This April Fool’s day I joined other Rose residents for a presentation by Professor Michael Fontaine. Professor Fontaine recently published a book called “How to tell a Joke” and discussed many of the major aspects of his book during our talk. Professor Fontaine started by introducing Cicero, an ancient Roman, who was the author of a treatise that is widely considered the longest discussion of humor in the ancient world. Professor Fontaine shared a lot of the major parts of Cicero’s treatise and some examples of ancient jokes. What surprised me was that many of the ancient jokes used the same elements we use today such as deprecating humor, irony, puns, playing dumb. As Professor Fontaine explained that humor is based on human relations and as such relationships exist throughout history, today’s jokes will work thousands of years from now. Overall, this presentation was highly engaging and interesting. I believe I learned a lot about humor and the history of the joke and am excited to try out some of these jokes myself!