Why I Tell Dad Jokes Every Friday (And Why Science Says I'm Right)
I’m the managing partner of a GovCon. My job is to win federal contracts, manage a firm, and keep clients happy. On Fridays, I also send out a dad joke. Why would someone in my position build a weekly ritual around that? Turns out, there’s a scientific reason.
A few days ago, I came across a 2025 study with the greatest title in the history of academic research: What’s Brown and Sticky? (Spoiler alert: it’s a stick.) Researchers at UNC Greensboro and UMass Amherst analyzed over 32,000 dad jokes to figure out what actually makes them work. Turns out there’s a recipe. The best ones use puns, literalization (turning a familiar phrase into physical reality, like “I’m worried about the calendar. Its days are numbered.”), or pedantic humor, where the setup promises one thing and delivers something deliberately, almost irritatingly, obvious. “What’s blue and smells like red paint? Blue paint.”
Science also confirmed that dads find dad jokes funnier than everyone else. I have no argument with this finding.
But here’s the part that struck me. One of the study’s authors told The Washington Post: “Humor is a playful social glue that makes everyone feel a little bit better, a little more at ease, and closer to the people they’re with.” That’s why I started Bob’s Dad-a-Base…for the moment of connection it creates.
We work in a demanding environment. The stakes are real, the timelines are tight, and the pressure doesn’t let up. A little levity goes a long way.
Here’s what I’ve noticed in the years I’ve been doing this: people remember the jokes. Not always the punchline, but they remember that there was one and that someone in their feed made them roll their eyes and smile at the same time. That’s not nothing. That’s actually quite a lot.
Teams that laugh together work better together. I believe that. The research backs it up. And I’ve got about 32,000 more jokes to work through, so I’m not stopping anytime soon.
See you Friday.
— Bob Etris, Managing Partner, Evans Incorporated
Follow Evans on LinkedIn to see Bob’s latest dad joke every Friday.
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