Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind New York Comic Con Stranger Things. Yes,
Speaker 1: it all comes together on October six, from seven pm
Speaker 1: to eight thirty pm at Hudson Mercantile in Manhattan. If
Speaker 1: you're in the area, join us for Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind Live Stranger Science as we explore the exciting
Speaker 1: science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix show
Speaker 1: Stranger Things. Stuff you missed in history class has a
Speaker 1: show right after us in the same venue, so you
Speaker 1: can really double down on your stuff. And hey, the
Speaker 1: three of us would love to meet you. This is
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do it. Learn more and buy your
Speaker 1: tickets at New York Comic Con dot com. Slash n
Speaker 1: y c C hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Christian Seger, and hey, we've both just
Speaker 1: saw the movie It in the movie theater. And this
Speaker 1: is rare because you don't get to the movies as
Speaker 1: much as I do. But we have both been able
Speaker 1: to see a movie in the theater and experience it
Speaker 1: pretty recently. Yeah, and I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: are checking it out. Yeah, it's it's become quite a hit.
Speaker 1: So when I was at the movies watching this, there
Speaker 1: was this woman in the theater who is in the
Speaker 1: back a couple of rows from me, and she just
Speaker 1: kept screaming every time Pennywise would show up, like this
Speaker 1: howling scream, and this caused her. Then she would laugh
Speaker 1: in response to her own screaming, and everyone else in
Speaker 1: the theater then would laugh as well. So there's this
Speaker 1: like weird moment where like everybody was laughing over this
Speaker 1: movie of this just horrible depictions. Then I saw that
Speaker 1: movie Mother a week later. Yeah, yeah, and that didn't
Speaker 1: happen at all. No one laughed, No, there was no
Speaker 1: nervous laughter, there was no screaming. It was just this unrelenting, traumatic,
Speaker 1: uncomfortable horror playing out in front of you. And so
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, is there some kind of metric of successful
Speaker 1: horror here or is it just like different subgenres when
Speaker 1: people feel like it's okay to laugh nervously versus they're
Speaker 1: just enraptured with with what is so scary in front
Speaker 1: of them. Well, yeah, and then of course these are
Speaker 1: two very different films. I understand with with kind of
Speaker 1: different target audiences, so when I very much account but yeah,
Speaker 1: I I share some of your concerns about my my
Speaker 1: fellow viewers. I mean, this is a reason I one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I don't go to movie theaters that much,
Speaker 1: because ultimately I would rather watch anything in my living room. Um,
Speaker 1: it's only the whole timing aspect of of like a
Speaker 1: film you're really excited about. It's going to get me
Speaker 1: to go to the theater because otherwise I'm not crazy
Speaker 1: about the theater. It's you know, it tends to be overpriced.
Speaker 1: You gotta go if you if you're gonna if I
Speaker 1: go in my and I go with my wife, then
Speaker 1: I have we have to get a sitter. It's just
Speaker 1: the whole whole pain and uh. And you know, life
Speaker 1: moves so fast now at our age that it's like
Speaker 1: a movie. Like when you're a kid, if you didn't
Speaker 1: see Batman in the theater, it's like forever in the future.
Speaker 1: It's like two months, yeah, and two months like that's
Speaker 1: gone like that, like movie after movie, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that Marvel film seems kind of kind of cool. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll check that out. And then it's on, you know,
Speaker 1: direct streaming. But of the many things that bother me
Speaker 1: about the the movie theater going experience, there's certainly the
Speaker 1: the audience reaction to not only scares, but to just
Speaker 1: graphic violence in general. You're you're watching it, you're immersed.
Speaker 1: Something scarier violent happens and someone responds with laughter. It
Speaker 1: throws me out of the experience of watching the film.
Speaker 1: But then I also have this weird moment where I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are we as a species? Who? Where? What have
Speaker 1: we done culturally so wrong? How do what is our
Speaker 1: relationship with depictions of violence in our in our fiction
Speaker 1: that that will that allows this to happen, That I'm
Speaker 1: hearing somebody cackle while someone's being like bludgeoned to death
Speaker 1: or something. Well, I have to admit, Robert, I'm probably
Speaker 1: one of the people that would annoy you in that respect,
Speaker 1: because during it there were points where I giggled gleefully.
Speaker 1: But I think when I think back on it, it
Speaker 1: was more out of the sheer excitement that as a
Speaker 1: horror fan they were able to make a film that
Speaker 1: was actually as dark and horrifying as the novel, And
Speaker 1: I was so I thought I was going to be
Speaker 1: disappointed going into it. And you know this, horror fans
Speaker 1: were like junkies, were always on the lookout for the
Speaker 1: next good story that's going to come out in the genre. Right.
Speaker 1: We're just always hoping, will this be it? Will this
Speaker 1: be the next cool thing? And more often than not,
Speaker 1: we're disappointed. So I think when I was giggling, it
Speaker 1: was more out of happiness that this thing wasn't failing
Speaker 1: my expectations, you know. And I've been getting a lot
Speaker 1: of questions about what you're talking about in relation to
Speaker 1: the movie it because it's been so popular. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are saying to me, because they know that
Speaker 1: I write horror and that I'm a fan of horror,
Speaker 1: what is it that you like about horror? What you know?
Speaker 1: They say it to me as if like I'm a
Speaker 1: damaged human being and they need me to explain you
Speaker 1: know that I'm not, uh, And I guess for me,
Speaker 1: I see storytelling as a way of learning through the
Speaker 1: surrogate figures that are playing out in the story in
Speaker 1: front of you, right, And this is essentially our method
Speaker 1: for explaining to each other how the world works. So
Speaker 1: cautionary tales like horror seem to me to be culture
Speaker 1: designed to enhance our survival rate, and something like it
Speaker 1: is a glimpse is something that's larger than us, because
Speaker 1: obviously it's not a real clown running around and murdering people.
Speaker 1: It's some kind of monstrous, cosmic entity. Yeah, so you've
Speaker 1: got this whole idea that there's something beyond our understanding
Speaker 1: and something that scares us by simply showing us that
Speaker 1: we are just not as significant as we like to
Speaker 1: think we are. And there's something oddly zen about that
Speaker 1: that I like when you learn to be content with
Speaker 1: your lack of significance and you just can accept that
Speaker 1: you don't understand everything and you never will. And I
Speaker 1: think there's room for laughter there as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree with with that. You know, I I write
Speaker 1: horror as well, and I don't think of myself as
Speaker 1: a as a horror writer per se. Like, I think
Speaker 1: it's more a matter of exploring the reel through the unreal.
Speaker 1: And if you were exploring something that is inherently dark
Speaker 1: or inherently fantastic, inherently ridiculous or surreal, I mean that's
Speaker 1: going to color your unreal method of exploring it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's more about it's it's more about what
Speaker 1: that that that endpoint, like, what are you trying to
Speaker 1: explore about the real world? Right? So then let's back
Speaker 1: up for a second here, because we're both practitioners and
Speaker 1: fans of this, but there's something going on here with
Speaker 1: the human experience when people are laughing at horror movies.
Speaker 1: So let's try to unpack this and look at the history, biology,
Speaker 1: and psychology of laughter. Yeah, because I think the main
Speaker 1: issue here is that you can either say I'm the
Speaker 1: only person in this theater who's sane and everyone else
Speaker 1: is having an insane or a logical reaction to the horror.
Speaker 1: That's one way to approach it. But the more likely
Speaker 1: explanation is that what is happening here is normal, and
Speaker 1: if we look at it, it'll reveal something about our
Speaker 1: relationship to humor, our relationship to horror, and just the
Speaker 1: human experience itself. All right, So let's let's start with
Speaker 1: just laughter and humor in general. So studies have shown
Speaker 1: that various apes, rats, dogs, birds, dolphins, they all do
Speaker 1: something that resembles laughter. But of course everything is a
Speaker 1: little bit more complicated with humans, and laughter itself is complicated.
Speaker 1: You know what, when you hear it, it's that mix
Speaker 1: of rhythmic vocalized, you know, involuntary actions. It begins with
Speaker 1: a set of gestures, a crack in the facial features,
Speaker 1: and then the emergence of sound, and that exact sound
Speaker 1: is gonna gonna very tremendous. I mean, you've you've all
Speaker 1: heard countless versions of laughter, you know, like the deep
Speaker 1: resonating laughter of say Brian blessed Um, who played, of course,
Speaker 1: of the character Vulcan and the flash Gordon, the tittering
Speaker 1: laughter of say the character Knox Harrington, or David Thulis
Speaker 1: played by David Threwis in The Big Lebowski, or you know,
Speaker 1: any example of sardonic laughter or sexy laughter. I mean,
Speaker 1: the list goes on and on. But when we we
Speaker 1: belt out a hearty laugh, we we feel it throughout
Speaker 1: the body. Uh, even the arm, leg, and trunk muscles,
Speaker 1: fifteen facial muscles contract and we feel the unmistakable stimulation
Speaker 1: of the zygomatic muscle, the main lifting mechanism of your
Speaker 1: upper lip. Meanwhile, the epiglottis partially closes the laarnix, interfering
Speaker 1: with respiratory system, making air and take ir regular you gasp.
Speaker 1: In extreme situations, you even have your your tear ducks
Speaker 1: kicking in and contributing tears um as well. Maybe your
Speaker 1: your nose is running. It becomes this. We often forget that,
Speaker 1: like a really true full body laugh. It's like being
Speaker 1: gassed with something. In extreme situations, you pee your pants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens now. Of course, for you to laugh, you
Speaker 1: need some sort of stimuli, and the most common stimuli is,
Speaker 1: of course, humor. But humor itself is a tricky subject
Speaker 1: to understand that we've been we've been banging our heads
Speaker 1: against it for thousands of years. So I thought it
Speaker 1: might be helpful to just go ahead and roll through
Speaker 1: a few basic theories regarding a humor so that we
Speaker 1: can move forward. And I think as we go we'll
Speaker 1: find that in trying to um explain what humor is
Speaker 1: and how we react to humor, we also get into
Speaker 1: that area of horror. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbs, they all
Speaker 1: argued the superiority theory of humor, which states that we
Speaker 1: simply find the misfortune of others amusing. Yeah, this is schadenfreud,
Speaker 1: of the great German term for finding pleasure in somebody
Speaker 1: else's misfortune. Yeah, and he view. You see someone trip
Speaker 1: and you laugh, or you trip and someone laughs at you.
Speaker 1: This seems like a perfectly solid explanation for everything that's occurring. Now. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud, he championed the champion the relief theory, which
Speaker 1: states the comedy is a way for people to release
Speaker 1: suppress thoughts and emotions safely. And this can include everything
Speaker 1: from you know, cutting a slice of you know, confert
Speaker 1: you know, controversial say social commentary, or are just a
Speaker 1: simple fart joke. Now. Emmanuel Conta Flip favored the incongruity theory,
Speaker 1: which suggests that humor blooms when people notice the disconnect
Speaker 1: between their expectations and the actual payoff. I went in
Speaker 1: to smell that flour on your lapel and it squirted water.
Speaker 1: That was unexpected. That was hilarious. Now. One that one
Speaker 1: of the more recent theories that that I find quite
Speaker 1: attractive is the benign violation theory, and this holds that
Speaker 1: humor arises when benign subject matter and violent or dangerous
Speaker 1: subject matter overlapped, overlap and allow and the laugh itself
Speaker 1: is a way to communicate to others that a previously
Speaker 1: perceived threat is not a real danger. Now, none of
Speaker 1: this is a subtled debate. You can argue for any
Speaker 1: one of these, and maybe there's a little truth in
Speaker 1: all of them, but especially for our purposes here, I
Speaker 1: do really like the benign violation theory because it explains
Speaker 1: humor and laughter in terms of communication. After all, we
Speaker 1: are social organisms. I mean, we we banned together. That's
Speaker 1: where we found our survival in a in a dangerous
Speaker 1: world of limited resources. So it makes sense that allowed
Speaker 1: vocal expression, not only a vocal expression, but a very
Speaker 1: physical expression is we've described, would have some sort of
Speaker 1: a communicative role. So when we drilled down even further,
Speaker 1: we look to the work of a guy named Robert Provine.
Speaker 1: He's a neuroscientist and psychology professor at the University of
Speaker 1: Maryland in Baltimore County, and he conducted laughter research for
Speaker 1: this book that he wrote, and he observed real world
Speaker 1: laughter in more than a thousand episodes in public places.
Speaker 1: And Provine described his approach as trying to understand laughter
Speaker 1: from the position of a visiting extraterrestrial. So essentially, what
Speaker 1: would an alien make of the sounds and faces we're
Speaker 1: making when we're laughing. So he first defined what a
Speaker 1: laugh is, and he quantified it as a series of
Speaker 1: short vowel like notes or syllables that are each seventy
Speaker 1: five milliseconds long and are repeated at regular intervals about
Speaker 1: two hundred and ten milliseconds apart. Now, there's no specific
Speaker 1: vowel sound that defines laughter, but similar vowel sounds are
Speaker 1: typically used for the notes of a given laugh. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're not going uh oh e I, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're not combining all the various different vowels. Is
Speaker 1: usually the same one over and over again. So there's
Speaker 1: usually a strong harmonic structure to laughter, with each being
Speaker 1: a multip full of a low frequency. So when you
Speaker 1: look at laughter's harmonic structure on a sound spectrogram, you
Speaker 1: actually find that there are evenly space stacks of short
Speaker 1: horizontal lines in the spectrum, and the notes and the
Speaker 1: inter note intervals between them, those carry the actual information
Speaker 1: that helps us identify a sound as laughter. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you were to use like editing software and you
Speaker 1: cut out the spaces between laugh notes, you would still
Speaker 1: recognize it as laughter. But if you cut out the
Speaker 1: notes themselves, it just sounds like a long, breathy sigh. Essentially,
Speaker 1: all human laughter is a variation on this basic form,
Speaker 1: and we typically start seeing it in babies around three
Speaker 1: and a half to four months of age. And Provide
Speaker 1: also found the following stats. He found that less than
Speaker 1: twenty of the laughter incidents he cataloged were in response
Speaker 1: to something that was actually funny. Instead, people more often
Speaker 1: are giggling or chuckling at innocuous statements like, for instance,
Speaker 1: I see your point and then somebody goes And what's
Speaker 1: even more interesting is that the person who produced the
Speaker 1: laugh provoking statement was forty six percent more likely to
Speaker 1: be the one who chuckled themselves. So it's more likely
Speaker 1: that people tell a joke and then they laugh at themselves,
Speaker 1: then somebody else laughs at them. In only eight of
Speaker 1: the one thousand, two hundred recorded episodes that Provine looked
Speaker 1: at did they find that laughter interrupted what someone was saying.
Speaker 1: Nine point nine percent of the time, laughter occurs in
Speaker 1: these tidy, natural breaks. And this is weird because I
Speaker 1: think I'm probably the point zero one percent of the population.
Speaker 1: Then who laughs in ways that totally interrupted conversation? Anybody
Speaker 1: who's listening to me on these podcasts will probably attest
Speaker 1: to that. Also, I'm the most awkward person to go
Speaker 1: to the movies with because I laugh a lot inappropriately.
Speaker 1: I got dirty looks in the theater for laughing maniacally
Speaker 1: at movies like American Psycho and Hannibal. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: American Psycho. In Hannibal, you do have to admit that
Speaker 1: they play with black comedy a little bit. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought. Yeah, as I was watching them, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is supposed to be dark humor. I was laughing
Speaker 1: in response to it, and people were looking at me
Speaker 1: like I was a madman, Like you're laughing at this
Speaker 1: naked man running down the hall with a chainsaw. But
Speaker 1: that scene is legitimately hilarious because they're going to such
Speaker 1: pains to hide as genitalia. Because and that made an
Speaker 1: otherwise terrifying, otherwise terrifying scene, uh, comedic because they're because
Speaker 1: of what they're clearly doing from a blocking standpoint, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that's silly about that scene started on un Hannibal.
Speaker 1: There's a lot selling that as well. Now as far
Speaker 1: as laughter interrupting conversation, uh, and and even with yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, I I tend not to interpret people's laughter
Speaker 1: in conversation as an interruption. Maybe it's I kind of
Speaker 1: think of it in the same way that you generally
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that applause interrupts a performance, you know. Um
Speaker 1: it just it seems like we if you're engaging with
Speaker 1: the conversation with somebody and there's laughter happening on one
Speaker 1: or both sides, that that is factoring into the communication, right,
Speaker 1: unless it's just occurring with you know, in a state
Speaker 1: of madness. Yeah, exactly, That's how I see it. So
Speaker 1: for instance, I think the stats actually back this up too,
Speaker 1: and this is why I tend to laugh the way
Speaker 1: I do. But uh, probably more unconsciously than conscious. Indicates
Speaker 1: that most people use laughter in the same way we
Speaker 1: use verbal pauses. And what I mean by that is,
Speaker 1: rather than quietly wait to respond while we're collecting our thoughts,
Speaker 1: we're using the stilted laughter to hold our place in
Speaker 1: the conversation. It's the same thing is when people use
Speaker 1: like or you know, as verbal pauses in a in
Speaker 1: a sentence that they're saying out loud so that they
Speaker 1: can kind of compose themselves first. And as podcasters, we
Speaker 1: have to admit not only do we do this like
Speaker 1: every human who communicates in any language does, because this
Speaker 1: is just a natural part of human communication. But boy,
Speaker 1: do we get a lot of messages about it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I haven't really noticed any messages about it recently.
Speaker 1: Maybe not recently. Yeah, maybe it's because we've been doing
Speaker 1: the show for a long time. I remember when I
Speaker 1: first came on Stuff to Blow your Mind, I got
Speaker 1: a lot of notes about it. Well, there is an
Speaker 1: exercise in sort of, you know, cutting down one's use
Speaker 1: of those words. But also I think people that was
Speaker 1: into this show and certain other shows like this realize
Speaker 1: that it is, for the most part, an organic conversation. Yeah. Granted,
Speaker 1: it's not the same as a full blown conversation. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a performance conversation with notes on hand. It
Speaker 1: would be a very weird conversation if you were having
Speaker 1: if you were trying to talk to somebody and they
Speaker 1: were referring to note cards the whole time. But we're
Speaker 1: also were not scripted show. And if you have if
Speaker 1: it's scripted, then yeah you can you can cut out
Speaker 1: all of those likes and yeah, exactly, And I think
Speaker 1: there's different expectations of what people think we might be
Speaker 1: doing on this show, right, Like some people think that
Speaker 1: everything is completely scripted and that we're just reading the
Speaker 1: whole time to each other, and then other people think
Speaker 1: that it's totally extemporaneous and we have all of these
Speaker 1: facts in our head and it's just spouting them off
Speaker 1: back and forth to each other. Really it's a mix
Speaker 1: of the two. So provide back to his research. He
Speaker 1: proved essentially that laughter is inherently social and it's a
Speaker 1: tool of communication, and it's not always or often actually
Speaker 1: in relation to something that's supposed to be funny. He
Speaker 1: found that participants were actually thirty times more likely to
Speaker 1: laugh in the presence of others than they were when
Speaker 1: they were a quote, truly alone. What he meant by
Speaker 1: this is not counting in response to TV shows or
Speaker 1: other media. So when we're totally alone, apparently we seem
Speaker 1: to hardly laugh at all. Yeah, I did it. Certainly
Speaker 1: mag is up with my experience of watching comedies, Like
Speaker 1: I really don't like watching comedies by myself, because there's
Speaker 1: there's very little joy to be had trying to laugh
Speaker 1: or or never inevitably setting there not laughing while something
Speaker 1: humorous takes place. Yeah. I think maybe this is why
Speaker 1: I surround myself with animals, because even if my wife
Speaker 1: isn't home, I spend half my day talking to them
Speaker 1: and laughing at them or like having like little interactions
Speaker 1: with them. And they're just like, dude, we don't understand English.
Speaker 1: You know, they understand laughter probably, but not necessarily whatever
Speaker 1: I'm saying to them. You know, I just and weirdly
Speaker 1: inherently communicative in that way. I think if I was
Speaker 1: by myself and just laughing and talking to myself, it
Speaker 1: would feel stranger to me. I mean, that's the ultimate
Speaker 1: beauty of having any kind of pet around. Is it
Speaker 1: gives us license to sit around and talk to ourselves. Oh? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So it's also worth noting, just broadly about this,
Speaker 1: that social scientists have confirmed too that laugh tracks on
Speaker 1: television show those actually do increase audience laughter, and not
Speaker 1: only that, they increase people's rating of comedic materials. So
Speaker 1: we have yet another social aspect that's going on here
Speaker 1: with laughter. I really do not like the idea that
Speaker 1: science is backing up the laugh track tracks. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: We have an entire brain Stuff video episode all about uh,
Speaker 1: laugh tracks in the history of them that Joe actually
Speaker 1: worked on and it's a it's really good. Oh cool.
Speaker 1: We'll have to throw a link to that on a
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. And we should consider getting a laugh
Speaker 1: track for this, uh show. That's a great idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the listeners would hate. Are there any podcasts
Speaker 1: out there with laugh tracks? Surely there must be, Huh
Speaker 1: that would be interesting. Cereal's got to have a laugh track, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's also an evolutionary theory that's related to the
Speaker 1: whole laughter thing and it was proposed in two thousand
Speaker 1: five and the Quarterly Review of Biology, and this was
Speaker 1: by Matthew Gervas and his advisor David Sloan Wilson. Basically,
Speaker 1: they looked at the research of this nineteen century French
Speaker 1: physician named Guillaume Duchane. He was this guy this is
Speaker 1: the electrocution of the fac Yes, so he would go
Speaker 1: around and zap people's faces with this little electronic mischief box. Well,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't just go around and do it. It was
Speaker 1: like a psychopath. No, he wasn't just going up to
Speaker 1: strangers and doing it. Sorry, Yeah, he was doing it
Speaker 1: too too willing volunteers in a hospital, but he wanted
Speaker 1: to see what would happen, and the volts evoked a
Speaker 1: certain kind of smiling. Uh. And this is what Robert
Speaker 1: was referring to earlier. This is where the zygomatic major
Speaker 1: muscles get raised along the corners of our mouths. Right.
Speaker 1: But he could never get the mischief box to reproduce
Speaker 1: the kind of laugh or smile we get when we
Speaker 1: actually find something truly funny. This laugh is way more complex,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it uses the zygomatic major muscles, but it
Speaker 1: also uses the obicularis oculi muscles, and those are the
Speaker 1: muscles that are around our eyes that form crow's feet.
Speaker 1: This is why you hear that phrase A real smile
Speaker 1: is in your eyes. The first smile, the one that's
Speaker 1: just with your mouth. That's just what we do to
Speaker 1: be polite. I call it a dead smile. And it's
Speaker 1: unfortunately what I usually end up producing when I'm asked
Speaker 1: to smile for a camera. Right, So, like anytime I'm whatever,
Speaker 1: like somebody wants to take a picture, I had the
Speaker 1: hardest time genuinely smiling, and there's always like somebody on
Speaker 1: the other end. It's just like, oh, why can't you
Speaker 1: just smile? What is what are you doing? You know
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, And it's because I'm conscious of
Speaker 1: the dead smile. Look, yeah, I mean it's just a
Speaker 1: classic griff and grim smile where someone just says, hey,
Speaker 1: smile for the photo, take the picture. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: an actual professional photographer is going to try and get
Speaker 1: a legitimate, you know, emotional response from you and they're
Speaker 1: taking a picture. That's difficult. Your wife's a photographer. That
Speaker 1: must be a huge part of the job, and I
Speaker 1: can't imagine it's easy. No, it's it's always a challenge
Speaker 1: because you're all ways dealing with a different person with it.
Speaker 1: And some people are going to be natural laughers. They're
Speaker 1: you know, they're gonna they're gonna naturally let that that
Speaker 1: inner portion of themselves out. Other people are gonna be
Speaker 1: more closed off and they're gonna give you that dead
Speaker 1: smile and you've got to sort of all but carve
Speaker 1: it out of their face. So Jervas and Wilson they
Speaker 1: positive that two to four million years ago we human
Speaker 1: beings evolved into having what they're referring to as do
Speaker 1: shame laughter. This is when we actually find something funny.
Speaker 1: But why did we do it well? The idea is
Speaker 1: that it was a signal that everything was okay and
Speaker 1: that our danger was low and our needs were met.
Speaker 1: That lines up with the benign violation theory exactly. But
Speaker 1: then sometime since then, the dead smile laughter emerged as
Speaker 1: we became more cognitively developed. Now, the idea here is
Speaker 1: that we learned to mimic the spontaneity of laughter so
Speaker 1: that we can try to take advantage of its effects
Speaker 1: and manipulate other people into thinking everything was okay when
Speaker 1: it isn't. This is like the little finger form of laughing.
Speaker 1: This is why your boss thinks that that every joke
Speaker 1: they've ever told is hilarious. So true, so true. This
Speaker 1: is absolutely that. Yeah, I immediately thought of bosses in
Speaker 1: the past. Yes. Uh. But no matter how hard we try,
Speaker 1: we usually can't get it right because of the whole
Speaker 1: eyes thing. So there's another neuroscientist that backs us up.
Speaker 1: His name's V. S. Rama Shandron. Oh yeah comes up
Speaker 1: a lot, so he theorizes something similar. He says that
Speaker 1: laughter evolved as a signal to both ourselves and others
Speaker 1: that what may appear to be dangerous or threatening actually
Speaker 1: is not so today, when we nervously laugh, it's because
Speaker 1: we're signaling ourselves that whatever horrible thing that we've encountered
Speaker 1: isn't really as horrible as it appears. So that maybe
Speaker 1: what's going on when people are laughing when they're watching
Speaker 1: horror movies. Right, so it jumps out, it's this crazy
Speaker 1: clown with fangs. The lady screams, but then she laughs
Speaker 1: because she's like, oh, it's just a movie. I'm okay.
Speaker 1: So this maybe why psychologists actually classify humor as one
Speaker 1: of our quote mature defense mechanisms. We invoke it to
Speaker 1: guard ourselves against overwhelming anxiety. If we can laugh, for instance,
Speaker 1: at traumatic events that are in our own lives, perhaps
Speaker 1: then that we can endure them, and it diminishes our
Speaker 1: suffering and attempts to convince us that we're going to
Speaker 1: be able to make it through that trauma. But then
Speaker 1: here's what the question becomes. Is laughter creating an expectation
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be all right? Or is laughter only
Speaker 1: possible when we actually believe things aren't as bad as
Speaker 1: they seem. All Right, We're gonna take up quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will continue this exploration. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. You know you were talking about the power
Speaker 1: of laughter. And on a recent episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blay to Mind trailer Talk Our Our Friday, eleven am
Speaker 1: Eastern Time Facebook live show, we had a trailer. We
Speaker 1: featured the trailer for the Name of the Rose, and
Speaker 1: one of the plot lines in that is this this
Speaker 1: idea of what is humor and should humor be permitted?
Speaker 1: Should humor being encouraged by the church, The idea being
Speaker 1: that if you can, if you can laugh at anything,
Speaker 1: you can laugh at the church, you can laugh at God.
Speaker 1: And if in doing so, are you taking away some
Speaker 1: of its power? Oh? Interesting, Well, it seems to me
Speaker 1: that it would be inherently useful to the church if
Speaker 1: the idea was to provide its followers with soulas that
Speaker 1: everything's gonna be okay or that it's not going to
Speaker 1: be okay, and then you're gonna continually need to pray
Speaker 1: to God about it and it definitely shouldn't laugh. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's a whole This is a gets into the whole
Speaker 1: theological deep end. Did Christ laugh? Is it okay to
Speaker 1: laugh at certain things? Etcetera? And I'm not sure they're
Speaker 1: any clear cut answers on that well, turning away from
Speaker 1: laughter for a second before we converge back together and
Speaker 1: try to figure out what's going on here when people
Speaker 1: are laughing at horror movies. Let's talk about scares and fear. Remember,
Speaker 1: anxiety and fear are a product, not a failure, of
Speaker 1: being perceptive. Perceptive people are the ones who are most
Speaker 1: often anxious. The most fearful among us are often those
Speaker 1: who have the most imaginative intelligences. Yet most of us
Speaker 1: respond to being frightened as if it's embarrassing, right, it's
Speaker 1: this petty emotion we don't want other people to see.
Speaker 1: As if the notion of being afraid is somehow indicative
Speaker 1: of our insecurity about our control over our own lives. Well,
Speaker 1: we have to remember that evolution favors false positives, not
Speaker 1: false negatives, because if I mean the classic example is
Speaker 1: if there's some sort of a large carnivore hunting you,
Speaker 1: and you're you know, an ancient human, uh, prior to
Speaker 1: any kind of advanced technology. Then if your fellow, you know,
Speaker 1: cave person thog jumps out at you and you think
Speaker 1: for a second he's a tiger, and you react accordingly
Speaker 1: like that that's a positive survival benefit. Whereas if an
Speaker 1: actual tiger jumps out at you and you're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's tharg again, well then your bone exactly. Well, that's
Speaker 1: related I think maybe to nervous laughter. It's been noted
Speaker 1: in psychological experiments when subjects are placed under a high
Speaker 1: degree of emotional stress, and this is specifically when they're
Speaker 1: thinking about perceived harm not to themselves but to others. Now,
Speaker 1: I've got a mortifying thought here that may be one
Speaker 1: answer to why people are laughing in movie theaters. What
Speaker 1: if the person laughing at horror has what's called pathological laughter.
Speaker 1: This is actually when there's damage to a wide variety
Speaker 1: of brain regions and it produces abnormal laughter. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: like the most common cases of this are pseudo bulber palsy,
Speaker 1: gelastic epilepsy, and then just psychiatric illness in general. They
Speaker 1: found it in reported cases of multiple sclerosis als, in
Speaker 1: cases where people have tumors or lesions in the limbic
Speaker 1: system in the brain stem. So it's just this like odd, abnormal,
Speaker 1: uncontrollable laughter. You know, I don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: engage too much in judging strangers that I have no
Speaker 1: real insight on. But when I saw Baby Driver recently,
Speaker 1: there was somebody in the theater who was laughing almost
Speaker 1: continuously through the film, not just the humorous moments and
Speaker 1: the fun moments, but also just the moments of intense
Speaker 1: violence that pop up here and there and then really
Speaker 1: and and looking back, and I'm like, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: I could see that individual's reactions being a product of
Speaker 1: some sort of uh, you know, abnormal laughter scenario. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes my experience at the movie theater has
Speaker 1: been that, at least especially in the last ten years,
Speaker 1: it seems to be or that like it's this communal
Speaker 1: experience where a lot of people feel like that kind
Speaker 1: of like out loud reaction is allowed and part of
Speaker 1: the experience, you know. I remember going to see one
Speaker 1: of the paranormal Activity movies and there was this guy
Speaker 1: behind us who was just like shouting at the screen
Speaker 1: the whole time, like, Oh, no, don't go in there,
Speaker 1: don't don't know, don't let that baby touch that dog, No,
Speaker 1: don't do that. You know, you know, there's something kind
Speaker 1: of magical about that experience, Like I haven't been in
Speaker 1: a theater with that recently but when it's authentic, when
Speaker 1: the individual is speaking to the movie theater, uh, kind
Speaker 1: of organically and they're not showing off, they're not trying
Speaker 1: to do some sort of a riffing thing and being
Speaker 1: the life of the party, it is kind of it
Speaker 1: is kind of magical because I feel I feel like, well,
Speaker 1: they're they're more alive with this film than I am. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm really into it, but maybe I'm sort of checking
Speaker 1: out now and again and thinking, oh, what's that actors
Speaker 1: been in recently? It's need how they shot this scene, strange,
Speaker 1: how they adapted this from the novel. But this person
Speaker 1: is living in it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just what kind of media consumers we are too that
Speaker 1: might be part of it. Well, all right, let's try
Speaker 1: to bring it all together back around what is going
Speaker 1: on when that person in the theater is laughing? What
Speaker 1: are they laughing at? Seems like there's no definitive answer
Speaker 1: to this question yet. Not a lot of research has
Speaker 1: been done on the neurological basis for nervous laughter, But
Speaker 1: there are two popular theories that revolve around the idea
Speaker 1: that laughter is inherently social, So laughter is sending messages
Speaker 1: to people around us. Likewise, smiling and socially awkward situations
Speaker 1: seems to demonstrate that you have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: any external problem. Yeah, and this is again why I
Speaker 1: favor the benign violation theory, because if it's not social,
Speaker 1: then why is it disrupting my movie going experience? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. The first type of message that could be
Speaker 1: going on with nervous laughter seems to be an expression
Speaker 1: of fearful submission. So we actually see this in MCA
Speaker 1: acts when they feel threatened or dominated. Their laughter is
Speaker 1: accompanied by evasive or submissive body movements, and this is
Speaker 1: used to admit their fear and communicate their desire to
Speaker 1: avoid conflict. This is actually first noted by primatologists Signey Pruschoft.
Speaker 1: He was the first one who primarily studied Reesiss macaques
Speaker 1: along these lines. He noticed that they also bared their
Speaker 1: teeth in a smile during these social interactions. And this
Speaker 1: wasn't a signal to begin a fight or anything, but
Speaker 1: it was to dispel tension so that their aggressor would
Speaker 1: become more friendly. The smile was a display of submission
Speaker 1: to the more dominant member of their their group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to think of viewer of a horror movie
Speaker 1: reacting in a way where they're they're submitting. They're saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: Jason vorhees right, please don't I submit? And then you realize, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: I don't have to submit to Jason Vores because he's
Speaker 1: pretend look, Pennywise, I'm laughing, don't meet me. We humans
Speaker 1: seem to have adapted the smile to express approval, joy, compassion,
Speaker 1: sometimes sympathy. But when we recognize a dangerous situation, we
Speaker 1: may still smile at it. And this line of thought
Speaker 1: about laughter trends toward evolutionary history. Now, the second idea
Speaker 1: that's going on here is I mentioned this earlier, the
Speaker 1: mature defense mechanism that represents our denial of fear. So
Speaker 1: with this type of laughter, we're actually trying to convince
Speaker 1: ourselves that everything's okay, and it's a signal that we
Speaker 1: can endure whatever trauma is in front of us. So
Speaker 1: humor seems to be a way to put our fears
Speaker 1: into perspective. It allows us to strengthen our ability to
Speaker 1: confront them. And then if you can laugh at something
Speaker 1: like that, well that surely must show you've got some
Speaker 1: courage or at least are you know, you might wish
Speaker 1: for that courage because laughter seems to banish anxiety. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of the classic scene of like two gun slingers
Speaker 1: standing each other down and there both the stone faced
Speaker 1: and then one laughs are snickers, and it's like, that's
Speaker 1: that's the the indicator, right, It's the same thing. That's
Speaker 1: what's going on with these maccaques, basically, like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: actually it's the opposite of what's going on with these maccaques,
Speaker 1: where it's like, rather than showing that I'm submissive, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm not afraid of this. I'm so not afraid
Speaker 1: of this that I'm gonna laugh at how silly this
Speaker 1: situation is. Yeah, and I think we've seen that in
Speaker 1: various cinematic showdowns, like occasionally like that, the tension will
Speaker 1: be so uh, you know, grim that somebody will break
Speaker 1: it with about by saying making a kissy face or something. Right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So there's actually an experiment that speaks to this in
Speaker 1: which volunteers were asked to be head a mouse. They
Speaker 1: were actually like human beings were asked to volunteer to
Speaker 1: behead a mouse, and their faces were photographed while they
Speaker 1: did it, and when they did, the photographs showed that
Speaker 1: they had pained, uncomfortable smiles. This is like the creepiest
Speaker 1: thing ever that all these people were smiling while they
Speaker 1: were cutting the heads off these mice. I'm assuming these
Speaker 1: were dead mice. I don't know, man, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with that assumption. Now, the first
Speaker 1: idea that we talked about, that one trended towards evolutionary history.
Speaker 1: This line of thought is more accepted by psychologists and neuroscientists,
Speaker 1: and actually Freud, for instance, was a big proponent of
Speaker 1: this theory. So maybe though, here's here's another backup, and
Speaker 1: this gets back to what you're talking about with forms
Speaker 1: of humor. Maybe this kind of nervous laughter is an
Speaker 1: expression of incongruous emotional reactions. For instance, when we feel
Speaker 1: like we might be overwhelmed by our emotions, whether they're
Speaker 1: positive or negative, we might express the opposite emotion to
Speaker 1: have a dampening effect and kind of restore some kind
Speaker 1: of emotional balance. It's interesting that reminds me of the
Speaker 1: theory on the pinching of baby cheeks. What's that? This
Speaker 1: is the idea that occasionally you will encounter something so cute.
Speaker 1: It might be a baby and be a puppy, a
Speaker 1: kitten so cute that you have to hurt it to
Speaker 1: like restore balance. So the baby is so cute, you
Speaker 1: just gotta pinch it. You've got to basically assault the
Speaker 1: baby so that you you won't just completely explode. There
Speaker 1: used to be a bit about this on that old
Speaker 1: MTV sketch show The State. They had a whole bit
Speaker 1: about this old lady who was who her grandson was
Speaker 1: so cute that she had to try to crush his
Speaker 1: face and the people in the store that she was
Speaker 1: in We're trying desperately to prevent her from two inks,
Speaker 1: and it turns into this whole farcical adventure. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've certainly felt the like the weird urge to bite
Speaker 1: an infant for executeness or a puppy or a kitten
Speaker 1: before it's it's a very strange situation. Yeah, maybe we
Speaker 1: should return to that. That That is an interesting that's
Speaker 1: uh an interesting like crossing of wires in the brain,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to our episode on the Call of
Speaker 1: the Void. Yeah, um yeah, we'll eat you up. We
Speaker 1: love you so. Yeah. From The Wild Things all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back,
Speaker 1: all right. So, um, I think at this point I
Speaker 1: want to come back around to some of the theories
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, uh, talking more expressly about humor, and say,
Speaker 1: all right, how do they how do they line up
Speaker 1: with horror? So, first of all, incongruity theory, which again
Speaker 1: suggests that humor blooms when people notice the disconnect between
Speaker 1: their expectations and the actual payoff. I can certainly see
Speaker 1: where this could come into into play, especially with all
Speaker 1: the misdirections and jump scares that one encounters in modern
Speaker 1: horror movies and in haunted houses. That's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: horror films may actually be a phenomena of both incongruity
Speaker 1: and transgression. So maybe we're laughing when there's this incongruous
Speaker 1: event that goes against our expectations or veers from harmlessness
Speaker 1: into actual potential dangerous territory. It also brings to mind
Speaker 1: a Raskins somatic script based theory of humor, and this
Speaker 1: ideas that humor involves the activation of two opposing scripts
Speaker 1: such as sex no sex good bad, and humor comes
Speaker 1: from the incongruity here of these two activated scripts. So
Speaker 1: like danger, but not danger because I'm in a theater. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as this superiority theory of humor goes, I
Speaker 1: think there's certainly plenty of misfortune to take pleasure in
Speaker 1: and most horror movies, either if you're kind of a
Speaker 1: terrible person, or if the movie encourages you to take
Speaker 1: pleasure in the mutilation and death of its characters, which
Speaker 1: we especially see in so many nineteen eighties slasher films. Right,
Speaker 1: you have like the bad Boy, the bad Girl, you know,
Speaker 1: these various archetypical kids that the movie is basically saying, Look,
Speaker 1: they deserve to be killed by Jason or whoever the
Speaker 1: slasher is, and only a couple of characters are above
Speaker 1: that treatment. Yes, slasher movies in particular use this kind
Speaker 1: of old Testament punishment system as being an excuse for
Speaker 1: why there's such horrible violence being enacted, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to encourage us to, you know, be okay with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very certainly a very sacrificial feel to it.
Speaker 1: So the next time you watch a horror movie, ask yourself,
Speaker 1: which of these characters are are okay? To die according
Speaker 1: to the film, and which ones are not? Yeah, and like,
Speaker 1: who am I made to identify with? Yeah? Right, in
Speaker 1: some situations you're made to identify with Freddy Krueger or
Speaker 1: Jason Vorhees rather than the like, sexually active kids that
Speaker 1: they're slaughtering. Yeah, there was. There was a wonderful treatment
Speaker 1: of this. Years ago. There's a Michael Caine film titled
Speaker 1: A Shock to the System. I've never seen this. It's
Speaker 1: quite good because he plays just a normal guy who
Speaker 1: suddenly realizes that he can kill people, that he can
Speaker 1: kill people in his life that he doesn't like that
Speaker 1: inconvenience him, or that there's to whom there's some advantage,
Speaker 1: you know, to murdering them, and and he starts killing
Speaker 1: these people, and for most to the film, he's killing
Speaker 1: people that we we see through his eyes and therefore think, yeah,
Speaker 1: they should go. They're annoying, they're terrible, And we follow
Speaker 1: that up to a point and then we realize, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not cool with you killing anybody else anymore. Michael Caine,
Speaker 1: huh this have you seen Harry Brown? I don't think
Speaker 1: I have. It sounds very similar. It's another Michael Caine movie.
Speaker 1: Harry Brown is like Michael Caine is a senior citizen
Speaker 1: who lives in block housing, and uh, he essentially becomes
Speaker 1: a vigilante. It just starts like murdering criminals in his neighborhood,
Speaker 1: even though he's like this, this kind of daughtering old
Speaker 1: senior citizen. Yeah, it all comes down to the question
Speaker 1: is the character or the slasher murdering the wrong sort
Speaker 1: of person? Yeah, alright, And then let's talk about relief theory.
Speaker 1: The states that comedy again is a way for people
Speaker 1: to release suppress thoughts and emotions safely. So for this
Speaker 1: kind of gets into the similar territory. So you have
Speaker 1: this cardboard cutout of a person. Let's say it's um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's say it's a bo us or
Speaker 1: or something more mundane, like a rude driver. Like without
Speaker 1: a lot of character investment, we're generally okay with the
Speaker 1: idea of Jason or he's killing a rude driver or
Speaker 1: or some other slasher person killing the bad boss. Whatever
Speaker 1: the the you know, the crude cardboard cutout of a
Speaker 1: human is. This is why the Hannibal Elector stuff is
Speaker 1: so popular because in a lot of ways, he's like
Speaker 1: an anti hero. People see him positively even though he's
Speaker 1: the serial killer that eats people because he only well,
Speaker 1: it tends to only eat people who are rude, right,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean he eats the rude. It for
Speaker 1: us denizens of the real world, Uh, it is um
Speaker 1: it's it's quite wrong for us to eat rude people
Speaker 1: just because they're rude. It's at least a little bit
Speaker 1: icky to fantasize about eating rude people because they are rude.
Speaker 1: But we can safely get that same sort of relief
Speaker 1: by watching Hannibal elector do it instead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So all of this leads us to the connection between
Speaker 1: horror and humor, and this seems to have become increasingly
Speaker 1: popular in our fiction in the last few decades. Think
Speaker 1: of how many like goofy horror movies there are now, right,
Speaker 1: and the sort of silly combination of these. So I
Speaker 1: found this actual quote from one of our favorites here
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow Your Mind Stewart Gordon. He's the
Speaker 1: maker of films like Reanimator from Beyond and Castle Freak. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he tells the story about how Alfred Hitchcock referred
Speaker 1: to Psycho as a comedy. Uh. And he said that
Speaker 1: Hitchcock's point was that there's this very fine line between
Speaker 1: getting someone to laugh and getting them to scream. And
Speaker 1: so perhaps this is why many creators like Gordon himself
Speaker 1: now are finding it best to just alternate between the
Speaker 1: two rather than going with like a straight comedy or
Speaker 1: straight horror film. They're introducing both in the same context.
Speaker 1: But uh, why what's going on? They They're supposed to
Speaker 1: be different, right, Horror oppresses us, comedy liberates us, Horror
Speaker 1: turns the screws, comedy releases it. Comedy elates us. Horror
Speaker 1: stimulates depression, paranoia, and dread. They're supposed to be opposites.
Speaker 1: I don't know. After this episode and talking about all
Speaker 1: these weird convergences between the two, it really feels like
Speaker 1: we stand at an intersection of of horror street and
Speaker 1: humor boulevard. I think so that the traffics flowing both ways. Well,
Speaker 1: and if we bring it all the way back around
Speaker 1: to it where we started talking about this, the trope
Speaker 1: of the evil Clown plays with this whole relationship of
Speaker 1: humor and horror, and it creates in itself this incongruous
Speaker 1: object of laughter. Right, So it's no wonder that people
Speaker 1: were laughing while we are watching this new movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, another factor that comes to mind is
Speaker 1: is that you have an individuals that are watching the
Speaker 1: film alone. Uh, and then you have individuals who are
Speaker 1: watching it more socially, like I was there with somebody,
Speaker 1: but we weren't really talking during the film. Other people
Speaker 1: were having more of a like a social engagement with
Speaker 1: the picture. And you, of course can get into a
Speaker 1: lot of arguments about to what degree that's that's that's
Speaker 1: sort of breaking the rules of going to a movie theater.
Speaker 1: But still there's there does seem to sometimes be this
Speaker 1: to this drastic difference between their social engagement with each
Speaker 1: other during the film. Well, speaking of social engagement, Robert,
Speaker 1: if people out there want to socially engage with us,
Speaker 1: how can they do it? Oh? Well, they can head
Speaker 1: on over to any number of our social media accounts.
Speaker 1: Were on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram. Uh, We're we have
Speaker 1: a group. Even you go to Facebook, you look up
Speaker 1: the stuff to Blew your Mind discussion module. You have
Speaker 1: to ask to join, but you'll probably get in and
Speaker 1: then you can you can interact not only with us,
Speaker 1: but you can interact with with other like minded listeners
Speaker 1: to the show. Yeah, so I'd like to ask you, listeners,
Speaker 1: let us know what you think about this whole thing
Speaker 1: with people laughing at horror movies, whether it's in the
Speaker 1: theater or not. Do you think the theories that we
Speaker 1: presented are you know, potentially valid or is there something
Speaker 1: else going on here that we missed? And how does
Speaker 1: your experience with a horror movie and a haunted house
Speaker 1: or haunted attraction. How do those differ? Because from my
Speaker 1: own point point of view, I don't really laugh while
Speaker 1: watching a horror movie generally, but I certainly laugh after
Speaker 1: being scared at a haunted house. Like there's for me,
Speaker 1: there's an experiential difference between the cinematic scare and the
Speaker 1: real world pretends scare. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And one last
Speaker 1: way you can get in touch with us about this
Speaker 1: is the old fashioned way. That's on email at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
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