ROBERT KRULWICH: Jad?

JAD ABUMRAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Let me play you this.

JAD: Mm-hmm.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Elaine May: Buddy.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: Yes, mom.]

ROBERT: You're listening to Mike Nichols ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Elaine May: I've been thinking.]

ROBERT: ... and Elaine May.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Elaine May: You're getting older now. You're nearly a man, and you should start thinking about your future a little bit, you know?]

ROBERT: You're listening to a rehearsal that happened to get caught on tape.

JAD: Okay.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Elaine May: You're a happy boy. [laughs]]

JAD: What are they laughing about?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: [laughs] For God's sake!]

JAD: What are they laughing about?

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: Mama I have been giving it some thought, I ...]

ROBERT: Here's the thing, he has a joke in his head.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: I know what I'd like to do with my life. I ...]

ROBERT: But he just can't get the punchline out, without ruining it with a laugh.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: I'll have to train for some years.

JAD: Wait, what was the joke? I didn't even hear the joke.

ROBERT: Oh well you haven't heard it yet. He wants to be when he grows up ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: I want to be a registered nurse.]

ROBERT: ... a registered nurse.

JAD: The joke is I want to be a nurse?

ROBERT: I want to be a nurse. That's the joke, but he can't say the word nurse without losing it. Nor can she say the word nurse without losing it. That is their punchline.

JAD: Why is that funny?

ROBERT: Well, remember it's 1959 and boys don't want to be registered nurses, not in 1959.

JAD: Oh.

ROBERT: That's, for Mike Nichols, the funniest thing he's thought of all week.

JAD: Not funny.

ROBERT: Wait.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: Mother I want very much to be a registered nurse. Stop laughing.]

ROBERT: I love this. I love this rehearsal. I don't know why, but I could listen to this 150 times. I have listened to it 150 times.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Mike Nichols: All right mother. I want very much to be a registered nurse.]

ROBERT: So no go on that one. He can't do it. Now understand that this laughter just keeps bubbling up. Mike can't control it. Elaine can't control it. Oh, here we go.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Elaine May: ... your father and I to be able to say, "That's my son."]

ROBERT: Here's the thing, Jad. These are two of the greatest humorists of the mid-20th century in the United States. They're professional improvisational comics. They live to laugh. They control laugh. They try to create laugh. They're all about laughter and yet ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Elaine May: I can't. I can't.]

ROBERT: ... laughter beats them.

TYLER STILLMAN: Here we are this species with the capacity for language, which allows us exquisitely nuanced expressions.

ROBERT: This is Tyler Stillman. He studies laughter at Florida State University.

TYLER STILLMAN: Yet we produce these kinds of bizarre sounds. Laughter is this kind of clumsy inarticulate way of expressing yourself, but it's also kind of awesome.

JAD: Looking forward, is the question then why is laughter so awesome?

ROBERT: Ugh, I always—I hate that word awesome.

JAD: Okay.

ROBERT: I will say that it's a good question to ask: why do we laugh, what is laughter for, and why those sounds?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Why those sounds?

JAD: All right. Well let's go. Our topic today is laughter. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. Okay dude. To get started, the thing we just talked about, the weirdness of laughter.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: How it's both clumsy on one hand, but also kind of awesome.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: I know you love that word, awesome.

ROBERT: I hate that word. Why do you have to say that word all the time?

JAD: Well in any case-

ROBERT: You could say delightful. Delightful is a good word.

JAD: All right, delightful. What I really want to say is that sort of paradox is something that some of the greatest minds in history have thought about, and written about.

ROBERT: Like?

JAD: Aristotle.

BARRY SANDERS: In a book called De Animalium, Aristotle wants to describe what separates human beings out from all the other creatures.

JAD: That's historian Barry Sanders. He wrote a book about laughter called Sudden Glory. According to him, after pages and pages of complicated reasoning about what makes us special—is it language? Is it reason? Is it this? Is it that? Aristotle ...

BARRY SANDERS: Concludes one thing.

JAD: What?

BARRY SANDERS: What makes us absolutely different is our capacity to laugh.

JAD: When you laugh ...

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Go ahead, do it.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: That right there ...

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: That is a specifically human endeavor. No other creatures can do it. Not only that, the first time you do it ...

ROBERT: You mean like when you're a little peeper and you're just ...

JAD: Mm-hmm. When you're a tiny baby, and you make your first laugh. That, to Aristotle, might be the most important moment of your life, because it's the moment that your life at least as a human being begins.

BARRY SANDERS: When the infant utters its first laugh, emits its first laugh, at that moment heated air from lower in the stomach moves through a membrane into the soul, ensouls the creature. And at that point, this is the fine distinction. At that point, the creature moves from being a human into a human being.

ROBERT: Yes. Yes. He's absolutely—I remember it so clearly. The cymbals, the clashes, I thought oh I'm a human being.

JAD: But but but but do you remember when it happened?

ROBERT: No.

JAD: Yeah, well Aristotle was very specific about this. He thought it always happened, or should happen ...

BARRY SANDERS: On the 40th day of your existence.

AMANDA ARONCZYK: Oh, hi there. Good morning. Mina, today is your 40th day.

JAD: We wanted to check this proposition, so we called up radio producer Amanda Aronczyk who just had a brand new baby girl.

AMANDA: Mina is celebrating her 40th day of existence today. We're gonna get you to laugh.

JAD: Now were you able to record with Mina this morning?

AMANDA: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We recorded for 50 minutes.

JAD: Really?

AMANDA: Just like went for it.

JAD: And? Did she laugh?

AMANDA: Well, I tried. Hey there, pretty. Rob tried. Her aunt tried.

AUNT: What a clever girl. A laugh, I would almost say.

AMANDA: We all tried, and tried, and kind of harass her and stick your tongue out at her, and try to tickle her. Tickle your armpit. Then at the end she's like, "Ah."

JAD: It's because you were doing this.

AMANDA: Lost it.

JAD: Oh.

AMANDA: We have yet to get a giggle out of her. That was a smile. What would it take to make you laugh? Please. Oh. But she made some sounds we've never ever heard before. What are all these sounds you're making? Like, her level of interaction in the last two days has been more than anything we've seen.

JAD: Really?

AMANDA: If you stick your tongue out at her, she does it back.

JAD: Uh-huh.

AMANDA: If you open your mouth she kind of tries to do that too. It has been a milestone, aside from the actual day count, it really is—she's becoming a little being. Oh what? Say hi, Mina. It's much more emotional. It's like you're looking at this thing that you're deeply in love with and it's finally looking back at you.

JAD: All right. Well Amanda, when it happens will you call us right back?

AMANDA: Okay, I will for sure.

JAD: Do you agree with Aristotle that the ability to laugh is what literally separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom?

BARRY SANDERS: God, how can I disagree with Aristotle? That would be blasphemous, but ...

JAD: Not as an academic, I mean you as a person.

BARRY SANDERS: Yeah, as a person. I truly believe we're the only creature that laughs.

JAD: What about you?

ROBERT: I do think there's something about the way we laugh, the way we share the emotional feeling that leads to a laugh, that is kind of ... I don't know of any other creatures that do that.

JAD: Wrong.

ROBERT: You can't do that to me. Screw you.

JAD: I don't know if it's wrong, because in truth—in all honesty, this scientific debate is still—the jury is still out on this question. Whether we are the only ones that laugh, but it's one of those things that if you poke around a bit ...

ROBERT: Uh-huh?

JAD: And let's poke, shall we?

ROBERT: Okay.

LULU MILLER: Be beside you ...

JAD: The question becomes much more complicated.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Oh, okay. So ...

JAD: Introduce yourself, so I don't mangle your name too badly.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Oh, absolutely. My name is Jaak Panksepp.

JAD: Jaak Panksepp.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Yes.

JAD: Jaak Panksepp is a neuroscientist.

JAAK PANKSEPP: At Washington State University.

JAD: And for the last 30 years, he has studied animal emotion. Particularly—and this is his specialty ...

JAAK PANKSEPP: Happiness and play.

JAD: Play.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Playfulness.

JAD: In rats for example.

ROBERT: Do rats play?

JAD: Well, yeah.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Oh, yes. When they're still young and you put them together they start tussling immediately.

JAD: But when they play, they're silent.

ROBERT: You mean, no squeaks or anything?

JAD: Uh-uh.

ROBERT: Really?

JAD: All the while they are headbutting each other. They are flipping each other over. They play really hard. No sounds.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: That's our starting point, okay? One day Jaak and a grad student are standing in front of a rat cage watching two rats wrestle silently, and the grad student, this guy by the name of Brian, turns to Jaak and says, "Is it really possible they're not making any noises? I mean, look at them. Maybe they're making sounds but we just can't hear them."

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: He suggested to Jaak, "Why don't we order one of these little black boxes?"

JAAK PANKSEPP: They call them bat detectors.

JAD: What nature people used to listen to bats. What if we put one on the rat cage? Maybe it will take whatever sounds might, or might not, be there lower them down to a range that humans can hear.

JAAK PANKSEPP: I said, "Okay, we'll buy the equipment." The equipment arrived, and the first day we had a couple of animals playing, and we tuned it through the various frequencies. Lo and behold it's like a playground at 50 kilohertz.

JAD: What did it sound like?

JAAK PANKSEPP: It's like "Chit-chit-chit-chit."

JAD: All of a sudden you just heard this sound erupt from the little box?

JAAK PANKSEPP: Absolutely.

JAD: Wow!

JAD: So now they had this sound that no one had ever heard before. And there's two things you need to know. First, the rats would make the sound sporadically. Each little rat would make it just like cheep, cheep. And second, Jaak had no idea what the sound was. What did it mean?

ROBERT: What does it mean? What are they saying?

JAD: What are they saying to each other? He knew it had something to do with play, but was it just like, "Hi!" "Hi!" Was it something more aggressive like, "You want a piece of me? Let's wrestle!"

ROBERT: That's what I think.

JAD: Or maybe they're excited and they're saying, "Give me sex. You want to have sex?"

JAAK PANKSEPP: Arousal. They get aroused and make a couple chirps.

JAD: Or maybe it was just a grunt of some sort.

JAAK PANKSEPP: There's a lot of possibilities.

JAD: Ten years, ten years they studied this sound trying to figure out what it means.

ROBERT: And every theory failed somehow?

JAD: Well, nothing was conclusive.

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

JAD: Then one morning, Jaak walks in to the lab, which he showed us.

JAAK PANKSEPP: We are going to the animal facility on the fifth floor.

JAD: With a crazy idea.

JAAK PANKSEPP: One morning I came in and I says, "Jeff ...

JAD: His grad student at the time.

JAAK PANKSEPP: "Jeff, lets go tickle some rats."

JAD: What on Earth gave you that idea?

JAAK PANKSEPP: I don't know. This is the mystery of having a new idea.

JAD: Oh, okay.

JAD: So he and his grad student quickly walk over to the rat cage.

JAAK PANKSEPP: We pick up a rat. We carry it to a box. We put it in the box. Okay, the animal is going in. And I begin to tickle it.

JAD: By tickle, it's just like you would tickle a baby.

ROBERT: Meaning what?

JAD: Like coochy coochy coo, with the fingers.

JAAK PANKSEPP: You're moving your fingers rapidly all over the animal's body. There's a male rat.

JAD: He demonstrated.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Tickle.

JAD: The sound that came out was the same cheep, cheep as before, but now it was louder, more continuous.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Now you can see how consistent it is.

JAD: Plus, it had this very familiar rhythm, and familiar dynamic quality. The way it went da, da, da, da, da. For the first time, it occurred to Jaap ...

JAAK PANKSEPP: My God, what if that's laughter. What if that sound is laughter?

JAD: Visually, I must say it's pretty convincing. When you see him do it—and we put a video on our website Radiolab.org—when you see him tickle the rat, and the rat kick it's little rat legs and chirp like mad, it does look like the animal is cracking up. Like a little kid.

JAD: What were you thinking at this moment?

JAAK PANKSEPP: We were thinking it's a fluke.

JAD: It's a fluke?

JAAK PANKSEPP: It's a fluke.

JAD: Oh, so you didn't trust what you were hearing?

JAAK PANKSEPP: Well, we trust what we're hearing, but I said, "Let me get another animal." Okay, here's another rat, ready for a tickle session. Tickle.

JAD: Whoa!

JAAK PANKSEPP: Bingo. Exactly the same.

JAD: The same cheep, cheep?

JAAK PANKSEPP: Exactly. I still kind of said, "Come on. This is too good to be true. Let me get another animal." Okay here's the tickle. Exactly the same. Jackpot.

JAD: Here's the kicker, the moment Jaak stops tickling the rats, moves his hand away, the rat starts chasing his hand. Moves his hand left, the rat goes left. Moves his hand right, the rat goes right.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Exactly. The animal is just glued to your hand.

JAD: Because it wants to be tickled again?

JAAK PANKSEPP: It wants more, exactly.

JAD: That's so cool.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Whoa. Whoa! I'm just running circles with my hand, and the animal is running circles right after my fingers. Want some more huh? Okay. And if you stopped tickling and just leave your hand there in the cage like a dead piece of meat ...

JAD: Uh-huh?

JAAK PANKSEPP: The animal knows you're alive, and gradually begins to pounce on your hand and it begins to nip at your fingers.

JAD: It's like, "Come on, come on!"

JAAK PANKSEPP: Exactly.

JAD: Let me ask you this though, in terms of calling the squeaking a squeak, or a chirp, or a cheep, cheep, or whatever you want to call it ...

JAAK PANKSEPP: Mm-hmm.

JAD: That would be one thing, but to call it laughter is saying something very specific.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Yeah, a lot of people don't like that word. Even my friends have advised me to drop that word.

JAD: Because they don't think that a rat can feel joy? Is that why?

JAAK PANKSEPP: Yeah, giving human qualities to animals has been a no no since we are closer to the angels than the other creatures of the world.

ROBERT: Ah, to laugh is to be an angel.

JAD: He was kidding, by the way.

ROBERT: Oh really? Oh, I kind of believed him.

JAD: Oh, you think that he was being ...

ROBERT: I thought he meant the laughter in the subtle way that he imagined.

JAD: No, no, no, no. He thinks human laughter is not special. He thinks Aristotle is wrong basically.

JAAK PANKSEPP: Check it out, Aristotle. Do an experiment.

JAD: Like, it goes back a long way, back to rats, back to pigeons, who knows? That all these creatures laugh, like us, and they laugh more or less for the same reason as us.

ROBERT: Hmm, I don't know. You tell a pigeon a good chicken crossing the road joke and you're going to get nothing.

JAD: You don't think that a pigeon has a rich emotional life?

ROBERT: No, not like-

JAD: ... and joy.

ROBERT: ... we do. No, I have talked with pigeons. Let me tell you something.

JAD: All right, I'll give it that we probably laugh for irony.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: We probably do that, and pigeons don't.

ROBERT: And delight.

JAD: Delight.

ROBERT: Do you think a pigeon laughs for delight?

JAD: I don't know, but sure a pigeon experiences delight.

ROBERT: What do you know? You're not a pigeon.

JAD: Forget the pigeon. Okay, take a bird that sings. I bet birds sing because they're happy, and singing is probably in a way like laughing.

ROBERT: Oh, if you're gonna get all general on me, yeah, sure. Worms like to wiggle.

JAD: And wiggling is kind of like laughing.

ROBERT: Yeah, okay. Why don't ... by the way, what's happened to baby Amanda?

JAD: You mean did she laugh yet?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: No. Unfortunately not.

ROBERT: Oh, geez. Then Aristotle's really in deep do-do here.

JAD: I mean these days, I don't know about ancient Greece, but these days people who study this stuff say it's usually around 90 days.

ROBERT: Oh, really?

JAD: Is what it ...

ROBERT: Huh. Well we've got a little time.

JAD: ... the general consensus. Yeah we've got a little time.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: I told her to call us back.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: When she does laugh.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Message one.]

[AMANDA: Hey there, Jad. It's Amanda Aronczyk calling, and I am calling to say that Mina just laughed. She just laughed. She actually full on did a, like, "Ha, ha, ha" like that. It was incredibly exciting. But it was not day 40, it was by my calculations day 97. I don't know about Aristotle and those babies but this baby here laughed for real definitely, 100%, on day 97. It's very exciting, and we're very excited and now she's crying, because it was so much effort to laugh I think. Okay bye.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

ROBERT: Now for the next question. Forgetting for a moment how we laugh, let's ask why we laugh.

JAD: Mm-hmm. I'll tell you why we laugh.

ROBERT: Why do we laugh.

JAD: We laugh because something's funny.

ROBERT: No, not at all.

ROBERT PROVINE: The most important thing to remember about laughter is that it's social.

ROBERT: It's not about humor. That's Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, who got very interested in this question so he went out on the street with some of his Grad students, pen in hand, and they listened for what people actually in real life say just before they laugh. In 85 percent of the cases—are you writing this down?

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: 85 percent of the cases nothing funny preceded the laugh.

ROBERT PROVINE: Yeah, so first of all people weren't really telling jokes to other people. They were saying things like, "Hey where you been." "I've got to go now," "I have a class."

ROBERT: I have a class?

ROBERT PROVINE: Yeah. This is the kind of things that people say before they laugh. Now don't take my word for this, go to a cocktail party and you're going to be a lot of laughter there, but people are not telling jokes to each other at a furious rate.

ROBERT: So laughter isn't about joking, it's about something else.

ROBERT PROVINE: It's about social relationships. You've got to have those people there. When you're alone, laughter basically disappears.

ROBERT: When you're at home alone, Jad, do you ever find yourself laughing?

JAD: When I'm by myself?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Well you see sometimes.

ROBERT: When?

JAD: When I'm watching the TV or something.

ROBERT: No, no.

ROBERT PROVINE: Those are kind of vicarious social stimulant.

ROBERT: No, no I mean like when you are solitary.

ROBERT PROVINE: If you take away media ...

ROBERT: No radio, no TV, no nothing in your ears.

JAD: No.

ROBERT PROVINE: ... the laughter basically disappears. You have an unconsciously controlled, neurologically programmed social behavior.

ROBERT: It will only work if there's a sharer.

JAD: Even if the sharer is just in your head?

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: Neurologically programmed by who?

ROBERT: By evolution in this case.

ROBERT PROVINE: Okay, now ...

ROBERT: Towards the end of the interview he walked me over to a TV VCR thing he had.

ROBERT PROVINE: State of the art stuff.

ROBERT: Yeah this is pretty fancy.

ROBERT: He showed me a video of a woman tickling a chimpanzee.

ROBERT: What is this?

ROBERT PROVINE: I have an example here of laughter from our primate ancestors, baby chimps.

ROBERT: Okay, we have now a chimpanzee on the screen and you're listening to a chimpanzee playing with a woman. That's the woman laughing. She is now cuddling and smothering the chimp with hugs, and he's being tickled. That's chimpanzee laughter. That panting sound that you hear is chimpanzee laughter.

ROBERT PROVINE: A low level of chimpanzee panting laugh too it would be like ... When they really get into it, it becomes more guttural like ...

ROBERT: That sound, that—sound, Provine thinks it has nothing to do with jokes. This is not a reaction to any ... Although, tickling is kind of delightful. What it really is doing, he says that particular sound is a signal, one chimp to the other. Those two chimps to any other animals that happen to come by, other chimps, we're just playing. Chimps have evolved, it's taken them a long time, but they figured out a way to signal we're not fighting. I am not going to kill you. This is just play. It's the signal of we're just playing.

ROBERT PROVINE: When you really get into it, it becomes more guttural like ...

ROBERT: We're safe. According to Provine we inherited that chimp signal from our chimp relatives.

ROBERT PROVINE: Yeah, so basically panting became ha, ha.

ROBERT: In a human, we've just added one little wonderful extra, the H.

JAD: Hmm. All right, more in a moment.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Message one.]

[AMANDA: Radiolab is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Science Foundation. Somebody here is trying to grab my sheet of paper. Okay, Radiolab is produced by WNYC, New York Public Radio, and distributed by NPR, National Public Radio. Mina, you're so good!]

JAD: This is Radiolab. I'm Jad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert.

JAD: Today on our show, laughter.

ROBERT: I want to say one more thing about this. We've talked about how laughter is evolutionarily sort of wired in. We've talked about that it's a social thing.

JAD: A safety, all clear, kind of situation.

ROBERT: Yeah, but it's another level of safety that's kind of fascinating. Let me tell you a really classic, and not well known, story. It involves the television show The Nanny. You remember in the '90s, Fran Drescher had this very big hit TV comedy series.

JAD: Uh, no.

ROBERT: Well, you will probably remember the voice of the nanny.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Nanny: Hello?]

ROBERT: That's Fran.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Nanny: Ma, you finally made up. Well, what's the emergency? Ma, Mike Douglas isn't on channel four because they canceled him 22 years ago.]

ROBERT: And the story actually is not so much about Fran Drescher as it is about—you hear those people laughing right underneath all of it.

JAD: Yeah, constantly.

ROBERT: Yes, well this is about Fran's laughter. It's the story of The Nanny laughers. And it begins with a woman named Lisette Saint-Claire.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Just FYI my name is pronounced Lisette.

ROBERT: She's a casting director at Central Casting in Los Angeles.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Central Casting is the oldest extras casting company. It's been around for years, and years and years. Back in the day where people used to line up outside the studios, and the productions would come out and pick you, you, you.

ROBERT: She actually got her start as an extra.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: My first gig, I think it was called The Big House. And I had to jump out of a coffin, but I was a hooker. [laughs] I was a hooker out of a coffin.

ROBERT: Anyway, after years as working as an extra, Lisette decided to jump to the other side of the business, and be the person in charge of casting the extras.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: You know, you're on the phone and the production company calls and says, "I need three strippers, two nurses and four doctors." And so that's what we do. We find them.

ROBERT: Now here's some more background that you will need. In 1985, which is years before The Nanny, Fran Drescher had been raped during a break in at her apartment. And later she wrote about this experience, and she spoke about it publicly.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Fran Dresher: That night was the night that changed everything.]

ROBERT: This is Fran reading from her book Cancer Shmancer.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Fran Dresher: Two men with guns broke into our home, and raped both me, and my girlfriend Judy who had the misfortune of having joined us for dinner. We were never the same again.]

ROBERT: The people who did this to her were caught and locked up. And then things got worse. As her fame grew, she started getting stalked. And this was right around the time that filming began on The Nanny.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Nanny: Dr. Warner you're wanted in Radiology please.]

ROBERT: And the thing about filming The Nanny, when it's filmed live, as they say, in front of a live studio audience, pretty much anybody can come into the theater. Fran worried that someone who might mean harm would come in, and sit there during the show. So she and the show's producers decided to do the only thing they could do: get rid of the audience. Just kick them all out. Now this was right in the middle of the season. They had a taping to do the very next day.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Fran Dresher: No matter how hard things became in our personal life, the show must go on.]

ROBERT: So they called up Lisette.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: They decided instead of having an audience come in, just have people from Central Casting that they know ...]

ROBERT: She said, "All right. I'll fill your audience with extras."

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: I was looking for about 30 or 40 people.

ROBERT: She had thousands of people to choose from, and there are all kinds of categories available to her.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: You could do a search in the database, height ...

ROBERT: There was age.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: ... ethnicity ...

ROBERT: Skin color.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: ... weight, dress size ...

ROBERT: Eye color.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: ... hair color. You could put that all in and it'll bring up what you need.

ROBERT: She needed a safe audience.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Just normal lively people.

ROBERT: That she could screen, and while she was at it she thought "Well, why don't I get people who are good laughers? I mean, why not?"

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Yeah.

ROBERT: With 24 hours to go she put out a rather strange request.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: I put it out on the sequencer, it's like a work line, a hotline that people listen to and if they fit, or if they think they fit, then they'll call in. I said, "Hi this is Lisette. I'm looking for some people that have good laughs to work on The Nanny tomorrow."

ROBERT: And when they'd call she'd begin with one question.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: Hi, my name is A. Donny Mitchell.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Okay, let me hear you laugh.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: Yeah, okay. [laughs]

PAM WEST: Hi my name is Pam West.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Let me hear you laugh.

PAM WEST: [laughs]

KIM JANUARY: Hi my name is Kim January.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Like you just saw the funniest thing. Let me hear you laugh.

KIM JANUARY: [laughs]

DENNIS FILER: My name is Dennis Filer.

KIM JANUARY: [laughs]

PAM WEST: I was at the laundromat. She answered the phone right away, she goes, "Let's hear it." [laughs] And everybody in the laundromat looked at me. And I said, "It's an audition. It's an audition." She said laugh right now. I said ...

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: These were people that were calling that were all ethnicities, all ages, 20-something to, like, 70-something. I had married couples. And it's not a show like Baywatch where everybody has to look bikini ready and all that.

ROBERT: Which means they weren't going to win a beauty contest, but they could get to the studio and sit down and laugh.

PAM WEST: There were certain things that we were laughing at, and they would come to us and say, "Okay, we don't want you to laugh at that." We knew when to laugh, and when not to laugh, and then it got to the part where we just knew exactly what to do.

KIM JANUARY: Can you think of anything more wonderful than sitting in a comfortable chair all day long and being amused?

WOMAN: People look puzzled, what do you mean a laugher?

ROBERT: How much did you pay them?

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Back then it was like 75 bucks.

PAM WEST: And you'd get paid? Yeah, we'd get paid for laughing. What a thing to do!

ROBERT: Lisette got a bunch of the laughers in a room together, just to show us how it works.

LISETTE SAINT-CLAIRE: Okay, so this is kind of like a murmur chuckle. It's not like a gut wrenching, just a little bit of murmur chuckle. [laughter] Okay, something funny just happened, but it's not like a whole big long laugh, it's just something really quick and funny. [laughter] And this one, something's happening and it's a little bit of chuckle, but then something came out of it just making you pee in your pants. [laughs]

KIM JANUARY: And we all have our great individual laughs but we were told not to ...

ROBERT: Yeah.

KIM JANUARY: ... stand out. We had to know each other, play off each other. And if somebody was paused in their laughter maybe we'd cover it. I mean, we were a well timed, orchestrated machine.

DENNIS FILER: Yeah, we were.

ROBERT: So well orchestrated that their services became very desirable.

KIM JANUARY: You know, a chain reaction.

ROBERT: Central Casting began getting calls from other sitcoms.

PAM WEST: The Drew Carey Show.

ROBERT: From talk shows.

PAM WEST: They sprinkled us in the audience.

ROBERT: And something odd began to happen on the sets. The actors began noticing the laughers.

KIM JANUARY: They would thank us, want to know if we're all right. Did we have enough food? Was the food good, you know?

ROBERT: And for a lot of these people who were used to working as extras and being pretty much ignored all the time, this was wonderful.

KIM JANUARY: They treated us as though we were principal family. I mean, they recognized us at Christmas parties, and it's just like we were a part of them.

PAM WEST: They would come and sit with us and talk to us. They appreciated us. That's the part I loved. Because they know we got their back. Yeah, and we did have their back.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: There was a time we stayed after, and it was a scene where the nanny was climbing a telephone pole outside. And she wanted us to come out there and do our thing so that the timing was right, and felt right. And I think we went on 14 hours that night. It was wonderful.

PAM WEST: It is, and you almost want to cry because everybody is so wonderful as a family here, us laughers.

ROBERT: And then reality stuck.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The battle for a quarter of a million dollars.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm feeling a pure disgust with Trisha.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm going to have to nominate George, and Erica.]

ROBERT: Starting around 2000, reality TV, you know these shows, that merit no laughs required. They pushed sitcoms aside. And professional laughing work slowed down to a trickle.

PAM WEST: When we're laughing three times a week on different shows, there is like this momentum, and this adrenaline. And suddenly it all comes to an end and it's like—honest to God it's like going through withdrawal.

KIM JANUARY: I found that when I'm not laughing I'm a lot more depressed. I found that it was great therapy for me on a weekly basis.

DENNIS FLIER: I miss it.

KIM JANUARY: Oh God, so I need that. I miss it.

ROBERT: It's sad.

KIM JANUARY: Anybody out there needs any laughers there's a whole room full of us.

ROBERT: Look, we could use you. We could use you. Look, Jad?

JAD: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: Just go with me here. What is brown and sticky?

JAD: What?

ROBERT: A stick.

JAD: Whoa.

[laughter]

ROBERT: Thank you! And Jad?

JAD: Yes?

ROBERT: I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning.

[laughter]

ROBERT: This is mowing in high grass. Jad?

JAD: Yes?

ROBERT: I'm wearing brown shoes.

[laughter]

ROBERT: This is fun! You're all hired!

ROBERT: This story was produced by Rob Christiansen, and reported by Mary Beth Kershner. Support provided by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives at dana.org. The excerpts from Fran Drescher's book Cancer Schmancer was courtesy of Shift Audio. Our laughers interviewed were ...

DIVA PERRY: Diva Perry.

BONNIE CHUSE: Bonnie Chuse.

GRACIE SPIRANZA: Gracie Spiranza.

1. DONNY MITCHELL: A. Donny Mitchell.

PAM WEST: Pam West.

BRENT PURDUE: Brent Perdue.

LOUISE SAXTON: Louise Saxton.

JEAN VAN OSDAL: Jean Van Osdal.

SANDY OLMANS: Sandy Olmans.

RAMON LIVINGSTON: Ramon Livingston.

ADELE DANALOUSE: Adele Danalouse.

TOM PETRA: Tom Petra.

DENNIE FILER: Dennis Filer.

ROBERT: And ...

KIM JANUARY: Kim January.

JAD: Okay, so here's the question Robert.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: In that story somewhere there was a guy who had an amazing laugh. Well, they all have amazing laughs, but there was one particular guy who just had like an outrageous laugh.

ROBERT: This one?

[laughter]

JAD: Yeah, that guy. What is it about that kind of laugh that just gets you? What is it about the sound?

ROBERT: The laugh itself.

JAD: Yeah. Well I took that question to somebody who studies acoustics of laughing.

JAD: Hello.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Hi.

ROBERT: Really. There's somebody that does that?

JAD: Yeah.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: I am Dr. Joanne Bachorowski. I'm an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University.

JAD: She's from my hometown of Nashville Tennessee.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: I study the sounds that we make.

JAD: She has collected over 30,000 thousand laughs.

JAD: Can we hear some?

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Yes.

JAD: This is probably the biggest collection in the world. She has analyzed every one on the computer, and played me a few.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Okay.

JAD: Just little tiny scraps.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: I'll just go ahead and play this for you.

JAD: Yeah.

JAD: Like this one.

[laughter]

JAD: Wait, sorry, sorry. Play it one more time.

[laughter]

JAD: It sounds hysterical, like an alien.

JAD: Every bit of that laugh, she thinks, has a secret evolutionary purpose. She breaks it down for me starting with that first part of the laugh, the little breathy thing. Which, in her business, she calls a glottal whistle.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: She's still got this glottal whistle thing going on here.

JAD: A glottal whistle, what's that again?

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: It's the wheeze.

JAD: Oh.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Yeah. This is just creating turbulence in her glottis.

JAD: Hmm.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: It's like there's a storm going on down there.

JAD: A lot of people do the wheeze when they laugh.

ROBERT: Yeah, they do.

JAD: I do it.

ROBERT: They do.

JAD: Why? It always happens at the beginning of a laugh. Always at the beginning, which makes her think.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: That sub glottal whistle seems to really say hey pay attention to me, and then you get this wonderful sound that follows.

JAD: The wheeze, she thinks, is like a laugher's gunshot to get you to listen up. Now the sounds that follow they jump around a lot in pitch. Which, again, she thinks has a purpose considering when we talk we keep it right here in the middle. "I'm Linda Worthheimer na, na, na." When we laugh we go up and down. We leap crazy octaves, and land on really, really high notes like this.

[laughter]

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: This sound here, it's like a mouse squeak.

JAD: This note in pitch is actually higher than the highest note in that famously unsingable aria Queen of the Night.

ROBERT: Really?

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: This laugh has got so much going on in it.

JAD: Acoustically extreme, that's what she calls it.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Acoustical extreme laughter.

JAD: Which means that it's hard for our brains to process. She's seen this on brain scans. We get a little jolt, a little bzz, when we hear a laugh that jumps pitches like that.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: 55 hertz up to 276 hertz in a heartbeat.

JAD: Maybe the pitch jumps, maybe the wheeze, these sounds they're not random she would argue. They have specifically evolved to tweak us.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Tweak us emotionally. Humans have the ability to produce a sound that makes other people feel good, and so if we can do that then they're more likely to feel positively towards us, and behave positively towards us. Ultimately we want to shape their behavior towards us.

ROBERT: Well what you're saying then is a laugh is a way of the laugher getting into the head of, or under the skin of, the other person.

JAD: Maybe, just maybe. Studies in fact have found that people laugh louder and more extremely around their boss. Over and over Joanne has found that women tend to exaggerate their laughs when they're around men. Men that they don't know.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: With a stranger male she is laughing a lot, and she is producing acoustical extreme laughter.

JAD: You can interpret that in a lot of different ways. She interprets it as a safety thing.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: The idea being that male is inherently threatening so you want to manipulate his emotional state so that he's positively disposed toward her.

JAD: There's another way to sort of interpret that, which is that you're essentially confirming the stereotype of the giggling girl.

JOANNE BACHOROWSKI: Yeah, the giggling girls have power.

JAD: Don't I know it.

JAD: On that note, let's end the segment with author Barry Sanders, who in his book Sudden Glory writes a lot about this relationship between laughter and power, and laughter as a way to stay safe.

BARRY SANDERS: Yeah.

JAD: Were there moments, early moments that you can remember where you felt that acutely?

BARRY SANDERS: Oh absolutely. You can't see them with me but I can see them in my minds eye.

JAD: Well paint the picture for me.

BARRY SANDERS: Well, you know, there's my father absolutely utterly drunk, and he's turning off the lights and turning on the lights in the house with such power that he's breaking the switches and sparks are flying in the house. Sparks are going around in the house, and my mother is crying. I said, "Wait, it's Fantasia. Everything's going to turn into color."

JAD: Fantasia, I don't get it though, because of the sparks?

BARRY SANDERS: Yeah, because don't you remember in the middle of the movie it just turns into technicolor. There are sparks flying, and there's magic wand going, and Mickey's starting to touch things and they become vibrant and alive.

JAD: Oh.

BARRY SANDERS: That's what the house looked like to me. The house looked like magic mountain. It was the fourth of July. I tried to convert it that way with him. It actually worked. He took a few steps back, looked at the situation, and he cracked up. I mean I've always thought that anger ... In Latin the route for things like anger and anxiety and angina is a word called anxeri which means to be without air. You know, you start to choke up and you tell someone "Hey take a deep breath." Laughter is about breath after all. This is what Aristotle tells us. That's what would happen. He stopped for a second. His shoulders would go down. He would relax. He would move from out of his throat into his belly, and laugh at the situation.

JAD: Radiolab will return in a moment.

[LISTENER: This is Candice currently calling from her bicycle. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, and by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Thank you.]

JAD: This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This hour we are looking at laugh ...

ROBERT: Wait.

JAD: What was that?

ROBERT PROVINE: That's ... Okay, here we have the laugh box.

ROBERT: That's a strange little device that Robert Provine from University of Maryland played. Remember him from the previous section?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: He played it to me, and he has a notion about this.

ROBERT PROVINE: Yeah so basically you just need laughter to cause laughter.

ROBERT: The notion here is you don't need a joke to start the laugh, all you need is a laugh.

ROBERT PROVINE: You can throw the joke away, laughter causes laughter.

ROBERT: No you can't get a laugh going from nothing. You have to have something.

ROBERT PROVINE: Actually you can.

ROBERT: He said, "I'll prove it to you." He showed me a video tape.

ROBERT PROVINE: This was in the mall.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Excuse me, we're doing a study on laughter. Is laughter a good thing?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Absolutely.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Do you laugh a lot?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: I laugh every day. I make my wife laugh all the time. She's laughing already.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: What do you do that makes him laugh?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: Trip. [laughs]]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, man: Spills a lot of things.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: [laughs]]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: One other thing, we have a piece of apparatus here. You push the button for this.]

[canned laughter]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: [laughs]]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Why were you laughing?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: I don't know! [laughs]]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Did anyone tell a joke?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: No.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, interviewer: Did anyone do anything funny?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: No.]

[canned laughter]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, woman: [laughs]]

ROBERT: It was true. Provine is absolutely correct about this. What we're doing here is something that's very contagious.

JAD: All right well while we're on the subject of contagious laughter I've got a story to tell you. It's a good one too.

ROBERT: All right.

JAD: Now imagine—you with me?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Okay, imagine 1962 ...

ROBERT: Where would I go? I was just sitting here.

JAD: Oh just your attention, I mean.

ROBERT: Oh yes.

JAD: 1962, rural village of Kashasha Tanzania. Girls boarding school.

ROBERT: All right.

JAD: Girl is sitting in class.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: She begins to laugh. The girl next to her, maybe to her left, hears her laugh and she begins to laugh. Across the classroom a third girl joins in. The teacher gets upset, but it's too late. Soon four girls, then eight, the entire class has begun to laugh and then cry, and then laugh and then cry.

ROBERT: At what?

JAD: Just because. I don't know.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Anyhow, a girl outside at that moment walking down the hall imagine she hears the laughter from the classroom. She starts to laugh and as she walks and laughs her laughter goes into other classrooms and soon the whole school is doing this laughing, crying, laughing, crying. Teachers cannot control these girls, and they try to. The girls get violent.

ROBERT: They get violent?

JAD: Yep. The principal then has no choice, he's got to close the school. They open the school a week later, and it happens again, so they close the school a second time. Meanwhile, the girls who started all this they go back to their villages many, many miles away and this thing, whatever it is, spreads up and down the coast of Lake Victoria.

ROBERT: You mean people in the villages start to laugh?

JAD: Yep. In one village 217 people start to laugh, and cry. A second boarding school has to shut down, and no one knows why. A team of doctors, some British doctors in the area, they hop in a land rover, and they rush out to investigate this strange phenomenon. This is what they write.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The Central African Journal of Medicine. Volume nine, number 5, May 1963. The disease commenced on the 13th of January 1962. The mission run girls middle school was ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The onset was sudden with attacks of laughing and crying lasting for a few minutes to a few hours.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: After a maximum of 16 days, followed by respite, and then a recurrence.]

JAD: In the report there is an account of a 52 year old man who saw some people afflicted with this sickness.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: And soon after returning to his hut he felt something telling him to laugh and cry and shout. This he continued to do for most of the night. No fatal cases have been reported.]

ROBERT: This is very—what? Is this true?

JAD: Yeah. I mean—well, okay, we wondered.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: So we sent our producer Ellen Horne, 40-some odd years after the fact to see what she could find.

ELLEN HORNE: I'm flying to Bukoba

ELLEN: To be honest, I was a little bit worried that ...

ELLEN: I can see the sun setting over Lake Victoria.

ELLEN: ... that the medical journal article just wasn't true.

JAD: Yeah that's what I expected was just a total hoax.

ELLEN: Yeah, or that it was some kind of stunt.

ELLEN: We might be getting close.

ELLEN: I just sort of doubted the general credibility of the whole thing.

ELLEN: Okay, we've arrived in Bukoba.

ELLEN: Okay, so I get to Bukoba.

ELLEN: This is totally the most beautiful place.

ELLEN: Bukoba is a tiny port town.

ELLEN: It's green and lush.

ELLEN: In this very remote part of northern Tanzania.

ELLEN: Good morning.

ELLEN: And my first step was just to spend a couple of days walking around and asking everybody that I ran in to who spoke English about this contagious laughter.

ELLEN: An epidemic of laughter.

ELLEN: I guess I imagined, you know, this happened in the '60s so I'm looking for people who are like in their 70s and 80s. Turns out that I didn't need old people. Young people totally knew what I was talking about.

WOMAN: Oh yeah, I know what you mean.

ELLEN: Because it still happens today.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: The first time I saw it it was in 1991.

ELLEN: 1991.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Yeah.

ELLEN: I went to this tour office, and the first person I met there was this guy named Raymond.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: I'm Raymond.

ELLEN: What's your last name?

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Umpwena.

ELLEN: He said he thought he could find me somebody who had had it.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Maybe if you give me three hours I can find out.

ELLEN: Okay, let me give you my phone number.

ELLEN: About an hour later I get a text from him that says meet me in a half hour. I hop in his car, we drive off.

ELLEN: So how did you find this person?

RAYMOND UMPWENA: I know everybody in town, and everybody knows me.

ELLEN: He's not kidding. Raymond is a former Tanzanian national soccer team star. He's like a local celebrity. Kids follow him down the street. Raymond drives me up this dirt road about 10 minutes. We get to this blue cement building. We sit outside on the porch in these white plastic chairs, and we wait.

ELLEN: Hello.

ELLEN: After about 20 minutes, this woman comes out. Really beautiful, has a mole on her nose, long eyelashes.

ELLEN: Will you ask her if she'll introduce herself for me?

ELLEN: She's nervously squeezing this plastic water bottle that's in her hand.

CONCHESTER ANTON: Conchester Anton.

ELLEN: Conchester is her name. She tells me that in her high school, there were three girls who were affected. And for all of them it happened during exams.

ELLEN: An exam, a test?

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Yeah.

ELLEN: Well do you remember what the test was?

RAYMOND UMPWENA: [speaking Swahili]

CONCHESTER ANTON: [speaking Swahili]

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Mathematics.

ELLEN: It was the morning of the math test. She remembers walking into the exam room. She sat down, she looked at her paper, and suddenly something came over her.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: And she started laughing.

ELLEN: And then she took off all her clothes.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: She started undressing.

ELLEN: Undressing?

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Yeah, and they got her and took her to hospital.

ELLEN: She says she doesn't remember much else from that. She's told that she fought when they tried to restrain her. She spent three days in the hospital. They would give her Valium, make her pass out. Then she'd wake up, feel a little bit better for a while and it would come on again. She'd uncontrollably be laughing, then they would give her more Valium, she'd pass out.

ELLEN: Why do you think this happens? The laughing sickness?

ELLEN: She says it happens for girls who are not free.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: For girls who are not free.

ELLEN: I asked her if she felt free. I'm not even sure what they're talking about, but I asked her if she felt free, and she said, "Well when you live with your parents, and you're that age, no one's really free." She said she had a boyfriend, and her parents wouldn't let her see him. In the hospital when she had the laughing sickness, he was allowed to come visit.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Yes.

JAD: This girl ...

ELLEN: Yeah.

JAD: ... has a crazy attack of laughing, and then her boyfriend shows up, and she's just fine?

ELLEN: Well, more like she's allowed to see her boyfriend.

JAD: So it's about the ...

ELLEN: While she's ...

JAD: Hmm.

ELLEN: I mean, the real common association with this sickness is that it's a teenage girl disease.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Only to girls.

CONCHESTER ANTON: It is for girls.

ELLEN: It only happens to girls?

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Yeah, yeah. A girl 16 to 20 years old. Crying and sometimes laughing.

ELLEN: I talked to a school nurse, a psychiatric nurse from a local hospital, a doctor. And they all said vaguely the same thing. The reason it happened was that it had something to do with the transitions of adolescence.

JAD: And just out of curiosity, you're a girl?

ELLEN: Mm-hmm?

JAD: Is there something about this that makes sense to you?

ELLEN: Yes. Out of curios—yeah, sure. You're just beginning to negotiate your relationship to sex, and boys, and there's these new pressures, and these new responsibilities that are really challenging.

JAD: It's funny, boys don't have that problem. We just want to have sex.

ELLEN: It's a crisis for girls.

JAD: Yeah.

ELLEN: It does kind of make sense.

JAD: Okay.

ELLEN: It doesn't really explain anything about 1962 to me.

JAD: Why not?

ELLEN: Because in 1962 it wasn't just teenage girls.

JAD: Oh.

ELLEN: It was boys. It was men. It was villages full of people of all ages. So what explains that?

Fortunately for me, I had found a woman who was there.

ELLEN: Hello. How are you?

ELLEN: Gertrude is in her 50s she's got short loose curls, and a big smile. In 1962 when the laughter epidemic struck her village she got it too.

GERTRUDE: I was six years old.

ELLEN: Yeah.

GERTRUDE: Really young.

ELLEN: Do you remember?

GERTRUDE: I remember, yes.

ELLEN: Yeah, she remembers seeing hundreds of people coming down with this strange affliction and it took many forms. Some were laughing ...

GERTRUDE: Everlasting laughter, then laugh and cry at the same time.

ELLEN: At the same time?

GERTRUDE: [crying and laughing] What happened to me, was I was not able to talk. Crying only, and then my eyes were closed as if there is a gum on my eyes. My mom she carried me on her back.

ELLEN: They walked, they walked over the hills. Her mom carrying her on her back for hours. A long the way they ran into other people, boys, girls, men ...

GERTRUDE: Even older ones.

ELLEN: Dozens of people all headed the same way, laughing, crying.

GERTRUDE: Grabbing at the other skin.

JAD: Where were they going?

ELLEN: To the witch doctor.

GERTRUDE: This witch doctor.

ELLEN: They didn't know what else to do. Hundreds of people she says converged on this woman's tiny hut.

GERTRUDE: They were going inside ten by ten in the house. They were full. They had to stay outside, there were many.

ELLEN: There was so many people going to the witch doctor?

GERTRUDE: Yeah the many people. It was terrible.

ELLEN: What do you think the problem was?

GERTRUDE: Okay. I was asking my elder once what was the problem. They said that it was something spiritual, a spiritual event.

ELLEN: Yeah.

GERTRUDE: Because one year before this problem there were certain insects ...

ELLEN: She said that about a year before the laughter epidemic caterpillars had shown up.

GERTRUDE: They were breading in they spread all over the ground.

ELLEN: There was this huge infestation. One of the explanations was that the people who got sick had walked across the caterpillars.

GERTRUDE: They stepped on this caterpillars.

ELLEN: And had killed them.

GERTRUDE: As a result ...

ELLEN: The spirit of the caterpillars were possessing them.

GERTRUDE: ... they started to get this feeling.

ELLEN: Now she sort of dismissed that as not scientific.

GERTRUDE: Maybe these caterpillars had a certain bacterias which affected the brain.

ELLEN: Okay, this explanation that there was some sort of bacteria, or virus, I had already checked it out. I had gone to the government hospital to talk to the medical officer. They'd never found any physical cause for this.

OFFICER: There's not any medical importance which was found.

ELLEN: I'd even talked to a lab technician.

LAB TECHNICIAN: I'm a technician.

ELLEN: Who had checked blood samples in 1962.

LAB TECHNICIAN: Everything was negative.

ELLEN: They tested the water supply, the food supply.

LAB TECHNICIAN: Negative, negative.

ELLEN: So that the caterpillars seemed like a dead end. I tried a different tack. I asked Gertrude what was going on then at that time in your village. She thought about it for a while, and then she said. Well of course there was ...

GERTRUDE: Independence.

ELLEN: Independence. For 40 years, Tanzania had been a British colony. But in 1961 Tanzania had declared independence.

JAD: And this was right before?

ELLEN: Just weeks before that first girl started laughing.

ELLEN: Gertrude, I don't know much about independence. What can you tell me about independence?

GERTRUDE: What I experienced back then was people going around, singing, beating drums, dancing. It was the independence. Apart from that I can't tell more what's independence, because I was very, very young.

ELLEN: Gertrude said that she knew somebody who would remember more, someone I should talk to.

GERTRUDE: This Mr. Sospeta.

ELLEN: A 71-year-old man, Mr. Sospeta.

GERTRUDE: Who was assisting the witch doctor.

ELLEN: He was the witch doctor's assistant?

GERTRUDE: Maybe this man can help more.

ELLEN: Yeah.

GERTRUDE: Than I.

ELLEN: Do you want some coffee or some breakfast here first?

ELLEN: On my very last day in Bukoba, Raymond and I sat down with this man, the witch doctor's assistant at a restaurant near my hotel. Tiny guy. Gray hair, and big oversized suit, and he filled in some of the missing pieces.

ELLEN: Will you tell him I want to know what he remembers?

ELLEN: I asked him about the independence celebration that Gertrude described, the ones just before the laughter epidemic. He painted a very different picture.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: I remember. I would mark a check, any marker these things.

ELLEN: He was 26 at the time, but after the parties died down he said change swept through his village. Immediately following independence Tanzania became a socialist state, and the new government was out to create a new world order. Land changed hands, they abolished the local clans.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: The president, President Nyerere, after the independence ...

ELLEN: And the local religions.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: They banned the spirit.

ELLEN: This was the brand new age. This was the new era. You were supposed to have a modern belief system. The entire village was being asked to abandon the way that they had worshiped for thousands of years. Within weeks the churches moved in. Suddenly they had business. Catholic church opened up on one side of the street, and a Lutheran on the other.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: Christians were telling people, convincing villagers to join different religions.

ELLEN: They even handed out money. It was kind of a bidding war for souls. All of it was too new, too fast. He even remembers this one particular night that everyone in his village gathered outside, and stared at the sky.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: They had been told that was the end of life on Earth. At midnight everyone was out the whole night waiting to see whether they are going to die.

ELLEN: He told me, we saw the heavens and the moon slamming into each other.

RAYMOND UMPWENA: What they saw, it was an eclipse of the moon. That's what they said.

ELLEN: An eclipse of the moon. Looking back on it, maybe that was the end of the world, of that old world. Here's this guy, this witch doctor's assistant, who introduced himself to me actually as an elected official.

ROBERT: Oh that's interesting.

ELLEN: He made this jump in his life. That was a particular period of time when everybody was making this big jump, all of a sudden.

JAD: So you think that this laughing epidemic had something to do with like an avalanche of newness.

ELLEN: Yeah. Of all the explanations I came across, this is the one that makes the most sense to me.

ROBERT: It's plausible to me too. You've got a loss of religion, an arrival of a new religion, a loss of a political culture, a new leader. That's a very large pile up of change, all of a sudden.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: And of course everyone is a little bit scared, so there's a quiet, and then someone starts to laugh.

ELLEN: Who knows why that first girl went crazy, and why she started making crazy laughing noises, but it was like people saw that and they were like oh God I feel like that too.

ROBERT: It sounds like laughter but you could think of it as ...

JAD: As like a collective scream, or something.

ROBERT: Yeah.

ELLEN: Like the entire society was a 16-year-old girl in 1962.

JAD: Radiolab Producer Ellen Horne. Well that's it for us, at least for now. For more information on the Tanzanian laugh epidemic, or anything else you heard in this hour visit Radiolab.org. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: We'll see you later.

[LISTENER: Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad, Lulu Miller, Rob Christiansen, Ellen Horne, Elizabeth Giddings. Production support by Sally Herships, Sarah Peligrene, Ariel Latsky, Heather Radke, Michael O'Ryan McManis and Soren Wheeler. Thanks to Gail Cleaver, Beth Barrack, Bingo Nightly, Emily Webber and Sharon Counts. Finally, special thanks to Casey Cromwell. Radiolab is produced by WNYC, New York Public Radio, and distributed by NPR, National Public Radio.]

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