1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:04,560 Speaker 1: How do refrigerators keep food cold? Who really invented the radio? 2 00:00:04,680 --> 00:00:08,000 Speaker 1: What was the worst video game of all time? On 3 00:00:08,119 --> 00:00:11,520 Speaker 1: tech Stuff, we answer these questions and more. You can 4 00:00:11,560 --> 00:00:15,120 Speaker 1: get brand new episodes of tech Stuff every Wednesday on Spotify, 5 00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:23,200 Speaker 1: Google Play, iTunes, and anywhere else you get podcasts. Welcome 6 00:00:23,239 --> 00:00:30,320 Speaker 1: to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey everybody, I'm 7 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:34,040 Speaker 1: Christian Seger and this is brain Stuff. Do you remember 8 00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:37,040 Speaker 1: how sitcoms used to lay in those horrible laugh tracks 9 00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:40,879 Speaker 1: after every joke, including cartoons, like just in case the 10 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:43,880 Speaker 1: jokes weren't insulting your intelligence, they had to go to 11 00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:46,680 Speaker 1: you with taped laughter, like they're running the faucet to 12 00:00:46,680 --> 00:00:49,760 Speaker 1: get somebody with a shy bladder to pee. I can't 13 00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:54,080 Speaker 1: believe this, but some shows are still doing it. Why Well, 14 00:00:54,440 --> 00:00:58,720 Speaker 1: back before recordings and radio and TV, all performances were live. 15 00:00:59,120 --> 00:01:01,240 Speaker 1: This meant actor has always had the benefit of a 16 00:01:01,320 --> 00:01:05,039 Speaker 1: crowd's reactions to drive their performance, and the audience reaped 17 00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:09,400 Speaker 1: the benefits of that energy to pension during a sad moment, 18 00:01:09,680 --> 00:01:13,400 Speaker 1: a collective gasp at a revelation, or mass laughter when 19 00:01:13,520 --> 00:01:18,280 Speaker 1: something funny happened. Broadcasts and recordings, however, brought these performances 20 00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:21,559 Speaker 1: to a wider audience, but some of that energy got 21 00:01:21,560 --> 00:01:25,200 Speaker 1: lost in the transition. Every show couldn't involve a crowd, 22 00:01:25,600 --> 00:01:27,880 Speaker 1: and you couldn't always rely on an audience to have 23 00:01:27,959 --> 00:01:31,120 Speaker 1: the right reaction. They might be too loud or too quiet, 24 00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:33,959 Speaker 1: or they might not laugh at all after say the 25 00:01:34,040 --> 00:01:37,120 Speaker 1: fifth take of a joke. So in the late forties 26 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:43,320 Speaker 1: and early fifties, radio and TV engineers began sweetening audience reactions, 27 00:01:43,680 --> 00:01:47,200 Speaker 1: mixing them to sound more appropriate. This became a huge 28 00:01:47,319 --> 00:01:50,960 Speaker 1: trend in the industry when Charlie Douglas invented the original 29 00:01:51,480 --> 00:01:54,440 Speaker 1: laugh box. It looked sort of like a typewriter, but 30 00:01:54,520 --> 00:01:58,680 Speaker 1: contained three hundred and twenty laughs and other audience noises. 31 00:01:59,240 --> 00:02:02,440 Speaker 1: The noises are grouped by type of response into thirty 32 00:02:02,480 --> 00:02:06,640 Speaker 1: two loops of tape, each activated by a single key. 33 00:02:06,840 --> 00:02:09,919 Speaker 1: You played it like an organ. You'd select the style, age, 34 00:02:09,919 --> 00:02:12,280 Speaker 1: and gender of the response you wanted by pressing one 35 00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:15,079 Speaker 1: or more keys. Then you'd use a foot pedal to 36 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:20,000 Speaker 1: control the sound level. Supposedly, Douglas recorded these original noises 37 00:02:20,040 --> 00:02:25,080 Speaker 1: at Marcel Marceau and Red Skeleton shows, totally pantomime parts 38 00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:28,040 Speaker 1: to make sure he'd get a clean tape of just 39 00:02:28,400 --> 00:02:32,639 Speaker 1: the audience. These days, laugh tracks are digital and they 40 00:02:32,680 --> 00:02:36,720 Speaker 1: contain lots of sounds, though if you watch any particular sitcom, 41 00:02:36,880 --> 00:02:40,640 Speaker 1: you've probably heard distinctive laughs repeat, which brings me to 42 00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:46,840 Speaker 1: my next point. Industry critics and creators alike hate laugh tracks. 43 00:02:47,200 --> 00:02:50,119 Speaker 1: Pretty much everybody who stops to think about them hates them. 44 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:53,280 Speaker 1: But do they work? You bet they do. Have you 45 00:02:53,320 --> 00:02:55,520 Speaker 1: ever seen one of those YouTube videos where they take 46 00:02:55,560 --> 00:02:59,080 Speaker 1: a popular sitcom and remove the laugh track. It turns 47 00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:02,920 Speaker 1: into this creep nightmare world where people say depressing things 48 00:03:02,919 --> 00:03:07,800 Speaker 1: to each other and then pause for three seconds. Without 49 00:03:07,840 --> 00:03:11,280 Speaker 1: the laugh track, you realize the jokes aren't necessarily funny, 50 00:03:11,320 --> 00:03:14,760 Speaker 1: you're just laughing along with some invisible crowd. One theory 51 00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:18,400 Speaker 1: says that we feel social pressure to conform to the group. 52 00:03:18,680 --> 00:03:23,720 Speaker 1: Another suggests laughter is an automatic neurological response, something a 53 00:03:23,760 --> 00:03:28,760 Speaker 1: little more hardwired. Either way, real research going back decades 54 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,520 Speaker 1: shows that laugh tracks work. In nineteen seventy four, a 55 00:03:32,560 --> 00:03:36,480 Speaker 1: study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed 56 00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:39,960 Speaker 1: empirically that people were more likely to laugh at jokes 57 00:03:40,280 --> 00:03:43,920 Speaker 1: that were supplemented with a laugh track. In fact, with 58 00:03:44,080 --> 00:03:46,760 Speaker 1: a laugh track, you might not even need the joke. 59 00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:53,480 Speaker 1: In neuroscientist Robert Provine showed that test subjects smiled and 60 00:03:53,600 --> 00:03:57,720 Speaker 1: laughed in response to an electronic track that wasn't even 61 00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:01,960 Speaker 1: attached to a narrative. They were reacting to the laughter itself. 62 00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:06,640 Speaker 1: But provines results wore off after repeated tests. By the 63 00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:10,520 Speaker 1: tenth round, subjects stopped laughing along and reported that they 64 00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:15,640 Speaker 1: found the taped laughter obnoxious. So okay, laugh tracks do 65 00:04:15,760 --> 00:04:19,120 Speaker 1: seem to influence the audience, but there are tons of 66 00:04:19,160 --> 00:04:22,520 Speaker 1: factors that moderate this. For example, what if you're consciously 67 00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:27,440 Speaker 1: aware that the laughters canned? Study in found that people 68 00:04:27,480 --> 00:04:29,960 Speaker 1: who thought the sound was coming from a live audience 69 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:33,320 Speaker 1: were more influenced by it than people who were aware 70 00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:37,280 Speaker 1: that it was artificial. Or what if you don't think 71 00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:39,800 Speaker 1: you'd get along with the people who are laughing? In 72 00:04:39,839 --> 00:04:42,599 Speaker 1: two thousand five, a paper published by the Journal of 73 00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:47,240 Speaker 1: Experimental Social Psychology found that college students laughed less and 74 00:04:47,360 --> 00:04:50,240 Speaker 1: rated a taped comedian lower when they thought that the 75 00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:53,320 Speaker 1: tape laughter they heard was coming from members of a 76 00:04:53,360 --> 00:04:57,680 Speaker 1: political party they disagreed with. But laughing in response to 77 00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:01,279 Speaker 1: hearing laughter may be in volunte terry. In two thousand 78 00:05:01,279 --> 00:05:05,000 Speaker 1: and six researchers at the University College London used f 79 00:05:05,400 --> 00:05:09,160 Speaker 1: m R I to discover that human vocal sounds activated 80 00:05:09,240 --> 00:05:13,400 Speaker 1: part of the brain called the pre motor cortical region, 81 00:05:13,760 --> 00:05:17,440 Speaker 1: which primes our facial muscles to react. That means that 82 00:05:17,480 --> 00:05:22,040 Speaker 1: when subjects heard laughing, they began to smile. Some theorists 83 00:05:22,080 --> 00:05:26,880 Speaker 1: think that gestures and sounds like laughter predated speech. Could 84 00:05:26,960 --> 00:05:36,280 Speaker 1: our vulnerability to laughter actually be a survival mechanism. Check 85 00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:38,360 Speaker 1: out the brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more 86 00:05:38,400 --> 00:05:40,919 Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff 87 00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:55,400 Speaker 1: works dot com.