Factually! with Adam Conover - Why Do We Laugh? with Nuar Alsadir

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

What the hell is laughter? Why do we do it, and what is its purpose? This week, psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir joins Adam to discuss her theories about the origins of laughter, its effect on other people, and its purpose in various scenarios. Buy Nuar’s book at http://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing shit that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together and we're going to have a fantastic time doing it.

You know, after years of doing that intro, I'm still a little bit ambivalent about it, but I say it every time just because it does feel good rolling off the tongue. I want to remind everybody that I am going on tour once again this year. From March 23rd through 25th, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas at the Capital City Comedy Club. From May 5th through May 6th, I'll be in San Francisco at Cobb's Comedy Club. From May 11th through 13th, I'll be in San Antonio, Texas. And from June 8th through 10th, I'll be in Batavia, Illinois, just outside Chicago. Please come out and see me.

And of course, if you want to support this show, you can head to patreon.com slash adamconover. Just five bucks gets you every episode ad-free and a whole lot more goodies. Now, let's talk about this week's episode. This week, we're talking about laughter. You know, it is my actual job to produce laughter. But strangely enough, we don't really have an amazing sense of why we laugh scientifically. We know that we laugh, and we know we're not the only species that laughs. Other apes actually laugh too, and the

closer those apes are to us evolutionarily, the more similar their vocal laughter is to ours. But still, we do not have a precise agreed-upon explanation for why it happens. There are a number of theories for how laughter works, but they all cover only part of what a possible explanation could be. For instance, there's the benign violations hypothesis. This idea is that something is funny because it contains a violation of the rules, but it does so in a context that does not present a real danger or threat. Think of tickling, right? It presents a violation which has the appearance of a threat, but it's not actually harmful and it generally gets laughter from the recipient of the tickles.

Now, as you might know, I'm a stand-up comedian, not a stand-up tickler, and I need to grab the audience with my words, not my fingers. So there's another theory that humor is akin to grooming in apes. It helps create and strengthen social bonds. And some anthropologists think humor might be even more effective than grooming at that task because you can share it between more people at once. You can only pick gnats off of one friend at a time, but you can share a joke between four or five friends. So that explanation is that, you know, laughter is providing an important social connecting force between people. Now, those theories are pretty good, but they don't get at

what I think is the most important provoker of laughter. My own personal theory, when we encounter something that we recognize as instantly true, but it comes to us as a surprise when we weren't expecting it or when it's the first time that we thought of it, well, then we tend to laugh. And I've built, as you might be able to tell, my entire career around this version of laughter. But again, my theory doesn't encompass every single type of laughter out there. So it seems like there is something deeper and bigger that laughter is that we just have trouble getting our arms around. But whatever it is, we know that it is something so basic to us. Now, I know my theory doesn't cover every type of laughter either, but it's at least a start

at understanding this thing that is so basic to us and that yet we understand so little. So here on the show today, we are going to dive even deeper into an investigation of what the fuck laughter is and why the hell we do it. And we have a great guest to bring us on that journey. She's a psychoanalyst and she's the author of the new book, Animal Joy, a book of laughter and resuscitation. Please welcome Noir Alsader. Noir, thank you so much for being on the show. My pleasure. I'm excited to be here. on the show. My pleasure. I'm excited to be here. So you are a poet. You're a psychoanalyst. You have a new book out about laughter. And you also spent some time in clown school. A lot of these topics are really interesting to me as a comedian. Where should we start? What made you write this

book? I, of course, because I'm a psychoanalyst, want to ask you about your being a comedian and your interest in laughter. Of course, that's horrible to flip it on to you since you're the interviewer, but it's a conversation, right? Makes it an interesting conversation. I'm happy to have it be flipped on to me, but get a little more specific in your question, though. What's your interest in laughter? Because you said before we started recording that it's a subject that's close to your heart. Well, my entire job is to provoke laughter in people. I mean,

I also do other things, right? Sometimes I describe, you know, my training as a comedian. First, you learn how to make people laugh and then you have to learn how to make people give a shit and you have to learn, you know, what to talk about and, and, you know, the topics that you cover that are actually gonna make people interested other than just making people laugh. But the first job is still to provoke the physical response from people over and over again. And in fact, the, the kind of comedy that I enjoy doing the most, standup comedy, requires me to cause people to laugh, to make a whole room make the same sound with a frequency of a couple times a minute, you know, every 20 seconds or so. If people don't laugh, they get uncomfortable in a stand-up comedy show. It's like one of the rules of the medium is that there be

constant laughter, and if that's not happening, people are unhappy, and the show is a failure. You know, I grade myself by how much laughter I get like sometimes people will come up to me and say oh the show was good and I'm like yeah it was fine you know it was it was good because I know that I didn't squeeze enough laughter out of them that the jokes have hit harder on other nights etc um and so yeah that's that's my whole job but at the same time I don't think I understand very much what laughter is or what it's for. You know, like why certain concepts and certain ways of being presented concepts in a particular order and with a particular rhythm cause us to have a physical reaction that is sometimes uncontrollable. Right.

And that we also seek out. We don't generally seek. I guess sometimes we seek out crying. People do go to sad movies on purpose and they like to cry, but it's a little bit less common, I guess, than going out to want to, you know, be forced to make this sound over and over again. And I'm going on a little bit, but maybe this last bit will help frame it. I used to do a joke in my act about how if people wanted to laugh, they could just do it all by themselves at any time. They could just sit at home and go, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, if they felt like it. But they don't want that. They want to go somewhere and be forced to laugh. They want someone else to make them make the sound

that they like. And my joke is that, you know, like it's, it's like masturbation. It doesn't feel as good if you're doing it yourself, you want someone else to make you do it. You know, you want like that, that makes it more exciting. So that's my interest area. Those are all my, the things I know about laughter, but I, it leaves me with so many more questions. Well, scientists divide laughter into two main categories. Of course, it's not a strict divide. It's not binary. But the two categories are Duchenne and non-Duchenne, named after a neurophysiologist. And basically, Duchenne laughter is that full-bodied fit of laughter where you can't stop.

Your stomach starts cramping, tears run down your face, you sometimes lose total control of the sounds coming out of your body. That's Duchenne, and that's body-driven. Non-Duchenne is intellectual, and it's usually is intellectual and it's usually interpersonal. It's a communication outside of speech about a relationship. Like this is friendly. I'm happy to see you. All good here. Don't be nervous or go easy on me. I'm nervous. And 90% of the laughter that people use on a daily basis is non-douchen. Right. That's most of my laughter on this show. A lot of times when I laugh on the show, sometimes it's because something really genuinely struck me as funny,

but a lot of times it's like I'm simply adding emotional fluidity to the conversation. I'm helping everything move by communicating you know, uh, by communicating in this audio format that we're on that I'm enjoying what's being said and I'm enjoying the presence of the other person and I'm listening and et cetera. Like, you know, it's just good interpersonally to be laughing a lot, even, you know, regardless of whether or not something is funny. Yeah. You're signaling positive feeling and a positive reaction to what you're hearing. And it brings out a more comfortable guest, I'm sure. They're able to speak more easily.

And that was an example. Hear my laugh right there? That was it. I was like, oh yes, it does, it does. And when I started doing my research, it was really Duchenne laughter I was interested in because it's an escape from the unconscious. And I'm a psychoanalyst. And so I'm really interested in the unconscious.

You can't get at the unconscious directly only through its derivatives, like a slip of the tongue, parapraxis, which is ways in which we mess things up, we forget, we bungle actions. ways in which we mess things up, we forget, we bungle actions. Those reveal some deep-seated meaning that you can analyze and figure out. But non-Duchenne laughter is on the surface. It's social. We know what it's about. So in searching for Duchenne laughter, I went out into the world and I went to stand up. I went to improv shows, storytelling, and I was listening to the people on stage as much as I was paying attention to the audience to see when people really laughed, what made them really laugh? And what I realized was that people laughed most frequently when the person was saying something that was deeply human, something honest, almost something you would say in therapy. had been different, many of the texts on stage could have been the texts of a therapy session. So I was totally confused and excited to realize that there's some connection between being real

and people laughing. And that's what led me to clown school. Because clown is the extreme of that where when you're the clown on stage, you can't try to make someone laugh. Because people sniff it out and it's really unappealing if somebody's trying to make you laugh. You can't use something you've used in the past. And you can't lead with an idea. You have to go on stage and see what comes out of you and lead with the body. And the times that you generally make the audience laugh are not when you're being funny, but when you're being honest. And that was mind blowing for me, because I realized that that it's a form of connection, but it's also a form of really primal, primitive communication, laughter. And so we sometimes laugh because something is funny,

but most often when we're really laughing, Duchenne laughter, it's not rational, it's not logical. It's this escape from this primal part of ourselves, which the psychoanalyst Winnicott would call the true self. He says the true self is in every infant when they're born. It's this wellspring of spontaneous creative energy that the infant will express in these spontaneous gestures and sounds.

And if the mother, he makes it very gendered. It's an infant and a mother. Of course, we know it could be any parent. If the mother responds, then the infant feels free to express themselves. Whereas if the mother corrects the expression, like instead of the infant saying mama, or saying if the infant says something that sounds like mama, like muah, and the mother cracks it and says, mama, mama, and then the infant says, mama, and the mother starts clapping, then the infant will learn to give the mother what she wants from it in order to get love.

And that's the birth of the false self. So we all have these true selves that are deep inside of us, the spontaneous wellspring of creative energies, and we have the false self that if I tried to use my intellect, it would flop. Or if I tried to be funny, I wouldn't make anyone laugh. But if I was completely honest and I really reached deep inside myself and just expressed myself with whatever impulse came out, I would usually make the audience laugh. There's a lot in what you said that I really relate to as a comedian. And first of all, let me just say this is my first time talking to someone from the psychoanalytic tradition on this show. So it's very cool to hear you, you know, talk about just, just the insights coming from that, you know, field of the understanding of the human mind. Cause I've talked to psychologists and neuroscientists and,

you know, like that, but this is a, a somewhat different tradition. Um, and so it's, uh, it's really cool to, to get that frame. Um, but you know, I think often about, yeah, that full body laughter, you know, and one of the weird, uh, frustrating things about being a comedian, a standup comedian specifically is it's very, very difficult to get people into that D. I know what that state feels like. That's when I start falling out of my chair and I'm covering my eyes and I'm spasming. It's the best feeling, right? When something is funny. But it's very, very hard to get someone to feel that way with prepared material

as a stand-up comedian. You can't. Unfortunately, you have to prepare most of your material because you're doing an hour at a time if you're headlining. But you get frustrated because you're like, I spent all this time writing these jokes and these jokes are what I care about the most. But then when some random event happened in the room and I commented on it, right? When like somebody did something weird in the crowd and I commented on it or, you know, some other strange thing occurred and i was in the moment that's when

everybody laughed and you're like well i wasn't in control of that you know that was just like some bullshit crowd work that i did or whatever you know um and uh what i often think about that tension is that as a comedian you like okay doing comedy in front of people is one of the most unnatural acts, you know, you're, you're standing up in front of hundreds of people, and you are trying to pretend as though you're having a natural conversation with a single person, and you're trying to make it sound completely off the cuff, and completely, like, but at the same time, it has to be prepared, you know, and a lot of comedians often have this feeling of like my, the self that I am just talking to my friends is funnier than the prepared material I'm doing on stage. And so a huge, like,

I often think the whole challenge of doing standup comedy is getting back to your natural funny self in the most unnatural of environments. When I'm telling people how to do, how to do standup comedy, I'm like, imagine that you're at a party and you're just talking to a couple friends and you're making them laugh with a funny story everybody has had that experience and that's sort of the so you know you're doing you're not trying to perform you're just sort of like naturally making people laugh and finding the the funny and so you're you're trying to re-find that natural funny self in the most unnatural environment possible and it's almost it's incredibly difficult and it takes often like decades you know if someone's been doing stand-up comedy for five years I can tell because they're usually over prepared you

know if someone's been doing it for 20 they've maybe found that natural self that uh you know and it feels all natural and easy on stage. What you described. I don't know. That's what you said made me think of, is that related all to what you found in your own work. What you described when you responded to something someone did in the audience shows that you're alive and you're actually there and you're not just an automaton standing up reciting jokes.

And in clown school, whenever you flop, which is, of course, so often, you're trying to do something, it's not working, the audience isn't laughing, they're staring at you, the thing to do is to acknowledge the flop because then you're real again. You're not this actor on stage pretending to be something you're not or get a reaction, but you're yourself. You're an authentic person. And then the audience is with you again. You have to keep moving and you can't just follow a script because

to follow a script is to fall into something that is stagnant and fixed. And we have social scripts that we're unconsciously picking up and following all day, every day, we step into a situation and our unconscious gets a cue and we take up a role and we play the part without even realizing it and then we move on. So it's a relief to have a scenario where you're stripped of those scripts and you see someone on stage being a real human being with real emotions and reactions. And that isn't

necessarily humorous, but we can mark the feeling of genuineness with laughter. Yeah. It's yeah. I think of like the most I ever laughed watching a stand-up comedy show it was a show which some friends of mine were performing it was in a backyard um and uh so my friend one of my friends chris thayer a wonderful comedian was on stage you have to imagine we're in a backyard in los angeles and we're on a hillside so there's a gigantic retaining wall behind the backyard right um because like two stories up there was a street up there. And we're doing an outdoor comedy show. And what happened is somebody on the street, like this old dude up there who like lived in one of the adjoining buildings,

was annoyed that there was a stand-up comedy show happening beneath him. And so he starts walking up and down and filming the show on his iPhone, you know, like as though he's going to send it to the cops or something to say there's a there's a comedy show happening in my neighbor's yard and I'm annoyed. And Chris like turns to him and is like, hey, man, what's up? And the guy's like, yeah, keep making jokes, you know, or whatever. Like they have this bizarre interaction and the audience lost our minds because this guy somehow became part of the show like he didn't realize he was on stage because he was in front of us we were all looking at him and the and chris just like wove him in and was like oh hey hey man what what you doing up there you know and and it was like the it was the most bizarre thing i'd ever seen theatrically

and it made me again, fall out of my chair. You know, it made me, it made like all my muscles lose, go slack. I was laughing so hard. Um,

I can picture it so vividly in my mind. I don't remember a single other joke Chris told that day. Unfortunately, apologies to him, but it was because it was this spontaneous event where everyone was just being that Chris was being himself. The, event where everyone was just being that chris was being himself that we the crowd were being ourselves the guy up on the street was being himself um and and uh there there was like a weird moment of absurdity yet truth to it you know

and maybe his turning to the guy and saying hey what's up man was a spontaneous gesture from his true self. He was just being real. And there is, there is so much beauty in that and that he's alive and he's actually present and not just this machine who's going to recite the script of jokes. And that's a relief to people. It's a relief to be around people who

are real and alive. And I think that's even a relief in psychoanalysis, because the only rule in psychoanalysis is that you're supposed to say whatever comes into your mind. And if you actually follow your connections and associations as they occur to you, you land inevitably at revelation. But you have to believe in it. This is so fascinating, but we have to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Noir Al-Sadir. Okay, we're back with more noir, Alcideer. So you write in your book about Nietzsche and laughter, I believe,

who I read Nietzsche in, I've said on the show many times, I'm very blessed to have a bachelor's degree in philosophy, all right? So I'm really learned on this topic. And I did read in one semester, we had one unit on Nietzsche, which I barely understood because I was 19 years old. But he's not often thought of as being the funniest guy in the room, you know, more like a sickly individual who lived in who was bedridden and then died of syphilis. So what what do we what did he have to say about laughter? What I take from Nietzsche has less to do with what he says explicitly about laughter than some of his philosophy about how to live your life. For example, he says, become the one you are. And I love that because it is very much like Winnicott's idea of a true self. The one you are is already inside of you. And your goal should be to become that person,

not to become some other person and to have the guide be your true self as opposed to the false self that you develop and decorate over years in social contexts. And that was a real mantra for me for a long time, become the one you are. I also love the way it's counterintuitive because why is it futile to become what you already are? But intuitively, we all know it's true. We can kind of forget or we can lose touch with that essential core self within us. And it's not a self like an identity. It really is a wellspring of energies. And you know when you're in touch with it. And I think that the moments when you are able to have a fit of Duchenne laughter, those moments are usually the ones where you're surrounded by people who know you in your most fundamental form. And so oftentimes those fits are around

old friends, friends from adolescence, family, someone you haven't seen in a long time, but knew really well when you were a kid. Those sorts of relationships are relationships that are usually formed during a period when the false self is less developed. It takes time to get that close to people in adult life because we're so good at presenting a front. Yeah. And it also makes me think of uh you every time you say true self it makes me think of one of my uh favorite uh quotations from george carlin from the book that he wrote before he died and i'm gonna you know mangle the the quotation because this is the version i've been repeating for years but he he says when people are are laughing that is when they are most their true selves and all their defenses are down. And the point that when people are laughing that hard

when a comedian is talking, it's because the thing the comedian is saying is somehow hitting the person's true self. They're like, yes, I do feel that. I do believe that. This person has put words to something I have always felt but never had a name for that I always thought was funny or absurd about them,

even if it's something dumb about the grocery store or whatever, it's like, yes, I've had that thought before, I were, your self is interacting with myself, and yeah, so I, and it's funny, because that, that line that you said, become the one you are, sounds, yeah, it sounds self-contradictory, except yes, I know exactly what you're talking talking about it connects exactly to my own journey as a comedian which often seems like a an attempt to get back to my real self or to find who i actually am and put it on stage for people and it's interesting what you describe matches up with a neurological explanation for what happens when someone laughs at a comedian on stage. Really? Yeah, because our mirror neurons fire

when a feeling we see outside of ourselves resonates with a feeling we know. But when our... And so basically, if I'm watching you, you say something, and it makes my mirror neurons fire, I feel the feeling that I perceive you to be feeling inside myself as though it were my own. And our mirror neurons, the same mirror neurons fire whether an experience originates in someone else or whether it originates in us. So we actually have the capacity to feel someone else's feeling inside ourselves as though it were our own.

And we recognize it with laughter. It's not always that it's funny. not always that it's funny. That's the really interesting thing I learned in Clown, is that what makes us laugh hardest isn't always humorous. In fact, it often isn't humorous. It's human. Yeah. And the recognition of our ability to let our true selves out and let the false self like armor fall to the floor is laughter. And laughter is very vulnerable because you don't have control over your body. You don't have composure. The sounds one makes, the way your face looks, it's not, The sounds one makes, the way your face looks, it's not, you know, it's. And part of that is the open mouth of laughter because we're exposing our interior to others. The only part of our interior we reveal to others is our skeleton when we laugh.

our skeleton when we laugh. Okay, that was a real laugh on my part because it was a surprising, a surprising truth. Ben, I revealed my skeleton to you. You saw some of my teeth in the back of my throat over the Zoom connection. That is really strange. And it is the case that in, you know, a lot of cultures today, people, it's common for people to cover their mouths when they laugh to sort of hide away a little bit. And yeah, the obvious connotation of that would be that you're revealing something of yourself when you laugh. And so for reasons of dignity or whatever, modesty, you might at least put a gesture towards covering it up a little bit. Is there a connection there as well? That's true. And it goes in a few directions. It's also considered obscene laughter because when you see someone laugh, it's infectious. You laugh yourself. And that has to do with this mirror networking process where your mirror neurons fire, someone's laughing, you feel the laughing feeling inside yourself, you start to laugh as well.

that is similar to other kinds of reactions. Like if someone's watching porn and they see someone having sex and they feel that feeling inside themselves as though it's their own, that's similar. And so it was considered obscene also because you don't have control, intellectual, rational control over your body, your body takes over and it makes you vulnerable to feeling things you may be forbidden to feel, or you may be told are unacceptable. Yeah. I'm also curious though about, so we also have this desire to gather together in groups and all do it simultaneously even though it's it's a loss of control right and and let's be clear you you made the comparison to someone watching pornography or or a sexual response to a stimulus and i feel that

that's the case but people don't get together in large groups to watch porn generally they did at one point when we had you know porn movie theaters across the country. But those quickly went by the wayside once people could do that in the privacy of their own homes. Right. It's it's kind of uncommon now for people to get together in mass sexual release. And that might be for particular mores and and norms around sex. But we do it specifically with laughter. And something that I find really interesting, I think, about a lot as a comedian is, you know, people really lose their individuation when they are in that large group. When you are a comedian,

you're talking to the audience, you're talking to the whole audience as a single mind. And in fact, your goal is to make sure they stay united. If one table gets distracted and they're talking, you have to address that as a comedian because they've become, you know, separated from the rest of the group and it's going to distract other people and they're not going to laugh. And so you need to go, no, focus up on me and forget your selfhood for a moment and become part of the group mind, you know, and then, you know, part of my goal, I often think is to get the only way to get people to laugh is to get everybody to have the same thought simultaneously and for them to all find that thought funny. Right. And then they all will

laugh in unison. But so I'm curious if there's any in your work, any any thought that you put into that idea of, you know, that group mind that we form and the way that we sort of, you know, the bonds of our own identity become kind of permeable and loose in that environment and why we might crave that. The philosopher George Bataille talks about the secret channels of communication that are opened up through laughter or excitement as obscene. It is about this bodily communication. We become almost like animals, and our bonding is animalistic because it's unconscious and it's happening bodily, not rationally.

And it's also interesting because there's, I'm thinking about the first thing you said when you were talking about people getting together in groups to laugh. The groups are, the group is organized around one person on stage. And I think that's important. Also, there's this British philosopher, Alistair Clarke has a theory called the pattern recognition theory of humor. And his idea about stand-up is that there's this thing called it's so true humor. And what happens is when an audience member hears a comedian on stage, and it's a lot like completing a puzzle. So if you're completing a puzzle and you put the last piece of the puzzle in, you feel a cognitive pleasure, like an aha moment that you mark with laughter. But there's nothing that's funny.

And there are ways in which when we hear a joke and we get it, we're supplying a piece to the puzzle of the joke and there's a cognitive pleasure as well as whatever is going on in the content of the joke. Some kinds of jokes require us to supply that piece to complete the joke from our unconscious, those are the ones that are going to get the biggest laugh because something that's been repressed is released and that always is accompanied with a release of energy. But oftentimes what we pull out of ourselves to complete the joke is something that we might not connect with our idea of who we are. It may be offensive in some way or it may be problematic in the way we would choose to think if we had power over ourselves. And if a comedian is on stage making the joke that prompts us to pull this piece out of our unconscious and release it, we can get the pleasure, but we can connect the piece to the comedian and the comedian's joke and not to ourselves.

And so we're not responsible. You can disavow what's inside of you by saying, oh no, that's the comedian. It's not me. Even though in order to get the joke, you're required to participate. You can't get a joke without participating. Yeah. Uh, wow. That is a very interesting set of theories, uh,, yeah, there's a lot of comedy where, you know, people laugh at things that, quote unquote, they're not supposed to laugh at. What I love about, and that's a whole, you know, that's a whole part of comedy. It's a whole thing that people enjoy that comedy does. I don't think that's close to being all of comedy, but there are comedians who focus specifically on that emotion what i like that way you put it centers is the complicity of the audience member

in it that even though you're like oh i'm just like you know as soon as the comedian will be going i'm not hey i'm i'm not saying it or whatever it's you know that kind of everyone's disclaiming what's going on but at the same time uh everyone has to contribute to it for the joke to work. You have to make that little leap at the end yourself. Yeah. And if you wanted to get Duchenne laughter out of people, you would want to go for some kind of joke that would cause them to pull something repressed out of their unconscious. joke that would cause them to pull something repressed out of their unconscious because it requires energy to keep something under repression. It's like a beach ball. You know, you can hold it underwater for so long, but then eventually it's going to pop out somewhere,

but with great energy. And so if you hold something in repression, it requires energy. And that energy, if it gets released, if the thing that's repressed gets released, is also released. And so there's this release that is, you know, almost orgasmic. And that's what Duchenne laughter can feel like as well. It can feel almost orgasmic. It's so pleasurable. And it is a release. And it's also a way of getting something out of you. In the same way, the primary function of tears is to wash out some foreign particle from the eye, or vomiting is to get something bad for you that's inside of you outside laughter also spits out it it gets something out of you bodily and a lot of the feeling that you have of the sore stomach muscles after laughing laughing is a lot like the feeling after vomiting yeah Yeah. I'm so curious about you as someone who has studied laughter and then attempted to do comedy yourself in clown school. I am always encouraging people to do comedy. Like,

you know, we've had, we have a culture where people sort of know they can take an improv class. Non-comedians know, Oh, I can take an improv class and it'll be kind of like taking a yoga class and it'll get out of my comfort zone, da-da-da-da-da. That sprung up around America.

But people often say, oh, I could never do stand-up comedy. And I always say, do it. Give it a try. There's an open mic in your city. Go and just try and you'll find it interesting. It's a little frightening. In your first time, I always tell people you'll either bomb or you'll kill. And then your second time, you'll do it interesting. You'll find, you know, it's a little frightening. You, you'll, in your first time, I always tell people you'll either bomb or you'll kill. And then your second time you'll do the opposite. You know, you'll, people's first two times, they tend to have one

than the other. But if you bomb, you'll learn, oh, that didn't kill me. You know, you'll, it feels like shit. It feels real bad to bomb. But you'll know what that feels like. And you'll have the experience of doing it. And, you know, a lot of people are just oh no no I could never never never it's a lot of people's greatest fear so I'm very curious what your experience was like as a as a I assume you would call yourself a non-performer and and you're I am a non-performer yeah so what was it like for you to do, for you to actually perform in that context? Well, at first it was horrific and exactly the way you're describing, because I didn't, I didn't know how to do it. And I'm used to knowing how to do everything I do. And it's, knowing how to do everything I do. And it's very distant from childhood where you try things. I mean, if you asked a kid to do clown, it would be really easy for them because they're always

trying to do things they don't know how to do. But after a while, you get good at the things you're good at, you get better at the things you're good at, and then you forget about everything else. And you don't really try that many new things. So part of it was just really having forgotten how to be on stage. But also, I'm not someone who considers myself funny. And when I do make people laugh, it's never because I wanted to. It's usually I'm saying something that is really from the heart and super genuine, feeling it really deeply. And then suddenly everyone's laughing and I don't know why they're laughing. So that's the kind of humor I have. It's the, I guess it's the, it's so true humor, but I don't realize that I'm being funny because I'm not trying to be funny. I'm actually being real. So once I was able to tap

into that in clown, it was okay. Yeah. Clown is so interesting because it's such a deep, rich tradition of how to make people laugh. And yet it's one that's also almost never performed in contemporary America. Like it's a very historical, historical is the wrong word, because it is still performed. No insult to the clowns out there. But, you know, it's a theatrical tradition. So what made you choose clowning over taking an improv class or a sketch comedy writing workshop or something like that. I agree with you. It's not like in the French tradition, it's not performed here. In the French tradition, it's performed much more. Here we see birthday party clowns or it's a very different

thing. When I talk about clown, I'm talking about the tradition that comes from Lecoq and Goliad and many actors train in clown, but then not necessarily to go on and do comedy. Often they're trying to get in touch with that wellspring of creative forces. I started to do clown because of that curiosity I had with why people laughed when they laughed when I went to hear different kinds of shows and how it seemed like it was most often when someone was honest. And I didn't quite understand what that was about. Why are we laughing? Because this person is being honest. And I didn't quite understand what that was about. Why are we laughing? Because this person is being honest. Why, why is that funny to us? Yeah. Well, I can't wait to keep talking about this, but we have to take another short break. We'll be right back with more Noir Al-Sadir. okay we're back with noir also dear um so do you feel that you know look my field comedy is like a little bit uh you know it's not taken that seriously in society you know what i mean like the comedies never win the oscars um the the emmy for best comedy nobody cares as much as the dramas. The dramas are the crown jewel, you know.

And even comedies themselves often, I think, don't put enough primacy on the laugh, on causing people to laugh over and over again. Most, you know, comedies you watch on television or in films now don't try to make you laugh over and over again, you know, on a repeated basis. The laugh track is gone from television, you know, on a repeated basis. The laugh track has gone from television, you know, with the exception of the Night Court reboot, which is excellent. So do you feel that we don't take laughter seriously enough as a society? I would agree with that. I think the laugh track is really interesting since you mentioned it. The original laugh track was developed to become infectious and to cause people to laugh, to sweeten moments when there wasn't laughter or de-sweeten moments when laughter went on too long or was weird. Because laughter can get weird. Sometimes a laugh that goes on really long can be awkward.

But it was to control the audience's response. awkward, but it was to control the audience's response. And I think that the kind of laughter you're talking about is the laughter that isn't controlling the audience, but it's releasing them into a state of freedom, a freedom of expression. And professional mourners are a lot like professional laughers. And professional mourners are hired at funerals that have been for centuries to laugh in a certain way at funerals so that the laugh. I mean, I'm so sorry. Is that why they hire professional mourners? I mean, look, when I die, please hire some people to show up to my funeral and laugh. That's what I would love.

That would be hilarious. You know, Freud writes about how common laughter is at funerals. It's so common that someone will break into hysterical laughter at a funeral. And it's really complicated. There are different reasons why. To finish the professional mourners thought, and then I can go back to this, professional mourners are hired at funerals, not professional laughers, in order to cry in a certain way so that they curate the emotion of the crowd. because sometimes the way people cry can get out of control or it can

move in a direction that doesn't feel right or good or appropriate or it's too upsetting. And so it appeals to the bodies of the mourners and pulls them in a particular direction. of the mourners and pulls them in a particular direction. There also might be people who want the social license of having other people crying in the same space in order for them to cry. So maybe you've got a funeral where everyone's eyes are too dry and you need someone to sort of get the lawnmower started

with the crying, you know, and, you know, oh, this person's crying now, I can cry as well. And that's the same with professional laughers. Sometimes the laugh can get the laugh going. What's really interesting is I was listening to, I was watching different shows, more recent shows that had laugh tracks. And there aren't that many anymore. We don't really use laugh tracks.

But one show, the Jamie Kennedy experiment, uses a laugh track. It's not that recent, but I find it really funny. So I was watching it. And what I noticed was that sometimes the laughter occurs by a specific person in order to also give permission to laugh about something. So a really loud female laugh may erupt when there's something that's potentially misogynistic, and it almost signals to female viewers that it's okay to laugh. Or someone who might question the appropriateness gets an unconscious signal that it's okay.

There's a woman laughing at it. So it's okay. Women are okay with this. Yeah. It's also true that you say we don't use laugh tracks that often. It's true. There were shows, I think, especially in the 60s and 70s that used specifically recordings of laughter as a cheat, but now it's more often to have a studio audience and you know you just like get them all in the right headspace to laugh when you want them to sort of on command and then you sweeten it in the edit you know I've done that myself I did a live special in 2016 and you know I remember being in the edit bay and being like, hold on a second, the audio of our laugh wasn't enough that we captured on the day.

I've done this show 30 times on the road. I know that should have a bigger laugh. Let's sweeten it a little bit because it just deserves, that's the big punchline and it normally works all the time but this time the crowd was a little bit off. Let's just boost it up a little bit. It's like that sort of thing.

It's rarely totally fake. It's a matter of representing to the audience what the laugh should actually be so they're able to follow along. And people think it's weird when the laugh isn't there. I have a couple recordings of me performing live on YouTube where the audience is miked very quietly and I didn't have the power to boost it. And people go, why is the audience not laughing at this? It's strange. You know, like they should be laughing more. Yeah, well, they were too. It was, you know, they were not mic'd properly, unfortunately. Sorry,

you were going to say something. I was just going to say that different laughs, there are laugh sounds within laughter and different laugh sounds communicate different meaning, almost like speech. And I was wondering whether when you sweetened it, you thought about the kind of laugh you included or if you just included laughs. Yeah, no, I mean, the specific kind of laugh that people have at a specific moment is there's a whole lot of information in it. Like there's there's laughs that people do, you know, when you're doing comedy stand up, for instance. Like there's if you say something really funny, here's the big moment. You'll get a big shock of laughter when something hits people shockingly.

And then you'll often do a tag on the joke right and there'll be another laugh after that and that's sort of a continuing follow-up following up laugh it sounds completely different from the first one um but it's you know we're sort of just sort of finishing the thought it's like follow through on a golf swing or something you know um and if you were to transpose those two laughs it would sound completely unnatural and so yeah it is. I don't know how to describe them. I mean, probably if someone who is, you know, the audio editor on a, you know, for a late night show probably has names for what all these different laughs sound like.

But, you know, I don't I don't particularly have them. But, yeah, they have totally different characters to them. And, you know, you can tell the number of people in a space and, you know, how connected they are. There's a reason a lot of stand up comedians have been going back to doing taping their specials in smaller rooms, in smaller comedy clubs rather than big arenas. comedy clubs rather than big arenas because in a big arena or a big theater, you only get a certain kind of laugh, like this sort of loud, large, mass group laugh, whereas in a smaller space, you can get these like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, you know, of a sort of boisterous, you know, boisterous space. The sound of the laugh is so important to the comedians. I mean, like we really obsess over, you want a space with low ceilings because you want the laughs to bounce back to the audience as soon as they laugh.

If the ceilings are too high, they get lost. Lots of stuff like that. And if they get lost, then the audience doesn't laugh as much, you know? Like, the laughter breeds more laughter. So you need it to bounce around. And, you know, you need people to be able to hear themselves laughing if you want them to laugh more. So all these weird details to it that audiences never really think of but that comedians are obsessed with in clown we thought a lot about where in the body the laugh was coming

from whether it was coming from the gut or whether it was high in the throat And that is also really important. I would imagine in a smaller space, people would laugh more also because it's more embodied. Your body is closer. Their bodies are present and visible. Whereas sometimes in a big auditorium, you kind of feel invisible and you're so far from the person that you're watching them on a screen. It's almost like being over Zoom. They're projected. And that just feels so different. The embodiment is totally the way to put it. I mean, the best, you know, the most I've ever had people laugh at a set of mine was when I, you know, was doing shows back in New York City. And there were venues where, you know, the audience would be very shallow. It would only be like four rows of people, but they'd be around you in a semicircle in a very small room and

people would be packed in, you know, and when you would get a laugh, it was just like a little, a mini explosion inside of a, you know, setting off a bomb in a garbage can, you know, it was just like poof, right on top of you, and, you know, people felt it really physically, and it felt like you were right there with the audience, the audience was right there with the comedian, whereas some of the worst shows I did, there was the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater used to have a space that was in an old movie theater, and it was this New York City movie theater where it was this it was this new york city movie theater where it was really long like it was only you know the the it was only like six columns of chairs but like you know 30 or 40 rows back and so people would sit in the back and they'd scroll on their phones you know they'd be like oh i'm watching this like i'm in a movie theater and the space of the room made them behave

differently um than they would have if they had been in that other room. That's a real practical consideration that all comedians know. But the way that you put it, I, you're embodied. That is exactly why. That's the psychoanalyst talking, I guess. I think also that would carry to a subway car, because if you're on the subway and you see someone laugh, it's impossible not to laugh, having no idea what they're laughing at. And it has so much to do with being stuck in a car and close to their body. But even though you're pretending not to look and you

don't have any knowledge of what they're finding funny, your body can't help but respond. Yeah. So does this make you, I'm so happy that in order to research this, you went out and watched so much comedy. Does this make you feel any differently now when you, when you go to a comedy show or do you have any thoughts for, uh, how people might, might bring a little more mindfulness to their laughter and get a little bit more something out of it the

next time that they're in a laughter, uh, provoking scenario? Well, I suppose you would probably get the most as a, as an audience member, you'd probably laugh the most if you went to the show with someone you were really comfortable with that would make a big difference and someone who laughs a lot this is why people shouldn't go on first dates this is the big problem, people go to comedy shows on first dates and they feel tentative

big mistake yeah, big mistake and I think if you're the comedian if you want the really big, explosive Duchenne laughs, you probably want to somehow make people pull things out of their unconscious to complete jokes or to resonate with something that's really deep in them and that will get the deepest laugh but this is difficult as a comedian because how don't i then need to delve into my own unconscious to find what that thing is and how do i do that uh the best and most important question oh so this is true of writing as well. So I'm a writer as well. So as a writer, if I want to move my reader, and I think moving a reader is the equivalent to making the audience

laugh in comedy. So if I want to move my reader, I can't do it by targeting my reader or writing something that I think they'll find moving. I have to, in the writing process, be moved myself. that emotion of mine will transmit to them, make their mirror neurons fire. So they feel that feeling inside themselves as though it's their own. And that's when they feel moved. And so as a comedian, you would need to reach into your own unconscious, say something that is truer than true for you, and really pull something out that maybe has been repressed or has some energy release with it to bring it out into the open. They'll witness that and they'll feel that feeling inside themselves and pull something out of themselves in responding to it.

Yeah, how do I, this is really helpful to me because I'm currently writing new stand-up material that I'm bringing on the road. Go to adamconover.net slash tourdates to see when I'm going to be near you. But how do I then,

how do I make that investigation? Like what's the first step of finding that bit of unconsciousness to share with the audience? Because, you know, I mean, it's hard to access, right? That's unconscious for a reason. Yeah, and this is the psychoanalytic aspect. You can't get at the unconscious directly. You can only get at it through its derivatives, what pops out.

The only way you can try to get at it would be to pay attention to dreams, when you slip up, when you make a mistake, when you forget something. You can also look deep within. You know, you can ask. I mean, obviously, the best thing would be to go into analysis, but short of that, you could ask yourself, what is the last thing you would want to talk about on stage? What is the thing you absolutely do not want to talk about? It's not that you have to talk about that, but you have to be in touch with that. And then if you're in touch with what you know you don't want to talk about, you'll free the way for what you don't know you don't want to talk about to come through. But you have to go through some process of discovery for the audience to go through some process of discovery.

That is so true, and it's so hard to do. It's so hard to half the time that I'm writing, you're trying to squeeze jokes out, and you're like, well, I got a laugh, but it still wasn't quite the kind of laugh that I'm writing, you know, I'm trying, you're trying to squeeze jokes out and you're like, well, this, I got a laugh, but it still wasn't quite the kind of laugh that I wanted. It's such a journey and a struggle always. I think that's what keeps me coming back to it over and over again. But this gives me some really wonderful juice to take to my next writing session. Noire, this has been so wonderful talking to you. How can people follow you? And please tell us the name of the book. Once again, my book is called animal joy, a book of laughter and resuscitation.

And, um, I'm not a big social media person. I'm, but you can, you can buy the book and you can, I don't know, hopefully get better laughs, pull better laughs out of yourself after reading it. Well, as always, you can pick up a copy of the book at factuallypod.com slash books. Noire, thank you so much for being here. It's been such a wonderful conversation. And by the way, I think we got a lot of good belly laughs out of each other, too. I think we got a lot of good belly laughs out of each other too i think we genuinely did for instance when you said let's just point out when you said uh professional laughers at funerals right that was it was unplanned there's a bit of truth there and we

both we both lost it at that moment i bet a lot of the people listening did as well and that proves your point doesn't it yeah and i think if I were to do a joke, maybe I would, and you're welcome to it, I would put professional laughers at funerals. See what came out. Why is it such a human thing to laugh at funerals? It's fascinating. I mean, Freud wrote about it.

It's so common that he even investigated it himself. But thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you so much to Noir Alsader for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of her book, you can get it at factuallypod.com slash books. I want to thank our producer, Sam Rodman, our engineer, Kyle McGraw, and everybody who supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon. I'm going to read out some of your names.

We got Ask, we got Ghost, we got Francisco Ojeda, Dark Avenger, yet another Mike, Pat, Hayden Matthews, Eric Zeger, Jen Hoffman, Smitzel, Rick Staton, Blake Kolb, Robert Irish, James Lynch, and Chris Parker. If you want to join their ranks, head to Patreon.com

slash Adam Conover, and I thank you for doing it. Thank you to the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC that I record every episode of this show for you on. You can find me online at adamconover.net where all my tour dates are. Please come see me live and at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you next time on Factually. I don't know anything Starbends Audio A podcast

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