When’s the Last Time You Cachinnated?
Though it’s practically a truism by now that anthropologists’ reports often say more about the writers’ assumptions than about the cultures in question, the valiant attempt by Mahadev L. Apte to...
View ArticleA Joke’s a Joke the World Around?
British behavioral psychologist Richard Wiseman set out to track humor on an international scale and discover the funniest joke in the world. After analyzing 1.5 million Internet ratings of 40,000...
View ArticleLaughing or Weeping?
The excellent Brooklyn-based quarterly Cabinet dedicated its Spring ‘05 issue to laughter. You’re just going to have to buy a copy, because only a very small portion is available online…including this...
View ArticleSadistic Laughter
“Laughter,” wrote Thomas Hobbes, “is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own...
View ArticleWhat Makes Kids Laugh?
Aristotle thought babies became human beings only once they laughed for the first time. He also decided that this should happen around their 40th day. Conventional wisdom now puts it at about the 90th...
View ArticleIs Laughing Good for You?
Much has been written about the alleged health benefits of laughter, but a new report takes it up a notch by claiming that the mere anticipation of laughter dramatically reduces stress hormones—which...
View ArticleLaughter and Gender
Mrs. Murphy’s Manners for Women, a British how-to from 1897, has very particular ideas about the role of women’s laughter.“Laughing should be carefully taught. The thing to be guarded against is that...
View ArticleYour Brain on Cartoons
A neuroscientist at Stanford recently used an fMRI machine to peer into people’s brains while they watch cartoons, and found that men and women were responding differently.“The first-of-its-kind...
View ArticleWhy Can’t We Tickle Ourselves?
Aristotle puzzled over the great mystery of why it’s impossible to tickle oneself. Turns out it’s quite simple, really. Here’s a brief explanation by British neuroscientist Sarah Blakemore that...
View ArticleThe Funny Business of Tickling
Some hard-working psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara found that although tickling generally elicits laughter, it’s not always funny or pleasant. Here’s an excerpt from a New...
View ArticleSardonic Laughter
On the etymology of 'sardonic laughter', from Laughter: A Scientific Investigation by Robert Provine:The term “sardonic laughter,” referring to the bitter, mocking laughter of derision, has a rich if...
View ArticleRepeat After Me
There is a phenomenon whereby, as soon as you start thinking about something, you see it everywhere.I started thinking about repetition when Radiolab asked me to address a listener’s comment from the...
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