Stuff You Should Know - Laughter: What's so funny about that?

Episode Date: August 11, 2011

The response to humor starts with electrical activity, potentially translating to physical responses that make up laughter. Science still can't pin down what makes one thing amusing and another not (which is pretty funny). Tune in to learn more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hey. Hey. Yeah. You have tape on your new mic cover. Well, that's because it's mine and mine alone, so I'm going to write Chuck on it at some point. That's going to affect something.

No, it's not. It will. How does he sound, Jerry? I'll screw it up. For those of you that don't know, I got my own microphone cover because all the other ones here smell bad, so I got one to keep in my drawer and it's Chuck's. And I'm paranoid that I'm making the microphone cover smell bad. Well, there's three of them now. Yeah. Well, you keep switching them out and I can't smell it, so I'm like, uh-oh. All right, I got something for you. Speaking of me just laughing right there. You ready for this? Yes. All right. What do you think I have integrity? I'm buying a Cinnabon right now. I'm buying a Cinnabon at the airport that I arrived at. You understand why that's extra disgusting, right? Because when you're leaving, if you're at your

desk, you know, when you're at the airport, you're leaving, you can go like, oh, I gotta eat, I need to do food because I might be trapped in the sky forever and I should eat right now. But this is, I've landed. The trip is over. Not too shabby, Chuck. That's the great Louis C. K. if I'm not mistaken. Yes, who I think is one of the funnier people on the planet today. I agree with you. You know, he started out as a Saturday Night Live writer. It doesn't surprise me. Um, and that was from his, uh, his special, right? Like his, like, uh, what's it called? Chewed up? Yes. Chewed up his standup special. One of his standup specials. It's very good. Uh-huh. Okay. So I've got one for you. Okay. All right. Let me see if I can get

you to laugh here. Listen up, Chuckers. All right. When I finished high school, I wanted to take all my graduation money and buy myself a motorcycle. But my mom said no. See, she had a brother who died in a horrible motorcycle accident when he was 18. And I could just have his motorcycle. That's T. Shabby, huh? Who's that guy? That's Anthony Jezalmick. He's, uh, hilarious. Oh, you saw him live? Yeah. South by Southwest. Oh, okay. That was that guy. So, okay. All right. We're laughing. This is a pretty good, it's a pretty auspicious start to the podcast on how laughter works. Yeah. Now we just have to be as funny as Louie C. K. Yeah. I don't think we should even try. No pressure. Yeah. No, no. I think we should just be ourselves here and explain how

laughter works. Like this is a robust how stuff works article. I thought this was really good, actually. Uh, it was written by Marshall Brain himself. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and he went to town, uh, figuring out exactly how, um, laughter works, why we laugh, and came up with a bunch of really good data on it, which we're going to share here. He gets right into it too. Did you notice that? With the joke? With nothing, man. It was like, oh no. I cut all that out, I think. Oh, you did. You didn't see the joke about Bill Gates and the president and General Motors? Yeah. I cut all that out. No wonder it seemed like he got right into it. Yeah. I cut that part out. Well, yeah. After, after that, after the intro, he does start out with, you know, first of all, laughter is not the

same as humor. No. End quote. Uh, and that's a pretty good point. Laughter is the physiological response to humor, right? That's right. So humor is a joke or, um, Moe Howard slapping Larry Fine. Yeah. Um, whatever is your bag. Tom, you know, chasing Jerry, Jerry makes it into his mouse hole and then Tom smacks his face. Or Moe de Bautenda. Right. That's where I thought you were going when you said Moe. No. Moe Howard. Another funny Moe. That's Moe. What's Moe's last name? Moe de Bautenda. No, he has the last name. Does he? Yeah. Is it like, I don't know what it is. His first name's Moe Mar. I can't remember what his last name is. Yeah, someone will know. Well, anyway, so any of that is humor. And then we respond to it in a certain way. And what's awesome is,

although we can't really say like why things are funny or why we even have a capacity to find things humorous. Yeah. Um, we have a pretty good understanding of what happens in the brain. Right. We do. Um, and we also know that what happens physically, like there's a, there's a cascade of events that takes place in a very unfunny way. Um, that, that starts with your face. Right. That's right. Uh, right off the bat, 15 facial muscles will contract. It's going to stimulate the zygomatic major muscle, which is the apparently the lifting mechanism of your upper lip. Yeah. And think about it when you're trying to stifle after what you're doing is focusing on keeping that muscle from lifting. Yeah. Like closing your mouth. Because once it hits that one point of no

return, you're, you just crack up. That's right. Isn't that crazy? Uh, your respiratory system is upset and your epiglottis apparently half closes your larynx. So that's why you sometimes can't catch your breath. And if you really get going, it's going to activate your tear ducts. That's why you cry with laughter sometimes. Yes. And I guess those happen in a sequence depending on how hard you're laughing. Right. Um, not only that, you talked about the epiglottis closing the larynx, right? I did. So that, that you're trying to gasp for air, which is also why sometimes you can go for a pretty long period of time without making any sound whatsoever. Right. Because your epiglottis has, um, completely closed your larynx. You can't breathe.

That's right. Exactly. But when you're, when you're drawing in and gasping, it makes the laughter sound, right? Or why you snort. Right. Yeah. You don't snort normally when you're walking around. No, it's absolutely true. Um, snort ever when you laugh. Sometimes once in a while. Yeah. Me too. It's funny. It's such an embarrassing thing too. It is. Like you just suddenly like if you go out of your snort. Right. Exactly. I'm proud of when I snort because that means I'm really laughing. Right. Sure. Um, and when I cry, it means I'm really laughing. Oh yeah. It's wonderful. But, um, so when, when we make this, uh, when we're drawing air in, right, to try to survive and live, um, where we make a sound and we make a certain sound. And what I've,

what I found was that it's universal. Uh, ho ho ho. Oh, I thought you meant when you're breathing. Or ha ha ha. That's the laugh. Right. What's crazy is, is it happens like almost universally, people say ha ha ha or ho ho ho. Right. And they deliver that same laugh at about the same rate about every 210 milliseconds. That's right. That's the sonic structure. Yeah. And the H is almost the delivery vehicle for the vowel, either the over the A, the long or the long A, for the short A. I'm a ha ha. I've never paid that much attention to myself. But you don't intermix them ever. No one has ever in the history of humanity ever genuinely intermixed hot and hoe into a real laugh. Isn't that interesting? It is. And you also

have your own signature laugh, just like your voice, uh, is, is your own and your hiccuping pattern is your own. It's, your laugh generally is the same. Yeah. Like it might, might range, but that is your laugh. You're never going to laugh like, wow, that sounded like someone else all of a sudden. Right. Yeah. That'd be weird. Yeah. My signature laugh is pink. It's really, I don't know what that means, but I'm laughing. So, um, well, there, there you go. Then it was, it was successful. Um, and we also apparently humans have some sort of, um, um, laughter detector, uh, that as far as I know, since we call it a laughter detector, it means science hasn't figured out what that is yet. It's because it has to do with the brain,

but just based on observation, um, we have an ability to pick up on other people's laughter. And for some reason that can make us laugh. It's contagious. And as we laugh, it can make the other people laugh and so on. And laughter just kind of keeps going. That's right. Something else interesting about laughter is the more you try to stifle it, say you're trying to really keep your zygomatic major muscle in a relaxed position, the more, the funnier the situation becomes. You know, they call that the church giggles. Sure. I think we've all had those. Even heathens know that it's called the church. Yeah. If you've never sat in footed sided church, you still call it the church giggles. Right. And I have actually gotten the church giggles in church.

Really? Oh yeah. Sure. When I was a kid, I remember being specifically being a teenager this one time. I got the church giggles really bad because something a guest preacher said, he misspoke in a funny way. And it's something you shouldn't have laughed at. And I couldn't help it. And I literally for like, I had to excuse myself. I was the only person that had to get up and leave. Did he shout center at you on your way out? No, no. So one last little universal aspect or pretty much universal aspect of laughter specifically. And we should say like this is based on the article how laughter works, but it includes humor quite a bit as well. Yeah, sure. But laughter specifically, there's this aspect of it called the punctuation effect,

where it doesn't, it doesn't normally, I know what you're saying, I know your idea, but it doesn't normally come in the middle of a sentence. It normally comes at the end of a sentence or the end of a phrase or in a dead space of a period, which hence the name punctuation effect. Yeah, that's one of those things where I was like, do you really need some researcher to tell you that? Like that you laugh after you speak because you can't do both at the same time. No, but I think the point is, is you're not like, most people don't in the middle of a joke laugh and then continue on with the joke and then laugh and then continue on and then deliver the punchline. And if they do, everybody thinks they're a terrible joke teller.

Well, if you're laughing at your own joke anyway, you're probably doing it wrong. Or when Henry Hill and Goodfellas, right, he's just ticking off Joe Pesci. Yeah. And he tells him he's a funny guy and then he's like, what, am I a clown? Do I amuse you? You think I'm funny, right? Yeah. And then like the tension is relieved and he jumps on him or, no, he doesn't jump on him yet. And he goes, you really are a funny guy. And then they start laughing again. He didn't go, you really are and laugh a funny guy. The punctuation effect. Yeah, I think that's lame. Well, okay, let's move on into why we laugh. Like this is a, this is one of the parts where we just don't fully understand.

Well, some people have their ideas. Obviously, it all goes back to tuk-tuk and people think that initially it might have been as a release of tension from the passing of danger. Tuk-tuk and his buddies are sitting around and the saber tooth tiger is nearby and they are all quiet. And then they think maybe laughter started as a relief that the danger is now gone. Right. Or maybe tuk-tuk farted right afterward, which is always funny. Yeah, I guess we had to get one of those in there. Another explanation is that it's a form of social bonding. Sure. That you don't really laugh around people you don't trust. At the very least, don't genuinely laugh around people you don't trust, right? Yeah, you have to be at ease

to laugh. Yes. Generally speaking. It's also a means of asserting dominance. Yeah. As far as I understand that dominant individuals in societies, whether it be human or maybe chimp, the jerks, in other words, tend to create laughter more, but it's not necessarily genuine laughter. Right. It's not comfortable laughter. It's a way of controlling the social climate. But as far as genuine laughter goes, there seems to be a necessity for trust and there's some sort of positive feedback loop, right? Where when you laugh with somebody, you feel comfortable around them and they laugh and they feel comfortable around you and that little comfort can lead to more laughter and it's, again, a positive feedback. And then you're all just having a rip or a good

time. Right. And then afterward, after you share this experience with this person, you feel even closer to them than before. That's right. When you share a good laugh with someone, it bonds you. Yeah. I feel that way for sure. So in that sense, it's a social signal and there's other studies that back up the idea that it's laughter is expressly designed for as a social bonding glue. Yeah. You're 30 times more likely, apparently, to laugh in a social setting than when you're alone with the TV off. And again, I wonder about that. It's like, don't you need some sort of stimuli? Or do they do when they didn't have anything on the study? Like, did they put someone in a room alone and give them like a funny book or something? I don't understand how that works.

Probably. Okay. I think that maybe a book would do it. It says no pseudo-social device like a television. So what are you laughing at then if you're just in a room? But that's what I'm saying. Like maybe like you just are reading jokes on strips of paper. Oh, okay. Like a bazooka gum jokes. Nobody laughs at those. Yeah. That explains that. Well, in nitrous oxide, they found a German physiologist named Willebald Rook. That's a funny name. He found that laughing gas was even less effective when you're alone. Yeah. Which is true because you're just high. Was that the deal? Oh, yeah. I can't remember if I ever had laughing gas, to be honest. Oh, really? No, I've never like had surgery or anything like that. You don't necessarily. I mean, you do kind of laugh and you're

funny and everything seems funny. And I have noticed like when you're at the dentist and you know, the dentist and the hygienist are in there and they got you like nice and loaded. Everything's kind of funnier and you're talking and all that. And then when they leave and you're by yourself, you're just like looking at the ceiling tile because it looks crazy. But it's not necessarily funny. You should try it, man. It's my whole life free. I hate the dentist, too. That would probably change that experience. You'll still hate the dentist, but you'll be like, well, at least there's this. Yeah. Okay, I got you. Dr. Feelgood. It is the study of laughter. Josh has a name. It's called Gelatology or Gelatology. That's the physiological study of

laughter. That's what it said. Right. But I just want to make sure that that's clear. Because we're kind of vacillating between laughter and humor. And this is the physiological study of humor, of laughter. Thanks for clearing that up. Emotional responses are the function of the frontal lobe. But when it comes to laughter, it's all over the map. It's not just the frontal lobe. They hooked people up to EEGs and showed them funny things and found that all parts of the brain are involved in the laughter response. So it's not just emotional. But it's not necessarily all over the map. I mean, it is all over the brain, but it follows a prescribed neural circuit. That's right. Like they can go, oh, it's going here next. C.

What parts of the brain does it include? The cerebral cortex, electrical wave, it moves through there. Now, I didn't really understand this, but if the wave takes a negative charge, then you're going to be laughing. If it's a positive charge, then there's no response. So I guess that just measures whether or not you think something's funny. I guess, I don't know, or else it literally, like one type of electrical charge will trigger this response and another type won't. Like it just passes over you. But the human will trigger that though. Well, either way, an electrical wave is generated when something that's potentially funny, a potentially funny stimuli is encountered by the brain. Within four tenths of a second.

Yes, this electrical signal is generated and it's determined, I guess, in four tenths, whether you thought it was funny or not. Very quick. Yeah. So, but that's a great question. I mean, like, that's a Carter the horse kind of question. Like, does it turn positive or negative because we found it funny or do we find it funny because it turned positive or negative? I think it's the humor. You have to find it funny and then the brain reacts to that response. Right. That's what I think. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast howler back now with Holland Rodin. Join Holland and other stars of the series Teen Wolf for a rewatch of the popular show. You know me as Lydia Martin from Teen Wolf. And on this podcast we will rewatch every episode from the beginning. The moon is full in Beacon Hills and

the wolves are coming out again. So join me and my favorite Teen Wolf stars and friends as we reunite the cast, the crew, and the heroes and the villains. We'll be sharing every gory detail with you. Fall in love at first bite all over again with the Teen Wolf. The series that you just can't get enough of. Because as if a hundred episodes wasn't enough, I am bringing you all the behind the scenes. There's going to be so much more of each episode. Nothing is off limits. And oh that's right. We'll be talking about Teen Wolf the movie. Listen to howler back now with Holland Rodin on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's say that it does take a negative charge, this electrical wave that just covers your brain

and it starts spreading through this neural circuit. Starting with the left side of the cortex, right? Which analyzes the words and structure of a joke. Yep, making sense of it all. Yep. Of the words themselves. The frontal lobe, which is in charge of emotion. That's right. You got the right hemisphere, the cortex, which basically it sorts out whether or not the joke makes sense to you. Right, well that's where you put it together. Like the right hemisphere, the frontal lobe, is the place where we manage to construct emotion and intellect. Yes, of the cortex. And that's where we, that's where you get the joke. Right. They've also found that that's the part, since you need all these different systems in the brain, but that's the part when it's

damaged that produces the most damage to experiencing humor, getting humor, finding anything funny. Yeah, it's real sad. Of course you have the motor sections that get all the physical responses going like slapping your knee or doubling over, or whatever you do that's wacky when you laugh. And there's also another big one that I didn't think of, but it made perfect sense when I thought about it, which was the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe, just toward the back of the head. But that's where you visualize things. So it's like, imagine what a snake wearing a vest does look like, you know, and then that makes you laugh as well. So it's almost like all of these different, like the structure of the joke, the words and all that pulling in past emotions,

your emotional response right then going, visualizing the thing that's just been described, all this stuff is brought together to produce the sensation of finding something funny. And then that motor part is triggered. Yes. And that's when you start crying and you can't breathe and you say ha ha ha or ho ho ho every 210 milliseconds or flail your arms about or whatever you're into. The limbic system, I didn't get a lot out of this part, especially the comparison to the alligator. It was a, I have a, I have a big question mark. I didn't really understand. There's a whole paragraph in this, in this article, everybody that has no purpose for being there. Chuck and I can't make heads or tails of it. If you can email us, please do. But Chuck, the limbic

system part didn't make much sense to me until I found a theory that we can talk about called incongruity theory. What's that? Well, it's one of the theories of why we have the ability to find things funny or why things are funny and others aren't. And incongruity theory says that remember with curiosity, that was also a theory for why we're curious like, you know, this pencil just fell up. Right. And I want to go find out why that that's a theory to explain why things make us curious. There's also a similar theory for why things can be found funny. And it's when you tell a joke, we were the joke tellers riling up the expectation in the listener. Right. And then delivering something totally different that that moment of incongruity that

makes the brain like, whoa, it just slipped on ice. Right. And it's regaining its footing is thrilling. That's one explanation. The other explanation for incongruity theory is that we find things funny so that we can learn how not to think or how not to act. Right. Right. Like, you don't, you don't, you just don't walk around acting like the three stooges. We find it funny because it's something we don't do. We learn to not do it like that. Or we can, we can not follow logic, just kind of madcap screwy logic that is attendant to jokes by finding them funny as well. Yeah. That's, I think that's one part of some types of comedy for sure is when the punch line is unexpected in some way. Right. Incongruous. Like, for instance,

the other day I was hanging out at the house with Emily and I was singing songs to my dog. There's a lot of goofy things like that in our home. Okay. And I was singing the song. I was playing patty cake with my dog, Charlie, who was a girl. Okay. And I said, wait, well, you got to know that because killing me here for the song to make sense. And so I was singing the song and I said, patty cake, patty cake, baker's chick, bake me a cake that's shaped like a standard cake. And Emily just thought that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. But that's a good example. Like that limerick thing where you, I mean, it's the same, what's the old limerick joke where you think you're going to say something dirty and it's

actually something very normal. Right. I know what you're talking about. I can't think of it right now. But it's that unexpected incongruous thing that works so well in comedy so many times. Yes. You have me. Did you thought I was going to say something else? I did. And I blushed. You did. Your face got a little red. So incongruity theory is old and very widely accepted, although it's also criticized for being overly broad. It doesn't explain a lot of stuff. Totally. But it's like, I don't understand why everybody has to have a theory for everything. Yeah. Why can't it be like, yes, incongruity explains some type of humor. Sure. Superiority explains another. Well, that's another, that's what I like to call the America's funniest home videos humor,

which is we've talked about before. And that's when you focus on stupidity or misfortune, a guffaw, not a guffaw, that's a laugh, a boner, a mistake. And it makes you feel superior to the guy that just got kicked in the groin. And you think that's funny because it's not you getting kicked in the groin. I guess I've never analyzed it like that. But yeah, I guess better him than me is what I'm thinking. If you get kicked in the groin, would you think it was funny? No, I wouldn't, but that doesn't explain why I find it funny when it happens to somebody else. Well, in a way, it's just the superiority theory. And I don't think that literally means you feel superior, but it's just funny to see someone fall down sometimes. Then they should call it something else. Okay.

Let me say one more thing about incongruity. Okay. There's a dude out there named Alistair Cooke, who came out with a book and in it, I know him. You do? Well, not personally. Really? I hadn't heard of him until recently. Anyway, he came out with a book and in it, he came up with an equation to basically figure out how humorous something is. So humor equals, are you ready for this? I mean, the guy came up with a formula to explain humor. Humor equals the amount of misinformation present in the joke, which is part of incongruity, times the potential for the joke listener to take it seriously. So the bigger the whopper is, and the more finesse with which you tell it, the more humorous this joke is going to be.

That makes sense. There's also the comedy is tragedy plus time. We've all heard that. Things that aren't funny today might be funny in 10 years. That's why too soon. You can also get a laugh. Actually, just by saying too soon when you make a bad joke in poor taste. Or Alan Alda, did you ever see Crimes and Misdemeanors? What do you mean Alan movie? Yeah. Alan Alda was this really pompous director in that movie and when he was trying to explain comedy to Woody Allen and he said, if it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not funny. But that's kind of true though. It's that take it to a certain point, but don't break it. Right. Because then it's just not funny. I don't know. Sometimes it's funny to break it. I think there's

always so just because you don't take something as funny doesn't mean that someone else does. Well, it's all in the delivery. Sure. Yeah. I don't think you should ever begrudge somebody for taking something funny even if it offends you. There's not a lot that offends me as you know. The last one is relief theory, which is like you were saying some people postulate was the first experience of laughter. Sure. Was some danger passed and everybody was just relieved. So they were laughing. Right. Have you seen Emerson the baby that's scared of his mom blowing her nose? Oh, it's awesome. You got to see it. This kid is terrified like you've never seen a human being terrified whenever his mom blows his nose and then he starts laughing. Right. He does it

again. He's terrified again and it's really just I'll send you the link. Yeah. It's awesome. But yeah, he supports relief theory. The other thing too about superiority theory before we move on is that's that's the basis of a lot of comedy period. Like Louis C. K. is so funny because he's talking about how fatty is and how he never has sex anymore and like what a piece of crap he has as a human and a bad dad. Yeah. And that's that's not just him. That's a lot of comedians. Take that route that self it's either goes beyond self deprecating even make fun of myself like everyone laugh at me and how miserable I am and feel better about yourself because you're not fat and bald. Yes. And then relief theory also explains how laughter is a great way to diffuse

a Mexican standoff right because you're in there and you got your gun on one guy and he's got his gun on you and then if you laugh yeah and you can convince him it's a genuine laugh he becomes disarmed and then bam right you're the last man standing. I'm gonna remember that. Haven't you ever seen any movies. Yeah. Well sure that happens. The movies are right. That's why. That's scientific fact. Are there really Mexican standoffs? Has that ever happened. Three people it has. I think you can do it with two but yeah. Now I thought the definition was three people. No. I don't know. I know that if you have your gun on somebody and they have their gun on you. I think that's a a Chilean standoff. Right. And I'm mistaken. So we've just dragged humor through the mud and

just basically we've just eviscerated it. Yes. We've vivisected it. So let's find out what's not funny. Chuckers. Apparently it comes down to and again there's researches out there. There's a guy named Robert Provine who's made it quite a career for himself like studying humor and laughter. Yes. But this laughter or humor research has yielded that there's basically two factors in somebody not finding something funny. That's age makes sense and attachment to the subject or the victim. That says it all. When you're a little baby discovering the world you think your mom sneezing is funny. No terrifying. No. No. I was just using a different example. Okay. Or your dog you know lapping water is funny because it's all brand new. You get a little bit older.

Things are going to change when you're a little toddler. You're going to think poopoo is funny. When you're an adult you might think poopoo is funny. When you're an awkward teenager you might be more into jokes that make fun of authority figures or that focus on sex and like all these new things when you're trying to figure yourself out. Right. And then as you mature supposedly you're supposed to get a little more evolved with your humor. And barriers are broken down much more and like you may joke about work. Right. Sure. The old boss the old man the old lady. Right. And with all of these each of these stages even though like an adult thinks a teenager sense of humor is just crap. Right. Yeah. If you kind of take away that evaluation and look at all of them equally. Sure.

People laugh about or find things funny based on what's a stressor in their life. Yeah. So what stresses a teenager out is totally unrelatable for an adult. So they're not going to find it funny. There's it's not a stressor. So mainly most of the stuff we laugh about or we find funny are based on stressors in our lives. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And your intelligence level has a little something to do with it as far as what you find funny. I've known people and I'm sure you have that were dumb and that didn't get jokes or humor. I used to have a rule of measuring stick for intelligence. You remember the show Dr. Katz. Oh yeah. Did you ever meet anybody who was like oh I can't watch that show. The squiggly lines is driving me crazy. Yeah. Sure.

Yeah. You have it. That's pretty good. They just still use that. I mean it was infallible. Yeah. Or I mean there's a lot of TV shows like that but it's all just I don't know it's all subjective. It's I guess it's not right to say someone's not smart but I've known some dummies that sit in a quick paced funny conversation. They just sit there like I don't get it. They're lost. Yeah. It's sad and drags everybody else down and really they should just stay in their rooms. Right. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds tomorrow

one. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table without any drugs. Of course. Yes. They can do that. And I'm the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops are they just like looting. Are they just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackpot or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast howler back now with Holland Rodin. Join Holland and other stars of the series Teen Wolf for a

rewatch of the popular show. You know me as Lydia Martin from Teen Wolf. And on this podcast we will rewatch every episode from the beginning. The moon is full in Beacon Hills and the wolves are coming out again. So join me and my favorite Teen Wolf stars and friends as we reunite the cast, the crew and the heroes and the villains. We'll be sharing every gory detail with you. Fall in love at first bite all over again with the Teen Wolf. The series that you just can't get enough of. Because as if a hundred episodes wasn't enough. I am bringing you all the behind the scenes. There's going to be so much more from each episode. Nothing is off limits. And oh that's right. We'll be talking about Teen Wolf the movie. Listen to howler back now with Holland Rodin on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck. Josh. Lastly, I guess where you come from is another aspect of what you find funny and what you don't. Cultural for sure. May I play an example of that? I brought another one today. Okay. I have a joke. There you say chair. The chair walk with the shoes. You walk on the street. The chair is a walking. Yes. What's a funny image? Yes. It is nice. That one was using her occipital lobe. Oh boy. That was from the genuinely perfect movie Borat. Yeah. There's not much as funny as me than Borat. Yeah. I love it. Yes. But it's a great example of how something could be funny in theory to a foreigner that the person in the culture outside

of that. And that's the whole basis of Borat. That's all he does is talk about things that are funny in Kazakhstan. So British humor. You've always heard about British humor. Very specific. If you think like, oh, I didn't like faulty towers. Well, you just don't get British humor. I don't know. I just thought it was funny. Yeah. It was hit or miss faulty towers. Monty Python was even hit or miss. Sure. I mean, just sometimes you're not in the mood for absurdity. Agreed. And there is a British humor, but I found the Brits are a little prone to get up on their high horse about like, well, you just don't get it. Right. Well, no. You have a British friend, don't you? Oh yeah. Justin will tell me I don't get it too. Okay. Oh, it's just British humor.

You don't understand. Right. No. Leave me alone while I eat my beans drenched in ketchup. Yeah. Justin's been here since he was 17, at least 41. So he's American. He's American. Georgian even. Until the girls come around. So Chuckers. Oh, lastly, if you have an attachment to the subject. Yeah. Say, you know, your, your, your brother really did die in a motorcycle accident. You're never going to find that. You might not find that Anthony Jeslinick joke funny. Right. Or if you literally couldn't care less about people dying in motorcycle accidents, you're probably not going to find that funny. And that researcher Provine has basically divided that up into two ends of the spectrum, which based on things people commonly say, which is.

Is it offensive or what's the point? Or it is, I'm sorry. It is offensive or what's the point? Right. Well, there you have it. That means you, yeah, that probably means you have a personal something at stake. Yes. And you found even in time won't even cure that. Yeah. That's like the Twin Towers falling. It was the first comedians to start joking about that. It was, I remember that being a very like tense thing when people started making jokes about that. But I think one of the ways to digest raw and negative emotions is to eventually laugh about it. Right. Oh, yeah. Because it's the best medicine. So speaking of medicine, Chuck, there is no less than two groups dedicated to studying humor. And these are international associations. Well, one's American.

What is the American Association for Therapeutic Humor and the International Society for Humor Studies. And they are Bonafide. They have conferences all over the place because it's real, dude. It is. And there's like a definite hint of patch atoms in there. So I'd like to just skim right over this. But there is a physiological effect to laughter that is totally beneficial to the body. That's right. Right. And it kind of goes back to fight or flight in a way. Very much so. Because we've talked about this a gazillion times when the fight or flight response kicks in that kind of a lot of your other bodily functions cease to happen and everything freezes up. And when we laugh, though, is that laughter shuts off the stress hormones, certain stress hormones, that the fight

or flight response would normally be shutting down your like immune system. It shuts that down and actually boost your immune system. Right. Temporarily. Not only that, it boosts the production of gamma interferon, B cells and T cells, which are all engaged in warding off disease or boosting the immune system. Right. The production of blood platelets increases. Salivary immunoglobulin A, which protects against respiratory diseases. All of these cells and antibodies, their production is boosted. So basically, we're just inherently healthier when we laugh, which is pretty awesome if you ask me. So not only is the fight or flight, the sympathetic nervous system like deadened, but we're actually getting healthier. Right. While we laugh. That's awesome. It's

pretty amazing. It also gives you a pretty good workout. They found that laughing 100 times is about the same as 15 minutes on an exercise bike. Works out your diaphragm. You know, you've had your stomach hurt from laughing so hard. Yes. It's like doing crunches. I know it feels so good. It feels so good. The best is when your stomach hurts and you realize you've just peed yourself a little. I've never peed myself laughing. Really? It's a gas. There's a guy named Norman Cousins. Have you ever heard of this dude? No. He is or was an author, humorist, political activist, and he studied the biochemistry of emotions for many years and UCLA. And he struggled with heart disease and then eventually a severe form of arthritis. And he watched Marx Brothers films and basically

found that belly laughing for 10 minutes, watching one of these Marx Brothers films, allowed him to sleep pain free for two hours. And then literally he could feel it wearing off as if it were a medicine and then he would watch funny stuff again. If only I could laugh at Marx Brothers films. I'd be a happier person. You don't laugh at Marx Brothers films? No. I'm more like in awe. Like, wow, these guys were comic geniuses. But to find something a comic genius doesn't necessarily mean to find it funny. Interesting. I don't. Although I do have to say, and maybe I'm like a fan of the poor man's Marx Brothers, but I do laugh out loud. You and me and I both laugh out loud at Three Stooges now. I would think you would laugh at Marx Brothers because they

watched it, man. That's not anything like higher class of comedy than Three Stooges. I'll have to check it out again. No, Groucho was, he was a sharp tack. Yeah, sure. And I think that that kind of translates to a different part of my brain is activated where I'm like watching him on an intellectual level with the Three Stooges. I can just turn off and it's just funny. I got you. All right. You got anything else? Yeah, UCLA has a study they're doing now too where they they inflict pain on children. There it is, the funniest thing of this whole podcast. They take healthy kids and they wire them up and then ask them to put their hands in 10 degrees Celsius water and hold it there for as

long as they can. Geez. It's painful. It's not like inflicting damage though, you know what I'm saying. And on average, kids can hold their arms in the freezing water for 87 seconds. But if they're shown funny videos while they're doing that, their heart rate, blood pressure and breathing and all their vital signs get better and stronger and they can last up to 40% longer. Wow. And then afterward they sample this. We've talked about cortisol, the stress hormone before. Yeah. And then there's saliva and they laughing helps their bodies recover much faster. So it's physical, baby. It's very neat. It's all in the spit. I guess that's the that's the point of this whole how laughter works podcast. It's all about your spit. Is that the deal? Hey, you should check out. I

think it's a National Geographic, maybe Netgeonova. It's one of those. It's one of those two. Um, documentary on stress. I like the physiological effects of stress. Who wrote about that to really awesome. It's very good. It's like an hour. That article actually physical effects of stress. It's good. It's streaming on Netflix. Check it out. Right. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, if you want to learn more about laughter, type in laughter in the search bar at how stuff works.com, which brings up Chuck. It's been a little while. Listen to me. Josh, we asked for bear stories and we got him. Yeah, we did. And this is what I thought was the best one. And this is from Chris F in Vancouver, BC, Canada, British Columbia. Two years ago,

the bear population came out of the mountains early because of poor berry supplies. Basically, this guy's neighborhood was rampant with bears for a summer. I'm sorry in the spring. I'm sorry in the autumn. He returned from walking his dog, walked into his carport and there was a large bear cub chowing down on my garbage. My dog was an energetic labradoodle, howled in happy excitement of what he thought was the biggest squirrel he had ever seen and chased after the cub who we named Boo. The dog ran around, chased this cub in the backyard and all of a sudden Boo's mother came around the corner and they later named this one Moriarty. She weighed about 250 pounds and walked up to this guy and the dog who was barking four feet away when I hit her on the head with

my golf umbrella. The salve stopped dead in her tracks, sat back on her haunches, shaking her head in disbelief and was very surprised to be smacked with the umbrella for about five seconds and then she came straight at me in the garage. And I smacked her again with significantly less profound effect, gave me time to back out of the carport and do the only thing I could think of was to open the umbrella in her face and yell and scream and close my eyes. Yeah that sounds like a reasonable thing to do. Yeah that makes perfect sense. Man I am so tense right now what happened? I opened my eyes again and Moriarty was gone into the brush along with Boo but they became regular visitors throughout the rest of the fall ranging through the neighborhood for scraps

and then they returned the next summer with a new small cub that we named Boo too. Happy ending for Chris F and PS We Are Proud Kiva contributors which is really hot right now. Our Kiva team is killing it we're about to hit 600k in loans. Wow. Yeah so go guys if you want to join our Kiva team you can go to www.KivaKiva.org slash team singular slash stuff you should know. Join up, start donating and help contribute to the cause and if you want to send us an email about laughing something you thought was very funny or even better than that because we probably wouldn't find it that funny send us a link to something that's actually funny right? And we will judge you. We'll judge your laughing skills. Send it to Stuff Podcast at

HowStuffWorks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast Stuff from the Future. Join HowStuffWorks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV.

I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.