Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Cameray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamp and
Speaker 1: my name is Julie Douglas. We are back in Atlanta
Speaker 1: after a little little side trip where we went on
Speaker 1: up to Minnesota. Yes, indeed, we presented at the E
Speaker 1: four Elementary Education Conference and it was awesome. It was
Speaker 1: It's just infectious energy, a lot of enthusiasm from the
Speaker 1: teachers present all, you know, just really gung ho about science,
Speaker 1: about teaching about engineering and mathematics. And we gave our
Speaker 1: spiel about about how we're all scientists just from the
Speaker 1: get go, where we crawl out of the wound. Why
Speaker 1: don't guess we don't crawl out of the wound, but
Speaker 1: we're fee a lot more convenient for women if that
Speaker 1: were the case. We're ripped from the womb, with ripped
Speaker 1: a little strong your coherce coerced from the wound, I guess,
Speaker 1: from the womb with math, with engineering and science already
Speaker 1: born into you. And uh we've discussed this in the
Speaker 1: podcast and we we shared it with everyone there and
Speaker 1: it's just a grand time. So we may have some
Speaker 1: new listeners now who were present at our speech. And
Speaker 1: so if if any of your teachers are tuning in,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Yeah. And actually I have a
Speaker 1: little tidbit that relates not just to the education conference,
Speaker 1: but also to our topic today here about laughter, because
Speaker 1: I can help but giggle into her later on when
Speaker 1: I when I remembered us rehearsing our keynote speech in
Speaker 1: front of a giant uh Lucy character from Peanuts, giant
Speaker 1: sculpture of her. They were all over the hotel and
Speaker 1: we got there the night before, so it's like Sunday
Speaker 1: evening and we we just want to rehearse the material
Speaker 1: a few more times. So what we need an audience, right,
Speaker 1: but not a living audience because they have better things
Speaker 1: to do on a Sunday night. So we found ourselves
Speaker 1: this giant Lucy idle, I guess you would call it,
Speaker 1: and with a giant plate of cake. I think it
Speaker 1: had something because we also found a candy store down
Speaker 1: the road that had some Peanuts characters out front with candy,
Speaker 1: so I guess they were related somehow. And looking back,
Speaker 1: just the two of us in front of this giant sculpture,
Speaker 1: gesturing to Lucy and giving the keynote just made me laugh. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course, if if I had remembered this, um, this,
Speaker 1: this memory with other people with you, turns out I
Speaker 1: would have laughed a lot more. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in a moment. Yeah, we've we've talked about humor before,
Speaker 1: and we talked a little bit about laughter. This episode
Speaker 1: is all about the healing power of laughter, which is
Speaker 1: it's become something of a cliche over the past few decades.
Speaker 1: You have, of course, like Patch Adams, you have you
Speaker 1: shaking your head. Ye, Pat Adams, you have Have you
Speaker 1: seen it? I have not, but I have seen Children's
Speaker 1: Hospital the Adult Swim Show where they have a character
Speaker 1: and they're played by Rob Cordrey. He plays Dr Blake Downs,
Speaker 1: who is a healing clown. That the funny part of
Speaker 1: this is that he takes the healing power of laughter
Speaker 1: deadly seriously, like he's he's wearing clown makeup that kind
Speaker 1: of kind of looks like John Lynne Gacy esque, you know,
Speaker 1: like that kind of slightly scary clown makeup, and he's
Speaker 1: not really he never does much in the way that
Speaker 1: of actual humor for the sick, Like he's he's just
Speaker 1: very serious about yeah, very intense. Yeah, I could get
Speaker 1: behind that, the intense clown. Intense clown. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: I say, it's becomes something of a cliche for all
Speaker 1: of us. But you go back to around the nineteen
Speaker 1: in the d a guy by the name of Norman Cousins,
Speaker 1: and he was a writer and magazine editor for The
Speaker 1: Saturday Review, and he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease,
Speaker 1: and at the time that the theory was making the
Speaker 1: rounds that stress could worsen such a condition. So he
Speaker 1: asked himself, well, what about it? What if I use
Speaker 1: the opposite of stress? So he thought about humor. So
Speaker 1: he goes to his doctor and uh, he gets his
Speaker 1: doctor's okay, and then prescribes himself a regime of humorous videos,
Speaker 1: shows like Candid Camera, which was I guess was big
Speaker 1: in the seventies at the time. But he's gonna take
Speaker 1: these videos, he's gonna watch them along with his other treatments.
Speaker 1: And the disease went into remission, and Cousins wrote a
Speaker 1: paper for the New England Journal of Medicine as well
Speaker 1: as a book titled Anatomy of an Illness, A Patient's Perspective,
Speaker 1: and I was posted in nine became a best seller,
Speaker 1: and it led to a lot of actual researchers looking
Speaker 1: into the matter. Most notably, you had this guy Lee Burke,
Speaker 1: a preventative care specialist from Loma Linda University in Low Melinda, California.
Speaker 1: And then also from Lo Melinda, you had Stanley tan
Speaker 1: who was an m D, pH d and a diabetes specialist.
Speaker 1: So they were curious does mirthful laughter helped individuals with diabetes?
Speaker 1: And so short version of this as they took a
Speaker 1: group of twenty high risk diabetic patients. They had a
Speaker 1: group C, which was control, and they had group L,
Speaker 1: which was laughter. So twelve months later they found significant
Speaker 1: improvement in group L HDL cholesterol. The good cholesterol had
Speaker 1: risen by in group E, the laughter group, and only
Speaker 1: three percent in groups see the control group. Harmful C
Speaker 1: reactive proteins decrease sixty in the laughter group versus in
Speaker 1: the control group. So this is a big study that
Speaker 1: actually pushed the idea even more that laughter is maybe
Speaker 1: maybe there's something too laughter, the laughter it can actually
Speaker 1: heal us in some way, shape or form. So that's
Speaker 1: what we're talking about in this episode. But we need
Speaker 1: a backtrack a little and say, all right, what is
Speaker 1: laughter before we start prescribing it willy nilly? What's going
Speaker 1: on when we laugh? Well, okay, one of the things
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out is that you can tell
Speaker 1: that it's central and very important to us when you
Speaker 1: look across species and you see that other species do it.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that chimps do it. We know
Speaker 1: that if tickled raps will giggle. There's an actual study
Speaker 1: on this, and from a new article on how stuff
Speaker 1: works called ten Surprising Behaviors and Non Human Animals by
Speaker 1: Kate Kirshner, we know that guerrillas also engage in antiq
Speaker 1: um and laughter. In fact, she gives this example of
Speaker 1: a gorilla that got his kicks by running beside his
Speaker 1: trainer along the length of his cage at full speed,
Speaker 1: and then the gorilla would suddenly stop and start laughing
Speaker 1: uncontrollably as the human kept running past him, And she
Speaker 1: said it was great because the gorilla figured out a
Speaker 1: stupid human trick. So chimps, gorilla's rats, they're all laughing
Speaker 1: at us. They're all laughing at us. But what happens
Speaker 1: when we are laughing? What's going on in our own bodies?
Speaker 1: Because this is great. We can look at the chance
Speaker 1: when we can look at rats and we can see
Speaker 1: them giggling, But we can of course turn turn the
Speaker 1: focus to ourselves and say, you know, just at a
Speaker 1: mechanical level, what's happening to spur on all of these
Speaker 1: different chemical changes in our body. Well, the thing about laughter,
Speaker 1: like true laughter, like hearty laughter, not just a little
Speaker 1: snicker or or or what have you. But full laughter
Speaker 1: is a is it's a full body experience. Like your
Speaker 1: face is moving a lot, your jaws moving, but also
Speaker 1: your torso, even your arms and legs, your trunk, muscles,
Speaker 1: everything's getting in on the joke. Um fifteen facial muscles contract,
Speaker 1: and you also have stimulation of the zygomatic major muscles.
Speaker 1: These are the main lifting mechanisms of your upper lift lip.
Speaker 1: And then you also have the respiratory system is getting
Speaker 1: in on the action. You have half closing the larnix,
Speaker 1: so air intake occurs at regularly, making you gasp. And
Speaker 1: in extreme circumstances, what happens something is just extremely funny.
Speaker 1: You start crying. With laughter. Yeah, yeah, and you might
Speaker 1: you might pee a little. I've heard about this. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think on Dirty rock Wislam and calls it lizing,
Speaker 1: where if you you laugh so hard that you start
Speaker 1: peeing yourself. I have you you ever done this? Have
Speaker 1: you ever laughed so hard that you really? And I
Speaker 1: would admit to it even though I because you know,
Speaker 1: I have no problem with that, But no, have not.
Speaker 1: My wife sometimes will be watching something and she'll she'll
Speaker 1: warn that that she's about to pee herself if if
Speaker 1: she laughs any harder or more. If I was to say, say,
Speaker 1: like come over and tickler while she was laughing, then
Speaker 1: she might pee. That's that's the warning. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe a false threat. I've never pushed, pushed, pushed around
Speaker 1: that one. I have made friends do it, though, and
Speaker 1: they'll be like sap, and I can't help myself. Can
Speaker 1: they start crossing their legs and just go in for
Speaker 1: the kill? Um? But yeah, I mean that's extreme circumstances
Speaker 1: for sure. Um. Also, your mouth is opening and closing
Speaker 1: and so there's still that struggle for oxygen, and of
Speaker 1: course your face becomes moist and you know, flushed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great feeling. Like I watched a
Speaker 1: lot of humorous content. I imagine you do as well.
Speaker 1: You like funny things. Correct, yes, it's true, but I
Speaker 1: still find it's rare that I watched something where it
Speaker 1: just completely overtakes me, where it's like you're you're possessed
Speaker 1: by a demon for a good minute or two and
Speaker 1: it's just you just can't control yourself. And it's it's
Speaker 1: overstatement the obvious here, but it's a wonderful feeling because
Speaker 1: it's it's like you're no longer in control of your
Speaker 1: body or your senses in the most delightful way possible.
Speaker 1: It is great. And it's kind of funny too, because
Speaker 1: you're psychologically when you're watching something like that, you start
Speaker 1: to feel that rise and you're like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a roller coaster. It's like I'm writing something a wave
Speaker 1: and I'm not completely in control, but I'm loving it. So, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's break down the actual sonic structure of what a
Speaker 1: laugh sounds like. And before we do it, let's listen
Speaker 1: to a clip of what I think is a great,
Speaker 1: full bodied laugh. Well, that's that's a full body laugh.
Speaker 1: In the actual video of the YouTube, the individual's laughing
Speaker 1: really hard, and he's kind of an older gentleman to
Speaker 1: the point where you're got a bunch of beer bottles
Speaker 1: behind them. Yeah, but you're a little concern You're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: you're laughing a little hard, Grandpa, you need to slow
Speaker 1: it down. But it's just I love it because it's
Speaker 1: such a joyful laugh and it's just um, the structure
Speaker 1: of it just builds in. You can just tell that
Speaker 1: this guy is having so much fun, and it really
Speaker 1: is infectious. In fact, I think if you watch it,
Speaker 1: you probably are a little bit more invested in it
Speaker 1: that rather than just hearing it. But even just hearing it,
Speaker 1: you can't help but smile to yourself a little bit.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the sonic structure laughter. Researcher Robert
Speaker 1: Provine discovered that all human laughter consists of variations on
Speaker 1: a basic form that consists of short vowel like notes repeated.
Speaker 1: What he says is every two and ten milliseconds. So
Speaker 1: I didn't time it in that clip. The first part
Speaker 1: of that, though, was the expert weigh in and said,
Speaker 1: when we laugh, we tend to go ha ha or
Speaker 1: ho ho. That's right. He said, there's one of two.
Speaker 1: It's either ha ha ha or I'm glad we have
Speaker 1: scientists on these things. I know, I wonder if that
Speaker 1: was an ig noble and think that clip that we
Speaker 1: played is definitely representative of the more like ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: But vrty or do is that? Is that a myth
Speaker 1: at I've never really heard, unless like they were intentionally saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess it's or like a wood sprite
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. Yeah, I know. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's something that would come natural to you when you're laughing,
Speaker 1: like full on body laughing. Yeah, because full on body
Speaker 1: laughing it, I mean it reaches the point of borderline
Speaker 1: disgusting at times like where I feel like he he
Speaker 1: is maybe a more of a social laughter, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into it a little bit, but more of a
Speaker 1: look at me, I am laughing and I am a
Speaker 1: wood sprite, as opposed to I'm laughing so hard that
Speaker 1: urine is flooding through my pants my face. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Provine also suggests that humans have a detector that responds
Speaker 1: to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain,
Speaker 1: which in turn generates even more laughter. And that's just
Speaker 1: one explanation for why laughter is contagious. We'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that, But here's the question, why
Speaker 1: why do we laugh in the first place? I even
Speaker 1: do it? Well, this is a valid question. We've touched
Speaker 1: on this a little bit when we've discussed humor in
Speaker 1: the past, because on a very basic level, you can
Speaker 1: say that laughter is a response to humor or about
Speaker 1: the then that that's a tricky answer too, because then
Speaker 1: you then you get into the question what is humor?
Speaker 1: What makes something humorous? One thing that we've discussed in
Speaker 1: the past is the is the benign violation theory? Just
Speaker 1: a quick run through this, this is the idea that
Speaker 1: you encounter, oh back on the primordial wilds, or when
Speaker 1: you go to a haunted house, haunted attraction in the
Speaker 1: modern day, you're something jumps out at you, scares the
Speaker 1: living daylights out of you, and for a second you
Speaker 1: think you're gonna die. Then you realize you're not because
Speaker 1: it wasn't a saber tooth tiger. It was your cousin
Speaker 1: ug uh decided to have some fun with you. Or
Speaker 1: it was just some dude, Yeah, cousin ug he said,
Speaker 1: he's quite the trickster. Or it's or it's some some
Speaker 1: person in a Google mask at the haunted attraction. You
Speaker 1: realize you're not going to die, and the body's response
Speaker 1: then is to laugh, which arguably and then, according to
Speaker 1: this theory, is then a queue, a social queue to
Speaker 1: those around you just say we are not actually going
Speaker 1: to die. Please disregard that blood curdling scream that I
Speaker 1: issued earlier. Yeah, and I think it's interesting that that
Speaker 1: the basis of this is really stress, right, because it
Speaker 1: is a release, and you talked about the social implications
Speaker 1: of it. Um. Some people say that laughter may even
Speaker 1: serve as a conciliatory gesture at times when things get
Speaker 1: very stressful. Yes, um, that there's a way to deflect anger.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I found a two thousand and ten North
Speaker 1: Carolina State University study that looked at the role laughter
Speaker 1: plays injury the liberation. And in fact, the case they
Speaker 1: study was a capital murder case, so it was it
Speaker 1: wasn't like they just they decided, oh, it's like a
Speaker 1: grandma was arrested for jaywalking and you know, or something
Speaker 1: more mundane. It was a life and death scenario. And
Speaker 1: they made some interesting observations about how humor among the jurors.
Speaker 1: It helped her to release the tension, and it also
Speaker 1: allowed them to acknowledge when they made errors and then
Speaker 1: they could correct them because you know, if you just
Speaker 1: sort of laugh off your mistakes, which as we've all
Speaker 1: I hope we've all encountered that. You know, when when
Speaker 1: something it gets a little stressful at work, maybe you
Speaker 1: screwed something up. You can stick to your guns and
Speaker 1: let your ego command it and refuse to back down,
Speaker 1: or you can sort of laugh it off and everyone forgets.
Speaker 1: Like whenever I pronounced Michael Carton as Michael Creton, just
Speaker 1: laugh at me, do I? You kind of do? It's
Speaker 1: a laugh Mark. I appreciate it because then I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: there goes that tick again. Um. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: laughter occurs when people are comfortable with one another. We've
Speaker 1: found this out and cultural anthropologist my head Dave opt
Speaker 1: says that, um, you know, when you feel open and
Speaker 1: free and comfortable, the more you laugh, the more you laugh,
Speaker 1: the more you bond within a group. And this is
Speaker 1: really important because there's this other desire to not be
Speaker 1: outside of the group, and so you want to participate
Speaker 1: and laugh. And we've talked about this before. Within this
Speaker 1: social contract that we're always signing. Um that where we
Speaker 1: are kind of hardwired to cooperate with one another anyway
Speaker 1: because it's to our benefit. So what happens is you
Speaker 1: have a feed, a loop of bonding and laughing going on. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting you mentioned individuals on the outside because you
Speaker 1: also get into that that idea when you look at
Speaker 1: the theory of what humor is and how it works,
Speaker 1: the idea that all laughter then has to do with Well,
Speaker 1: put it this way, with any given joke, you could
Speaker 1: argue that you're either on the inside or on the
Speaker 1: outside of that joke. Which side are you standing on?
Speaker 1: Are you on the side holding the hose on the
Speaker 1: side getting hose down by the humor? Uh? And then
Speaker 1: you can argue that the humor is about maintaining that
Speaker 1: barrier between self and otherness, between normal and strange. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can really run wild with it. I
Speaker 1: was having a conversation with my friend Matt the other day,
Speaker 1: and he was he was making the argument that all
Speaker 1: racial humor is intrinsically racist. I don't know, I leave
Speaker 1: that to everyone else to think about. But but but,
Speaker 1: but certainly you get into some some tricky moral areas.
Speaker 1: But it's why you see comedian after comedian getting the
Speaker 1: hot water, because they end up joking about a topic
Speaker 1: that some else takes too seriously. Because there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount there is a certain amount of meanness to do
Speaker 1: a lot, if not most humor. You know, I thought
Speaker 1: about that with Peter Segel because I was listening to him.
Speaker 1: I'm wait, wait, don't tell me the other day. Yes,
Speaker 1: a cruel he's not. He's not cruel, but he's very
Speaker 1: funny most of the time. But this guy will just
Speaker 1: he'll just kind of throw whatever out there sometimes, and
Speaker 1: I admire that because it doesn't always stick. And I
Speaker 1: have actually heard the audience boo him before, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he didn't play with the audience. The audience was a
Speaker 1: little bit offended. So anyways, it is interesting to see
Speaker 1: that kind of dynamic can play. Yeah, take Louisa k
Speaker 1: for instance. I mean, Louisa k Will does not seem
Speaker 1: really to have much of a filter, but he approaches
Speaker 1: it from a certain point of honesty. So he'll say
Speaker 1: something that's really offensive or really gross, but he approaches
Speaker 1: it in such an honesty where he's where he kind
Speaker 1: of says, this is what humor is, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of it as well as you guys are.
Speaker 1: So you know, I have to say that in season
Speaker 1: two of Louis that I nearly stopped watching because one
Speaker 1: of his bits to stand up bits was so offensive
Speaker 1: and it's really really hard to offend me. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh no, I can't get back on this,
Speaker 1: but thankfully I did because it is a great show.
Speaker 1: But back to to uh, laughter and what's going on
Speaker 1: with the group dynamic. The researcher Robert Provine, who we mentioned,
Speaker 1: also found that laughter is thirty times more frequent in
Speaker 1: groups compared to private settings. So again there's this idea
Speaker 1: that that's the feedback loop in place, and that's why
Speaker 1: there's a huge difference between watching a comedy by yourself
Speaker 1: in the quiet living room, watching it with a loved
Speaker 1: one or a small group of friends, versus watching it
Speaker 1: in amidst an audience that's like super into the movie
Speaker 1: or the improv show or what happened. And this is
Speaker 1: from our article how laughter Works. The studies have also
Speaker 1: found that dominant individuals, the boss, the tribal chief, or
Speaker 1: the family family patriarch used humor more than their subordinates.
Speaker 1: And that's where we get into some interesting social area
Speaker 1: as well, because zero psychological and behavioral studies revealed that
Speaker 1: laughter can be more than just a spontaneous response to stimula. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's not just a matter of tiger jumped out at
Speaker 1: me and I didn't die. But about two million years
Speaker 1: ago we started developing willful control over our facial motor systems.
Speaker 1: So you can almost think of this as kind of
Speaker 1: a birth of deception and a birth of lies. That
Speaker 1: was kind of a Garden of Eden moment because and
Speaker 1: certainly is micro expressions reveal and you know not everyone's
Speaker 1: a great liar, and you can often tell the difference
Speaker 1: between fake laughter and real laughter. And the example that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is your boss makes a joke, what
Speaker 1: do you do? You laugh at that joke. That's even
Speaker 1: if your boss is a great guy. And maybe even
Speaker 1: if even if your boss is actually funny, our boss
Speaker 1: is actually funny. Is pretty larious, it's pretty hilarious. But
Speaker 1: I still find myself falling into fake laughter sometimes, and
Speaker 1: hopefully I'm pretty good at it and no one's noticed it,
Speaker 1: but we still find ourselves knowing when to laugh sometimes.
Speaker 1: When I found myself doing this at the teacher's conference
Speaker 1: because I'm suddenly interacting with a lot of people that
Speaker 1: I haven't interacted before, be it teachers or discovery personnel
Speaker 1: that we're there with us, and I find myself falling
Speaker 1: into the pattern of using a little fake laughter sprinkled
Speaker 1: in my conversation, you know, and just you know, smiling
Speaker 1: and kind of laughing a little bit as part of
Speaker 1: the way that I'm communicating with them. That's interesting because
Speaker 1: some I read that UM in order to try to
Speaker 1: gain control social control over a situation that the people
Speaker 1: who are trying to gain social control over it tend
Speaker 1: to laugh more than the person who is listening. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a way to engage people, right and
Speaker 1: to get people to pay attention UM using laughter. And
Speaker 1: as you as you had pointed out, this part of
Speaker 1: the brain is actually called the pre motor cortical region,
Speaker 1: and this is the reason that's activated, and it is
Speaker 1: the part of the brain that is standing at the
Speaker 1: ready and listening to conversations and lighting up just before
Speaker 1: it begins to contort your your facial muscles to react
Speaker 1: to this situation. And of course we always have to
Speaker 1: bring up mirror neurons. When it comes to this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Stephen Small, who is a professor in neurology
Speaker 1: and psychology, argues that the contagious nature of laughter is
Speaker 1: caused by mirror neurons, or he says, brain cells that
Speaker 1: become active when an organism is watching an expression or
Speaker 1: behavior that they themselves can perform. And we've seen this
Speaker 1: again and again and again. Um, so it's no surprise
Speaker 1: there that when you're watching another person laughing, you begin
Speaker 1: to mimic that that you actually have those neurons in
Speaker 1: your brains that are saying, hey, laugh now it's funny. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: which comes right back around to the idea of laughter yoga,
Speaker 1: which I know you hate. I don't know that I hate.
Speaker 1: And let me let me say I have never taken, well,
Speaker 1: I've never meant to take a laughter yoga class, but
Speaker 1: some yoga instructor yeah yeah, uh, you know. I think
Speaker 1: for me, I was there for yoga, not for laughing.
Speaker 1: So perhaps I just wasn't in the right mindset. But
Speaker 1: I hate the idea of it. Yea. Just to explain
Speaker 1: this to anyone who hasn't had any actual experience with
Speaker 1: laughter yoga, this involves you being in a yoga classroom
Speaker 1: and the yoga instructor who's leading you in various physical
Speaker 1: activities will also lead you in about of basically fake laughter,
Speaker 1: where you the teacher will start going off and everyone
Speaker 1: else has to join in with lots of fake laughter.
Speaker 1: But what you're in opposed by the way. Sometimes I've
Speaker 1: order to involve sort of hand gestures, Like there's one
Speaker 1: that we do in my yoga class called the laughter milkshake.
Speaker 1: We have like a pretend milkshake and you move it
Speaker 1: from one mug to the other and then you pour
Speaker 1: it on your head and then you laugh really hard. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's it always ends with legitimate laughter, at least
Speaker 1: from me and people I noticed in the room. It
Speaker 1: starts fake and then it becomes contained aus it, it
Speaker 1: becomes authentic. It's true. It's one of the things was
Speaker 1: the whole fake it till you make it and you
Speaker 1: become right. So if you laugh, even when you're faking it,
Speaker 1: we're going to actually start to laugh. Sometimes I'm out
Speaker 1: throwing a little sardonic laughter, you know. Well that's what
Speaker 1: I did to try to counter it because it was
Speaker 1: driving me crazy. So I was like, but that's interesting.
Speaker 1: The sardonic laughter is another interesting thing to bring up
Speaker 1: because what I don't know that anyone actually does it.
Speaker 1: I have I guess I'm just not around like severely
Speaker 1: evil individuals. But if it exists legitimately and not just
Speaker 1: in movies, and I don't know that anyone's ever actually
Speaker 1: uh looked into this. If we have any evil listeners
Speaker 1: out there, maybe they can tell us. But if it exists,
Speaker 1: then it's an example of this social hijacking of the
Speaker 1: left of the use of laughter to where we're faking it.
Speaker 1: I guess too belittle someone or we're just unhinged. I
Speaker 1: guess is the whole deal that you find humor in
Speaker 1: things that are not humorous, like taking over the world
Speaker 1: or or creating a robot guerilla hybrid that will help
Speaker 1: you take over the world. It was just my way
Speaker 1: of saying, like, hey, I didn't sign up for the
Speaker 1: left class. I signed up for the regular, regular yoga class.
Speaker 1: But what does all all of this laughing due to us?
Speaker 1: What what are the actual physical effects and the benefits,
Speaker 1: so the healing power of laughter. We We've talked about
Speaker 1: a lot about what what laughter is and some of
Speaker 1: the things that going in the human body. So to
Speaker 1: what extent can it actually heal us? Well? Okay, um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what is happening at the physical level, right,
Speaker 1: because let's just lay this groundwork so we can see
Speaker 1: if there's a possibility that it could have some sort
Speaker 1: of long term healing effects. When we laugh, our bodies
Speaker 1: respond really positively. There is a decrease in stress hormones
Speaker 1: of cortisol, adrenaline, and dopac, and an increased in beta
Speaker 1: endorphins which lower feelings of depression, and then human growth
Speaker 1: hormone UM also which helps protect us against disease and infection.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the act of laughter that changes
Speaker 1: our body's chemistry, because you know, even the mirror anticipation
Speaker 1: of laughing does this too. So if you see, um
Speaker 1: a funny movie, or rather if you're on your way
Speaker 1: to see a funny movie, you're already primed. Your body
Speaker 1: is ready to go ahead and release those feel good endorphins.
Speaker 1: Just on a physical level, of course, you're the repeated
Speaker 1: forceful exhalations of breath, it occur. Uh, They really give
Speaker 1: your give your lungs of workout, gives your the muscles
Speaker 1: of your diaphragm, will workout. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of breathing and h and chest movements going on.
Speaker 1: Um and laughter also prompts our bodies to produce more
Speaker 1: T cells and globulins. And this is where it becomes
Speaker 1: very important to our immune system because what they found
Speaker 1: is that higher levels of an antibody called salivary immenium
Speaker 1: globulin A when you laugh, this is released and that
Speaker 1: is what fights infectious organisms entering into the respiratory tract.
Speaker 1: So that is what they found in the saliva of people,
Speaker 1: this increase of this antibody for people who watched humorous videos.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that the benefits of this could
Speaker 1: actually be linked to longevity because people who report a
Speaker 1: general feeling of happiness and of course laughter would help
Speaker 1: with that, tend to be healthier overall, live longer rather
Speaker 1: than unhappy people. And there's a two thousand eleven study
Speaker 1: that says that three out of a people aged fifty
Speaker 1: two to seventy five, they found that those who rated
Speaker 1: their happiness higher were significantly less likely to die in
Speaker 1: the following five years. Uh So you know, there you go,
Speaker 1: is this is another reason to laugh. There's a great
Speaker 1: study that we ran across in researching. There's a two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve Oxford University study You're not in your head? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: you're not laughing. I laughed when I read this one
Speaker 1: because basically this is what it consisted of. They had
Speaker 1: subjects watch videos, either funny ones or dry documentaries, and
Speaker 1: then they were also tortured, which is to say they
Speaker 1: were they put their wrists arms inside blood pressure cuffs
Speaker 1: or frozen cooling sleeves. Yeah, we should say why they
Speaker 1: did this because because you had mentioned the what is
Speaker 1: happening physically like your you know, with your abdomen and
Speaker 1: the amount of the air that you're inhaling exhaling, they
Speaker 1: wanted to know if if laughing could be considered actual exercise.
Speaker 1: And we know that when we exercise were we release
Speaker 1: endorphins which helped to manage pain. Right, so you need
Speaker 1: to inject a little pain into the scenario to see
Speaker 1: if the laughter is actually helping with it. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: in the experiments, pain thresholds did go up after people
Speaker 1: watch the funny videos, but not after they viewed the
Speaker 1: factual documentaries. So and belly laughter was also the key here,
Speaker 1: like full blown not just snickering a little, but ken
Speaker 1: burns hair. Uh, you're watching a documentary, but actual full
Speaker 1: bodied laughter, like if you're watching airplane or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. They were looking at the amount of contractions
Speaker 1: of their bellies were doing, which reminds me. It brings
Speaker 1: me back to Burdo Eco's Name of the Rose, because
Speaker 1: a lot of that book and in the movie, which
Speaker 1: is also quite good, uh deals with the nature of
Speaker 1: laughter and what the what the church's view on laughter is.
Speaker 1: And Brother William in the book brings up an example
Speaker 1: of a saint uh Well who supposedly used laughter, employed
Speaker 1: laughter want being tortured and tricked one of his tortures
Speaker 1: and just dipping his hand into the boiling water that
Speaker 1: he was immersed in. It made me think it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if you had a sit maybe that's the way you
Speaker 1: could to a certain extent but not really counteract torturous
Speaker 1: pain by just going into it with a sense of humor,
Speaker 1: just tickling people instead of torturing them. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that while being tortured, if you found enough
Speaker 1: humor in the scenario, could you know, I guess you
Speaker 1: could conceivably reduce the level of pain. You could up
Speaker 1: your pains, right, I wouldn't actually work, but I can't
Speaker 1: help but go there with my mind. And you can't
Speaker 1: self tickle, right, that's a problem. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: think David Eagleman was just talking about that on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It has to do with it like anticipation. And if
Speaker 1: you find someone who can self tickle, they are faking
Speaker 1: it totally. Yeah, right, and they're weird for its probably
Speaker 1: a whole movement of self ticklers out there. Um. So
Speaker 1: here's this idea that came out of that studied though,
Speaker 1: is that exercise and laughter could have the same benefits, right,
Speaker 1: this this rise and endorphins. So then it became well, okay,
Speaker 1: if we know from laughing that laughing is increased in
Speaker 1: a group situation, could endorphins be increased in an exercise situation.
Speaker 1: So I think it's interesting how they took one data
Speaker 1: set and tried to apply it to that to the other. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it was a two thousand and nine study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was two thousand nine study that Dunbar, same guy
Speaker 1: um from the Laughing Experiment and his colleagues studied a
Speaker 1: group of elite Oxford rowers asking them to work out
Speaker 1: either on an isolated rowing machine separated from one another
Speaker 1: in a gym, or on a machine that simulated full
Speaker 1: synchronized crew rowing um and in that case, the rowers
Speaker 1: were exerting themselves in synchrony as a united group. And
Speaker 1: after they exercised together, the rowers pain thresholds and presumably
Speaker 1: their endorphin levels right um were significantly higher than they
Speaker 1: had been at the start, but also higher than when
Speaker 1: they rode alone. So even just thinking that you are
Speaker 1: participating in this group activity apparently helped in terms of
Speaker 1: the release of endorphins, which is very interesting, which which
Speaker 1: brings back to the idea of going to a group
Speaker 1: exercise class such as a group yoga class, but where
Speaker 1: then you then also engage in group laughing. Right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna saying, of course all roads leave to lead to
Speaker 1: laugh for yoga in this case, because that is the
Speaker 1: culmination of what we've described here. Yeah, the universe is saying,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, give this universe is not talking to me,
Speaker 1: and if it is, I'm insane. Another quick study that
Speaker 1: I found was the one from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital,
Speaker 1: and they found that patients use laughter to communicate emotionally
Speaker 1: with their psychotherapists, like using a lot like an exclamation
Speaker 1: point at the end of a sentence, and that laughing
Speaker 1: together also helped seal the bond. So I found that
Speaker 1: interesting as well in terms of not only physical healing,
Speaker 1: but emotional healing. Laughter ends up playing a role in
Speaker 1: therapy session, which uh a few times that I've I've
Speaker 1: seen a therapist. I mean, I do remember laughing a little,
Speaker 1: partially because I ended up accidentally going to a children's
Speaker 1: therapist and there was a sandbox full of toys in
Speaker 1: the room. She was great, but there was a sandbox
Speaker 1: full of toys. She have a clown news on. No,
Speaker 1: thank God, just have to check all right, well, before
Speaker 1: we go to our mail should we just listen to
Speaker 1: that clip one more? Yeah, play the laugh one time,
Speaker 1: and I actually I encourage everyone to laugh. Try laughing
Speaker 1: with this man. Laugh aloud. If you're in the car,
Speaker 1: you're out running, cycling, if you're alone in the truck, whatever,
Speaker 1: if you're on mass transit, for sure, yes, to start laughing,
Speaker 1: laugh with this man. All right, here we go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: good stuff. What do we have in the mail bag? Yes,
Speaker 1: let me grab the mail, Uh, the robot will be
Speaker 1: kind enough to bring it over all right, here's one
Speaker 1: from our listener Murphy Murphy Rights, and it says, Aloha,
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie. I just finished the podcast about the
Speaker 1: Ordovician period. Blew my mind, naturally, but I am here
Speaker 1: to talk about the listener mail at the end. About maps.
Speaker 1: One day, I was at a family friend's house when
Speaker 1: I saw a poster of a map that looked like this,
Speaker 1: and she included this image. And it's a It's basically
Speaker 1: the map of the world as we typically see it inverted, Okay,
Speaker 1: It's a map of the world, only upside down from
Speaker 1: its traditional orientation. It got me thinking about how arbitrary
Speaker 1: north and south were, and how easily our Earth could
Speaker 1: have eastern and western snowcaps and orbited around the Sun
Speaker 1: vertically rather than horizontally. It's all about the map maker's
Speaker 1: perspective and whatever sticks. On the topic of science fiction
Speaker 1: and mapps. I also came across this map. Somebody on
Speaker 1: the Internet mapped out the location of all the Star
Speaker 1: Wars planet's ever man in the films, games, novels, and
Speaker 1: comic books. I think they call that the extended universe.
Speaker 1: There are quite a lot of them, just thought you
Speaker 1: would appreciate that. And she also included this map, which
Speaker 1: is really awesome includes all of these star systems and
Speaker 1: so forth. So, yeah, that's one of the things we
Speaker 1: talked about in that episode, the creation of maps that
Speaker 1: thought all the details of our fantasy settings as well
Speaker 1: as the bias of our maps regarding the world as
Speaker 1: it is or the world as we experience it, and
Speaker 1: its effects on how we experience it. Because again, you
Speaker 1: have that map of the of the of the world
Speaker 1: and you basically have the United States, they're in the
Speaker 1: center of it, or or europe western ist. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the center of the map. This is the center
Speaker 1: of the of the place in the world in space.
Speaker 1: So thanks for us sending that, Tis Murphy. Here's one
Speaker 1: from a listener by the name of Alberto from Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: Alberto Retsina says, hi, Julian Robert, I just finished listening
Speaker 1: to the three Map podcast and remembered a weird high
Speaker 1: school experience I had with maps and wanted to share
Speaker 1: it with you. In a Puerto Rican history class, the
Speaker 1: teacher to side did that the best thing we could
Speaker 1: do was make a lot of maps. The thing is
Speaker 1: that he had some weird map hypotheses. The first is
Speaker 1: that each map had a capital or central point, and
Speaker 1: that if it didn't, the owner or user of the
Speaker 1: map was the main point of the map. Second, every
Speaker 1: representation of space was a map, so every representation of
Speaker 1: any space had a main point. The assignment required that
Speaker 1: I localized myself on the ever bigger maps, starting with
Speaker 1: our house. We had to do maps with the star
Speaker 1: of for where I lived as a capital of our house,
Speaker 1: our barrio, neighborhood, reward, our town, our country, Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: our area Caribbean, our continent, our planet, and our solar system.
Speaker 1: I never understood the reasoning behind this, and he never
Speaker 1: made the connection between this exercise in the history of
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. The rest of the assignments of the class
Speaker 1: were maps related. But we're map related, but not so
Speaker 1: far away from the history is this one? Thank you
Speaker 1: for making my commute entertaining. Well, I think it's an
Speaker 1: interesting experiment that the class engaged in because it was
Speaker 1: getting down to what is the nature of the map
Speaker 1: and what does it say about where I am on
Speaker 1: the map and where I position myself in the map? Well,
Speaker 1: I like it too, because it gives kids the idea
Speaker 1: that they are citizens of the universe, that, of course,
Speaker 1: this is the specific street that they live on, specific
Speaker 1: neighborhood and specific city and so on, and keep going out.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the powers of ten, right, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I really like that one. Certainly of any
Speaker 1: of the other listeners have any cool map experiences and
Speaker 1: map activities from school like that right in, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear about them. But more importantly, if you have
Speaker 1: something about the healing power of laughter you would like
Speaker 1: to share, we'd love to hear any stories you have
Speaker 1: of of how laughter has affected your physical healing or
Speaker 1: emotional healing during trying times in your in your life. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you are employed in the medical profession in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, we'd also love to hear from you
Speaker 1: about your thoughts on the nature of humor and if
Speaker 1: any of your comedians share it as well. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and you can find us on Tumbler.
Speaker 1: On both of those we go by the names have
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, and on Twitter we used to
Speaker 1: handle blow the Mind, and you can drop us a
Speaker 1: line at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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