Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Alli, a production of Shonda land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I'm a sniper.
Speaker 1: I'm admitting it totally. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that you
Speaker 1: don't keep your mouth shut is what's so great about you. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you truly, and well if you can shine as
Speaker 1: you're going to death, you can shine as you going
Speaker 1: from Middle Lange, right, Yeah, like why not start now?
Speaker 1: I'm going to enjoy my life. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I'm just a little particle on an asteroid
Speaker 1: flying through space. So exactly. Yeah, just aspect were respects.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm Elly Wentworth. You know,
Speaker 1: this season, I just dug into everything I could get
Speaker 1: my hands on. I just peeled back the layers and
Speaker 1: got dirty. And now for the final episode of season two,
Speaker 1: we're going to have some fun. So this episode is
Speaker 1: all about laughter. The history, the science, the mental and
Speaker 1: physical benefits, and just the fun of laughing our asses off.
Speaker 1: When I was in sixth grade, I was in a play.
Speaker 1: It was a very serious play and I played kind
Speaker 1: of a nerdy, nunlike character that played the cello and
Speaker 1: I remember in one of my scenes, I had to
Speaker 1: walk out and play the cello, and when I walked
Speaker 1: out stage, I sat down on the chair and I
Speaker 1: opened my legs and pulled the cello in so aggressively
Speaker 1: it was, unbeknownst to me, an incredibly sexual move. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, everybody in the audience started laughing,
Speaker 1: like uproariously laughing, clapping their hands, falling over And I
Speaker 1: remember that feeling looking out in the audience and I
Speaker 1: didn't even know what I did. That was so funny
Speaker 1: at the time, thinking this is the greatest feeling in
Speaker 1: the world. I want to be able to do this
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. And so that's really
Speaker 1: when my celist career started. It was in that moment
Speaker 1: I thought, I want to make people feel like this
Speaker 1: because it makes me feel great. And I've been laughing
Speaker 1: ever since. I have an amazing guest today. Sophie Scott
Speaker 1: is a professor and the Director of Cognitive Neuroscience at
Speaker 1: University College London, who spent much of her academic career
Speaker 1: researching vocal communication and most recently, the neurobiology of laughter.
Speaker 1: Occasionally she takes the stage conducting her own personal research
Speaker 1: on laughter. As a stand up comedian. She is also
Speaker 1: an author and two time TED talker. Her talk on
Speaker 1: Why We Laugh has accumulated over four point four million views.
Speaker 1: So do I call you professor? I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get cross of view if you don't want to school
Speaker 1: me professor all the time. I'm very happy with Sophie. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I don't. I want to be respectful. You
Speaker 1: are British, you do love your names. Well, I must
Speaker 1: be commander of the British Empire if you want to
Speaker 1: go large. So I'm going to call you professor right
Speaker 1: the second. But professor, Sophie scott Um. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the science of laughter. And if you had
Speaker 1: to encapsulate that into one sentence, what is the science
Speaker 1: of laughter? The science of laughter is is really the
Speaker 1: science of laughter is a very important communication tool. We
Speaker 1: think it's about jokes and comedy, and it is about
Speaker 1: jokes and comedy, but it's actually one of the most
Speaker 1: important ways that we communicate with each other. And that's
Speaker 1: what I study scientifically. And it's fascinating because everything I've read,
Speaker 1: people basically studied negative emotions, that was anxiety, fear, and
Speaker 1: we didn't pay much attention to the laughter and the
Speaker 1: more positive emotions. Why is that? It's a very good question,
Speaker 1: and I'm not certain I can give you a good answer. Well,
Speaker 1: you're on this podcast to give me a good answer,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to give you the very best answer
Speaker 1: I let out of your ass. I think there's probably
Speaker 1: two main reasons. I think, first of all, the psychologists
Speaker 1: are relatively new science. It's only really been going around
Speaker 1: for probably hundred thirty years or so. Um And when
Speaker 1: people were certainly in the West developing psychology, they were
Speaker 1: developed because he as a science where you would sort
Speaker 1: of understand where things had gone wrong in pace with
Speaker 1: where what people used to sort of talk about normal behavior,
Speaker 1: the sort of normal and abnormal behavior would have been
Speaker 1: how it was described. And I was an undergraduate, so
Speaker 1: it made sense from that perspective to study negative emotions,
Speaker 1: because if you want to understand anxiety, you need to
Speaker 1: understand fear. If you want to understand depression, you need
Speaker 1: to understand sadness. So that kind of went out to
Speaker 1: affect everything to the extent which when we talk about
Speaker 1: emotions in my area, we largely mean negative emotions. There's
Speaker 1: very little research into anything else. And UM, I think
Speaker 1: there's a bigger cultural problem. If you look back throughout
Speaker 1: relatively modern human history, we've had a bit of a
Speaker 1: downer on laughter. So there was quite a lively debate
Speaker 1: in the sort of medieval period. I think about whether
Speaker 1: or not Christ had ever laughed, with a very clear
Speaker 1: view that he would not have laughed. It's not a
Speaker 1: civilized behavior. I think he laughed his hours after don't
Speaker 1: you think they are drawn at the last Supper? And
Speaker 1: just wonder aready joke after another? I am absolutely not
Speaker 1: saying that I agree with this, but the interesting is
Speaker 1: people wanted to argue it. The idea there that has
Speaker 1: kind of carried on that there's something not very grown up,
Speaker 1: not serious and sage about laughter. It's disruptive and it's naughty,
Speaker 1: and it basically look uncivilized and rude, and that I
Speaker 1: think also influences of view culturally, not just scientifically on laughter.
Speaker 1: So comedies very rarely win Oscars, and it's much harder
Speaker 1: to make a funny film than a scary film, frankly,
Speaker 1: but it's very hard for people to actually value that skill,
Speaker 1: and you see it everywhere. People generally think that comedians
Speaker 1: are standing up and just improvising, rather than being incredibly
Speaker 1: skilled artists who have written and worked at honed amazing
Speaker 1: pieces of material. Don't you think that some of that
Speaker 1: comes if for talking historically from gestures and clowns. I mean,
Speaker 1: these were kind of not the village idiot, but there
Speaker 1: were people that were kind of that would come in
Speaker 1: and be your lowest common denominator of humor for the
Speaker 1: king or the queen and literally be silly juggle balls
Speaker 1: and whatever, and so we equate that with sort of
Speaker 1: silliness and sort of not an intellectual thing. But I
Speaker 1: actually think it's the greatest thing in the world. And
Speaker 1: I happen to know a stand up comedian who's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, Jerry Seinfeld, And I can tell you
Speaker 1: he is at the office every day, all day long,
Speaker 1: writing and honing his skill. It's a full time job.
Speaker 1: It's not throwing balls and durables up in the air.
Speaker 1: It's it's a real thing. It really is. Just say again,
Speaker 1: it's so much harder to make people laugh. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a stand up comedian, you know in the moment,
Speaker 1: if it's working, you're there with it happening or not happening.
Speaker 1: It's an unbelievably complex skill. Stand up comedy it's you know,
Speaker 1: combines writing and performance and commanding a room, holding attention.
Speaker 1: So I think, as you said, there's this kind of
Speaker 1: link to somehow foolishness, the full, the just, the clown,
Speaker 1: all of which is very skilled, somehow makes this it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's a diminutive thing. It's a childish thing,
Speaker 1: and we never quite lose that at the same time
Speaker 1: as we value it greatly. Apparently, apparently King Henry the Eight,
Speaker 1: who was a bit of a capricious king, if his
Speaker 1: staff had to give him back news, they used to
Speaker 1: get his jester to do it, really, because he wouldn't
Speaker 1: stay cross with the jester where he might get really
Speaker 1: crossed with someone else. He used to kill people when
Speaker 1: he got upset, so he probably went through a lot
Speaker 1: of jesters, the jest to kind of had license that
Speaker 1: other people didn't have, right, And I think that is
Speaker 1: that's again something that is a feature of comedians. There's
Speaker 1: we give them a certain sort of license that we
Speaker 1: might not accept in other people. It's funny that you
Speaker 1: say that, because I sort of see a connection, huge
Speaker 1: connection with anxiety and depression and comedy and laughter, because
Speaker 1: having worked as a comedic actress for so many years.
Speaker 1: I've noticed a lot of comedians are funny because they've
Speaker 1: come from a place of anxiety or you know, there's
Speaker 1: some of the most happy people I've ever met in
Speaker 1: my life. And it's interesting that I think because of
Speaker 1: need and trying to sort of fill a whole in
Speaker 1: their own emotional life, they've mastered the art of making
Speaker 1: other people feel good and make other people laugh. There
Speaker 1: there is a very interesting kind of set of studies
Speaker 1: looking at this. So there are some studies finding that
Speaker 1: if you just take comedians as a whole, their personalities
Speaker 1: are not different from in many features from that of
Speaker 1: the normal population. So they are no more the unpleasant
Speaker 1: phrase uses neurotic, but basically that means like a tendency
Speaker 1: to have issues with mental health. They're no more likely
Speaker 1: as a group than any other group than I wonder
Speaker 1: when I look at that sort of data. Okay, I
Speaker 1: believe that, But what happens when you're really famous and
Speaker 1: you're really performing a lot, you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: the comedy, is that it's the sort of the life
Speaker 1: and the pressures that are on you that I'm sure
Speaker 1: interact with that. But there are other interesting differences that
Speaker 1: you find in comedians that are there for all comedians
Speaker 1: and are very different from the normal population. And one
Speaker 1: of them is open mindedness, So they tend to be
Speaker 1: more kind of tree in they're thinking about things which
Speaker 1: you would expect in a comedian. They're not going to
Speaker 1: be funny if you're very narrow, I guess. And they
Speaker 1: also have less of a need for social approval than
Speaker 1: the normal population, where you find a need for social
Speaker 1: approval quite a lot. And I think when I've asked
Speaker 1: comedians about this, they always say the same thing, which
Speaker 1: is I get it on stage. People laugh when I'm
Speaker 1: on stage. I don't need more than that. I get
Speaker 1: that feeling that lovely dopamine hit from the laughter then
Speaker 1: and there. So I think there's a lot more to
Speaker 1: know about it. And as you say, there are some
Speaker 1: very kind of famous cases of comedians who suffer terribly
Speaker 1: with mental health issues. But it may just reflect a
Speaker 1: normal distribution where you find this anyway, and it may
Speaker 1: also I think, interact with with the lifestyle as well
Speaker 1: as the comedy. So this is when I won't call
Speaker 1: you professor, because you have done stand up comedy. So
Speaker 1: my question is why and don't you because you've researched
Speaker 1: this and you are a professor of laughter, you know
Speaker 1: are the tricks. I first did stand up comedy, Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: about ten years ago the universe said that I work
Speaker 1: at University College London UM. About twelve years ago it
Speaker 1: started to do a lot more public engagement activities, do
Speaker 1: more stuff in our own community, and they started doing
Speaker 1: these stand up comedy nights where all the performers were
Speaker 1: staff and students from the university, and there'd be a
Speaker 1: professional comedian hosting the whole thing. And when I first
Speaker 1: heard about this, I thought, I've not doing that. That
Speaker 1: sounds absolutely dreadful. You know, I've just been made a
Speaker 1: professor and I thought, I'm not busting myself through that.
Speaker 1: And then it had been going for a couple of
Speaker 1: years and one of my male colleagues about the same
Speaker 1: age as me, he said, oh, have you done this?
Speaker 1: So it's called Bright Club? He have you done Bright Club?
Speaker 1: He said, I've done it. I was brilliant. He went
Speaker 1: really well and everyone laughed and I thought, bastard, you
Speaker 1: haven't even asked me. You asked him and he was brilliant.
Speaker 1: So two months later I would found myself locked in
Speaker 1: a pub toilet in London, going what thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I did it and it went okay and
Speaker 1: people laughed, and I came off stage just thinking I've
Speaker 1: got to do that again and do it better. I
Speaker 1: want to learn how to do this. Um. I've found
Speaker 1: it very very interesting. I still do it whenever I
Speaker 1: get the opportunity. I make all my students do it
Speaker 1: because it's such a great opportunity to kind of really
Speaker 1: improve your communication skills and your confidence. In the moment,
Speaker 1: you sort of feel you can do anything if you've
Speaker 1: done that. UM. I don't think I have an advantage
Speaker 1: from knowing about laughter. If anything, it's taught me a
Speaker 1: lot more about laughter having the experience of doing stand
Speaker 1: up comedy, because you see it from a completely different perspective.
Speaker 1: And I used to think, because I was an idiot,
Speaker 1: that stand up comedians were sort of broadcasting a joke
Speaker 1: into the room, and I had never thought about it
Speaker 1: as an interaction. As soon as you're doing it from
Speaker 1: on the stage, you realize it's a complete interaction. You're
Speaker 1: having a weird conversation with the people in that room,
Speaker 1: where all other things being equal, they will laugh and
Speaker 1: you're the only person talking. But sometimes they don't laugh,
Speaker 1: or sometimes they laugh when you didn't expect them to,
Speaker 1: and you have to be able to sort of cope
Speaker 1: with that in the moment. And actually, what's happening in
Speaker 1: that room. They may not all know each other, but
Speaker 1: they start to behave together, and what's actually happening there's
Speaker 1: quite extraordinary. I'd love to really get my I had
Speaker 1: one big scientific ambition. It would be to actually try
Speaker 1: and understand what's happening in a comedy environment to the
Speaker 1: audience and how the comedian is sort of controlling that
Speaker 1: and responding to that because no one tells us how
Speaker 1: to do it, but it's something that sort of gets
Speaker 1: negotiated in that room and in that space, and it's
Speaker 1: it's an incredible thing. I was doing a sketch comedy show,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty years ago called in Living Color in America,
Speaker 1: and it was predominantly men and on hiatus. They were
Speaker 1: going and doing stand up and making a fortune doing
Speaker 1: stand up. And my manager at the time said, Ali,
Speaker 1: you have to go do stand up. That's where the
Speaker 1: money is. And I went to a sports bar by
Speaker 1: l a X the Los Angeles International Airport and I
Speaker 1: got up and I was wearing a little sundress and
Speaker 1: little daisy sandals, and before I could even, you know,
Speaker 1: do my first joke, they all started yelling strip strip,
Speaker 1: strip strip, and so I dropped the mic and that
Speaker 1: was it. But now that I'm an old hag, I
Speaker 1: think maybe I'll go back and try it, because I'm
Speaker 1: sort of fascinated like you are, about the annex of
Speaker 1: the room and what happens. And you know, I was.
Speaker 1: I was too young and terrified, and there was a
Speaker 1: hockey game out at the same time. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: best platform for it. But I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating and I think there's something about that confidence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only thing that I think academics have is they
Speaker 1: were very used to standing up and giving talk. So
Speaker 1: I was used to people shutting up and letting me speak,
Speaker 1: and that kind of I carry that on to the
Speaker 1: stage with me. You would be brilliant at doing it. Now.
Speaker 1: You would probably would have been brilliant Leonard. They'd let you.
Speaker 1: But you just we get more confidence as we get older,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's something you bring onto the stage
Speaker 1: with you. Well, now that i'm you know, a fifty
Speaker 1: six year old woman. I'm gonna I'm gonna change it
Speaker 1: up and they're going to sit back and have a
Speaker 1: beer and get ready to laugh, and I'm gonna strap
Speaker 1: jokes on them, you know. But also if the audience
Speaker 1: pick up that are not and a comedian is unhappy
Speaker 1: or uncomfortable or anxious or unconfidence, then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: what's going on here, and they'll stop laughing. And it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting space where things can kind of change
Speaker 1: quite quickly, and it can we can't get an audience
Speaker 1: back if you're trying to be serious, yeah, and in
Speaker 1: fact they're still laughing, or if you want them to
Speaker 1: laugh and they've gone to a serious place. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to keep that balance, I think. Yeah, an audience
Speaker 1: is very instinctual and they can smell it too, kind
Speaker 1: of when you're off for your insecure about something. So,
Speaker 1: going back to the science of laughter, the first sign
Speaker 1: of somebody noticing that laughter wasn't getting it to do
Speaker 1: kind of the research of it, and he thought it
Speaker 1: was important. Is Darwin correct that? Absolutely? Darwin was a
Speaker 1: shining license in love to science, and he wrote this
Speaker 1: beautiful book about the expressions of emotions in Man and
Speaker 1: other animals, and he basically started a lot of modern
Speaker 1: psychology in that book. We think of him as being
Speaker 1: this kind of, you know, amazing progenitor of evolutionary theory.
Speaker 1: But by applying revolutionary theory to effectively psychological factors like
Speaker 1: emotional recognition and expression, that was a psychological theory that
Speaker 1: was a really important one and which we still have
Speaker 1: strong elements of. And he wrote so much about the
Speaker 1: real insight into lots of different emotions in that book.
Speaker 1: And he talked so much about laughter. He valued it,
Speaker 1: he'd recognize it when he saw it another animals. He
Speaker 1: describes it beautifully, describes it because baboon being tickled at
Speaker 1: the zoo by a zoo keeper and the animal's eyes
Speaker 1: have become bright like jewels. And then we just a
Speaker 1: lot of the next century people picked up on Darwin's
Speaker 1: ideas about emotions and wrote a lot about them and
Speaker 1: investigated them a lot, with the exception of laughter. So
Speaker 1: all this stuff on fear and anger and sadness, we're all,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of taken forward and and often acknowledges
Speaker 1: coming from him, and then we just we just ignored it.
Speaker 1: And then Paul Ekman wrote a lot about it too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I owe everything I do and laughter to Paul
Speaker 1: Ekman actually because he took Darwin's ideas and was testing
Speaker 1: these ideas of you know, could you find facial expressions
Speaker 1: of emotion that we're recognized in all human cultures, for example,
Speaker 1: and that was things like fear, anger discussed, sadness, happiness,
Speaker 1: and surprise. You can go anywhere in the world and
Speaker 1: find those emotional expressions recognized and see similar expressions in
Speaker 1: the humans that you meet. That I was at a
Speaker 1: conference because I was working on vocal versions of these
Speaker 1: um from the nineties, and I saw Paul Edwin giving
Speaker 1: a talk about this at a conference, and I asked him,
Speaker 1: why are they also negative? Like on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis, I feel like I experienced mostly positive emotions,
Speaker 1: little dips and dopts of negative ones. Most of the
Speaker 1: time is positive. It would seem strange to me that
Speaker 1: more of them wouldn't be represented in this sort of
Speaker 1: evolutionarily important set of emotions. And he said he thought
Speaker 1: they were. They might not be well studied by static
Speaker 1: photographs of faces. He thought that what you might need
Speaker 1: to do was look at like body movement all voices,
Speaker 1: and I was like, great, I look at voices. So
Speaker 1: I started looking at positive as well as negative emotions.
Speaker 1: And he talked about relief, contentment, physical pleasure, triumph kind
Speaker 1: of an achievement, feeling, feeling proud, and what he called amusements.
Speaker 1: And that's why I started looking at laughter. I never
Speaker 1: set out to look at laughter. If I hadn't gone
Speaker 1: to that talk by Paul Ekmand, none of this would
Speaker 1: have happened. I know, it's probably very upsetting for everyone
Speaker 1: to think about. And the sooner you start studying laughter
Speaker 1: as this set of much bigger emotions that you know
Speaker 1: it's one of setting up ten emotions I was now
Speaker 1: looking at, it just runs away from you because you
Speaker 1: realize it's everywhere. It's incredibly well recognized. We found it
Speaker 1: is cross culturally recognized. It probably should be added to
Speaker 1: the list of basic emotions that Kman was studying. And
Speaker 1: it is not only found in humans. You find it
Speaker 1: in other animals. And then of course you go back
Speaker 1: to Darwin and realize, right, okay, and Darwin was talking
Speaker 1: about joy. He wasn't talking about amusement. He was talking
Speaker 1: about something much more elemental than that. So I think Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to rethink this right from the beginning. So
Speaker 1: you're telling me other mammals laugh, they do the way
Speaker 1: we do. It's very easy to recognize if you look
Speaker 1: at other apes because it looks and it sounds like laughter.
Speaker 1: Um So, if you have a chance, gone to YouTube
Speaker 1: and google Cocoa, the gorilla and Robin Williams, and there's
Speaker 1: a clip of the late Robin Williams. Cocoa and Coca
Speaker 1: could sign in American sign language and she signs to
Speaker 1: him tickle me. And it's really hard to tickle a guerrilla.
Speaker 1: It takes them a while to get in that. You've
Speaker 1: really got to get in there. And when he manages it,
Speaker 1: you see her start laughing, and he's absolutely recognizable her
Speaker 1: facial expressions, her movements, the movement of her body. Chimpanzee laughter,
Speaker 1: which again looks very similar. Is it sounds a bit
Speaker 1: like sound they breathe in and out when they're laughing sound,
Speaker 1: and again it looks very recognizably like laughter orangutang's banobos.
Speaker 1: You see a very similar pattern that they're not the
Speaker 1: only animals that laugh. Probably there's very interesting work from
Speaker 1: another American scientist, Yeah Panks that who worked on rats,
Speaker 1: and he was working on rat vocalizations, and he was
Speaker 1: studying sounds rats made when they're unhappy. And rats are
Speaker 1: very small and they have high pitched voices, so you
Speaker 1: have to reduce their voices down in pitch to hear them.
Speaker 1: And when they did that, they noticed that the rats
Speaker 1: made other sorts of sounds all the time, and they
Speaker 1: made a particular kind of chirping sound when they were
Speaker 1: playing with each other. And rats are very social and
Speaker 1: they play with each other a lot. So they started
Speaker 1: tickling the rats to see if it was associated with laughter.
Speaker 1: And the rats make the same sound when they're tickled,
Speaker 1: And if you tickle a rat and then take your
Speaker 1: hand away, it will make the sound to try and
Speaker 1: get you to carry on doing the activity. So it's
Speaker 1: a It seems to be associated with play and social bonding.
Speaker 1: That's where you find it in common across other animals, right,
Speaker 1: panks That thought that at its heart, wherever you found laughter,
Speaker 1: it was the invitation to play. Come and take part
Speaker 1: in this delightful fun activity that's not going to be
Speaker 1: painful and not gonna be horrible. We're just gonna enjoy ourselves.
Speaker 1: That seems to be very important to mammals, and it's
Speaker 1: associated with sounds, and that may well be the root
Speaker 1: of laughter. A few years ago, I was in Rwanda
Speaker 1: and I had climbed up this gigantic mountain and I
Speaker 1: was sort of in there, embedded with the gorillas. And
Speaker 1: I'm just remembering this now and this silver back. You know,
Speaker 1: the Papa gorilla walked by me and used his ass
Speaker 1: to sort of pushed me and I went rolling backwards
Speaker 1: down the hill, I mean, like Lucille ball and he
Speaker 1: started making these noises, which of course I thought, you know, terror,
Speaker 1: he's going to kill me. And one of the guides
Speaker 1: with us says, no, he thought that was funny, you know,
Speaker 1: that he pushed me and I had rolled backwards. I
Speaker 1: mean I was laughing hysterically, partly because I was terrified,
Speaker 1: but also I couldn't believe a gorilla just pushed me
Speaker 1: down the hill. But it's so interesting. I haven't thought
Speaker 1: about it in that way. But he probably thought it
Speaker 1: was funny, our little interaction. He was being playful. Yeah, amazing,
Speaker 1: and it's time for a short break. Great, let's get
Speaker 1: back to it. When Paul Eckman, who talks a lot
Speaker 1: about as you just said how laughter is cross cultural,
Speaker 1: and you showed a video in one of your talks
Speaker 1: which I loved with Yelton and Clinton because I felt
Speaker 1: it really demonstrated how you can sort of cross what
Speaker 1: would be a very somber time these the two of
Speaker 1: them were doing a press conference, and in fact, my
Speaker 1: husband George Stephanopolis, who worked for Clinton, remembers that and
Speaker 1: remembers how even the two of them laughing got everybody
Speaker 1: watching laughing, the press corps and everything. So to sum
Speaker 1: it up, basically, so Yelton was there, he had had
Speaker 1: meetings with Clinton. Clinton was sort of standing like a
Speaker 1: good soldier next to him. Yelton was talking, he was
Speaker 1: being interpreted. You take it from there. What was the
Speaker 1: shift and what happened and what made us all laugh?
Speaker 1: It has been quite a serious series of meetings, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and Yelson was prone to blaming the press for reporting
Speaker 1: on meetings and ways that he didn't appreciate. So he
Speaker 1: comes out and he sank through the interpreter. You were
Speaker 1: all saying that this meeting was going to be a disaster,
Speaker 1: but actually you are the disaster, and you know, and
Speaker 1: it's funny now, at the time he was just quite cross.
Speaker 1: But the really interesting part is that right from the outset,
Speaker 1: Clinton is standing there very seriously, but he was also
Speaker 1: watching Yelps him like an absolute hawk. And the first
Speaker 1: opportunity he got to laugh, and it's a little laugh,
Speaker 1: is when Yelson mentioned his name to this meeting with
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, and then that was translated Bill Clinton, that laugh,
Speaker 1: that's my name. That's funny, and it gets a little
Speaker 1: bit of a laugh from that, and then that you
Speaker 1: are the disaster bit. Clinton does an enormous laugh, and
Speaker 1: then that really starts to set other people off, and
Speaker 1: it makes Yelton smile, and he carries on, and now
Speaker 1: Clinton keeps laughing, and it's like everything that he's saying
Speaker 1: now is being treated as amusing and very witty, and
Speaker 1: Yeltsin starts to laugh as well. And it's a master
Speaker 1: class in somebody taking a very awkward situation and using
Speaker 1: laughter in a very targeted way to completely diffuse the
Speaker 1: tension and also to kind of include everybody in it.
Speaker 1: He didn't laugh at Yeltson. He was behad because if
Speaker 1: Yelson was being very very witty, which was very clever, again,
Speaker 1: you could just look at look at this fool it
Speaker 1: was all laugh at him, which would have made everything worse.
Speaker 1: So Yelson felt included and like he was hilarious, and
Speaker 1: it was just it was a beautiful piece of work
Speaker 1: because it absolutely achieved its aim and it left him
Speaker 1: and Yelson looking closer and bonded and like presenting a
Speaker 1: common front exactly. And as a bystander or certainly somebody
Speaker 1: watching the video, you have this kind of relief, Oh
Speaker 1: we're good. Oh yes, foreign relations are good because we're
Speaker 1: all laughing together, we all get the joke. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they don't try to do that more. And
Speaker 1: these those very uncomfortable press conferences. You have to play
Speaker 1: your hand very carefully. And I think again this is
Speaker 1: a real hatic to Clinton's reading of the room, because
Speaker 1: you can't just start laughing and assume everything will make
Speaker 1: them work. Right. He makes a point in fact of
Speaker 1: sort of clapping on the back and pulling him into
Speaker 1: him to say, you know how right closely they are
Speaker 1: bonded over finding this hilarious. So it's he's very very
Speaker 1: careful to do in a respectful way, an inclusive way.
Speaker 1: But also you can imagine if the press courts hadn't
Speaker 1: started laughing as well. If everyone's just mortified and he
Speaker 1: pressed on, it would have been awful. So you need
Speaker 1: to read the room. You need to you know, if
Speaker 1: the audience is not going with you in that journey,
Speaker 1: then stop because it will just make things worse. And
Speaker 1: then provide pointed this out. You know, laughter often works
Speaker 1: very very well to diffuse situations, except at the times
Speaker 1: when it doesn't, and then it makes think it's worse exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, he was absolutely reading that environment and taking
Speaker 1: the laugh in the direction where it felt comfortable going,
Speaker 1: and it worked, and it worked. It made me think
Speaker 1: about how many times you've seen on stage when actors break,
Speaker 1: you know, where one of them kind of makes the
Speaker 1: other one laugh and they cannot get back to the
Speaker 1: dialogue and they're just cracking up, and you, as the audience,
Speaker 1: start cracking up too. You don't even know why they're laughing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is another very odd thing about laughter
Speaker 1: in the it's very very contagious. Very a lot of
Speaker 1: the laugh do you produce happens just because someone else
Speaker 1: is laughing. And in fact, that's a lot of what
Speaker 1: Clinton was doing was just just laughter will lead to laughter,
Speaker 1: and that's why we laugh when people corpse on stage
Speaker 1: slight detour. There are quite a lot of contagious behaviors
Speaker 1: that we have as humans, So yawning is contagious, Scratching
Speaker 1: can be contagious, blinking as contagious, coughing, and all of
Speaker 1: those things are social. You're much more likely to catch
Speaker 1: them from someone you know than someone you don't know.
Speaker 1: And also there things we learned to do. Babies don't
Speaker 1: show contagious yawning. We don't really know the trajectory, but
Speaker 1: you have to be quite a good age for it.
Speaker 1: We basically teach babies to do it. And also we're
Speaker 1: not the only animals that show it's so contagious. Yawning
Speaker 1: is actually found in many different social animals, including turtles
Speaker 1: as well as dogs and chimpanzees. However, the only animal
Speaker 1: that has been found to laugh contagiously is humans. So
Speaker 1: there is something very interesting going on there. Really, there's
Speaker 1: a there's something about yeah, and I wonder if that
Speaker 1: links in to maybe liketen can kind of jump the
Speaker 1: gap between us. Whereas two chimpanzees they will laugh when
Speaker 1: they're playing with each other, but a third chimpanzee is
Speaker 1: not in the game. And just sitting next to them
Speaker 1: won't love at all. So there's something about its ability
Speaker 1: for us to share it at a distance that I
Speaker 1: wonder maybe that builds up two elements of our interactions
Speaker 1: with comedy, for example. Yeah, that's interesting. Another thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is a few years ago I was
Speaker 1: in Burundi, Africa. Down there on a rather serious mission
Speaker 1: of building a hospital, and one afternoon I took a
Speaker 1: lot of the local girls, teenagers, and we were gonna
Speaker 1: beat necklaces together and I thought, oh, this will be
Speaker 1: so great, what a great bonding experience. And I had
Speaker 1: my teenage daughter with me, so we were all beating,
Speaker 1: and it was really awkward because we didn't speak the language,
Speaker 1: they didn't speak English. We all kind of looked at
Speaker 1: each other, Why are we even beating? What a stupid
Speaker 1: thing to do. And at one point we gave all
Speaker 1: the girls Coca cola, which was like a big treat
Speaker 1: to have this sugary soda, and then one of the
Speaker 1: girls drank her Coca cola down and made the loudest
Speaker 1: burp I've ever heard in my life. Just this it was.
Speaker 1: It echoed through the whole room, and there was a pause.
Speaker 1: You know, just like dead silence, and then everybody started laughing, everybody,
Speaker 1: and it completely changed the atmosphere of the afternoon. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly, after that burp and after fits of laughter,
Speaker 1: we all suddenly knew each other, like we all suddenly
Speaker 1: had a relationship. And I remember when I came back
Speaker 1: from Burundi, I said to my husband, I think there's
Speaker 1: a science to how laughter brings people together in a
Speaker 1: way that is so untangible, almost kind of this ethereal thing.
Speaker 1: And because that day it I can't explain to you
Speaker 1: how much it pivoted. And I just thought, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that after it's the greatest thing in the world,
Speaker 1: and I do it sometimes, probably when I shouldn't. But
Speaker 1: it was just a poignant moment in my life where
Speaker 1: I thought, yes, this is the great equalizer. But we
Speaker 1: have the phrase it breaks the ice, and what we
Speaker 1: mean is people laugh and the room warms up and
Speaker 1: you start to share something, and it's it's an incredible
Speaker 1: way of making maintaining social bonds laughter And as you say,
Speaker 1: it changes things. Once you've learned the chance to laugh together,
Speaker 1: you're you have a different relationship with those people. So
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a really lovely example of
Speaker 1: it transcending language and leading to a completely different emotional
Speaker 1: tone to the whole meeting. Um. I think the thing
Speaker 1: that's interesting is that you can't just make people laugh.
Speaker 1: So people laugh when they're in particular places with particular people.
Speaker 1: So laugh to reflects not just the thing that's made
Speaker 1: you laugh, it also reflects who you're with and how
Speaker 1: you feel about them, and how comfortable you will feel.
Speaker 1: I remember before the pandemic there was something somebody put
Speaker 1: on them social media that made me smile, and it
Speaker 1: was a clip of the original Doctor Doolittle film, which
Speaker 1: came out in the sixes and has Rex Harrison sort
Speaker 1: of marching around the giant snails and things, and there's
Speaker 1: one bit in it where he sings a love song
Speaker 1: to a seal dressed as a human woman. It's had
Speaker 1: a lovely song sing this and the seals are looking
Speaker 1: at him, and then he kisses the seal and then
Speaker 1: he throws the seal off a cliff into the sea
Speaker 1: and she swam with a lay really odd and it
Speaker 1: made me laugh and it made me smile, And as
Speaker 1: soon as I got home, I showed it to my
Speaker 1: partner and our son, and I said, you've got to
Speaker 1: see this, and then I became hysterical because watching them
Speaker 1: laugh and find it funny magnified my laughter. Ten fifty
Speaker 1: hundred times I'd laugh with you know, when I'm with friends,
Speaker 1: but I really lose it most of all when i'm
Speaker 1: with people really i'm really really close to. And if
Speaker 1: I'm with people I don't like, I don't know, there
Speaker 1: might be a little laughter, but it's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's much less likely to self conscious exactly. And so
Speaker 1: what you find actually is laughter act reflects people's feeling
Speaker 1: about who they're with, because it's primarily a social behavior.
Speaker 1: Or thirty times Robert Profile found too more likely to
Speaker 1: laugh if there's somebody else with you than if you're
Speaker 1: on your own. So it's already sort of promoted by
Speaker 1: social contact. But actually the who you are with really matters,
Speaker 1: and it will affect the amount of laughter and the
Speaker 1: extent of laughter. And they went to sharing of the laughter.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. Um So, the other thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is laughter as emotional health, because I
Speaker 1: truly believe that laughter is healing, and I've written some
Speaker 1: humor books and most of the compliments I get are
Speaker 1: from people who say, you know, my mother was sick
Speaker 1: or my father was in the hospital and I was
Speaker 1: reading your book aloud and it was making them laugh,
Speaker 1: and it actually it changed their physicality, it changed their mood.
Speaker 1: And that is to me, the greatest compliment in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think that laughter, you know, the cliche j
Speaker 1: laughter as therapy. Laughter is the best medicine. I think
Speaker 1: it's true. And the more I've read about it, the
Speaker 1: more I've read that it does actually strengthen your immune system.
Speaker 1: It actually does real physical helpful things, So talk to
Speaker 1: me about that. It is very, very interesting. So if
Speaker 1: you look at the physiological responses, so that you said,
Speaker 1: your body's responses to laughter, you get some things that
Speaker 1: happened really quickly, so very soon after you started laughing,
Speaker 1: you get an increased uptake of endorphins, and those are
Speaker 1: the bodies and actually circulating pain killers. And that's why
Speaker 1: you can literally tolerate pain more when you're laughing when
Speaker 1: you've been laughing. Um, I laugh when I'm in pain
Speaker 1: quite a lot. It was the only thing on my
Speaker 1: birth notes was like, if I'm laughing, don't assume I'm
Speaker 1: more rights And some people do this. It seems to
Speaker 1: be quite random, and I suspect actually it's a deliberate
Speaker 1: strategy to get the endorphins going to cope with the pain.
Speaker 1: I can't say I don't have much insight into it,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly something I know I do a lot,
Speaker 1: and there's I'm really like a broken arm or something
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work then, but there's that element to it,
Speaker 1: and it's a measurable effect. This change your thresholder pain.
Speaker 1: Coping with pain, you also get an immediate reduction in adrenaline.
Speaker 1: And adrenaline is that fight or flight hormone. So when
Speaker 1: you are feeling really anxious, if something scares you and
Speaker 1: your heart starts pumping, that is adrenaline. A drelling can
Speaker 1: work really really quickly. You can also get turned off
Speaker 1: really really quickly. And if you measure someone's heart rate
Speaker 1: before they start laughing, and then show them something funny
Speaker 1: and then measure it again, because the heart your heart
Speaker 1: rate actually go up while you're laughing, but as soon
Speaker 1: as you stop laughing, you'll notice the heart rate drops
Speaker 1: back down lower than it was before. Really interestingly, and
Speaker 1: you can do this to yourself if you've got one
Speaker 1: of those little pulse oximeters that we all started buying
Speaker 1: during COVID. If you sit down to watch something that
Speaker 1: will make you laugh, look at your pulse. But you'll
Speaker 1: notice is your pulse will probably drop just before you
Speaker 1: start watching, because you're actually anticipating the laughter is already
Speaker 1: making your adrenaline levels go down. It's extraordin And I
Speaker 1: would imagine the intake, the oxygen intake from laughing so hard.
Speaker 1: You must see that too. Well, that's a very good question,
Speaker 1: and I can't think of a good study that's actually
Speaker 1: shown that. And I think one of the problems is
Speaker 1: when you're laughing really hard, humans laugh on an excelation
Speaker 1: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, and that's actually
Speaker 1: just pushing air out of you, and you'll sometimes be
Speaker 1: aware you're you're desperately gasping for breath. I suspect your
Speaker 1: oxygen levels get a bit depleted as well, because you're
Speaker 1: really slowing down the normal rate at which you would
Speaker 1: breathe in, and then you gasp with great breath in.
Speaker 1: So that's a good question. It'd be worth with you
Speaker 1: that with your pulse oximeter experiments to send me your results.
Speaker 1: You also get I love that we're working together as colleague. Well,
Speaker 1: there's so little science on this. It's it's all to
Speaker 1: be done. Yeah, there's another hormone which affects your is
Speaker 1: affected by laughter, and that's court is all. The courtisol
Speaker 1: is the stress hormone. It's the thing that wakes you
Speaker 1: up in the morning. Is quite at point. You know
Speaker 1: when you wake up first thing and you feel a
Speaker 1: bit grotty, that is court is all. And you know
Speaker 1: when you're stressed out and you're not eating and sleeping
Speaker 1: properly and there's something bothering you all the time and
Speaker 1: you feel bad. That is courters are working in the
Speaker 1: long term. Courtersol levels that are high are not good
Speaker 1: for you. You need it a bit, you don't need
Speaker 1: lots of it, and it has a sluggish response. Unlike adrenaline,
Speaker 1: which responds really quickly. Courssol levels vary more slowly. But
Speaker 1: it's again you find after people have been laughing slower
Speaker 1: time scale, you will see the courtsole levels reduced. So
Speaker 1: you're you're more relaxed because the adrenaline is going down,
Speaker 1: and you are less stressed because the cortisol is going down,
Speaker 1: and you feel good because that's the endorphins. Endorphins don't
Speaker 1: just act as a pain reliever. You feel nice. It's
Speaker 1: like that not a good feeling you get when you've
Speaker 1: been exercising. There is and you've referred to it. One
Speaker 1: more thing that we do know about. And I have
Speaker 1: to be very cautious here because I don't we don't
Speaker 1: exactly know why it happens that when you are if
Speaker 1: you also get an increase in human growth hormone. Now,
Speaker 1: human growth hormone is a very very important hormone throughout
Speaker 1: your life when you are a growing in the womb,
Speaker 1: when you're a baby and a child, it's what's powering
Speaker 1: the changes in your body. Once you are a grown adult,
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop its work. It continues playing an important role.
Speaker 1: But it's main role, which you've hinted at, is actually
Speaker 1: in the immune system. So it's hard to do the
Speaker 1: studies to actually prove the effect, but that's certainly a
Speaker 1: mechanism for it. So you've got these you've got these
Speaker 1: clear effects and your body that are affecting your mood,
Speaker 1: how you feel, and how relaxed you are and how
Speaker 1: stressed you are. I read that laughter helps start dementia,
Speaker 1: and so now every day I called my mother who's eight,
Speaker 1: and tell her a dirty joke, just by a little
Speaker 1: way of helping her medically. Um. But here's my question
Speaker 1: to you, Sophie, and it's a confession. A couple of
Speaker 1: times in my life I've laughed so hard that I've
Speaker 1: peed my pants. Why is that? Um, it's actually quite
Speaker 1: common in childhood. It's called giggle incontinence. And um, the
Speaker 1: actual mechanism for it seems to be and she's going
Speaker 1: to sound crazy, Okay, right now, I'm sitting in a
Speaker 1: chair and it feels like I'm not doing anything, but
Speaker 1: actually there's lots and lots of work that my body
Speaker 1: is doing to maintain my posture. As soon as you
Speaker 1: start laughing, that motor control over your body starts to
Speaker 1: get suppressed. And that's why you become very weak when
Speaker 1: you're laughing, and it's why you start to get floppy
Speaker 1: and you may actually go onto the floor. We're rolling
Speaker 1: on the floor. Laughing is a thing I can I've
Speaker 1: seen that. We've all seen people do it. I've done it. Gee,
Speaker 1: it isn't it. And it's not just the postural control
Speaker 1: over the muscles in your body. And you know your
Speaker 1: urine is being kept in by motor control, So if
Speaker 1: you lose control of that, that's why it happens. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a market of the suppression of the motor
Speaker 1: system that happens when we laugh. And we understand very
Speaker 1: little about this. If you think about it in evolutionary terms,
Speaker 1: it's absurd. Why would be so easily get into a
Speaker 1: state where you know, if a tiger came in at
Speaker 1: that exact point, it probably could just eat you without
Speaker 1: any problem. If you would not be able to defend
Speaker 1: yourself at all, And if you try and do something
Speaker 1: fiddle with your hands like do what buttons when you're laughing,
Speaker 1: you just can't do it. You just have lost all
Speaker 1: that control. Yeah, I find that when I have been
Speaker 1: with friends and that happened and I paid my pants,
Speaker 1: I did lose the room, they did leave after they
Speaker 1: laughed at me. Um. I mean to me, there's no
Speaker 1: better feeling than being with your family, are close friends
Speaker 1: literally laughing or at us off. There's just no better
Speaker 1: feeling in the world. It's probably the most important part
Speaker 1: of your whole day, the times when you get to
Speaker 1: do that. When we went into the first lockdown in
Speaker 1: the UK, just over two years ago. Because we're in
Speaker 1: a quite small, flattened someone's schooling from home and partner
Speaker 1: I both working from home. Been there, You probably have
Speaker 1: all been there with So okay, end of every day
Speaker 1: thirty for putting away the computers, We're going to watch
Speaker 1: something on television that makes us laugh. It almost didn't
Speaker 1: matter what it was, but we would do it together
Speaker 1: and it would be funny. And actually we've carried on
Speaker 1: doing it because it's a silly half hour, but it's
Speaker 1: a effects and you know that we're all still alive,
Speaker 1: We're all still here. Let's spend that time making sure
Speaker 1: we spent some time laughing together. I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I feel like we spent COVID and I actually wrote
Speaker 1: a book about it that's coming out in May. We
Speaker 1: spent COVID during the day because George was doing Good
Speaker 1: Morning America from our dining room, just watching COVID numbers
Speaker 1: and worrying about people getting sick. And I got sick
Speaker 1: very early on. It was very scary, and we did
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. We got addicted to a show
Speaker 1: called Love Island Australia, which I had to explain to
Speaker 1: George was just about people having sex and not getting
Speaker 1: kicked off an is lunch. But you know, we still
Speaker 1: watch something funny at night because I think, particularly now
Speaker 1: with what's happening in the world, we need that release,
Speaker 1: We need that laughter. Um, I think it's so important. So, Sophie,
Speaker 1: I always ask all these questions to my poor guests
Speaker 1: when they come on my podcast, and so I always
Speaker 1: allow with my us to ask me a question. So
Speaker 1: you may ask me anything you want. Can you remember
Speaker 1: things that made you laugh when you were a kid
Speaker 1: that you might have shared with your family. Did you
Speaker 1: have like family jokes? I did. So. I grew up
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And my parents were political journalists
Speaker 1: during Watergate, so it was very somber time and my
Speaker 1: parents were very serious, and dinner was you know, we've
Speaker 1: spent talking about, you know, what was going on with
Speaker 1: the hearings, and and I decided that we needed levity
Speaker 1: even as a young child. So I used to put
Speaker 1: on some silly outfit or like one of my mother's dresses,
Speaker 1: and I would do a show. I would stand on
Speaker 1: the table and I would entertain. I would lip sync,
Speaker 1: and I remember one night it was very hard to
Speaker 1: get my parents to laugh I had not developed breasts yet,
Speaker 1: so I had a flat chest, and I put on
Speaker 1: black tights and I stuck a pillow down my tights
Speaker 1: and I pretended to be Barishnikov. And it was the
Speaker 1: first time that I saw my parents laugh really, really hard,
Speaker 1: and and for me, that was it. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: then comedy, comedy is the way to go. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I do remember that, and I do remember thinking how
Speaker 1: great it was to make my parents laugh, how great
Speaker 1: it made them feel, and how great it made me
Speaker 1: feel to do it. So that's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been so so helpful and so interesting, and
Speaker 1: it's really an area that I'm fascinated by. Couldn't agree more. Oh, excellent, Sophie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, and we're back. You have to
Speaker 1: love a genius, funny lady like Sophie Scott. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, if I ever get a chance to see
Speaker 1: here do stand up, I can't wait. She almost inspired
Speaker 1: me to do stand up, although I'm a hundred and
Speaker 1: five years old, so there's no way I'm going to
Speaker 1: try now, but I bet she's amazing. So, guys, this
Speaker 1: is the last episode of season two of Go Ask Gali,
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite things we did this season
Speaker 1: is answered listener questions, and so we've been stockpiling a
Speaker 1: bunch just for this occasion, and we've got a few
Speaker 1: of them. I'd like to have my way with This
Speaker 1: is from a listener in Wisconsin. Hi, Ali, love your
Speaker 1: podcast and recently listen to the Girlfriend Coach episode. I
Speaker 1: have a thirty plus year friendship with a treasured friend. However,
Speaker 1: I often find myself envious of her. Things that I
Speaker 1: used to admire about her now make me jealous. She's pretty, thin,
Speaker 1: has a wonderful marriage, perfect children and grandchildren, her life
Speaker 1: has changed with retirement and has opportunities to travel and
Speaker 1: make new friends. I don't want to feel envious of her.
Speaker 1: I realized that's my problem. I just want to get
Speaker 1: some advice and how to change my feelings towards her.
Speaker 1: I treasure our friendship and don't want to do anything
Speaker 1: to jeopardize it. Yeah, this is an excellent question, and
Speaker 1: I think that everybody at some point in their life
Speaker 1: has felt that towards a friend. Um. I recently went
Speaker 1: to visit a friend who's got this incredible house beautiful
Speaker 1: house right on the ocean, and it's interesting. I maybe
Speaker 1: twenty years ago I would have been jealous, but now
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy for her. So what you have
Speaker 1: to kind of say to yourself is that you're grateful
Speaker 1: for the friendship and that you truly are happy for her.
Speaker 1: Because there are so many people now that are suffering,
Speaker 1: we do have to celebrate the people that are healthy
Speaker 1: and have great relationships with their children and are traveling.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is try to get in on that.
Speaker 1: In other words, try to get in on that joy.
Speaker 1: You've been friends with her for thirty plus years, Go
Speaker 1: enjoy her children and her grandchildren. If she travels, travel
Speaker 1: with her. You know, sometimes it feels good to be
Speaker 1: around that. It inspires us, it makes us better. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you're at the playground with her grandchildren
Speaker 1: and her and you're laughing and you know, helping Timmy
Speaker 1: down the slide, you're participating and enjoying what you have
Speaker 1: seen as an enviable life. But now you're part of it. Okay, Brook,
Speaker 1: who's my producer? Let him roll? Hi, Ali, just curious,
Speaker 1: are you taking HRT sert any form as departments? Okay,
Speaker 1: hormones um always a tricky conversation. I am not taking
Speaker 1: any hormones right now because my levels are very even,
Speaker 1: and I'm not experiencing any anxiety or depression or foggy
Speaker 1: brain or night sweats or no strong symptoms of perimenopause
Speaker 1: or menopause. And so because of that, I'm a big
Speaker 1: believer in let things lay if it's working for now. However,
Speaker 1: if I started to experience it's any of the you know,
Speaker 1: horrible side effects, I would definitely go to the doctor
Speaker 1: and I would try something out. And again it's different
Speaker 1: for everybody. What kind of hormones you want to take,
Speaker 1: but I employ you to go to your doctor and
Speaker 1: get your hormone levels checked. Next question, Hi, Ali, I
Speaker 1: just would like to know who do you think is
Speaker 1: the funniest person, the one person that, no matter what,
Speaker 1: can always make you laugh. It's hard to say who
Speaker 1: the funniest person is for me, um, because circumstances make
Speaker 1: me laugh, like when I wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and my dog Cooper is eating a full box of
Speaker 1: dried spaghetti, or my husband is holding his keys and
Speaker 1: says he can't find them. But Ricky's your Vase, the
Speaker 1: stand up comedian really makes me laugh. And there's a
Speaker 1: video where Liam Neeson goes to him because he wants
Speaker 1: Ricky's your ves to teach him about comedy, and it
Speaker 1: is so funny to me. It makes me laugh every time.
Speaker 1: And there's also a bit where rick use your vase
Speaker 1: is playing god and telling every breed of dog what
Speaker 1: their responsibility is, and that always makes me laugh. And
Speaker 1: there's links at the end of our show notes if
Speaker 1: you want to see some of the stuff. But you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can find one or two things
Speaker 1: a day that make me really laugh that are sometimes
Speaker 1: just completely mundane, but I always do look for things.
Speaker 1: I always like to laugh at least twice a day. Oh,
Speaker 1: now we have a text here we go. How do
Speaker 1: you navigate girl clicks as an adult when you aren't
Speaker 1: in one, but maybe you'd like to be. This is
Speaker 1: a very relevant question because it's something that I have
Speaker 1: been talking about and thinking about in my own life,
Speaker 1: because I have a group of friends, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have a ball together, but I have other friends too,
Speaker 1: And I found that that a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: wasn't kind of featured in the squad photos had her
Speaker 1: feelings hurt. And I actually I couldn't believe it, because
Speaker 1: you know, I think at a certain age we don't
Speaker 1: care about this stuff, but we actually do. And I've
Speaker 1: noticed that. There have been times when I've seen, you know,
Speaker 1: a post of a group of friends of mine having
Speaker 1: dinner or doing something fun, and I have that fomo feeling,
Speaker 1: and I realize, and I even say to my teenage daughters,
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever outgrow it. I think you
Speaker 1: always feel left out, and I think the important thing
Speaker 1: to do is dive right in. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is, if they're girl clicks that you want
Speaker 1: to be part of, invite them all over, or you know,
Speaker 1: send them an email and say, hey, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I saw you guys on the beach. It looks so fun.
Speaker 1: I'd love to join you next time. Because as much
Speaker 1: as we internalize that that they are emitting us or
Speaker 1: not allowing us to be part of it, that's probably
Speaker 1: not true. And if you did just reach out and say, hey,
Speaker 1: how about you know, drinks at my house or I'd
Speaker 1: love to take you guys guy diving or whatever your
Speaker 1: hobby is, I think you'll find that people, especially when
Speaker 1: we get older or more inclusive. Okay, now, we have
Speaker 1: another audio question, being as you are the mother of daughters,
Speaker 1: how do you handle it when or if one of
Speaker 1: your girls brings home a young man that you immediately
Speaker 1: get a bad vibe off of, just by virtues, the
Speaker 1: fact that you've been around a lot longer than your
Speaker 1: daughter and around a lot of people, and you just
Speaker 1: get a bad vibe, but your daughter is oblivious. Well,
Speaker 1: my daughters, who are still relatively young, there's only been
Speaker 1: two that they brought home and they were both very sweet,
Speaker 1: delightful boys. So I haven't yet experienced an older daughter
Speaker 1: bringing somebody home that she's very, very interested in. But
Speaker 1: I have no problem verbalizing my opinion because my feeling is, yes,
Speaker 1: we have been around longer. Listen, I dated a lot
Speaker 1: of bad boys. I can sniff them before they walk
Speaker 1: in the door, so I would be honest and now
Speaker 1: it's it's going to make them angry. But there is
Speaker 1: a little bit of I told you so when he
Speaker 1: shows his true colors, and I actually think in some way,
Speaker 1: and it might not be on the surface or conscious,
Speaker 1: they do want to hear our opinions. So if somebody
Speaker 1: comes into your daughter's life and you get a really
Speaker 1: bad vibe from it, verbalize it truly. You might be
Speaker 1: saving her a lot of heartache in the future or
Speaker 1: prison time, depending on the guy. Now, if this is
Speaker 1: a rebellious thing, if your daughter is defiantly dating somebody
Speaker 1: just to piss you off, then I would play it
Speaker 1: very cool because that's just a kid acting out, and
Speaker 1: so rather than give them the treats they're looking for,
Speaker 1: I would just say, you know, oh he's great. I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually love his tattoos. You know, I've never seen
Speaker 1: anybody with a pierced tongue before, but he wears it well.
Speaker 1: And don't give her the satisfaction. Okay, give me another. Hi, Ali,
Speaker 1: I was wondering how the results for at this point
Speaker 1: of your blessed borrow plastic under eye surgery. I have
Speaker 1: the same thing I always have. I never chose to
Speaker 1: do anything about it, but I was envied and wondered
Speaker 1: how yours went, and how you feel about it now
Speaker 1: that you got it done. And it's been several years. Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: bleffero plastic. So I had the bags under my eyes done. Wow.
Speaker 1: I think it was about ten years ago. And at
Speaker 1: first when I was getting the surgery, which basically just
Speaker 1: sucks out of the fat out of the under your eyes,
Speaker 1: which I inherited from my dad. Thank you very much, dad. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: much it was going to hurt. I was a little
Speaker 1: nervous beforehand, and I went on the internet. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find anything. And I used to ask women who clearly
Speaker 1: had had a lot of stuff done. I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, does it hurt when you have bleff roplasty?
Speaker 1: And everyone would say, oh, I don't know, I've never
Speaker 1: done anything. I was like, okay, Joan Rivers. So I
Speaker 1: decided after I had the bluff roplasty, I wrote an
Speaker 1: article about it for l magazine. But I also videotaped
Speaker 1: every day like a video diary before the surgery and
Speaker 1: then my recovery after. And I think it was very
Speaker 1: helpful to people. Obviously it was helpful to you because
Speaker 1: you knew to ask me this question. And now it's
Speaker 1: ten years later, I feel great that I did it.
Speaker 1: It was kind of my moby dick, the thing that
Speaker 1: really bothered me. And I'm absolutely one satisfied glad I
Speaker 1: did it. I would do it again if I needed to,
Speaker 1: but I don't and anybody that you know is thinking
Speaker 1: about it. I encourage you, Okay, Brook, I think we
Speaker 1: have time for one more. We've been married for a
Speaker 1: long time and your purpose is to um help your
Speaker 1: husband raise your daughter. How president is is? Do you
Speaker 1: have a purpose and all of a sudden you get
Speaker 1: divorced and you find yourself make fifties, early sixties and
Speaker 1: there's no purpose? How do you find that? Okay, listen
Speaker 1: to me, all you women out there, late fifties, early fifties,
Speaker 1: late sixties. It doesn't matter how old you are. There
Speaker 1: are many, many, many chapters in our life. You know,
Speaker 1: my youngest daughter is going to go off to college
Speaker 1: in a year and we will be empty nesters. And
Speaker 1: my feeling is, Okay, what's next? Do I want to
Speaker 1: write a book? Do I want to make textiles? Do
Speaker 1: I want to you know, make jam and sell it
Speaker 1: at the farmers market. I mean you have to look
Speaker 1: at it not as an end, but as a beginning.
Speaker 1: And I think so many women now, particularly middle aged women,
Speaker 1: are starting new chapters. So this is what I would
Speaker 1: do if I were you, because we all have purpose.
Speaker 1: I think you take out a pen and paper and
Speaker 1: write down all your interests both charitable and you know
Speaker 1: self interest, Like I would love to make skirts and
Speaker 1: sell them, and you know I really care. I'm a
Speaker 1: big child advocate. What kind of charities that involved children
Speaker 1: could I be involved in? Or I love animals and
Speaker 1: make a list of things that you could actually go
Speaker 1: volunteer for, because I think that there's a great balance
Speaker 1: in life of giving back and what I call giving
Speaker 1: to So why not start a new business? Why not
Speaker 1: go read to a boy or girl club? Why not
Speaker 1: do all of these things? Um, I have found that
Speaker 1: we are as women are the most prolific and the
Speaker 1: most creative at this point in our life. I know
Speaker 1: women have started painting. I know women that just wrote
Speaker 1: their first book in mid fifties. So you can do
Speaker 1: it all, just it just have to simmer. Simmer it
Speaker 1: all down to what it is that makes you tick,
Speaker 1: what do you love, what interests you and take it
Speaker 1: from there and again make sure that you're sort of
Speaker 1: giving out to the world, which I think is more
Speaker 1: important than ever, and also pursuing things that maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't have time to pursue before when you were married. Okay, guys, well,
Speaker 1: I wish I had a sound effect for the popping
Speaker 1: of a champagne cork because it's the last episode of
Speaker 1: season two and it has been such a ball for me.
Speaker 1: It has been so inspiring, so informative. I mean especially
Speaker 1: for me. My husband always jokes that it's like my
Speaker 1: master class. I get to talk to all these incredible
Speaker 1: people and learn so much. I've loved every single episode.
Speaker 1: I hope you have UM before we get into season three,
Speaker 1: and don't worry, I will put everything out on social
Speaker 1: media when that's happening. Um. I have a book coming
Speaker 1: out May Tent called Allie's Well that ends well And
Speaker 1: so if you're missing me bad, go by a book.
Speaker 1: It's stories about how I dealt with COVID. UM. We
Speaker 1: all had our coping mechanisms. Mind was to eat a
Speaker 1: lot of ice cream and go clamming. And I look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing from you and talking to you in
Speaker 1: season three. Yeah, thank you for listening to Go ask Ali.
Speaker 1: Check out our show notes for fun links and more info,
Speaker 1: and be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast,
Speaker 1: and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali
Speaker 1: e Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth.
Speaker 1: Now if you'd like to ask me a question or
Speaker 1: suggest a guest or a topic to dig into in
Speaker 1: season three. I would love to hear from you, and
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can
Speaker 1: call or text me at three to three four six
Speaker 1: three five six, or you can email a voice memo
Speaker 1: right from your phone to Go Ask Alli podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. And if you leave a question as
Speaker 1: you heard today, you may hear it. I Go Ask Alli,
Speaker 1: Go Ask Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio
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