26

speed limits. Because

47:29

it's just using racism and

47:31

xenophobia. And so it's

47:33

just, it's kind of interesting, the history

47:35

of like, well, why did we feed

47:38

this territory to cars and why were they

47:41

pancake-ifying so many chickens? Yeah.

47:45

I mean, I think it's exactly what

47:47

you said earlier about just car manufacturers

47:49

lobbying super hard. I think that jaywalking

47:51

is a crime and using that term,

47:54

which is like a classist term to

47:56

basically like shame anybody who's like not

47:58

seeding the right away. to cars and I

48:00

get that it's a safety thing but it's also just like

48:03

how car-centric the United States

48:05

is and it's like I

48:08

feel like a lot of zoomers are just like I

48:10

just don't I don't want a car like I'll just lift

48:12

everywhere or I'll like walk or whatever I'll use public

48:14

transit. Yeah. Car culture.

48:17

So that's the real theme of this

48:19

episode. Or maybe this is

48:21

just chicken propaganda to try to get

48:23

the chickens to have primacy over

48:26

the roads. I

48:28

mean they did just pack a fresh truck of

48:30

roasted chicken to my apartment. So

48:33

you know like yeah. Why

48:35

did the chicken cross the road so Joey

48:37

could eat them? So Joey could

48:39

get swole. I

48:44

keep turning down this yummy sound dial but

48:46

it's not going far enough. You

48:48

can't do it. We

48:52

had to cut out about 30

48:54

minutes of the podcast which is

48:56

just too easy. Yeah which is just me eating chicken

48:58

bones and you can hear the crunch. It's

49:01

just the gristle noise. The gristle

49:04

noise is really tricky to edit out.

49:06

My microphone absolutely coated in grease.

49:08

It's got a sheen. It's

49:10

shiny. Yeah. Yeah

49:15

and this sudden beginning of

49:17

car culture people were primarily concerned

49:19

with the human injuries and deaths.

49:22

In the early 1920s cities like New

49:24

York and Washington DC held what are

49:26

called safety parades where people did a

49:28

protest calling out the lack

49:30

of safety and accountability. At

49:32

one of them they had 10,000 children

49:35

dressed as ghosts to represent

49:37

more than 10,000 children killed by

49:39

US cars that year. Dark.

49:42

Yeah and so along with

49:44

that people also noticed that animals were getting hit

49:46

by cars. That

49:48

1911 puck magazine cover is at least partly

49:50

pointing it out. Puck also

49:52

did a cover the year before 1910 where

49:54

a motorist car is pursued by the many

49:57

ghosts of the animals that they have run

49:59

over and killed. That was a

50:01

magazine cover. That's metal. That's

50:03

super metal. I love that Yeah, I'm

50:05

just gonna say not super familiar with

50:07

puck magazine, but based on these two covers

50:10

they rock Yeah, they're pretty

50:12

based apparently. It's great. Yeah, I'm big

50:14

big fan and Yeah,

50:17

and so roadkill not only

50:19

was it a real phenomenon people were

50:21

concerned about but on some level

50:23

It was a way to talk about the human

50:25

deaths without directly thinking about the human deaths. And

50:28

so Maybe this joke has

50:30

some origin in that like roads as

50:32

danger Was a dominant theme of

50:35

the 1900s and 1910s and then people

50:37

wanted jokes about it because it was in the

50:39

zeitgeist Yeah jokes

50:41

are always kind of a way

50:44

to cope with current situations. I

50:46

think so that makes sense to

50:48

me Yeah, there's

50:50

also one amazing thing here where like we

50:52

said there were small farmers possibly losing chickens

50:55

there was a lot of chicken raising by

50:57

the early 1900s by farmers and The

51:01

Theodore Roosevelt Center has a

51:03

specific written account of

51:05

someone observing a chicken dying when trying to

51:07

cross a road with cars in it This

51:11

was recorded by a historical society

51:13

and Sheffield in the UK and passed along

51:15

to them They have the

51:18

text of an early 1900s travelogue about a

51:20

car road trip Where the

51:22

writer says they quote watched another

51:24

member of the poultry suicide Club

51:28

Jesus rush out of a safe ditch

51:31

and prepared to take leave for immortality

51:33

and quote Well,

51:35

that's dramatic Right

51:37

and they recorded it as common. They're like yet

51:40

again. I'm seeing a chicken cross a dangerous road

51:42

and get splattered so so

51:44

this joke is almost topical to

51:46

that era and And

51:49

right has maybe almost been garbled in

51:51

the anti-humor sense Yeah,

51:55

I think that that's that's something I was talking

51:57

about earlier. There's this um really

51:59

great book it's called like

52:01

finding Springfield about the

52:03

Simpsons and how the Simpsons originally

52:05

started as being counter

52:07

culture but now it's so prevalent and

52:10

popular that it's just become culture and

52:13

it's not like counter to anything because

52:15

it just is the mainstream culture. And

52:18

I'm like you know talking about that with Garfield and

52:20

stuff like that is like you know now we look

52:23

at Garfield as sort of the

52:25

references that he contains of just like

52:27

he likes lasagna hates Mondays etc. But

52:30

if you think about it it's like Garfield

52:32

was like a counter culture comic that

52:34

Jim Davis wrote in the 70s in that

52:36

you know in a time where you

52:39

know like have a nice day like you

52:41

know like everybody like you know work hard

52:44

enjoy your lives etc etc etc was like

52:46

so prevalent like having a character that was

52:48

a cartoon cat that was like I hate

52:51

Mondays because that's the day you work I

52:53

like don't like dieting like I'm

52:55

all about self-care I'm not worried about like

52:58

you know being I'm not worried about being

53:00

the version of me that society wants me

53:02

to be I just want to make myself

53:04

happy and like you know I

53:06

think that you can look at this joke as

53:08

like a very early version of that of like

53:10

yeah it was probably it probably was the super

53:12

dark version of it it was commenting on like

53:15

you know chickens getting obliterated by cars constantly

53:17

and sort of like a comment on car

53:19

culture and now it's like we

53:21

just kind of get it for the reference

53:23

of like oh that's that old joke you

53:25

know I think what

53:27

you're saying is that you either die at

53:29

Calvin and Hobbes or live long enough to

53:32

become a Garfield oh we can only be

53:34

so lucky that's

53:39

all exactly done yeah it's just and it's

53:41

such an interesting cultural role for this joke

53:43

that I have primarily ignored or been annoyed

53:45

by my whole life like

53:49

what a good topic Ed one more

53:51

just quick takeaway for this main show

53:53

here kind of talking about

53:55

the situation of the real birds today takeaway

53:58

number three If

54:02

a chicken wants to cross a road safely,

54:05

it should use a purpose-built wildlife crossing

54:07

or sneak through a storm drain. This

54:12

is about two ways that animals are

54:14

now safely crossing roads. One of them

54:16

is the long time sneaking through storm

54:18

drains, and then there's also a nice

54:20

new movement of wildlife crossings through human

54:22

roads. I

54:24

like the way that you framed that

54:26

was just like those squares use those

54:28

crossings, but the cool chickens use the

54:30

storm drain. Yeah. I've

54:34

seen raccoons use storm

54:36

drains, like pop into one storm

54:38

drain, pop out of another one.

54:41

My cat actually followed, I think, some squirrel

54:43

or something down into a storm drain. We

54:45

thought she was going to die, but then

54:47

she popped out of another storm drain, like

54:49

a Mario. My

54:52

cat was Mario. Okay.

54:54

Did any of you crawl

54:56

around storm drains for fun growing up? Inside

55:00

the storm drain? Yeah, like

55:02

inside the storm drains. No. A

55:05

buddy of mine does that in Ohio. I haven't done it

55:07

myself. I don't know how I would

55:09

get it. I mean, maybe it depends on the

55:12

shape of the storm drain, but I couldn't get

55:14

in there. How would you even get down in

55:17

there? Yeah. I feel

55:19

like that was just ... I mean, I grew up in Washington

55:21

State, and it was on a road on

55:23

a res in kind of like the

55:25

... kind of away from a lot

55:27

of cool businesses and stuff like that.

55:30

There wasn't like a ton to do, so it's like that's

55:32

something that me and my friends would do sometimes. They would

55:34

just crawl around in storm drains. It's

55:36

not like a city storm drain. It's like

55:38

essentially a big cement

55:41

tube that kind of goes ...

55:44

that kind of separates one

55:46

part of a ditch from

55:48

another part of a ditch that allows for

55:50

cars to drive over past for like people's ...

55:54

for like entrances into like cul-de-sacs and stuff

55:56

like that. So it wasn't ... Oh,

55:58

I would have totally ... if we had ... I would have

56:00

totally been in there. Yeah, it was like it was

56:02

a weird summer where it's like I just did that with a lot

56:04

of my friends until like I don't know I think just like older

56:06

kids were like that's real dangerous you should maybe not do that and

56:08

then I was like oh. Yeah,

56:11

and that storm drain size thing is

56:13

dead on it could be very big.

56:16

That is one way animals love

56:18

to get around the otherwise extremely

56:20

dangerous and isolating situation of human

56:22

roads. It can create a

56:25

situation that is called

56:27

landscape dissection where land masses are

56:29

almost like separate islands because of

56:31

our roads for a population of

56:34

animals. Right. That sounds very visceral

56:36

too when you think about it in

56:38

the context of roads not being safe

56:40

for animals. Yeah, pretty visceral.

56:43

One source for this it's an amazing

56:45

show called Outside In which is a

56:47

radio show and podcast from New Hampshire

56:49

Public Radio. They say that landscape dissection

56:51

can be so extreme that in one

56:54

case in the US Rocky Mountains scientists

56:56

know which side of one highway the

56:58

grizzly bears are born on based on

57:00

their DNA because just the populations

57:03

are not meeting. Oh wow. Yeah,

57:05

there's a lot of genetic difference

57:07

in the mountain lions in Los

57:09

Angeles due to the

57:11

sort of like cut offs of the streets,

57:14

the roads, highways and freeways and such.

57:17

Yeah, that's another big example. If people aren't from

57:19

there and don't know there are mountain lions in

57:22

the mountains within and around

57:24

LA and freeways like the 101 separate

57:26

the populations and then they are finally

57:28

building a crossing for mountain lions to

57:31

use on the 101 that will be

57:33

completed in 2025. It

57:35

will be the biggest wildlife crossing in the world. Is

57:38

it going to be the Hyperloop? Is it going

57:40

to have a bunch of bright LED lights from

57:42

the cougars go around in

57:44

Teslas? Yeah, it'll shoot animals through

57:47

a vacuum tube across the freeway. Pneumatic

57:49

tubes for animals. Yeah,

57:52

it's like the salmon tube launcher if you'll see that.

57:54

Oh yeah. I have seen that so many

57:56

times. I love that. I love that

57:59

so much. Yeah, it's

58:01

a long flexible tube

58:04

that uses some kind of

58:06

like hose pressure to transport

58:10

salmon from one body of water to

58:13

another in case of like some disruption

58:15

of their migration.

58:18

But it's like a manmade thing to help

58:20

these fish be transported and

58:23

it's fantastic. Yeah, it's

58:25

essentially like a water slide in reverse where

58:27

it's like it basically sucks up the salmon

58:29

and then like you know along with water

58:31

like just shoots them out of the other

58:33

side. So they'll like catch air

58:36

and then like land in the body of water.

58:38

It's great. Yeah, and

58:40

that's kind of the other solution here

58:42

because we have had storm

58:44

drains that just accidentally let animals

58:46

cross and Katie it's amazing you've

58:48

seen a raccoon use one because that's kind

58:50

of the primary animal doing this. Of

58:53

course they are. They're so smart. And

58:55

one expert tracking their movements has

58:57

called storm drains raccoons super highways

59:00

in North America. It's how they do it.

59:02

They're the rogues. They're

59:04

the rogues of the animal kingdom. You know you've

59:06

got the paladins. I

59:09

think probably rhinos or something. Rhinos,

59:11

the most virtuous of all animals.

59:15

I mean they're pretty good. They're pretty

59:17

nice but strict, harsh

59:20

but fair. Chickens are your friend

59:22

who won't just learn how D&D works and

59:24

keeps asking what the rules are like come

59:26

on stop squawking and just like keep up.

59:30

Yeah cats are the rule lawyers who are just

59:32

like I mean technically I should be able to

59:34

roll a D20 on this. Yeah

59:38

and these storm drains they're also used

59:40

by opossums. They're even the big ones

59:42

that we're describing are used by white-tailed

59:44

deer can go through a storm

59:47

drain even though you're thinking of like the sewer

59:49

where Patty Wise lives that doesn't make sense. It's

59:51

too small but big ones they can do it.

59:54

You know I actually think I

59:56

have seen a coyote and a

59:58

badger go through. a

1:00:00

storm drain together as friends and

1:00:03

emerge as best friends. No, because coyotes and badgers

1:00:05

sometimes hang out. Yeah, no, it's true. They sometimes

1:00:07

hang out to like hunt together. And

1:00:10

now that it's like, now I think of

1:00:12

it, I should have realized that you can like

1:00:14

play around in storm drains because yeah, I've seen

1:00:16

this video. They are like going through this like

1:00:19

tube, which must be like this big storm

1:00:21

drain and it's just a coyote and

1:00:23

a badger and the coyote is super excited and the

1:00:25

badger is just kind of lumbering along. It's very cute.

1:00:29

And also their improvisational use of

1:00:31

storm drains has saved a

1:00:33

lot of animal lives, maintains more

1:00:36

genetic diversity in these populations getting to

1:00:38

connect than otherwise would happen. The

1:00:41

good news about human activity on

1:00:43

purpose is that we're beginning to

1:00:45

build wildlife crossings for animals. Apparently

1:00:48

the first ones ever on purpose were

1:00:50

built in the 1970s for the requests

1:00:52

of hunters

1:00:54

in Europe who wanted game animal

1:00:56

populations to connect. So fair

1:01:00

enough. It's better than nothing. Like

1:01:03

keep them alive so we can kill them.

1:01:06

It's very Theodore Roosevelt. I don't want to kill them with

1:01:08

a car like a commoner. I want to kill them with

1:01:10

a gun like a hero. Right.

1:01:14

Yeah. Yeah. And

1:01:16

now there's amazing conservation oriented ones

1:01:19

in many US states, including

1:01:21

Massachusetts and California. There are

1:01:23

small tunnels under roads for

1:01:25

salamander migrations. In

1:01:29

the country of Kenya, there's a highway

1:01:31

underpass for elephants that hundreds of

1:01:33

them use every year. Oh, I think I've

1:01:35

seen pictures of that. It's really cool. Yeah.

1:01:37

And it's just an amazing range of

1:01:39

stuff. And the US is 2021 Federal

1:01:41

Infrastructure Act, out of sight $350 million

1:01:44

to build new wildlife

1:01:47

crossings in our roads because we

1:01:49

have very few of them. On average, we have one

1:01:52

wildlife crossing per 4,000 miles of road. 4,000

1:01:57

miles is the distance between Florida and

1:01:59

Juneau, Alaska. So we don't have a

1:02:01

ton of these crossing ends. Let's

1:02:03

build more and let's help the chickens and all the

1:02:05

other animals get across. Yeah,

1:02:08

I think that is truly why the chicken

1:02:10

crossed the road, to set an example for

1:02:13

the future. I

1:02:17

don't know, I do think that that is like a

1:02:20

nice end to the story of car

1:02:23

culture taking over so

1:02:25

heavily that chickens being

1:02:27

obliterated by cars is necessitating the

1:02:30

need for a well-told joke about

1:02:32

it. Whereas now we're to

1:02:34

the point where it's like understanding that it's more

1:02:36

important that we live in concert with the environment.

1:02:38

And I don't know, it's like exactly what you're

1:02:40

talking about, about creating

1:02:42

essentially land

1:02:44

islands where it's the only way that a bear

1:02:47

can get to its original

1:02:49

hunting territory is to

1:02:51

cross a 12-lane highway and hope it doesn't get

1:02:53

obliterated by a truck. Going

1:02:55

from that to like, no, we should build land

1:02:57

bridges so we're not jerks to these bears. I

1:03:00

think that, I don't know, that's hopefully a

1:03:03

nice end to that joke. Yeah.

1:03:06

Yeah. The joke was us the whole time.

1:03:08

Yeah, it was. We were the monsters all

1:03:11

along. Really? We were. We

1:03:13

drove the cars. We

1:03:16

are on the other side. Ooh. Yay.

1:03:20

Or a progress meeting. It's changing again.

1:03:22

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, who knows? My

1:03:25

head hurts. Main

1:03:40

episode for this week. And I want to say

1:03:43

an additional thank you to our special guest, Joey

1:03:45

Clipp. Hello, buddy. One of

1:03:47

our favorite guests. And I'm glad he came back

1:03:49

for a whole other one, especially one where we could get

1:03:51

one additional comedy writer

1:03:53

onto this wonderful comedy topic.

1:03:56

I Also encourage you to check out Joey

1:03:58

Clipp's comedy writing right this second. You

1:04:00

Can go to Gone. The Native.t V.

1:04:02

That's where you'll find wonderful comedy shorts

1:04:05

by Joey about weird stuff that Native

1:04:07

American people in business people have to

1:04:09

deal with Austin in modern society and

1:04:11

it is a really fun and in

1:04:13

say seven and brilliant look at. Additional

1:04:16

the that tip This outrage has a bunch

1:04:18

of other phone features for you such as

1:04:20

help remembering this episode with a run back

1:04:22

through the big take away. This. Take

1:04:28

away number one, Why did the chicken

1:04:30

cross the road is either a matter

1:04:33

joke about comedy or a dark joke

1:04:35

about a chicken choosing to die. Take.

1:04:38

Away number to the joke about a

1:04:40

chicken crossing the road might have tapped

1:04:42

into early nineteen hundreds anxieties about the

1:04:44

dangerousness of car culture. Take. Away

1:04:47

number three is a chicken wants

1:04:49

to cross the road safely introduced

1:04:51

purpose built wildlife crossings or sneak

1:04:53

through a storm drain. Plus.

1:04:55

Numbers about when this joke originated

1:04:57

when chicken cross real roads, United

1:05:00

States national Security, and more. Those.

1:05:06

Are the take a ways off my

1:05:08

So that's the main episode because there

1:05:10

is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available

1:05:13

to you right now if you become

1:05:15

a member at Maximum fun.org. Members.

1:05:17

Are the reason this podcast exists

1:05:20

So members get a bonus show

1:05:22

every week where we explore one

1:05:24

obviously incredibly fascinating story related to

1:05:26

the main episode. This. Week's

1:05:29

bonus topic is the astounding internal

1:05:31

magnetic compass of chickens and what

1:05:33

that tells us about bird evolution?

1:05:36

Visit. As I pod.fun for that! Bonus

1:05:38

show for a library of more than

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fifteen dozen other secretly incredibly fast thing

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bonus shows and a catalogue of all

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sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's

1:05:47

special audio, it's just for members. Thank

1:05:49

you to everybody who backs this podcast

1:05:52

operation and makes this podcast the thing.

1:05:54

additional fun things check out our research

1:05:57

sources on this episode page at maximum

1:05:59

fun dot or Key sources

1:06:01

this week include the book Stop

1:06:03

Me If You've Heard This, A

1:06:05

History of Philosophy and Jokes by

1:06:07

New Yorker magazine contributor Jim Holt,

1:06:09

the book Car by Gregory Vodolato,

1:06:11

digital resources from the Theodore Roosevelt

1:06:13

Center at Dickinson State University in

1:06:15

North Dakota, and further reporting from

1:06:17

the Detroit News, CBS News, Atlas

1:06:19

Obscura, The Guardian, and other great

1:06:21

sources. That page also

1:06:23

features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm

1:06:25

using those to acknowledge that I

1:06:27

recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional

1:06:29

land of the Muncie Lenape people

1:06:32

and the Wapinger people, as well

1:06:34

as the Mohican people, Skatagoke people,

1:06:36

and others. Also,

1:06:38

Katie taped this in the country of Italy.

1:06:40

Joey taped this on the traditional land of

1:06:42

the Gabrielino Ortangva and Kich and Chumash peoples.

1:06:45

And like we do every week, I want

1:06:47

to acknowledge that in my location, also in

1:06:49

Joey's location, and many other locations in the

1:06:52

Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much

1:06:54

still here. That feels worth doing

1:06:56

on each episode, and you can join the

1:06:58

free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and

1:07:00

resources about native people and life. There

1:07:03

is a link in this episode's description to

1:07:05

join the Discord. We're also talking about this

1:07:07

episode on the Discord. And hey,

1:07:10

would you like a tip on another

1:07:12

episode? Because each week I'm finding you

1:07:14

something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all

1:07:16

the past episode numbers through a random

1:07:19

number generator. This week's pick

1:07:21

is episode 86. That's about the topic

1:07:23

of tuna. Fun fact

1:07:25

about bluefin tuna, as our cultural relationship to

1:07:27

that food has changed, its price rose in

1:07:30

the United States by more than 2,000%, and

1:07:32

rose in Japan by more than 10,000%. So

1:07:37

I recommend that episode. I also recommend

1:07:40

my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature

1:07:42

Feature about animals and science and more.

1:07:44

Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by

1:07:46

the Budos Band. Our show logo is

1:07:49

by artist Sperton Durand. Special thanks to

1:07:51

Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this

1:07:53

episode. Extra, extra

1:07:55

special thanks go to our members, and thank you

1:07:57

to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say.

1:08:00

we will be back next

1:08:02

week with more secretly incredibly

1:08:04

fascinating. So how about

1:08:06

that? Talk to

1:08:08

ya then. Maximum

1:08:27

Fun A worker-owned network

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directly by you.