WEBVTT - The Healing Power of Laughter 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.239 Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Cameray. 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:11.000 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:18.520 From how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:20.400 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamp and 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:23.760 my name is Julie Douglas. We are back in Atlanta 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:25.759 after a little little side trip where we went on 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.680 up to Minnesota. Yes, indeed, we presented at the E 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.440 four Elementary Education Conference and it was awesome. It was 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.920 It's just infectious energy, a lot of enthusiasm from the 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.840 teachers present all, you know, just really gung ho about science, 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.040 about teaching about engineering and mathematics. And we gave our 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.360 spiel about about how we're all scientists just from the 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:50.760 get go, where we crawl out of the wound. Why 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:52.440 don't guess we don't crawl out of the wound, but 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.520 we're fee a lot more convenient for women if that 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.840 were the case. We're ripped from the womb, with ripped 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.560 a little strong your coherce coerced from the wound, I guess, 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:05.960 from the womb with math, with engineering and science already 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:08.280 born into you. And uh we've discussed this in the 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:10.679 podcast and we we shared it with everyone there and 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:12.640 it's just a grand time. So we may have some 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:16.320 new listeners now who were present at our speech. And 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.720 so if if any of your teachers are tuning in, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.200 welcome to the podcast. Yeah. And actually I have a 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:25.400 little tidbit that relates not just to the education conference, 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.440 but also to our topic today here about laughter, because 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:34.000 I can help but giggle into her later on when 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:38.400 I when I remembered us rehearsing our keynote speech in 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:44.199 front of a giant uh Lucy character from Peanuts, giant 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.800 sculpture of her. They were all over the hotel and 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.080 we got there the night before, so it's like Sunday 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.120 evening and we we just want to rehearse the material 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:54.120 a few more times. So what we need an audience, right, 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:56.520 but not a living audience because they have better things 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.840 to do on a Sunday night. So we found ourselves 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.440 this giant Lucy idle, I guess you would call it, 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.800 and with a giant plate of cake. I think it 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:09.040 had something because we also found a candy store down 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.840 the road that had some Peanuts characters out front with candy, 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.040 so I guess they were related somehow. And looking back, 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:18.200 just the two of us in front of this giant sculpture, 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.240 gesturing to Lucy and giving the keynote just made me laugh. Um. 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:26.520 But of course, if if I had remembered this, um, this, 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:29.639 this memory with other people with you, turns out I 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:31.960 would have laughed a lot more. And we'll talk about 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.959 that in a moment. Yeah, we've we've talked about humor before, 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:37.600 and we talked a little bit about laughter. This episode 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.800 is all about the healing power of laughter, which is 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.400 it's become something of a cliche over the past few decades. 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.840 You have, of course, like Patch Adams, you have you 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.400 shaking your head. Ye, Pat Adams, you have Have you 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.560 seen it? I have not, but I have seen Children's 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.919 Hospital the Adult Swim Show where they have a character 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:03.280 and they're played by Rob Cordrey. He plays Dr Blake Downs, 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.160 who is a healing clown. That the funny part of 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:08.120 this is that he takes the healing power of laughter 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.679 deadly seriously, like he's he's wearing clown makeup that kind 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.680 of kind of looks like John Lynne Gacy esque, you know, 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.919 like that kind of slightly scary clown makeup, and he's 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:19.760 not really he never does much in the way that 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:22.440 of actual humor for the sick, Like he's he's just 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.760 very serious about yeah, very intense. Yeah, I could get 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:29.519 behind that, the intense clown. Intense clown. But yeah, like 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:31.919 I say, it's becomes something of a cliche for all 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:33.560 of us. But you go back to around the nineteen 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:36.480 in the d a guy by the name of Norman Cousins, 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.240 and he was a writer and magazine editor for The 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.440 Saturday Review, and he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:44.800 and at the time that the theory was making the 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:49.080 rounds that stress could worsen such a condition. So he 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.360 asked himself, well, what about it? What if I use 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.240 the opposite of stress? So he thought about humor. So 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.200 he goes to his doctor and uh, he gets his 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:02.520 doctor's okay, and then prescribes himself a regime of humorous videos, 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.240 shows like Candid Camera, which was I guess was big 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.360 in the seventies at the time. But he's gonna take 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.520 these videos, he's gonna watch them along with his other treatments. 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.560 And the disease went into remission, and Cousins wrote a 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:15.600 paper for the New England Journal of Medicine as well 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.719 as a book titled Anatomy of an Illness, A Patient's Perspective, 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.640 and I was posted in nine became a best seller, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.240 and it led to a lot of actual researchers looking 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.479 into the matter. Most notably, you had this guy Lee Burke, 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.960 a preventative care specialist from Loma Linda University in Low Melinda, California. 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:36.240 And then also from Lo Melinda, you had Stanley tan 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.719 who was an m D, pH d and a diabetes specialist. 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:46.120 So they were curious does mirthful laughter helped individuals with diabetes? 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:48.599 And so short version of this as they took a 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.200 group of twenty high risk diabetic patients. They had a 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:53.360 group C, which was control, and they had group L, 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:56.400 which was laughter. So twelve months later they found significant 0:04:56.440 --> 0:05:00.760 improvement in group L HDL cholesterol. The good cholesterol had 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.640 risen by in group E, the laughter group, and only 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.760 three percent in groups see the control group. Harmful C 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.440 reactive proteins decrease sixty in the laughter group versus in 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:13.440 the control group. So this is a big study that 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:17.760 actually pushed the idea even more that laughter is maybe 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.239 maybe there's something too laughter, the laughter it can actually 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:24.280 heal us in some way, shape or form. So that's 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:25.960 what we're talking about in this episode. But we need 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:28.960 a backtrack a little and say, all right, what is 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.800 laughter before we start prescribing it willy nilly? What's going 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:35.120 on when we laugh? Well, okay, one of the things 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.119 I wanted to point out is that you can tell 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.120 that it's central and very important to us when you 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.000 look across species and you see that other species do it. 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:44.720 You know, we know that chimps do it. We know 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:48.279 that if tickled raps will giggle. There's an actual study 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.320 on this, and from a new article on how stuff 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.840 works called ten Surprising Behaviors and Non Human Animals by 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:59.839 Kate Kirshner, we know that guerrillas also engage in antiq 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.479 um and laughter. In fact, she gives this example of 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.200 a gorilla that got his kicks by running beside his 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.880 trainer along the length of his cage at full speed, 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.360 and then the gorilla would suddenly stop and start laughing 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:18.159 uncontrollably as the human kept running past him, And she 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:20.279 said it was great because the gorilla figured out a 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:24.799 stupid human trick. So chimps, gorilla's rats, they're all laughing 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.520 at us. They're all laughing at us. But what happens 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.159 when we are laughing? What's going on in our own bodies? 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:31.560 Because this is great. We can look at the chance 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:32.960 when we can look at rats and we can see 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.000 them giggling, But we can of course turn turn the 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.560 focus to ourselves and say, you know, just at a 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.520 mechanical level, what's happening to spur on all of these 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.159 different chemical changes in our body. Well, the thing about laughter, 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:47.960 like true laughter, like hearty laughter, not just a little 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.039 snicker or or or what have you. But full laughter 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:53.440 is a is it's a full body experience. Like your 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.200 face is moving a lot, your jaws moving, but also 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.600 your torso, even your arms and legs, your trunk, muscles, 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:04.360 everything's getting in on the joke. Um fifteen facial muscles contract, 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.320 and you also have stimulation of the zygomatic major muscles. 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.440 These are the main lifting mechanisms of your upper lift lip. 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.080 And then you also have the respiratory system is getting 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.120 in on the action. You have half closing the larnix, 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:20.120 so air intake occurs at regularly, making you gasp. And 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.920 in extreme circumstances, what happens something is just extremely funny. 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.120 You start crying. With laughter. Yeah, yeah, and you might 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.360 you might pee a little. I've heard about this. Yeah, well, 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.280 I think on Dirty rock Wislam and calls it lizing, 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.440 where if you you laugh so hard that you start 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.680 peeing yourself. I have you you ever done this? Have 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.080 you ever laughed so hard that you really? And I 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.200 would admit to it even though I because you know, 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:46.920 I have no problem with that, But no, have not. 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.720 My wife sometimes will be watching something and she'll she'll 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.040 warn that that she's about to pee herself if if 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:55.920 she laughs any harder or more. If I was to say, say, 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.400 like come over and tickler while she was laughing, then 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:00.560 she might pee. That's that's the warning. I don't know, 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:04.480 maybe a false threat. I've never pushed, pushed, pushed around 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:06.800 that one. I have made friends do it, though, and 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.920 they'll be like sap, and I can't help myself. Can 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.360 they start crossing their legs and just go in for 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:16.400 the kill? Um? But yeah, I mean that's extreme circumstances 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:20.360 for sure. Um. Also, your mouth is opening and closing 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.320 and so there's still that struggle for oxygen, and of 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:27.040 course your face becomes moist and you know, flushed. Yeah, 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.080 I mean it's a great feeling. Like I watched a 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.400 lot of humorous content. I imagine you do as well. 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.160 You like funny things. Correct, yes, it's true, but I 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.679 still find it's rare that I watched something where it 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:42.480 just completely overtakes me, where it's like you're you're possessed 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:45.640 by a demon for a good minute or two and 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.160 it's just you just can't control yourself. And it's it's 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:51.520 overstatement the obvious here, but it's a wonderful feeling because 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:54.160 it's it's like you're no longer in control of your 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.360 body or your senses in the most delightful way possible. 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:59.560 It is great. And it's kind of funny too, because 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.839 you're psychologically when you're watching something like that, you start 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:06.440 to feel that rise and you're like, yeah, it's like 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:08.720 a roller coaster. It's like I'm writing something a wave 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.880 and I'm not completely in control, but I'm loving it. So, Okay, 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:16.240 let's break down the actual sonic structure of what a 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:18.840 laugh sounds like. And before we do it, let's listen 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:20.720 to a clip of what I think is a great, 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:38.200 full bodied laugh. Well, that's that's a full body laugh. 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:40.760 In the actual video of the YouTube, the individual's laughing 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.600 really hard, and he's kind of an older gentleman to 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.480 the point where you're got a bunch of beer bottles 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.400 behind them. Yeah, but you're a little concern You're like, whoa, 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.800 you're laughing a little hard, Grandpa, you need to slow 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:53.719 it down. But it's just I love it because it's 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:58.600 such a joyful laugh and it's just um, the structure 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.000 of it just builds in. You can just tell that 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.240 this guy is having so much fun, and it really 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:06.320 is infectious. In fact, I think if you watch it, 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.719 you probably are a little bit more invested in it 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.040 that rather than just hearing it. But even just hearing it, 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:12.960 you can't help but smile to yourself a little bit. 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:17.600 So let's talk about the sonic structure laughter. Researcher Robert 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.960 Provine discovered that all human laughter consists of variations on 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:25.079 a basic form that consists of short vowel like notes repeated. 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.800 What he says is every two and ten milliseconds. So 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.800 I didn't time it in that clip. The first part 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:33.520 of that, though, was the expert weigh in and said, 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:35.640 when we laugh, we tend to go ha ha or 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:37.520 ho ho. That's right. He said, there's one of two. 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:39.960 It's either ha ha ha or I'm glad we have 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.520 scientists on these things. I know, I wonder if that 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.080 was an ig noble and think that clip that we 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.599 played is definitely representative of the more like ha ha ha. 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.960 But vrty or do is that? Is that a myth 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:59.240 at I've never really heard, unless like they were intentionally saying, yeah, 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:00.840 you know, I guess it's or like a wood sprite 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:02.719 kind of a thing. Yeah, I know. I don't think 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:04.720 it's something that would come natural to you when you're laughing, 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.680 like full on body laughing. Yeah, because full on body 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:10.200 laughing it, I mean it reaches the point of borderline 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.800 disgusting at times like where I feel like he he 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:16.280 is maybe a more of a social laughter, which we'll 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.240 get into it a little bit, but more of a 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:19.880 look at me, I am laughing and I am a 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.120 wood sprite, as opposed to I'm laughing so hard that 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:28.559 urine is flooding through my pants my face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:31.600 Provine also suggests that humans have a detector that responds 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.800 to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain, 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.040 which in turn generates even more laughter. And that's just 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.959 one explanation for why laughter is contagious. We'll talk a 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:45.160 little bit more about that, But here's the question, why 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:47.800 why do we laugh in the first place? I even 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:50.480 do it? Well, this is a valid question. We've touched 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:52.200 on this a little bit when we've discussed humor in 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:56.000 the past, because on a very basic level, you can 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.839 say that laughter is a response to humor or about 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:02.440 the then that that's a tricky answer too, because then 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:04.120 you then you get into the question what is humor? 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.080 What makes something humorous? One thing that we've discussed in 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:10.040 the past is the is the benign violation theory? Just 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.400 a quick run through this, this is the idea that 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.440 you encounter, oh back on the primordial wilds, or when 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.440 you go to a haunted house, haunted attraction in the 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.320 modern day, you're something jumps out at you, scares the 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.199 living daylights out of you, and for a second you 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.240 think you're gonna die. Then you realize you're not because 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:31.440 it wasn't a saber tooth tiger. It was your cousin 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.120 ug uh decided to have some fun with you. Or 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.160 it was just some dude, Yeah, cousin ug he said, 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.520 he's quite the trickster. Or it's or it's some some 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.040 person in a Google mask at the haunted attraction. You 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.240 realize you're not going to die, and the body's response 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.800 then is to laugh, which arguably and then, according to 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.840 this theory, is then a queue, a social queue to 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.319 those around you just say we are not actually going 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.800 to die. Please disregard that blood curdling scream that I 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:00.959 issued earlier. Yeah, and I think it's interesting that that 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.160 the basis of this is really stress, right, because it 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.359 is a release, and you talked about the social implications 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.360 of it. Um. Some people say that laughter may even 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.640 serve as a conciliatory gesture at times when things get 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:18.080 very stressful. Yes, um, that there's a way to deflect anger. 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.080 It's interesting. I found a two thousand and ten North 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.280 Carolina State University study that looked at the role laughter 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.560 plays injury the liberation. And in fact, the case they 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.920 study was a capital murder case, so it was it 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:33.880 wasn't like they just they decided, oh, it's like a 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:36.520 grandma was arrested for jaywalking and you know, or something 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:39.360 more mundane. It was a life and death scenario. And 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:44.319 they made some interesting observations about how humor among the jurors. 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:46.920 It helped her to release the tension, and it also 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:49.560 allowed them to acknowledge when they made errors and then 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.000 they could correct them because you know, if you just 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.200 sort of laugh off your mistakes, which as we've all 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:57.480 I hope we've all encountered that. You know, when when 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.520 something it gets a little stressful at work, maybe you 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:03.079 screwed something up. You can stick to your guns and 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:05.720 let your ego command it and refuse to back down, 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.040 or you can sort of laugh it off and everyone forgets. 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:12.839 Like whenever I pronounced Michael Carton as Michael Creton, just 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.559 laugh at me, do I? You kind of do? It's 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:19.440 a laugh Mark. I appreciate it because then I'm like, God, 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.480 there goes that tick again. Um. But yeah, I mean, 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:25.720 laughter occurs when people are comfortable with one another. We've 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:29.520 found this out and cultural anthropologist my head Dave opt 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.480 says that, um, you know, when you feel open and 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.640 free and comfortable, the more you laugh, the more you laugh, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.400 the more you bond within a group. And this is 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.120 really important because there's this other desire to not be 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.920 outside of the group, and so you want to participate 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.480 and laugh. And we've talked about this before. Within this 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:53.000 social contract that we're always signing. Um that where we 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.360 are kind of hardwired to cooperate with one another anyway 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.040 because it's to our benefit. So what happens is you 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:03.200 have a feed, a loop of bonding and laughing going on. Well, 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.400 it's interesting you mentioned individuals on the outside because you 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.080 also get into that that idea when you look at 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.120 the theory of what humor is and how it works, 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.880 the idea that all laughter then has to do with Well, 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.760 put it this way, with any given joke, you could 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:20.840 argue that you're either on the inside or on the 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:23.360 outside of that joke. Which side are you standing on? 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:25.320 Are you on the side holding the hose on the 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.520 side getting hose down by the humor? Uh? And then 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.160 you can argue that the humor is about maintaining that 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:37.240 barrier between self and otherness, between normal and strange. Um. 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:39.000 I mean, you can really run wild with it. I 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.560 was having a conversation with my friend Matt the other day, 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.880 and he was he was making the argument that all 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:48.320 racial humor is intrinsically racist. I don't know, I leave 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.800 that to everyone else to think about. But but but, 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.720 but certainly you get into some some tricky moral areas. 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.480 But it's why you see comedian after comedian getting the 0:15:57.480 --> 0:15:59.600 hot water, because they end up joking about a topic 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.440 that some else takes too seriously. Because there's a certain 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:04.760 amount there is a certain amount of meanness to do 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.480 a lot, if not most humor. You know, I thought 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.240 about that with Peter Segel because I was listening to him. 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.080 I'm wait, wait, don't tell me the other day. Yes, 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:17.760 a cruel he's not. He's not cruel, but he's very 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:20.320 funny most of the time. But this guy will just 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.280 he'll just kind of throw whatever out there sometimes, and 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.920 I admire that because it doesn't always stick. And I 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:31.320 have actually heard the audience boo him before, Yeah, because 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.280 he didn't play with the audience. The audience was a 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.560 little bit offended. So anyways, it is interesting to see 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.280 that kind of dynamic can play. Yeah, take Louisa k 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:41.920 for instance. I mean, Louisa k Will does not seem 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.240 really to have much of a filter, but he approaches 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:46.920 it from a certain point of honesty. So he'll say 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.880 something that's really offensive or really gross, but he approaches 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:52.560 it in such an honesty where he's where he kind 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.240 of says, this is what humor is, and I'm trying 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:57.480 to make sense of it as well as you guys are. 0:16:57.560 --> 0:16:59.800 So you know, I have to say that in season 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.080 two of Louis that I nearly stopped watching because one 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.760 of his bits to stand up bits was so offensive 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.720 and it's really really hard to offend me. And I 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:10.560 was like, oh no, I can't get back on this, 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:14.080 but thankfully I did because it is a great show. 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.520 But back to to uh, laughter and what's going on 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:20.960 with the group dynamic. The researcher Robert Provine, who we mentioned, 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.119 also found that laughter is thirty times more frequent in 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.520 groups compared to private settings. So again there's this idea 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.160 that that's the feedback loop in place, and that's why 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:34.639 there's a huge difference between watching a comedy by yourself 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:38.720 in the quiet living room, watching it with a loved 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.960 one or a small group of friends, versus watching it 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.160 in amidst an audience that's like super into the movie 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:47.720 or the improv show or what happened. And this is 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:51.320 from our article how laughter Works. The studies have also 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.760 found that dominant individuals, the boss, the tribal chief, or 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.360 the family family patriarch used humor more than their subordinates. 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:00.880 And that's where we get into some interesting social area 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.600 as well, because zero psychological and behavioral studies revealed that 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.080 laughter can be more than just a spontaneous response to stimula. Obviously, 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:10.760 it's not just a matter of tiger jumped out at 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.600 me and I didn't die. But about two million years 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.800 ago we started developing willful control over our facial motor systems. 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:20.159 So you can almost think of this as kind of 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.040 a birth of deception and a birth of lies. That 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:24.399 was kind of a Garden of Eden moment because and 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:27.960 certainly is micro expressions reveal and you know not everyone's 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:29.600 a great liar, and you can often tell the difference 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:32.680 between fake laughter and real laughter. And the example that 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:34.560 comes to mind is your boss makes a joke, what 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.520 do you do? You laugh at that joke. That's even 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:39.440 if your boss is a great guy. And maybe even 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:42.359 if even if your boss is actually funny, our boss 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:45.000 is actually funny. Is pretty larious, it's pretty hilarious. But 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.679 I still find myself falling into fake laughter sometimes, and 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:50.679 hopefully I'm pretty good at it and no one's noticed it, 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.400 but we still find ourselves knowing when to laugh sometimes. 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:56.680 When I found myself doing this at the teacher's conference 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:58.639 because I'm suddenly interacting with a lot of people that 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:03.600 I haven't interacted before, be it teachers or discovery personnel 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.359 that we're there with us, and I find myself falling 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:10.119 into the pattern of using a little fake laughter sprinkled 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.560 in my conversation, you know, and just you know, smiling 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:15.560 and kind of laughing a little bit as part of 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:19.520 the way that I'm communicating with them. That's interesting because 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.399 some I read that UM in order to try to 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.600 gain control social control over a situation that the people 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.640 who are trying to gain social control over it tend 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.639 to laugh more than the person who is listening. So 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.720 you know, it's a way to engage people, right and 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.720 to get people to pay attention UM using laughter. And 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:41.720 as you as you had pointed out, this part of 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:45.359 the brain is actually called the pre motor cortical region, 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.960 and this is the reason that's activated, and it is 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:50.800 the part of the brain that is standing at the 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.960 ready and listening to conversations and lighting up just before 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:59.159 it begins to contort your your facial muscles to react 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.000 to this situation. And of course we always have to 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.840 bring up mirror neurons. When it comes to this kind 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.520 of stuff. Stephen Small, who is a professor in neurology 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:13.040 and psychology, argues that the contagious nature of laughter is 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:16.119 caused by mirror neurons, or he says, brain cells that 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:19.960 become active when an organism is watching an expression or 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:24.439 behavior that they themselves can perform. And we've seen this 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:27.280 again and again and again. Um, so it's no surprise 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.440 there that when you're watching another person laughing, you begin 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:32.879 to mimic that that you actually have those neurons in 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:37.159 your brains that are saying, hey, laugh now it's funny. Yes, well, 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:40.080 which comes right back around to the idea of laughter yoga, 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:43.560 which I know you hate. I don't know that I hate. 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.439 And let me let me say I have never taken, well, 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.760 I've never meant to take a laughter yoga class, but 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:54.760 some yoga instructor yeah yeah, uh, you know. I think 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:56.919 for me, I was there for yoga, not for laughing. 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.199