what makes you laugh essay

3 Sample Essay: What Makes Me Laugh

Christopher Perkins

Download and/or print this chapter: What-is-Funny-Chapter 3

A. Good Student

Dr. Perkins

English 1213

21 Feb. 2022

Cats and Humor: The Purrfect Pick-Me-Up

Everyone has their own sense of humor and their own reasons to laugh, developed over a lifetime and reflective of our individual needs and experiences. While many things in this world make me laugh, the most consistent source of humor in my life lately comes from cats. Whether watching online cat videos on YouTube and TikTok or laughing at the hijinks of the three felines who live in my house, these little weirdos never fail to get a chuckle out of me.

Sometimes I think the internet was created solely for the sharing of cat videos—or at least I think the world would be a better place if all we did on the internet was share cat videos. Lucky for us, while there are lots of other things to do and learn on the web, there are plenty of cat videos to watch too. Any number of these videos can make me laugh, but lately I’ve been really enjoying the way the TikTok users edit short and hilarious cat content using the app and its many sounds. One of my favorite such videos uploaded by @meredithdylan captures the essence of what makes a great, funny cat TikTok . In the video, captioned “my working theory is that she’s stupid,” we see a cat approach an automated feeder looking for a meal. For those unfamiliar with these devices, they are designed to help limit a pet’s food intake and help control weight. Many cat people end up needing feeders like this as housecats are notoriously lazy and can get fat, leading to complications like diabetes down the road. The feeder works by limiting access to food except at certain times. When the cat is allowed to eat and approaches the feeder, a chip in its collar or an implant signals the feeder and opens the food bowl giving the cat access. When the cat is not allowed to eat, the feeder will not open. In the more advanced models, like the one in @meredithdylan’s video, a message might appear (as if the cat can read it) letting everyone know that now is not feeding time. This is precisely what we see in the video as the cat approaches the feeder and a message displays on its screen saying “Sorry! No mo [ sic. ] until later!” To a cat lover, seeing a hungry cat denied food might not inspire laughter. On the contrary, some might initially feel sorry for this furry girl. However, because of the clever editing, such a reaction quickly turns to humor as the 9-second video unfolds.

Upon reaching the closed feeder and seeing it fail to open, our feline heroine responds by looking at the camera—most likely held by her owner/person—then back at the feeder. The video then cuts to a slightly closer shot of the cat standing menacingly over the feeder and glaring at its forbidden food. As all this happens the sound of a piano, voice, and drum machine play. Many viewers will recognize this as the intro to Rihanna’s “Take a Bow,” but you don’t need to know the song for the video to make you laugh. All you need to do is listen to the lyrics. It’s the lyrics that makes the video really humorous because right as the editing shifts from the cat looking at the camera to her staring intensely at the unopened feeder, the opening line of the first verse of the song plays: “You look so dumb right now” sings Rihanna, and viewers immediately associate the “you” in the song with the cat in the video. Every time I see this video it brings a smile to my face and a pleasant chuckle. Watching a cat struggle to understand the machinations of human beings and being playfully mocked by RiRi’s soulful voice is exactly the kind of pleasant, lighthearted, humorous content that can lift my spirits on a tough day.

Any time I need a quick jolt of joy, I know that cats have got my back both in the form of the delightful videos that populate my social media feeds and my actual cats at home. Of course, I’m not the only one who loves a funny cat. The stranglehold that cat videos, cat memes, and internet cats like “Grumpy Cat” have on online culture attests to a larger truth about one of the ways that humans find humor. While many of us laugh at many things, a vast population of people love to laugh at cats specifically, and an even larger group at pets/animals in general. Recognizing this potentially provides us another way of understanding our relationship to nonhuman animals and our senses of humor. Or maybe the truth is simpler than that: cats are just funny.

@meredithdylan “My working theory is that she’s stupid.” TikTok , 10 Jan. 2022. https://www.tiktok.com/@meredithdylan/video/7051717994522807599?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1.

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The very serious science of humor

How studying what tickles our funny bone can help explain who we are.

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To find mirth in the world is to be human.

No culture is unfamiliar with humor, according to Joseph Polimeni , an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba. For someone who analyzes humor, Polimeni tells me he’s still surprised by its complexity: How words and phrases and jokes have different meanings to everyone, but we all have the instinct to laugh. Just as humans have an innate ability to understand language, Polimeni says, so, too, do they have a reflex for comprehending everyday comedy. Sure, there are people who are better suited at making others laugh, but “almost everybody,” Polimeni tells me, can appreciate a quip.

As much as humor is universal, how it works is, to most people, a mystery. We seek out laughs in nearly every form of media, from film and TV to memes and TikToks. At the box office, popular comedies rake in big bucks . Funny people are idolized in pop culture.

A desire for hilarity influences who we choose to spend time with, too. Why else, when scrolling through profiles on dating apps, would so many say they hope to date someone who’s funny (or at least claim to be “ fluent in sarcasm ”)? According to the 2022 Singles in America survey from online dating service Match, 92 percent of singles seek a partner who can make them laugh. (Does this explain Pete Davidson’s appeal ?)

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The things that make us laugh today, from knock-knock jokes to satire, don’t quite resemble our ancestors’ version of humor. “Play is probably one of the original building blocks of humor,” Polimeni says. Many animals partake in it — dogs, otters, monkeys, rats , horses, fish, kangaroos — and humans’ early predecessors, similar to modern-day chimpanzees and primates, likely engaged in play, too, like mock fighting and tickling .

Over time, laughter-inducing play transformed into practical uses: Laughter and amusement signified a situation was safe , and positive emotions could be used to help cheer others up . Then, around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, Polimeni says, humor evolved to serve more modern applications: to smooth over awkward social situations, to laugh at others’ mishaps. Humor would have aided early humans in having difficult or contentious conversations — topics like “Are you helping me enough?” “Do you like me?” “Why did you accidentally hit me? Or was it on purpose?” — without getting angry at one another, Polimeni says.

If softening the blow of a potentially sticky conversation with a chuckle and a smile could help people deal with conflict, then it makes sense that humor and laughter matured for the purposes of social cooperation, as Polimeni and others suggest . Having an audience appreciate your humor has profound social benefits. Successfully landing a joke raises a person’s status while also lowering the status of anyone who’s the butt of a joke. Those in on the joke feel a greater sense of camaraderie, too.

Still, few people would find data and the minute dissection of jokes amusing. Yet an entire field of research exists aiming to analyze and quantify humor and how we use it. Scholars are trying to demystify something intangible and crucial to relationships and well-being, even as what we find funny is always evolving and taking new forms. Humor is an omnipresent chameleon, a misunderstood shape-shifter, and to figure out how it works is to take the temperature of society, culture, and our psychology.

In the modern world, research strongly suggests that the social functions of humor are considerable. Laughter, itself more likely to occur when we’re around others, boosts cooperation and cohesiveness in groups. People who are funnier tend to have higher levels of both cognitive and emotional intelligence and creativity . Genuine laughter (not fake polite chuckles), known as Duchenne laughter, improves mood and tempers negative impacts of stress , and shared laughter promotes social bonding . French scientist Guillaume Duchenne coined his namesake expression in 1862 after performing a series of experiments in which he identified the facial muscles used in genuine smiles and laughter. A true grin or chuckle manifests in the eyes — the bit of squinting and wrinkles that form on our faces when something actually tickles us can’t be faked. It’s, as Tyra Banks would say, smizing . That’s Duchenne.

But how does humor actually work? What makes things funny? For centuries, scholars and great thinkers attempted to clarify the conundrum that is humor. Philosophers and humor academics largely subscribed to three schools of thought when explaining why we find amusement in life: the superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity theory. The superiority theory , explained by the likes of Plato and Aristotle, is one of the oldest. It posits that things are funny when we feel superior to others or to prior, lowly versions of ourselves. Think: mocking humor or self-deprecating humor. Sigmund Freud’s interpretation, known as the relief theory , is that the act of laughter releases pent-up nervous energy or tension, such as when laughing at taboo or sexual topics . The third, and most widely accepted, explanation of humor is the incongruity theory . Philosophers James Beattie, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, and others postulated that we find amusement in things that are at odds with our expectations, a contradiction between the setup and the punchline. In contemporary humor, the joke teller sets the scene in the buildup; the part that makes us laugh is often a pivot away from the path we thought we were on.

These arguments don’t mean we’d find humor in “accidentally killing your mother-in-law,” Peter McGraw , a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder, and his coauthor Joel Warner wrote in their 2014 book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny . Unintended murder “would be incongruous, assert superiority, and release pent-up aggressive tensions, but it’s hardly a gut-buster.”

Gore, however, does garner a few laughs in the right context. I’m in the audience of a Denver theater watching improv comedians craft a layered and detailed narrative about vulnerability and love and gaping flesh wounds. Next to me, in the dark, mostly empty house of RISE Comedy , Caleb Warren is laughing. (As with some things that are funny, you really did have to be there.)

Warren, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona, studies what makes us laugh for a living. He, along with his collaborator, Peter McGraw, convened this performance so I can see their work in action. The pair think they’ve got humor down to a science, and with volunteer improvisers as kind and willing test subjects, Warren and McGraw attempted to take the magic out of comedy: to describe to me, in painstaking detail, why the comedians’ jokes — why talk of flesh wounds — might make us laugh.

McGraw, who is trained in quantitative psychology, focusing on judgment and decision-making, teaches courses including undergraduate consumer behavior, MBA-level marketing management, and behavioral economics to PhD students. Warren was one of those PhD students during the latter part of the early aughts — one who struggled academically, but was one of the smartest in the room, McGraw says. Warren remembers McGraw teaching a lesson about moral violations: “ victimless yet offensive actions (such as eating one’s dead pet dog), ” as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt put it. While reading Haidt’s paper, Warren mostly thought the scenarios were funny. Around the same time, McGraw was giving a talk on moral violations and an audience member posed a question: If moral violations are supposed to elicit disgust, why are we laughing? McGraw didn’t really have an answer. He also couldn’t stop thinking about it. McGraw brought the puzzle to Warren and the pair quickly began exploring why we laugh at things that are morally wrong.

The theories of superiority, relief, and incongruity did an okay job at explaining humor, they thought. But it would make much more sense if there were one framework, one bow to neatly wrap around the humor experience. McGraw and Warren say they believed another theory , by linguist Thomas Veatch, got closer to solving the puzzle. Take the joke that inspired Veatch’s line of thinking as McGraw later recounted to me: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree? Because it was dead. Veatch claimed “that humor occurs when someone perceives a situation is a violation of a ‘subjective moral principle’ while simultaneously realizing that the situation is normal,” McGraw and Warner wrote. The violation? The dead monkey. The “normal” situation? Any dead creature would tumble from a tree, as gravity is wont to do. The major issue with Veatch’s proposition: The word “normal” hardly applies to some situations we find funny — absurd, surreal humor, for example. Tweaking Veatch’s theory, McGraw and Warren devised their own: They called it the Benign Violation Theory .

“We were looking to apply another theory at first,” Warren says. Reserved and cautious when choosing his words, Warren is not quite an unlikely candidate to be an expert on humor, but he toes the line. “We weren’t really looking to create our own.”

“Not at all,” McGraw says. McGraw is boisterous and chatty, a natural presenter with a boyish verve, fortunate qualities to have considering the sheer volume of interviews and talks he’s given on humor.

“There’s plenty of models out there to choose from,” he says. “We were struggling finding one that was good enough to answer the question [of what makes things funny], plus all these other questions that were popping into our head as we went.”

The pair co-authored a 2010 paper that explained their framework: For people to find things funny, three boxes must be checked: A situation (anything from someone falling down the stairs, a story, someone flubbing their words) is a violation of society’s mores, the situation is benign, and both happen simultaneously. One of the studies included in their paper asked participants — University of Colorado students — whether certain statements made them laugh. “Before he passed away, Keith’s father told his son to cremate his body. Then he told Keith to do whatever he wished with the remains. Keith decided to snort his dead father’s ashes,” was one passage respondents found both wrong and funny. The violation in this scenario is clearly the snorting of the ashes. The benign part is that the snorting was technically okay since Keith’s dad said he could do whatever he wanted with the ashes. Over the years of studying humor, Warren tells me, his sense of humor has progressively skewed darker and become borderline disturbing. In one study, for example, he asked participants to watch drug awareness PSAs because he got a kick out of them. The subjects did not agree.

McGraw launched the Humor Research Lab in 2009. The lab itself is hardly funny; it’s a bland office space in the University of Colorado Boulder’s business school, with fluorescent lights and a series of cubicles and Dell desktops, and no beakers full of red clown noses or whoopee cushions to speak of. On the day of my visit, the lab was empty, but during times of research and data collection, student volunteers were shepherded into the room to take surveys, watch videos, or observe other potentially humorous media on the screens.

Prior to the early 2010s, humor research was scattershot and largely based in philosophy or linguistics. Rod Martin , a now-retired professor of clinical psychology at the University of Western Ontario, stood alone in applying scientific rigor to the field. Martin, literally, wrote the book on the psychology of humor, appropriately titled The Psychology of Humor , a copy of which sits on the bookshelf in McGraw’s office. (Martin declined to be interviewed for this story.)

From the 1980s until he retired in 2016, Martin studied aspects of humor, like the effects of humor on physical health and stress (in short, humor is good for the mind and the body and helps us cope). In 2003, Martin and a graduate student developed the Humor Styles Questionnaire to account for individual differences in sense of humor. Just as some people use humor to tease or belittle, others may take amusement in the weirdness of the mundane and can often make themselves laugh.

To learn a bit more about how I approach humor in my life — how I use humor to amuse myself, relate to other people, tear myself down — I took the Humor Styles Questionnaire. The assessment asks participants to rank how much they agree with statements such as, “If I am feeling upset or unhappy I usually try to think of something funny about the situation to make myself feel better” and “I let people laugh at me or make fun at my expense more than I should.” The results are a series of scores in four different types of humor: affiliative humor, self-enhancing humor, aggressive humor, and self-defeating humor. Those with high levels of affiliative humor tell jokes to make others laugh. Self-enhancing humor is the skill of staying upbeat and humorous even when stressed. People with an aggressive humor style use comedy to tease and manipulate others. Finally, self-defeating humorists make themselves the butt of the joke.

I scored extremely high in self-defeating and affiliative humor, quite high in aggressive humor, and below average in self-enhancing humor. I shared my results with Gil Greengross , a lecturer in psychology at Prifysgol Aberystwyth University in Wales whose dissertation adviser was Martin, the guy who created the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Greengross became enthralled with humor as an academic subject matter when he realized how little is understood about what makes us laugh. If aliens were to touch down on Earth and examine how humans communicate, he tells me, “but then, every minute or two someone burst out laughing,” the aliens might wonder what that expression means and what it signals. So he decided to find out. Over Zoom, when Greengross hears how highly I score in self-defeating humor, a nervous smile creeps across his bespectacled face.

“Oh really? Self-defeating your highest?” he says. “That’s not very good for your mental health, to make fun of yourself. But again, it depends how you use it. Self-deprecating humor can be very useful for people if you use it in moderation. So it all depends on how often. Do you feel that you joke a lot about yourself?”

I tell him that I do. “Because I am often talking to people I don’t know for my job. So I find that it’s a way to ingratiate myself. And I often am talking to like, way smarter people, like you, and so I’m like, ‘Tell it to me like I’m a dumb person because I am dumb.’”

“I mean, you don’t have to demean yourself,” Greengross tells me, sounding a little like a disappointed father. “I don’t think that you’re less intelligent than me.”

The person I feel most qualified to joke about is myself. Perhaps incorrectly, I believe belittling myself may make people like me more, but that’s a conversation best reserved for my therapist, not Greengross. He tells me to use self-deprecating humor as a way to make me appear more romantically attractive to outsiders, which works, his studies have found .

Because everyone varies in their approaches to comedy — and some people seem preternaturally gifted in the laugh department — what accounts for such differences? What makes one person funnier than another?

It’s partly hereditary, says Greengross, who is currently studying humor in twins to see how genetics play a role. “Basically all psychological traits have some heritable component,” he says. But it’s also our environment: peers, friends, family. Humor is a thing that is subliminally studied simply by living and adapting to culture. We observe those around us and infer clues about what is appropriate based on what others laugh about, their reactions to jokes.

Take movies or comedy specials that haven’t aged particularly well. These media speak to a time and a culture that may have found the violations benign enough to laugh about. “We probably are learning what we find funny, but we’re learning about what is socially acceptable,” says Shelia Kennison , a professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University. “What are the funniest kinds of jokes? What should you laugh at? What should you not laugh at? And maybe you still find things funny that you shouldn’t laugh at. But you learn how to appear to be socially following the norms.”

When these broad social norms aren’t adhered to, that’s when jokes fall flat — or worse, offend. Think: racist, sexist, and ableist humor. However, the cultural perspectives and mores influencing joke appropriateness are never fixed. As time and tastes progress, so do audiences and what they consider acceptable to laugh at. Comedians like Dave Chappelle, who once had broad appeal, are maligned for their regressive material today. According to Kennison, audiences have moved beyond what Chappelle thinks is appropriate. “Dave Chappelle is a very cerebral comedian and I think he purposely wants people to think in ways they’re not comfortable thinking,” she says. “So I think he knew he probably was going to lose people.” But for the audience members who stay with him, they may feel more permission to parrot his ideologies. The more people hear racist or sexist jokes, the more comfortable they are with expressing these thoughts in other forums . Because the internet constantly exposes people to harmful humor — through memes, trolling, anonymous posting — bad actors only have more opportunities.

To strike the right balance of a benign enough violation without offending your audience requires some brains. Funny people are indeed smart, Greengross says. Because humorousness is associated with higher levels of emotional and cognitive intelligence , effective comedians understand the right context in which to tell jokes. “You wouldn’t go [to] a feminist conference and start telling sexist jokes, right?” Greengross says. “That would be poor emotional intelligence.” A funny person is also a bit of a risk taker, accepting that a quip might rub people the wrong way. Natural comedians tend to be more open to new experiences, too, Greengross says.

Some believe that standups are tortured souls who found an outlet for their dark thoughts in comedy, but Greengross and Martin found professional comics were more successful if they had higher levels of affiliative humor (the kind of humor people use to share with and to delight others).

There are plenty of comedic questions still left unanswered. One of the most puzzling mysteries, according to McGraw and Warren, is how to make people funnier. “That’s so difficult,” McGraw says, “I spent a year on [it] and then quit.” Teaching everyone to be more amusing would be great for the people who are already naturally comedic — they’d be hilarious — and increasingly awkward for everyone else since they’d just be offensive instead. The pair attempted to bring the conundrum of improving humor capabilities to Humor Research Lab but ended up with two papers on entirely different subjects and dropped the idea.

Warren is also interested in why some things that the Benign Violation Theory says should amuse people don’t, like riding a roller coaster, engaging in kinky sex, or eating spicy food — thrilling experiences that, for the most part, aren’t life-threatening, meaning they’re benign violations. Why, for some people, are these adventures titillating, or horrifying, but for others laughter-inducing? Currently, Warren is studying why people use jokes when they’re accused of wrongdoing and why people may find posts describing severe violations funny but won’t share that content with others.

Much of the research into humor attempts to dive into people’s minds, questioning participants about their perception of what is funny, or how they conjure witticisms. Neuroscientist Ori Amir took a different approach. Growing up in Israel, Amir’s father was a comedian and would critique his jokes, he tells me over Zoom, tufts of curly auburn hair poking out from underneath a flat-brimmed baseball hat. “Only one of my jokes ever got an A-plus,” says Amir, who, in addition to his scholarly career, is a standup comedian. “Unfortunately, that joke is very heavily reliant on understanding of Hebrew expressions.”

When Amir was a doctoral student at the University of Southern California he successfully took a peek under comedy’s hood, examining the brains of professional and amateur comedians using fMRI scans. The goal: Figure out what parts of the brain are used when coming up with and appreciating humor. What he found, published in a 2016 study , was that two areas of the brain, the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe, are active while making a joke. The temporal lobe plays double duty; it lights up both when a person hears and processes a joke and when they make a joke. Understanding a joke is a quicker process in the brain — illustrated by a quick spike of brain activation — than the process of conceiving one, which appears as a gradual increase of activity. (It’s important to note that while fMRI scans can easily determine parts of the brain where activity occurs, interpreting the function of said areas is decidedly less clear .)

What was surprising to Amir was the funnier the joke (as rated by independent graders), the less activity there was in the prefrontal cortex of the person who created it. What Amir determined was the neuroscience equivalent to “get out of your head” — that we’re funniest when we’re not trying so hard to be funny. Amir suspects some people might be predisposed to have less activity in this area, but practice in the art of comedy can help further quiet the noise in the prefrontal cortex. In Amir’s study, the professional comedian participants had less going on in the prefrontal cortex than non-comics.

The magical thing about humor in everyday life is its ease, its ubiquitousness. The more you think about being the funniest person in the room, the more likely you’ll fail. It’s the effortlessness at which the funniest of us can fire off witticisms, the ways in which we intuit how to amuse those we know best.

Pages and pages of scientific literature are dedicated to uncomfortable experiences, such as regret, McGraw tells me, and not something uplifting, like humor. For McGraw, dedicating a decade of his career to a phenomenon that is all at once joyful, entertaining, status-enhancing, artistic, bond-building, and communicative is to shed light on an essential part of human existence we all know is there. From Warren’s perspective, humor is the guiding hand teaching us what’s right, what’s wrong, how to navigate the world. “Someone who jokes a lot as a child, or even as an adult,” Warren says, “they tend to have a better sense of the culture, a better sense of social norms, a better sense of how to understand people.”

I tell Warren this is my exact experience with humor. As an awkward and shy kid, I began to test the boundaries of friendship, of social appropriateness, through silly jokes. Every laugh was permission to proceed. Illogical or hurtful quips were learning moments. The symbiotic relationship between humor and ourselves is endlessly fascinating; as individuals grow, culture shifts, and so does the way we talk and joke about the world around us.

At the risk of turning something sexy into a chapter in a science book, humor research helps explain who we are, the forces that shape us, and the ways we move culture. It’s the reason why McGraw and Warren included a section in many of their papers titled “Humor Is Important.” McGraw lists some of the reasons why: Humor is a huge facet of the entertainment industry, an important coping mechanism, a driver of who our friends and romantic partners are, a weapon to bully and belittle, a vehicle to promote and destroy ideas.

“So, like, yeah, this is incredibly important,” he says wryly. “It’s a fascinating puzzle.”

What’s So Funny?
Science of Humor
Millennial Cringe
Political Divide
Funny Money
Emotional Armor

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February 9, 2020

Why Do We Laugh?

We laugh even before we can speak. But why? Science has some answers to the mystery of human laughter, and some of them might surprise you

By Everyday Einstein Sabrina Stierwalt

Dirk Lindner Getty Images

Last week, we talked about our love of sugar and I explained some of the reasons why we humans develop certain traits that seem contrary to our survival. This week, I thought we’d dig into why we develop some traits that aren’t so much contrary to our survival but may seem unnecessary. Specifically, why do we laugh?

People from all cultures laugh, although we may laugh at different things. (I once interviewed for a job in the Netherlands and none of my jokes landed. I didn’t get that job.) Apes also laugh . We know this because there are scientists whose job it is to tickle animals. I’m not even kidding. What a life!

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Humans start laughing as early as 3 months into life , even before we can speak. This is true even for babies who are deaf or blind. Peekaboo, it turns out, is particularly a global crowd-pleaser. And we know this because studying baby laughter is an actual job , too.

So, the ubiquitous nature of laughter suggests that it must serve a purpose, but what?

Why do we laugh? Here are a few scientific reasons

Laughter clearly serves a social function. It is a way for us to signal to another person that we wish to connect with them. In fact, in a study of thousands of examples of laughter, the speakers in a conversation were found to be 46 percent more likely to laugh than the listeners.

We’re also 30 times more likely to laugh in a group . Young children between the ages of 2.5 and 4 were found to be eight times more likely to laugh at a cartoon when they watched it with another child even though they were just as likely to report that the cartoon was funny whether alone or not.

Evolutionarily speaking, this signal of connection likely played an important role in survival. Upon meeting a stranger, we want to know: What are your intentions with me? And who else are you aligned with ?

In a study that spanned 24 different societies and included 966 participants, scientists played short sound bites of pairs of people laughing together. In some cases, the pair were close friends, in others, the pair were strangers.

Participants in the study were asked to listen to the simultaneous laughter and determine the level of friendship shared by the laughers. Using only the sound of the laughter as cues, they could reliably tell the difference between people who had just met and those who were long-time friends. These results suggest not only the link between true laughter and friendship but also that we aren’t fooling anyone when we pretend to laugh at another person’s joke.

Another theory, which takes the person-to-person connection provided by laughter a step further, is that laughter may be a replacement for the act of grooming each other. Grooming another is a behavior seen in primates. To groom someone else is a generous, one-sided act. Because it requires trust and investment of time, it bonds the groomer and groomee as friends.

As our communities got larger, we couldn’t all go around grooming each other to establish bonds. So, this is no longer our preferred method of exhibiting an offer of friendship. (And that’s probably a good thing.) But laughter, like the commitment offered through grooming, is also hard to fake, at least not without being obvious. And, unlike grooming, it can be done in a larger group and gives a more immediate impression. When we genuinely laugh, we signal that we are comfortable and feel like we belong.

According to the Mayo Clinic, there are also a multitude of physical health benefits to laughter . Laughter can increase your oxygen intake , which can in turn stimulate your heart, lungs, and muscles. Laughing further releases endorphins, the feel-good chemicals our bodies produce to make us feel happy and even relieve pain or stress. The act of increasing and then decreasing our heart rate and blood pressure through laughter is also ultimately calming and tension-relieving. Laughter can even boost our immune system response through the release of stress-and illness-reducing neuropeptides.

So laughter signals cooperation, a key aspect of human survival, and promotes a healthier body to boot. That’s the best excuse I’ve heard to make sure to take the time to enjoy a few laughs over dinner and drinks with friends.

»Continue reading “Why Do We Laugh?” on QuickAndDirtyTips.com

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What makes you laugh says a lot about who you are

Humor has long been the subject of serious research among psychologists, linguists, sociologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists. There’s an entire journal devoted to the topic and, though it may be hard to believe when you’re engrossed in the latest Hangover movie, humor is so much more than just a laughing matter.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein reportedly told his friend , philosopher Norman Malcolm, that “a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious.)” He believed the wordplay we laugh at helps reveal our unquestioned assumptions about the world.

“Wittgenstein thought that language was our window into underlying conceptions that we have, that often aren’t explicit,” David Boersema , philosophy professor at Pacific University, tells Quartz. “By attending to the language, we can see where we make these conceptual shifts.”

To this end, there are countless theories on the significance of what makes us laugh. One of the most prominent ideas is that humor is a means of establishing a connection. Charles Taliaferro, philosophy professor at St. Olaf College, tells Quartz that jokes are a means of establishing insiders and outsiders.

“Laughter is, basically, a voluntary matter,” he says. “Therefore when people laugh together at some shared joke, they form, however briefly and in an ephemeral way, a bond. Almost any joke can then become an ‘inside joke’ insofar as you-had-to-be-there or you reference the first telling.”

Boersema adds that humor is a way to “share our humanity with one another and share our foibles.” Jokes are often a means of referencing a mistake and displaying potential vulnerability, and so are a way of connecting with others.

Meanwhile Peter McGraw, marketing and psychology professor at the University of Colorado, who has written a book on humor , says that laughing at jokes developed out of primates play-fighting. Just as play-fighting is simultaneously threatening, yet safe, McGraw believes we laugh at “benign violations”—something that should be troubling, but becomes benign in a joke format.

But our ability to make such bonds—to show vulnerability or engage in play-fighting—depends on individual personalities. So while some people find is easy to be humorous and form bonds with large groups of people, others can only be funny (and therefore intimate) once they’re extremely close to another person.

Intimacy isn’t the only role of humor. Many believe that laughter is a means of expressing superiority—a notion espoused by Hobbes and Descartes, among others. And though it’s difficult to expand this theory to apply to all manner of jokes, there’s certainly a distinct brand of humor that’s based on a desire for supremacy, like dumb blonde jokes, Boersema says. “The idea is: ‘Dumb blondes are so dumb they do x, but I would never do that because I’m smarter than those dumb blondes.’ We laugh at other people instead of with them.”

Humor is also an expression of culture—some jokes simply will not translate, for example—and can speak to certain characteristics of society.

Taliaferro says he studied humor alongside comedic student Allison Lonigro, and found that comedy has greatest breadth in just, fair societies. “Of course, in a tyranny or ‘closed society’ there might be, and often is, a wickedly funny, underground and subversive form of humor,” he adds.“But under conditions of the fear of censorship and suppression, when comedy might be brave and an important form of resistance, it will be more constrained and tense than a society which is not ambitiously censorious.”

And so what we laugh at isn’t simply a reflection of personal taste, but a symptom of our personality and culture. Ultimately, though, understanding this won’t make a joke much funnier or help you develop a sense of humor.

“I always think of humor along very analogous lines to art,” says Boersema. “If you get it, you get it, and there’s an immediate response . If someone has to explain it to you, then you might think it’s funny but probably not in the same way.”

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Why do we laugh? New study considers possible evolutionary reasons behind this very human behaviour

Professor of Pediatrics, Università di Siena

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Carlo Valerio Bellieni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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A woman in labour is having a terrible time and suddenly shouts out: “Shouldn’t! Wouldn’t! Couldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!” “Don’t worry,” says the doctor. “These are just contractions.”

Until now, several theories have sought to explain what makes something funny enough to make us laugh. These include transgression (something forbidden), puncturing a sense of arrogance or superiority (mockery), and incongruity – the presence of two incompatible meanings in the same situation.

I decided to review all the available literature on laughter and humour published in English over the last ten years to find out if any other conclusions could be drawn. After looking through more than one hundred papers, my study produced one new possible explanation: laughter is a tool nature may have provided us with to help us survive.

I looked at research papers on theories of humour that provided significant information on three areas: the physical features of laughter, the brain centres related to producing laughter, and the health benefits of laughter. This amounted to more than 150 papers that provided evidence for important features of the conditions that make humans laugh.

By organising all the theories into specific areas, I was able to condense the process of laughter into three main steps: bewilderment, resolution and a potential all-clear signal, as I will explain.

This raises the possibility that laughter may have been preserved by natural selection throughout the past millennia to help humans survive. It could also explain why we are drawn to people who make us laugh.

The evolution of laughter

The incongruity theory is good at explaining humour-driven laughter, but it is not enough. In this case, laughing is not about an all-pervasive sense of things being out of step or incompatible. It’s about finding ourselves in a specific situation that subverts our expectations of normality.

For example, if we see a tiger strolling along a city street, it may appear incongruous, but it is not comic – on the contrary, it would be terrifying. But if the tiger rolls itself along like a ball then it becomes comical.

Animated anti-hero Homer Simpson makes us laugh when he falls from the roof of his house and bounces like a ball, or when he attempts to “strangle” his son Bart, eyes boggling and tongue flapping as if he were made of rubber. These are examples of the human experience shifting into an exaggerated, cartoon version of the world where anything – especially the ridiculous – can happen.

But to be funny, the event must also be perceived as harmless. We laugh because we acknowledge that the tiger or Homer never effectively hurt others, nor are hurt themselves, because essentially their worlds are not real.

So we can strip back laughter to a three-step process. First, it needs a situation that seems odd and induces a sense of incongruity (bewilderment or panic). Second, the worry or stress the incongruous situation has provoked must be worked out and overcome (resolution). Third, the actual release of laughter acts as an all-clear siren to alert bystanders (relief) that they are safe.

Laughter could well be a signal people have used for millennia to show others that a fight or flight response is not required and that the perceived threat has passed . That’s why laughing is often contagious: it unites us, makes us more sociable, signals the end of fear or worry. Laughter is life affirming.

We can translate this directly to the 1936 film Modern Times , where Charlie Chaplin’s comic tramp character obsessively fixes bolts in a factory like a robot instead of a man. It makes us laugh because we unconsciously want to show others that the disturbing spectacle of a man reduced to a robot is a fiction. He is a human being, not a machine. There is no cause for alarm.

How humour can be effective

Similarly, the joke at the beginning of this article starts with a scene from normal life, then turns into something a little strange and baffling (the woman behaving incongruously), but which we ultimately realise is not serious and actually very comical (the double meaning of the doctor’s response induces relief), triggering laughter.

As I showed in a previous study about the human behaviour of weeping, laughter has a strong importance for the physiology of our body. Like weeping – and chewing, breathing or walking – laughter is a rhythmic behaviour which is a releasing mechanism for the body.

The brain centres that regulate laughter are those which control emotions, fears and anxiety. The release of laughter breaks the stress or tension of a situation and floods the body with relief.

Humour is often used in a hospital setting to help patients in their healing, as clown therapy studies have shown. Humour can also improve blood pressure and immune defences , and help overcome anxiety and depression .

Research examined in my review has also shown that humour is important in teaching, and is used to emphasise concepts and thoughts. Humour relating to course material sustains attention and produces a more relaxed and productive learning environment. In a teaching setting, humour also reduces anxiety, enhances participation and increases motivation.

Love and laughter

Reviewing this data on laughter also permits a hypothesis about why people fall in love with someone because “they make me laugh”. It is not just a matter of being funny. It could be something more complex. If someone else’s laughter provokes ours, then that person is signalling that we can relax, we are safe – and this creates trust.

Two young women standing on a bridge laughing together.

If our laughter is triggered by their jokes, it has the effect of making us overcome fears caused by a strange or unfamiliar situation. And if someone’s ability to be funny inspires us to override our fears, we are more drawn to them. That could explain why we adore those who make us laugh.

In contemporary times, of course, we don’t think twice about laughing. We just enjoy it as an uplifting experience and for the sense of well-being it brings. From an evolutionary point of view, this very human behaviour has perhaps fulfilled an important function in terms of danger awareness and self-preservation. Even now, if we have a brush with danger, afterwards we often react with laughter due to a feeling of sheer relief.

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Laughter: Personal Experience Example Essay

There is such phenomenon in our life, namely laughter, without which human existence is almost impossible to imagine. It relates to means of communication that make us joyful day by day. From my point of view, laughter is the most beautiful thing in the world. From birth, we have learned to smile at our parents, relatives, and friends. Laughter brings us joy and unforgettable sensations because it is good for us and those around us. When we laugh and feel joy, our body receives another dose of positivity, and life seems beautiful and surprising with all the colors of the rainbow. Laughter is medicine, a weapon, and connecting thread.

Laughter helps a person to recognize and devalue what is alien and hostile to them in society because fun is salvation from troubles. Moreover, laughter helps to survive and support others in need. In addition, it also enables to expose the enemy, devalue and destroy problems since laughter tells false claims to power or significance; that is, it shows the genuine insignificance of the insignificant. Humorists and satirists are famous figures because they create a massive illusion of control, the ability of society to crush the enemy with laughter. Essentially, laughter is also a pill for conflicts and quarrels. If an angry person sees the funny side of the problem, they will simply laugh. Needless to say, humor is an excellent mediator, communicator, and negotiator. When we laugh together, we tune in to the same wavelength and understand each other better.

People who have a sense of humor always have a wider circle of surroundings and are more welcoming. People who laugh more often are friendly. To find a reason to laugh, you do not have to look for funny pictures or comics. One has only to remember funny episodes from our life because they remain in our life forever.

For instance, I like to laugh when watching a funny movie and listening to a funny story. I enjoy walking with friends, laughing heartily, fooling around! When you laugh, it means everything is fine, you are happy! People say laughter prolongs life; therefore, I laugh sincerely and almost to tears. It is impossible to describe this process. Suddenly you feel so good and clear, the joke seems very funny, just brilliant, and your shoulders twitch, your stomach hurts, there is not enough air, your cheeks are red as if they had been rubbed for a long time. It happens that in a quarrel, you laugh, and it becomes more manageable, the situation is discharged. It seems to me that it is good to be self-ironic and turn troubles into something funny. When I am sad, I try to remember the joke and smile. The main thing is that the laugh is real, and the trick is good-natured.

Laughter makes the sun shine brighter and the sky bluer. When we laugh, our brain releases endorphins or the hormone of happiness. This hormone is responsible for our good mood and allows us to experience the pleasure of life. My father says that with humor and a smile, you can solve any situation. My grandmother often says that “laughter heals the soul.” After all, he laughed – and that’s it, all the problems have disappeared somewhere!

I have always believed that laughter unites people with a thin thread, creating a spiritual connection. I can describe this warmth of laughter with the word ‘happiness’. The truth is that all good things begin with laughter, even friendship and love, and the creation of a family.

Laughter is the thread that unites people that has connected my family too. Important to mention that my parents met each other at college. They became best friends because of laughter. My dad has always had a good sense of humor and found funny things in every situation. When he saw my mother, he fell in love with her at first sight and decided to win her heart with his jokes. She was tall, slender and he lovingly called her a cute flamingo because she had long legs. They laughed every day, shared moments from their lives, and were incredibly happy. Even now, after so many years, if they quarrel, dad tells a funny joke, and everything falls into place. Thanks to him, I realized how important laughter is in our life.

Consequently, the ability to laugh with other people is vital in establishing good and supportive relationships. The point is that the general idea of several people about what can be funny allows them to be more open-minded with each other. To raise the level of trust between you and another person, you need to laugh together. No matter what, the process itself is essential. Laughter breaks down the psychological barriers between you, and the atmosphere becomes much more friendly.

Once my parents and I went on a short trip by car to visit our relatives. We left late and were insanely late, so my mother asked us to go faster. The road was long and tiring, and the sun shone mercilessly through the windows. The car stopped accidentally; there was not a soul around, only wild nature. My mother was distraught and started crying because she did not want to be late. My father reassured her and told me that this was nonsense and we would fix the car quickly. My father is such a person who finds a way out of any situation and does not lose heart. It turned out that we had a punctured wheel, so the car could not go further. My father and I turned on music and, dancing and laughing, changed wheels. Necessary to add, as my mother watched us, her mood began to improve. As a result, my mother got out of the car and started dancing too. Laughter can fix the saddest situations, and I understand that. I still remember how we danced with the whole family around our car in the middle of nowhere with a smile.

Besides, I try never to be sad, and if it becomes impossible, I remember this situation, and my soul starts to sing. What tremendous power laughter possesses, it can heal the deepest wounds. When nothing can help a person, you need to make them laugh. Above all, I noticed that the most critical events in life are associated with laughter because we dare when we feel good.

I believe that every day of ours should be filled with laughter and joy. Our life is so short and unpredictable that it can end any day. That is why we need to fill our everyday life with laughter and share positive emotions with loved ones and relatives. Laughter is beautiful in all its manifestations because it shortens the distance between people and is the main component of relationships.

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Why It is Important to Laugh: The Benefits

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Essay on Theater

Example Of Essay On What Makes You Laugh

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Theater , Shakespeare , Books , Love , Sleep , Humor , Comedy , Literature

Published: 01/26/2020

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In his book, A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare uses humor of different types throughout the play making the book rib cracking. The characters are given attributes that make them seem foolish and not everything they do goes according to their expectations. This ere are three different types of humor he employs when writing the book and they ate seen in either the scenes or in the characters themselves. The first kind of humor he applies in his work is the use of oxymoron. This is through their foolishness portrayed throughout the book. The book is full of foolish scenes where the actors act in ways that make the play so funny. The first scene is seen where Quince calls the play they want to act out to the audience "the most lamentable comedy," (Shakespeare 9). This may seem a little absurd because as readers we expect t a comedy will make us laugh and not make us lament about it. It however, turns out he was correct as they perform so poorly in the stage it makes the reader lament about the whole thing. It is so funny how he makes the remark innocently thinking that he is stating how the play will be so good but using a wrong term for it. it so foolish of Bottom to say "I'll speak in a monstrous little voice," (Shakespear 43) where he means he will speak in a very small voice, but instead of using the right term he replaces the work very small with monstrous. Helena is not left out as she exclaims at one point "oh devilish- holy fray!" Act 3, scene 2, line 129I find this as hilarious as people tend to sometimes use exclamations that do not make sense. There is no way something can be holly and devilish. The other way Shakespeare uses humor is with malapropism where the play employs confusion of words. Bottom is the victim of this device as he acts so educated while in the real sense he portrays a lot of foolishness it makes one laugh. I always find it so funny when a person pretends to know something yet they do the exact opposite with their actions and words. Bottom makes one laugh when he uses long dialogues, which does not make sense. Even he himself does not know what the words mean. Such cases are evident when he says "I have an exposition of sleep come upon me," (Shakespeare 35). Here is trying to say that he has an exposition to sleep. He uses the term deposition yet he is not sure what it means making him look foolish. The other one comes from Quince when he uses the word "paramour to describe how Bottom is perfect when it comes to the use of a small little voice. He wanted to use the word paragon, but ends up using the word paramour-meaning mistress. What makes this so funny is that Bottom ends up becoming a donkey paramour to Titania. The most outrageous humor is comes up with the use of mistaken identity or satire. Here Shakespeare applies satire by making the characters confused especially in the part of falling in love. There is confusion everywhere as the love portion Puck prepared makes everyone fall in love with the wrong person. It is so hilarious how they end up fighting over love. I always find it so funny when two people fight over love something they have no control over (Shakespeare 41-62). The part I find most hilarious is the part where Quince uses the term paramour instead of paragon and them it happens when Bottom becomes the paramour donkey belonging to Titania. It is so funny because it was a mere confusion of term, but in the end, it becomes true and more so when it happens to Bottom who always pretends to be so learned. This is hilarious as I find it funny in life when the people we do not expect to do certain things ends up doing it.

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Shakespeare, William. A Mid Summer Nights's Dream. New York: Plain Label Books. Print.

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What Makes Something Funny?

Stuart evers on why jokes make the best weapons.

My favorite joke is a joke about comedy.

“Everyone laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they’re not laughing now.”

This is a Bob Monkhouse joke, one of many fine one-liners he honed over a career that took him from theater to gameshow host, from hated old-guard to respected elder statesman. On the page it’s good; on the stage sublime: Monkhouse’s delivery initially enthusiastic, then bitterly self-lacerating. It’s a perfect story of failure, distilled into a setup and punchline: a joke that is both funny and self-aware, sad but satisfying. And it’s gone so quickly, so fleetingly this joke, like every joke: the audience and performer already moving on to the promise of the next gag.

In Isaac Asimov’s story, “Jokester,” an all-seeing computer, Multivac, reveals that jokes are a psychological experiment designed by a cadre of aliens—clearly with too much time on their hands, or tentacles, or whatever they experience time through—and are therefore extra-terrestrial in origin. It’s a nice conceit, and one that sometimes doesn’t seem so fanciful.

The first joke I ever heard—or certainly the first sick joke I ever heard—that seemed beamed from somewhere else was in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. The next day at school, Simon Lancaster took a few of us aside. “Why does NASA drink Coca-Cola?” he said. “Because they can’t get Seven-Up.” It was so quick, so tight, and so brilliantly joke-like, I couldn’t imagine where he had got it from. I had never met anyone, no one at all, who was as quick-witted at that, who could take a tragedy and instantly transform it into a one-liner. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t himself come up with it; the fact that someone, somewhere, had, just kicked me hard in the pants and head.

That joke is perhaps why, as a teenager, I listened to more comedy than I did music. The local library had a small but well-curated selection of comedy records, and in them I found names I recognized without having seen or heard them before: Monty Python, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers. There were shows I liked on the television, but I preferred the slightly dusty, faded records: their faceless comedy. I studied comedy as much as I studied novels and stories, but unlike Bob Monkhouse I never wanted to be a comedian: I just wanted to understand what made something funny.

In a comprehension test I took in my late teens, one of the questions asked was why the selected text was funny. It was not funny. It was nothing like Rita Rudner or Bill Hicks or Denis Leary. It wasn’t even like Simon Lancaster. But, dutifully, I wrote something about anthropomorphism, hyperbole and irony, knowing a better answer would have been to paraphrase Monkhouse: if it ever was funny, no one’s laughing now. I mentioned this to a teacher after the exam. Comedy is subjective, he said, in that bombastic way some men deliver the most banal truisms. But this oft-repeated cliché isn’t true. What you find funny is subjective, but comedy isn’t: comedy is just a delivery method, a packaged idea of humor. The distinction is important.

Academic theories of humor are legion: neat thesis coiling; a rigorous psychological and philosophic set of terms attempting to pin down why and how we need to laugh. I’ve tried to read them, but either they are so obvious as to be self-evident—the development of humor as part of sexual attraction is just an academic way of expressing s/he laughed them into bed—or so academic to feel part of a more elaborate joke. This is from On the Problems of the Comic by Peter Martienson:

The comic then, that which causes laughter . . . is the perception of an “unravelling of the seams” between external facts, intuitive notions and cultural concepts, all of which are normally leveled and rendered equivalent in anthropomorphic perception.

Reading this now, I’m waiting for the punchline, a hit of Woody Allen’s exquisite bathos, perhaps (… equivalent in anthropomorphic perception . Either that, or it’s a fat man from Ghent being hit by a fish ). And in waiting for the punchline I am reminded of Woody Allen and go to my bookshelf and take down Getting Even . The first page I open: “True, the passage was totally incomprehensible to me, but what of it, so long as Kierkegaard was having fun?” Reading about humor just makes me want to laugh properly.

It’s unfair to mock the seriousness of those researching humor at an academic level… but that is the nature of humor: it suggests itself wherever you look, especially around the profound and serious. Humor is a means of sexual attraction, an “unravelling of the seams,” as well as a defense mechanism: if you feel intellectually inferior to someone who has clearly thought longer and harder about a subject than you have, a well-aimed joke will at least level the playing field (“Not through wrath but through laughter one slayeth,” as Nietzsche had it). It also affects just about every social interaction we make.

Humor is inclusive and organic; and, like ending a novel with word mayonnaise, it expresses a human need. It is the oil that gets us through the day, the light that blunts the shade. I saw this most keenly when I was working away from home in the UK equivalent of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Each morning, I’d get the train from London and see the same kinds of groups, men and women who did not know each other well having to share an hour’s journey together. They would take their seats and put down coffees and pastries and someone would say something about work. You could count the beats before someone would make a joke. It was almost always a man. Then someone would laugh. The first one to laugh would make the second joke. The laughter for the second joke would either be polite, or be over the top. And this laughter would determine the entire rest of the journey. The laughter could bring them closer together, or merely cause an uneasy détente; it could put them at ease or move them swiftly on to shop talk. It was as close to a masterclass in group dynamics as I could imagine. There it was, just a small joke which would set the tone for the group, select its leader, give non-Alpha members an opportunity to show their worth; and ultimately, help to deal with the extreme psychological trauma of being stuck for an hour with people whose only connection is what they do for cash.

In fiction, this is how a great deal of realistic or naturalistic prose works: bringing a series of characters together in a particular setting, period or situation and seeing how they interact, what happens when they bump up against each other’s prejudices, desires and foibles. Denying them humor in such a framework is to deny them basic humanity, to make them thin and lipless. Orwell’s 1984 , for instance, is utterly without humor—despite Anthony Burgess’s entertaining but deliberately provocative argument that it is a comic novel in his essay 1948: An Old Man Interviewed— and with good reason. Orwell could write with comic gusto— Keep the Aspidistra Flying , much of his journalism—but the kind of British state in which Winston Smith finds himself cannot co-exist with British cynicism, satire, and old-fashioned gags. Extremism is difficult to widely cultivate in a culture constantly waiting to prick the bubble of pretention. Orwell, therefore, has to excise humor to build his nightmare realm—though what excuse the novels of DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy have is less clear.

I made a similar point at an evening discussing humor in fiction, and an audience member took exception. Fiction, she said, is not stand-up comedy—we don’t need laughs to enjoy a book. It felt to me a conflation of two distinct things. Humor is amateur and collaborative, but comedy is mercantile. It is the commercialization of humor, the taking of its component parts and reassembling it for consumption. The humor I was talking about does not require laughs, just recognition that something is supposed not to be serious; comedy on the other hand is busted without it.

The skill to take ordinary humor, mine life for its absurdity, and then turn it into comedy is a rich and astonishing skill. The best comic prose—Wodehouse, Thurber, Nora Ephron, Lorrie Moore, David Sedaris—is miraculous. Without delivery, a facial expression, a funny voice, you’re skating on nothing: the words are all you have, and every laugh is harder fought. Go to a comedy club and sit down and you’re already pre-disposed to laughter. You have an audience around you also wanting to laugh. You catch their laughter and you’re taken along with the whole thing. Sit down with a comic novel that doesn’t make you laugh and you’re left wondering what’s the point. Richard Ford calls the short story “the highwire act of literature,” but comic prose is just as precarious, plus it’s dressed up and wearing a funny wig.

In my own fiction, I’ve played on the sometimes uneasy relationship between comedy and humor; between what is supposed to be funny, and what people consider to be funny. The last story in my collection, though the first to be written, was inspired by Old Jews Telling Jokes , a television series that does exactly what you would expect from its title: against a white background, a silver-haired man or woman delivers gags older even than they are. There is nothing funnier than profanity coming from the mouths of babes—the meme that went round of a two-year old telling a monkey to fuck off remains the funniest thing I’ve seen in decades—or from the dry lips of a nonagenarian. The story, “Live from the Palladium” originally began with a kid telling an old Jewish joke and then turned into something less about humor—as I was expecting—and more about comedy, and how non-comedians use it.

Years ago, a British newspaper ran an exposé by the ex-wife of a hugely popular comedian—I’m being vague here as I can’t find any reference to it online and there’s nothing funny about litigation. In it she accused him of joking constantly, unable to cast off his stage persona. The idea of someone who could find nothing about which to be serious had been with me for a while, and in “Live at the Palladium” it lodged in Clive’s mother, a comedy obsessive, unable for a moment not to reach for an old joke or something culled from a long-forgotten performer.

Comedy can—and it’s very best always does—give us a deeper, more rounded understanding of the world around us: the way men and women live, the culture around us. But it can also be a deflection and a dereliction. A way to make time stand still. A way to speak, but actually to say nothing. In the story, Clive and his mother speak almost exclusively in quotations from comedy, make up their own routines. It is a kind of idioglossia, one that continues even in the presence of a new boyfriend perplexed by two people unable to look reality head on without a sideways glance. Their comedy is depressingly devoid of authentic humor.

The story went through the usual process of revision, until a friend—a sly wit himself—pointed out that the stand-up routine, which is its center-point, wasn’t working. “If you’re two comedy obsessives writing stand-up,” he said, “don’t you think you’d make it funny?” I said that the joke was that they weren’t funny, it would be wrong if they were. He said, “If you say it’s comedy, people expect laughs.”

I rewrote at length, cut back to the barest minimum. It was a discipline of which I had no experience: the sole purpose to make people laugh. Even the most abstract of comedy—Andy Kaufman, say—has that purpose. I mined the old comedy records, watched clips online. It took literally months to get a ten-line routine to where I wanted it.

A few months later I was stuck in a pub in the north of England, waiting for a train that started off late and got later and later. At the bar was a sign reminding patrons that the funeral for one of the regulars was being held the following week. I was the only one there, aside from the barmaid who was painting her nails. No music, just the rain skittering on the flat tar roof. A man came in and ordered a pint. Another man came in and ordered a pint. He said hello to the other man and then peered at the sign.

“Did I know him?” the man said.

“Course you did,” the other one said. “Came in on a mobility scooter. Used to drink whisky.”

“Oh yeah,” the man said. “Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He were here last week.”

“Oh right. How’s his wife?”

“She’s been dead a year.”

“Oh yeah. He never recovered, did he?”

It was effortless. Had it been on stage, a Pinter play, maybe a forgotten Beckett, I would have laughed out loud, but in a strange pub with the wind howling outside, I buried my head into my book and kept listening. More men arrived. They told their jokes, laughed their laughs and I pretended not to hear, tried not to laugh along. Their humor gave them away, all of them: without knowing a single thing about them, aside from when they laughed, I felt sure I knew them.

This is something that the best fiction understands: that when people are together they are compelled to joke, to laugh, to smile. No matter how bleak, no matter how downtrodden, someone, somewhere will try to lighten the load. As Twain had it: The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

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What Makes You Laugh? 5 Easy Ways to Laugh More

by Laurie Pawlik
September 6, 2023

What’s the funniest thing you heard today, that made you lol? What makes you laugh? If you haven’t smiled or laughed today, you need these ways to laugh more.

Before the tips, a quip:

“I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.” ~ Elayne Boosler.

See how easy it is to smile – or even laugh? Post your funniest one-liners where you can see them all the time. And, watch funny movies and comedians, such as Jeff Dunham’s Arguing With Myself . It got almost 800 five-star reviews on Amazon.com — people love that guy!

What Makes You Laugh?

The reason it’s SO important to know what makes you laugh – and to laugh often – is because of the proven health benefits of laughter . Laughing strengthens your immune system, creates better relationships, and even helps you lose weight.

Achieving your life goals or living to be 110 years old isn’t fun unless you’re happy…and laughter makes you happy!

5 Easy Ways to Laugh More

Find funny anecdotes or one-liners.

Typically, anecdotes are short stories – but sometimes a one-liner is all you need. For instance, you may chuckle when you hear a 5 year old kid say, “Once I’m done with kindergarten, I’m going to find me a wife.” Plus, one-liners are easier to remember. To laugh more often, create a “laughter file” of anecdotes, jokes and comic strips. When life gets you down, read your file for a happier mood.

Funny one liners — kids’ thoughts on love:

“Eighty-four, because at that age, you don’t have to work anymore, and you can spend all your time loving each other in your bedroom.” ~ Judy, 8
“Once I’m done with kindergarten, I’m going to find me a wife.” ~ Tom, 5
“It gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I’m just a kid. I don’t need that kind of trouble.” ~ Kenny, 7
“I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be so painful.” ~ Harlen, 8
“If falling in love is anything like learning how to spell, I don’t want to do it. It takes too long.” ~ Leo, 7
“It isn’t always just how you look. Look at me, I’m handsome like anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet.” ~ Gary, 7
“I’m not rushing into being in love. I’m finding fourth grade hard enough.” ~ Regina, 10

Ask people what makes them laugh

Do you know what makes your loved ones laugh? Find out! And, remember that watching funny performances with others makes you laugh more than watching alone. Dr Sophie Scott at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience found that laughter is contagious because of certain responses in the brain. Laughing together also builds strong bonds in groups.

So, if your family get-togethers tend to be tense, lighten things up by watching a comedian or funny video together. A bestselling comedy is Despicable Me — and I’m a huge fan of Date Night ! Both movies star Steve Carell.

Be aware of the gender divide

Men and women find different types of jokes funny, says Dr Pierce J. Howard, author of The Owner’s Manual for the Brain . Men like slapstick humor more than traditional jokes (e.g., the Three Stooges or Tim Allen in Home Improvement ). Dr Howard says that women enjoy jokes about relationships, the battle of the sexes, childbirth, and raising children – and they have a more “dry” sense of humor than men.

When you’re figuring out what makes your partner laugh, don’t forget these gender differences! They may be as important as the punch line.

Fun, Creative Stress Busters – The Most Unusual Ways to Relax is a good source of ways to laugh more.

Watch kittens, puppies, and baby humans scamper

Kittens, puppies, and babies are surefire ways to get the giggles going. Watching kittens wrestle, scamper, and hide in Kleenex boxes will tickle your funny bone – even just the thought of them makes you smile, doesn’t it? You don’t even have to spend time with “real” kids or animals to laugh more often; simply watching funny videos on YouTube is a great way to relax for a few minutes.

Don’t just ask for tickles — tickle people you love

Psychologist Randy Flanagan of Queen’s University says that you can’t tickle yourself, but if you want a good laugh you can enlist a loved one to awaken the nerves in your skin. Just make sure you’re caught by surprise, because anticipated tickles don’t usually get the giggles going. Tickles provide the additional benefit of human contact, so don’t be shy. Start a “tickle fight” with someone today!

If these tips for finding things that make you laugh don’t excite you, read Is Your Life Boring? 115 Things to Do When You’re Bored.

What makes you laugh? Comments, jokes, and one-liners welcome below!

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5 thoughts on “What Makes You Laugh? 5 Easy Ways to Laugh More”

From the TV Show “The Doctors”:

Researchers at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California have shown that regular intense laughter can affect the body almost like physical exercise, lowering blood pressure, decreasing stress hormones, increasing “good” cholesterol, and decreasing “bad.” Try to get at least an hour of hard-core laughing a week, even it’s just 10 minutes a day of getting tickled by your toddler or partner.

Yes, those one-liners are hilarious, huh?! :-)

I wanted to add another funny joke or one-liner here, to make you laugh, but after several minutes of searching the internet, I found nothing! This highlights the importance of keeping a “joke file” with cartoons, one-liners, funny pictures, etc — so you can make yourself laugh when you need it.

I loved the kids’ one-liners. They have such a wonderful perspective on life! Thanks for making me smile today. :)

I’m glad you found those one-liners funny — I did too :-) Laughing more often is easier than exercising or trying to eat healthy all the time…and almost as important.

Whoever has said laughter to be the best medicine must be an extremely wise man! The above quotes by kids are hilarious,ROFLMAO! I think happiness is the path towards a long life. Happy people live longer , so keep laughing!

Life of an Architect

What makes me laugh?

November 2, 2010 by Bob Borson 19 Comments

There are things that I think I’m pretty good at – but few things that everyone would agree that I actually am good at. The one ability or trait that everyone seems to agree on is that I am a funny guy. I’m okay with that … I try really hard to be funny. In fact, I actually practice being funny. I have stories that I have told many, many times and what some people might mistake for exaggeration or hyperbole is actually my attempt to hone and refine the story I’m telling. So when I was asked what makes me laugh, I was a little surprise to discover what my answer was –

Very little actually makes me laugh – and the harder someone tries, the less likely I am to laugh. I’m telling you people, you can’t force it, you have to let the game come to you.

The things that make me laugh are generally not okay to laugh at … like someone falling, slipping, or tripping (assuming they don’t actually hurt themselves – pain isn’t funny either). Or when someone gets surprised and scared and they … blaargh!!! These things seem to make me laugh because they are organic and true. When you slip, you can’t be cool – you just can’t. Your arms shoot out and your eyes bug open … most times you even let out a high pitch, totally not cool, but genuine shriek. You can’t control that – same is true when someone jumps out from around the corner and scares you. Those are funny moments.

Think Freud had an opinion about funny people who don’t laugh? Probably, but then again he wasn’t funny either. There have been a few people in my life that make me laugh and most of them don’t tell jokes. They tell stories of woe and accidental humiliation but are able to laugh at themselves and as a result I laugh along with them. Maybe this goes along with being a glass half full type person and always trying to find the positive side to things. I am not a joke teller but I do like a good story – its attitude and delivery; it’s knowing which word sounds better, wrinkling a brow and adding a pause at the right moment. When people can laugh at themselves when something goes wrong, it makes it okay to laugh with them. Ever been around someone who was laughing really, really hard and you couldn’t help but laugh with them even though you don’t know what they are laughing about? Or the person who is trying to tell you a story but they are dying laughing while they are trying to tell it? That’s the best.

I love to laugh but I don’t do it too often, so here’s a shout out to the comedians in my life – you know who you are, and I love you for making me laugh.

Pull my finger,

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My “Serious” Disclaimer

The complimentary advice provided on ‘Life of an Architect’ is based on an abbreviated examination of the minimal facts given, not the typical extensive (and sometimes exhaustive) analysis I conduct when working with my clients. Therefore, anything you read on this site is not a substitute for actually working with me. Following my casual advice is at your own peril … if you want my undivided attention, I would recommend hiring me. Cheers.

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Archives of Awesomeness

11 Writing examples – Email/Story/Article | B1 Preliminary (PET)

Writing examples for the B1 Preliminary (PET) Cambridge exam along with sample examiners’ comments and suggested grades .

B1 (PET) Email Writing Example: End of year party

Write your email to Mrs Lake using all the notes.

PET Email: Example Answer (Grade: 3-4)

I’m very nervous for this party, to celebrate the end of the school year.

I think that the best place to do the party is the class, because in this way we can be all together. In the class we can do a lot of activities like play with the blackboard, or watch a film, or listen to music.

About the food, we can have pizza, fries and for the sweet people chocolate, sweets or something like this.

I’m sure the party is going to be very well, and we are going to have a very good time.

See you soon!

Would you pass B1 Preliminary (PET)?

Pet email: example answer (grade: 4-5).

Dear Mrs Lake,

I think it’s a great idea to have a party to celebrate the end of the school year. I prefer to do the party at school, in the classroom, because we’ve spend a lot of time there, and I think it would be better, so that we can remember all the good things that have made this year so special. I think we could bring some games like domino, or one of us can bring his Play Station and we can play together. If you want, I will buy some pizza, and also something to drink like coca-cola or water. The other students will bring some potatoes, and the girls will make a cake. Do you like the idea?

Submit your B1 Email/Story/Article for evaluation!

B1 (pet) email writing example: new film club.

Write your email to Mrs Rose using all the notes.

PET Email: Example Answer (Grade: 3)

Hey! Thats great!

I’m doesn’t prefer Monday afternoon is doesn’t possible to me, because I have tennis classes after school, and next. I am going with Laura houses, and Friday is perfect. For me, I don’t have nothing, do you like this day?

My favorite types of the films is comedi and romantic film, and in the film club was another, and you like, we can see, I don’t have any prolem to the film. Yes, is a very good idea, I am buying some pop corn and a botle water or and sweets I don’t know, were you buy in

Kises WRite me soon and see you soon Clara!

Good afternoon Mrs Rose

I just got your email and I think it’s really great idea becase I think lots of people like watching films.

I personally would prefer Mondays because on Fridays I often have other plans with my family.

I would really love to see some detective or some action films but I relly do’t mind watching something different.

I think it’s good idea to have some food or drink during the film because lots of people are used to it because in cinemas they always eat something so i think it would be great

Have a nice day

Get Your (PET) Email Checked!

Fce, cae, pet, practice, write & improve, b1 (pet) article writing example: what makes you laugh.

You see this announcement in your school English-language magazine.

Write your article .

PET Article: Example Answer (Grade: 5)

I love to watch comedies a lot because it makes me laugh. The comedy I love the most is the Chinese Running Man. I enjoy watching and laughing it with my family. In the show, famous actors and actresses must overcome some challenging quests, such as trading a coffee bean with someone else for something more expensive and racing in the mud to capture the flag. The storylines are very interesting and they always tickles my funny bone. Laughing out loud is great! Laughing can help us to release stress and make us feel better. It may also make us more attractive too!

PET Article: Example Answer (Grade: 3-4)

So, I laugh always and for nothing.

I find very funny when someone fall down and I laugh for bad jokes. I like to watch funnys videos to laugh.

I enjoy laughing with my family and my friend but I really enjoy laughing with my best friend.

I think it’s good to laugh a lot and have humour to have a funny and good. I find important laugh with our friends to be better and have a good life.

It’s for this I laugh for anything and I enjoy life like it is

PET Article: Example Answer (Grade: 5-4)

What makes me laugh? Pretty much everthing. I can start laughing simply from watching my cat trying to catch a laser dot on the wall, or a fly. And I laugh even more with my friends and family. It is practically the only way we are spending with ourselfs ourselves. We are making jokes, laughing at something or telling funny stories about our trips, days at school or our pets.

I think it is important to laugh a lot, because it makes everyday stress easier to handle or it simply wears off! And it makes you look happy, optimistic and ready for a challenge.

PET Article: Example Answer (Grade: 3)

I have got many friends who can make me laugh. I am a big optimist, so I love laugh. I laugh every time when I am at school, at home, in the park, simply everywhere. My dad always makes my laugh, because he is very funny adnd his funny stories are the best of the best. If I am alone, I usually watch comedies. But the best comedy serial The Simpsons. The yellow family is the funniest family which I know. My favourite type of joke is black joke.It is bad, but funny. When I am surfing on the Internet I’m always searching videos called “Try not to laugh”. I can’t accept it because it is too funny.

B1 (PET) Story Writing Example: Classroom

Write your story.

PET Story: Example Answer (Grade: 3-4)

The teacher couldn’t believe what she saw when she opened the door of the class room! There was a Runway, with models, bloggers and every person fashionist in the world. The teacher at the beggining was mad, but later she started so happy and she fun, like everyone. The runway and party later have a lot of entertainment, good music, the food was very delicious. I was fun so much, I meet amaizing people, I dance. It was an incredible day, but I have my punishment with the teacher to the end

B1 (PET) Story Writing Example: Jo and map

Pet story: example answer (grade: 3).

Jo looked at the map and decided to go left. He wanted to go to the Karpats on foot. Jo liked to go to the rivers, forests and mountains on foot. He always took map with he. But one day he lost! Jo was very worried and scared. He was in the forest one week. He was could at night, he was very hot in the afternoon. He ate mushroomes and berries. But he found a way from the forest. And from that day he never came to the forest on foot. He always go to the rivers, forests and mountains on ships, by trains, by plantes. But he never go to the unknows places on foot.

PET Story: Example Answer (Grade: 2-3)

Jo looked at the map and decided to go left. Jo were in car with he friend, Lucy and go from city in car. Jo decide go in your car and nice day. They leave soon and take map but Jo looked at map and decided to go left so went in bad way and Lucy cry. They don’t came in good way and go to the your home. When they came house nobody home so they watch tv and see film and enjoy

What makes you laugh? (synonyms for laugh)

Vocabulary - synonyms for laugh

LESSON OVERVIEW

In this lesson students study advanced synonyms for laugh , watch a video about laughter and discuss different aspects of laughter . The video idea comes from one of our subscribers. Phil, thank you! #yousuggestwecreate

WARM-UP & VIDEO

The lesson starts with an activity in which students read five incomplete jokes and decide what words to put in the gaps. Afterwards, students have a short discussion about jokes and how our cultural background influences our sense of humour. Then, students watch the first part of a BBC video about laughter and note down the reasons why people laugh. During the second viewing, students make notes on several topics from the video (e.g. how apes and humans laugh, benefits of laughter ). After that, they answer some questions about laughing in different situations (e.g. at inappropriate times, being unable to stop laughing ).

SYNONYMS FOR LAUGH & SPEAKING

This part of the lesson starts with an exercise in which students learn seven synonyms for laugh (e.g. cackle, giggle, chuckle ). They do it by listening to the types of laughter represented by the verbs (audio available for teachers online) and reading sentences which put the verbs in context . Then, they come up with other contexts for the words by describing short situations with the use of the verbs. After that, students read the definitions of the verbs from the previous exercise and correct the mistakes in them (e.g. Chuckle means to laugh quietly, not loudly. ). The vocabulary is then practised in a multiple choice task in which students choose the correct synonym for the verb laugh in a few sentences. The last part of the lesson is an extended speaking exercise (similar to Part 2 of the CAE speaking exam) . Students work in pairs or groups of three and compare and contrast sets of photos showing people laughing in different situations. After the conversation about the photos, students discuss some questions related to laughter and wellbeing .

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Peter Brown, One of the Beatles’ Closest Confidants, Tells All (Again)

At 87, the dapper insider is releasing a new book of interviews conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people nearest to it.

A man in a tan suit and purple button up shirt, sits in a chair with his right hand on his face. In the background, yellow floral wallpaper is on the wall.

By Ben Sisario

Peter Brown stood in his spacious Central Park West apartment, pointing first at the dining table and then through the window to the park outside, with Strawberry Fields just to the right.

“John sat at that table looking through here,” Brown said, “and he couldn’t take his eyes off the park.”

That’s John as in Lennon. And the story of the former Beatle coveting this living-room view in 1971 — and how Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, eventually got their own place one block down, at the Dakota — is just one of Brown’s countless nuggets of Fab Four lore. In the 1960s he was an assistant to Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, and then an officer at Apple Corps, the band’s company. A key figure in the Beatles’ secretive inner circle, Brown kept a red telephone on his desk whose number was known only to the four members.

And it was Brown who, in 1969, informed Lennon that he and Ono could quickly and quietly wed in a small British territory on the edge of the Mediterranean, a piece of advice immortalized in “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: “Peter Brown called to say, ‘You can make it OK/You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain.’”

Next week, Brown and the writer Steven Gaines are releasing a book, “All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words,” made up of interviews they conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people close to it, including business representatives, lawyers, wives and ex-wives — the raw material that Brown and Gaines used for their earlier narrative biography of the band, “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles,” published in 1983.

Now 87, Brown is a polarizing figure in Beatles history. He was a witness to some of the band’s most important moments and was a trusted keeper of its secrets. “The only people left are Paul and Ringo and me,” he said.

On a tour of Brown’s apartment, the spoils of his access were everywhere. In his bedroom, Brown showed off an original image of the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” with background figures (like Gandhi ) that didn’t make the final cut. In the dining room are binders and boxes stuffed with Beatle-related snapshots and correspondence.

But the publication of “The Love You Make” four decades ago also made him a kind of villain. According to Brown, the band agreed to interviews to set the record straight about its history. Yet the book — primarily written by Gaines, a journalist and biographer known for detailed, warts-and-all portraits — was seen as tawdry and sensational, preoccupied with sex lives and internecine conflicts, with music a secondary subject. Excerpts ran in National Enquirer.

To the band and many of those around them, it was seen as a betrayal. Paul McCartney accused Brown of misleading him by pitching it as a more general book about music in the 1960s. Linda McCartney said she and Paul burned it.

“That book was a shame,” Mark Lewisohn , the pre-eminent Beatles scholar, said in a recent interview.

“It’s almost like there are two different Peter Browns,” Lewisohn added. “There’s the Peter Brown I know, who is this upright, respectable, very successful businessman. And then the one who attached his name to this Steven Gaines book.”

Brown has heard all the criticism before, and waves it off. Sitting in a chair he inherited from Epstein — and dapper as always in a purple button-down shirt and charcoal slacks — Brown said the book stands as an accurate portrayal, and that the Beatles knew full well what they were getting into.

“There was never any effort on my part to make it negative,” Brown said in his unflappably gentle voice, as classical music wafted quietly through his home. “And nobody’s ever questioned that it was true.”

He also rejected McCartney’s version of events. “Paul imagines things,” Brown said. “Everything he does, he has his own way of remembering, and he’s crazy about it.”

Gaines, for his part, attributes the notoriety of the original book to his and Brown’s refusal to produce a sanitized hagiography, and their decision instead to publish controversial private details. Among those was a rumor that Lennon once had a sexual encounter with Epstein, which Brown and Gaines reported as fact, based on their research.

“Nobody had put something like that in a book,” Gaines said. That episode, on a trip to Spain in 1963, has been debated for years by Beatles commentators. Lennon denied having sex with Epstein, saying in an interview with Playboy: “It was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated.”

Brown and Gaines’s new book, “All You Need Is Love,” goes even deeper into Beatle lore than their first. It offers an extended transcript of Ono denying, not too persuasively, that she introduced Lennon to heroin, and includes various firsthand accounts of the threats and chaos the band faced on tour in Manila in 1966. Ron Kass, who led the Beatles’ Apple label, describes the impossibility of running a business with Lennon and McCartney as the bosses. One, he says, wanted the label design to be green, the other white; Kass decided to make each side a different color.

There are also startling comments from McCartney and George Harrison about Lennon, revealing the tension and raw feelings that were still present a decade after the band broke up, in interviews recorded just weeks before Lennon was killed in December 1980. Harrison calls his former bandmate “a piece of [expletive]” and wonders why he had “become so nasty.”

McCartney describes Lennon and Ono as “very suspicious people,” and portrays his relationship with them as a kind of power struggle.

“The way to get their friendship is to do everything the way they require it. To do anything else is how to not get their friendship,” McCartney says in the book. “I know that if I absolutely lie down on the ground and just do everything like they say and laugh at all their jokes and don’t expect my jokes to ever get laughed at,” he adds, “if I’m willing to do all that, then we can be friends.”

Lennon never got a chance to respond, Brown said. “I spoke to John, and said, ‘Listen, I’m coming to New York to do some of the recordings,’” he recalled. “And he said, ‘Yes, fine. Looking forward to it.’ And that was the week before he was murdered.” Ono’s interview was done a few months later, in the spring of 1981.

As with many Beatles histories, there are plenty of contradictions, opposing perspectives and selective memories. Interviews with the manager Allen Klein and the lawyer John L. Eastman offer an icy tit-for-tat on the battle for business control during the band’s last days. And Alexis Mardas, a.k.a. Magic Alex, the supposed inventor who others in the book call a con man, gives his account — with skeptical footnotes added by Brown and Gaines — of the Beatles’ retreat in India in 1968.

When asked about finding the truth amid contrasting accounts in an oral history, Brown turned philosophical. “It depends on where you’re sitting,” he said.

There are even conflicting stories about the genesis of Brown and Gaines’s new book. According to Brown, it began when a New York Times reporter — me — asked him for comment three years ago about “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s exhaustive look at the band’s stormy recording sessions in early 1969. Brown realized then, he said, that he was one of the last remaining witnesses to important history.

But Gaines said that the origins of the project go back years before, to when he wondered what to do with the original interview tapes, which were languishing in his safe deposit box on Long Island. Gaines said he considered donating or selling them, but Brown demurred. They settled on a book of edited transcriptions, though they still squabble over details like ownership of the tapes. “It’s ‘Rashomon’ with Peter,” Gaines said.

After Brown quit his work with the Beatles on Dec. 31, 1970 — the day that McCartney filed a lawsuit to dissolve the band’s partnership — he came to the United States and worked with Robert Stigwood , the Australian-born entertainment mogul who had huge hits in the 1970s with the Bee Gees and the films “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease.” Then Brown founded a public relations firm, BLJ Worldwide, which in 2011 came under scrutiny for its work representing the families of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Brown declined to speak about that episode on the record.

But he remains most proud of his association with the Beatles, and said he viewed “All You Need Is Love” as a final gesture defining his legacy with the band.

“This is the end of it,” he said. “Hopefully we’re closing the door now.”

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

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Older white man, poofy hair, blue suit, standing in front of church sign and holding up black bible in his right hand.

Trump selling Bibles may be desperation – but that shouldn’t cheer anyone up

Despite mockery, Trump has sold trading cards, sneakers, cologne and perfume – and manages to get the last laugh

Donald Trump is a Bible salesman now

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and, of course, Donald John Trump. The former US president, as we all know, and as he has repeatedly told us, is God’s gift to humanity. He’s basically Jesus … if Jesus were a blond sexual predator from Queens.

As if there were ever any doubt that Trump – who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 25 women and is facing 34 criminal charges for paying hush money to an adult film star – is a pious man, he is now hawking Bibles. Earlier this week, the presumptive Republican nominee made headlines for endorsing a patriotic version of the Bible. “Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again,” Trump said as he announced his latest scheme. You can get your hands on the book – the only version endorsed by Trump – for just $59.99 through a website, GodBlessTheUSABible.com.

Where are all the proceeds going? Good question. An FAQ on the site clarifies that Trump is not selling the Bible directly but states that “GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC”. CIC Ventures is a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure. In short: it looks like he is getting royalties from the arrangement.

Trump’s superpower is the fact he has absolutely no shame whatsoever; the cash-strapped candidate will do whatever it takes to make a buck. He’s capitalized on his legal troubles by selling merchandise with his mugshot on it , for example. A couple of years ago, he was peddling digital trading cards depicting him dressed up as a superhero. (“Only $99 each!”) Earlier this year, he launched his own sneaker brand , selling Never Surrender High-Tops for $399. While shopping for the shoes, you could also pick up Trump-branded Victory47 cologne and perfume for $99 a bottle. Then, of course, there’s Truth Social: the Twitter clone Trump launched in 2022 .

All of these recent business ventures have inspired much mockery. Despite the copious jokes, however, Trump has always somehow managed to get the last laugh. His digital trading card selection sold out in less than a day, netting $4.5m in sales . His sneakers also sold out hours after launch. As for loss-making Truth Social? That went public on Tuesday and quickly achieved a valuation of almost $8bn .

Selling Bibles, of course, is rather different from selling sneakers or trading cards. Might this be a bridge too far for Trump’s followers?

There has certainly been some criticism of the venture from conservatives. Commentator Charlie Sykes, for example, slammed him for “commodifying the Bible during Holy Week”. However, others on the right are singing the Trump Bible’s praises. “From a Christian perspective, this is one of the the greatest spiritual moments in US history,” Tulsa preacher Jackson Lahmeyer told Real America’s Voice , a rightwing news network.

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