Why do we laugh?

This is a CBC podcast. So I have this one joke I really love but it's like it's really bad. I know it's really bad but like it's still so funny to me. Oh now you want to hear it? Well I warn you it's really bad. Like I told it to someone and he told me that it made his day worse. Yeah okay if you're ready then brace yourselves so. What do you get when you make a harpoon and a spoon? A harpoon? Yeah I told you it was bad. Even my friends think it's terrible. Do you have jokes like this where you know it's really bad but you just you can't help smiling whenever you tell it. I mean there's gotta be a reason we do this right? Like everyone laughs and everyone tells jokes and laughing feels great even if you're laughing at like your own joke and you know exactly what the punchline is. So why do we find some things funny and why do we laugh in the first place? Why? Why? I'm Ty and this is my podcast Ty asks why. There are so many good questions out there that you just really want to have answered. How do we fix recycling? How do animals know where they're going? What can I do when I'm anxious? How reliable are our memories? And why do we laugh? Have you ever been walking down the street and you hear a big burst of laughter and like your head turns to see what's going on and then you start thinking what's so funny? What are those people laughing at? Oh gosh are they laughing at my shirt? Or did they just hear a funny joke? I find that sometimes I end up laughing too even though I didn't hear what made them laugh. So wherever you go in the world as far as we can see people will recognize laughter and have a rough idea what it means and that's actually quite unusual. Most of the things that humans do are very very culturally specific. So as far as we're aware we are fairly certain humans in all parts of the world recognize laughter. That's pretty cool right? Laughter is an international language. Hi my name is Sophie Scott and I'm a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. Sophie Scott has spent a lot of time researching laughter. What happens to our bodies and brains when we laugh, what makes people laugh and why people laugh in the first place? And turns out there are all kinds of reasons. People will laugh during conversations to show that they recognize something someone said or they recognize the implication of something or they read something or they remember the same thing. So this is a lot of laughter in the group of friends is purely communicative. People will use laughter to cover up other emotions. People will use laughter to cover up being angry or sad or embarrassed. And people will use laughter to deal with stressful situations. I get what Sophie's saying and all of you guys in are a little secret. I've definitely tripped on the sidewalk plenty of times and stumbled in front of a bunch of friends and they giggle at it a little bit and I catch myself laughing too so I don't feel embarrassed. But that laugh was always more of like "ha ha ha ha" and not my real laugh. Now how easy is it to tell between these two different types of laughter? We have some data showing that people, children of 5 or 6, they don't know what you're talking about. It's a different kind of laughter because they just hear laughter. So by the time people are in their 30s they're pretty good. But it's actually quite a slow development between that. So would you like to hear some? Sure, I'd be glad to. Okay. So I'm going to play some laughter and I want you to tell me whether or not this sounds like somebody laughing really spontaneously or if they sound that laughing in a conversation, they're controlling it in some way. Okay. Let's try this one. [Laughter] Okay. I think that is just uncontrolled spontaneous laughter for sure. I think you're absolutely right. So that's actually me laughing spontaneous like "I'm going to very high pitch laugh." Right. Let's try this one. [Laughter] Okay. That's probably one of the most forced laughs I've ever heard in my life. Was that you're absolutely correct? How about how about this one? [Laughter] That's totally real laugh. I think I'm pretty sure I laugh like that. And actually those two, those are the same woman. So the first one, yeah. And then let's just try this one. Yeah, that guy is incredibly joyous. [Laughter] And actually you can hear a thing there. Can you almost sort of hear a sort of whistling sound? There's an awful lot of things amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. That's to us as far as we can see is a very strong indication that somebody has laughed things spontaneously because it's very, very hard to fake that. A bit like the very high pitch voice I have when I laugh. I can't fake that when I laugh in a non-spontaneous way. It doesn't give that high. Did you notice when I was doing that test that we both started laughing when we heard those clips of other people laughing? That's because laughter is infectious. Scientists call it behavioral contagion. So like have you ever seen someone yawn in class or on a Zoom and then all of a sudden you're yawning? Or picking it up from them. We see someone else yawn or blinker, cough and suddenly we're doing the same thing. I guess that kind of explains why those laughing fits with my friends and you know, spiraling out of control because one of you laugh and you pass it on and then it just kind of creates that cycle where you're giving it from one person to the next. And guess what? Humans aren't the only animals that laugh. Apes like chimpanzees or rangatangs and gorillas, they all laugh too. That was a chimp laughing. Dogs laugh and even rats laugh. It's this super high-pitched squeaky sound that rats make when they're playing. We've been laughing for a long time and I mean, oh really long time. Researchers have said that spontaneous laughter, you know like rolling on the floor type, started between two to four million years ago. So even before homo sapiens were round, they think laughing helped group dynamics just like it does now. And then once modern humans showed up and we started writing things down, you'll never guess what showed up then too. fart jokes. I'm not even kidding. In 2008, a group of historians discovered what they think is the world's oldest joke and it's from a rack around 1900 BC and it goes like this. Something which has never occurred since time immemorial. A young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. Ugh, I don't find this joke funny at all but I do find it interesting that farts have always apparently been a very big source of humor. That's another neat thing about laughter. I mean, sure, everyone laughs but not everyone laughs at the same things. You might have thought that that joke was hilarious or you might find fart jokes awful and disgusting. So how do we explain what we find funny? So the inspiration for this episode is kind of around, it's around my favorite joke. No one else thinks it's funny and at this point I even realize it's kind of bad but like, I still find it funny. So like, why do people find different things funny and like for me, why is it this terrible joke? Well, first of all, are you going to tell me your joke or are you going to save that to later? Maybe I'm not. Okay. Now I'll find, I'll tell you, but I'll warn you, it's like it is outrageously bad. What do you get when you mix a harpoon and a spoon? I don't know what you get when you mix a harpoon and a spoon. A harpoon. No, that's good. That's a good joke. The only thing that we have absolutely determined for sure, so intifically about humour in this respect is that there is no one that can do it. thing that everybody finds funny over time and over place. So everybody finds slightly different things funny and all sorts of things feed into that. So things I find funny, I find funny because my parents share them with me, you know, and the things I find funny because they're things I enjoyed watching or content going I went to with my partner and there are things I find funny because my son finds them funny. But what it means is that actually you won't find anything ever that every single person on earth decreases in music, there'll always be somebody saying, "Oh, dear, no, that's how my brother died, you know, oh, no, that's not funny, that's the horrible thing to laugh at." So sad that someone's brother died at the hands of a hard spoon, that's quite a fortunate thing. Okay, so humans are kind of weird. We laugh at different situations, different jokes, things that are funny to me might be cringed you and vice versa. But one thing's fairly universal, laughter is literally a stress reliever. So when you laugh, you get a reduction quite quickly in adrenaline and adrenaline is the fight or flight hormone. So that's the thing that, you know, if you get really scared and suddenly everything sounds and feels different, that's the effect of a adrenaline and that goes down when you're laughing, it goes down quite quickly. So you are more relaxed when you've been laughing and you get an increase of the uptake of the body's naturally circulating pain killers which are called endorphins and that means that you get, you can actually tolerate pain better when you can nothing, but also it feels nice. You get a nice, fuzzy feeling from this and actually humans, social interactions are kind of often associated with this kind of endorphin response. Yeah, laughing feels awesome until you're laughing so hard it hurts and this happens with my friends all the time where like you can't stop laughing and it gets to the point where you're in this fetal laughter and you're like you're crying and you're doubled over and you're doing this wheezy thing. It's like your stomach hurts. It's just and you can't stand up straight. So you are staying up and I'm sitting in the chair at the moment and what's stopping me from sliding onto the floor are postural reflexes. Now those reflexes that maintain this postural stability are suppressed really quickly when you start laughing and again we don't know why that that's when you get weak and floppy when you've been laughing and if you try and do anything fiddly when you're laughing you can't do it and that's that same mechanism. Well we use the phrase rolling on the floor with laughing and you're actually describing people collapsing with laughter. So we become all floppy and weak and stuff when we laugh. You also mentioned earlier how laughter kind of reduces adrenaline which is the whole fight or flight response and that's kind of important. So why do we laugh if it would make us more vulnerable to something say like a predator that's about to attack? I think because a lot of the power of humans comes from the fact that we are very very strongly socially bonded together. So if you think of laughter has been this very very important way of making maintaining social bonds and you think about the importance of those social bonds to humans. It's important for many mammals but arguably it's one of the really this kind of cooperative behaviour of humans is one of our really key distinctive features. You can see a really important aspect for laughter makes so it's maybe even worth getting all floppy and I'm able to do things because the power of that is that you'll be more cooperatively able to work together as a group when you do need to. Given how much time we spend laughing my friends and I should be uber cooperative and to be honest the things that make us laugh probably don't make sense to anyone else kind of like my friends inside jokes. My friends we found a picture from just it's a brand and picture our teacher took of us from like five years ago and it's a picture of my friend. That's a good photo and I just it's so funny. That's a very it's a very flattering angle for the listeners. Just this time when me and my friends were at the movie theater and there was like other groups of people there and I guess they were like air dropping photos around. So I just like I keep getting these random photos of Shrek air drops to my phone but then all of a sudden I get this one that's really interesting and it's just this baby lying it's like a doll lying on a table with a stomach cut out filled with guacamole with a bowl of chips on the side and we call it the guacamole baby and it's kind of legendary amongst my two friends now so just the guacamole baby that makes me laugh. It's affirming that's kind of social bond that you have with each other and in fact it's showing that you have it you're much more likely to laugh around other people than if you're on your own but you're even more likely to laugh if you're with people that you know so it's primed by the presence of people that you know. That makes a lot of sense. I'm super comfortable with my friends and we have our little jokes that nobody else will ever find funny because part of the humor comes from the fact that we're all in on the joke. So what if you want to make someone you don't know laugh like a new friend or a bunch of classmates or like an entire audience? I've got someone who can help with that. Yeah I'm in Toronto I'm in my sneaker room where I've been most for this little last year and I don't know if you guys recognize that voice so I'll give you a little bit of a hint. Got it now. My name is Andrew Fung. I'm an actor, comedian and improviser and people best know me as kimchi from Kim's convenience and run the burps. Comedy has always appealed to me because I just love making people laugh and I love I love joy. I love sparking joy in people. How does it feel when you make someone laugh? It's the oh when you when you make someone laugh that's the best feeling because we have such great memories associated with laughter like if you make your friend laugh you make someone you like laugh if you make a family member laugh that's a good thing that's a great thing it's better than making someone cry unless you make them laugh so hard they cry that's the ultimate laugh making someone laugh so hard they cry is like a 360 but I like there's nothing better than making someone laugh. He's right you know if there's one thing that feels better than having a good laugh yourself it's making someone else laugh but you know what Andrew says that he actually wasn't funny when he first started out in comedy. He started out by doing improv which is where the comedians get the cues and the prompts from the audience and have to create these scenes right there on the spot. Now were you like were you the class clown growing up were you the funny guy? I tried to be the funny guy I didn't necessarily succeed and that that's something that like kind of followed me in my improv career like I remember when I joined the loose moose theater I was not the best performer of my generation of my class of my group and it's because I don't think I had a comedic voice I was trying to mimic what other people were doing and I think that was my pitfall. Before Andrew found his comedic voice he definitely had some tough gigs to say the least. I was 16 and it was at the loose moose theater and it was a show called my stroo in pro and I so not to get nerdy but basically you do a scene and the audience gives you a score between one to five one being low five being high so obviously the performers with the highest scores will stay in and the performers with the lowest scores will be eliminated and I was eliminated in the second round with the score of total score of two I got two ones that is crushing it's not a good score like that's rough but I remember afterwards in the show my artistic director Dennis Keehill who taught me improv just said you get to come back next week and try again and I remember like improv comedy is all about failure and failing and I think that was the great thing because like to have that environment of failure helped me in my development as a performer and so to be able to fail on stage and like say something I thought would be funny and hear crickets you know not get a laugh from the audience like sucked but it made me better because like I could step back and be like why didn't that work and the more you do that the more you start to figure out why certain things do work now have you ever tried like something on stage that just totally flopped yeah oh totally I've tried many things on stage that have totally flopped I know most of the time when a character flop it was because it was forced it's because I was trying to be funny here's an example it's like I had to lose my ear there's a lot of props and stuff backstage but the props should be used to support your characters and to support the scene which makes it funny It is an item. It cannot save you. Right? There needs to be substance. And I remember early on, I brought out all these props on stage to try to be funny. Oh, I got a banana. Oh, I got this yellow jacket that doesn't fit me very well. Oh, I have this like really funny hat. Nah, these doors didn't work. But instead, what if I played this detective that just kept thinking that his banana was a gun. Right? Every time he was looking for a weapon, right? As a detective, he pulled out a banana. He's like, Oh, where are all these bananas coming from? Right? So is that the comedy there? Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. It's like for me to use an analogy. If you're trying to like build a shed or something, you use a hammer as a tool. You can't just kind of throw a hammer at the pile of wood and expect it to be made like their tools. They're vessels for you to do something funny with. Oh, that's great. The props we have are vessels to build sheds of comedy. I love that. That's that's bang on. Well, it makes me feel quite a bit better knowing that you don't have to be naturally funny to be a comedian. You just need the right tools and a little bit of practice to build that shed of comedy. I never saw my endgame was to work in comedy or to be on television and in film. And that's the great thing about comedy. Comedy can be used in so many different places. And so I'm always encouraging people of all backgrounds. Hey, like take an improv comedy class because at its core is that comedy teaches you how to connect with others to connect with the people around you. And I think that's a great thing because I think that that could be applied into any occupation or any any job you have. I didn't think comedy was going to be my endgame, but comedy has not only been my endgame, but it's been like my life philosophy. This idea of living in the moment, not planning ahead, saying yes to things. That's like the core of improvisational comedy. All those things has led me to this place in my life. And I'm I never thought that could be a thing and it's a thing. So from a guy who loves to make people laugh and loves to connect with them, why does he think humans need laughter? Well, laughter, we need happiness. It's not just laughter in itself. We need happiness as people, right? And laughter also helps us get through the tough times. Laughter is a therapeutic way of dealing with the tragedy and the down times and the pain in our lives and the trauma. So I think that laughter has so many so many uses, but at its core, it's something that I think everyone can enjoy and cherish. We really do need laughter, don't we? Because laughter makes us feel all fussy inside and it's good for us. It can help reduce our stress, make us feel calm, and it can build these social bonds between people. Whether you're standing in front of a crowd of 500 people like Andrew Doss or just hanging out with a few pals. And obviously we can't be laughing all the time. Like, imagine if you're doing a math test and you constantly have a case of the gigalays, right? You wouldn't get anything done. But I like knowing that when I'm laughing with a group of friends, there's a lot going on in the background that really makes it even better. I think that it's a way to release happiness and like, or not release happiness, but display happiness and show to the people that you're around that you're feeling happy or joy. I think it lifts my mood generally. Like even after I looked at that picture again, already in better mood than before. Sometimes when I laughing really, really hard, it's hard to breathe. So after I'm feeling pretty close to death, but it's a good feeling. It is a good feeling. And after talking to Sophie, now I know that feeling is good for you too. But you know what? Just like Andrew learned to ditch the props in his comedy routine, maybe it's time for me to finally let go of the Harspoon joke. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Ty Poole. This show was produced by Rachel Levy McLachlan, Eunice Kim and Judy Zee Goo. This podcast was created by Veronica Simmons. Graham McDonald is our sound designer and the theme music is by Johnny Spence. Sound engineer is my father, Minnuyen and our location manager is my mom, Nikki Poole. Thanks to my friends, Kaden, Piper, Maylin and Finn for sharing their funny moments with me. Special shout out to Austin Pauveau for his technical help. And thanks to my brother, Kianne, for not being too much of a loud grandma in his unworking. I love you, Kianne. Today, my guests were Sophie Scott and Andrew Fung. SK Robair is our digital producer. Our senior producer is Tina Verma and the director of CBC podcasts is Arif Nourani. If you liked this episode, I'd love to hear from you. Please consider taking some time to rate and review Ty asks Why on your favorite podcast app. It makes a big difference in helping others find the show. Until next time, I'm Ty, keep asking why. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.