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!]

 

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