The Power of Laughter w/ Sophie Scott + YOU Ask Ali

flying through space. So exactly. Yeah, just aspect were respects. Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm Elly Wentworth. You know, this season, I just dug into everything I could get my hands on. I just peeled back the layers and got dirty. And now for the final episode of season two, we're going to have some fun. So this episode is all about laughter. The history, the science, the mental and physical benefits, and just the fun of laughing our asses off. When I was in sixth grade, I was in a play.

It was a very serious play and I played kind of a nerdy, nunlike character that played the cello and I remember in one of my scenes, I had to walk out and play the cello, and when I walked out stage, I sat down on the chair and I opened my legs and pulled the cello in so aggressively

it was, unbeknownst to me, an incredibly sexual move. And all of a sudden, everybody in the audience started laughing, like uproariously laughing, clapping their hands, falling over And I remember that feeling looking out in the audience and I didn't even know what I did. That was so funny at the time, thinking this is the greatest feeling in the world. I want to be able to do this for the rest of my life. And so that's really

when my celist career started. It was in that moment I thought, I want to make people feel like this because it makes me feel great. And I've been laughing ever since. I have an amazing guest today. Sophie Scott is a professor and the Director of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, who spent much of her academic career researching vocal communication and most recently, the neurobiology of laughter. Occasionally she takes the stage conducting her own personal research

on laughter. As a stand up comedian. She is also an author and two time TED talker. Her talk on Why We Laugh has accumulated over four point four million views. So do I call you professor? I'm not going to get cross of view if you don't want to school me professor all the time. I'm very happy with Sophie. Okay, all right, I don't. I want to be respectful. You are British, you do love your names. Well, I must be commander of the British Empire if you want to

go large. So I'm going to call you professor right the second. But professor, Sophie scott Um. We're going to talk about the science of laughter. And if you had to encapsulate that into one sentence, what is the science of laughter? The science of laughter is is really the science of laughter is a very important communication tool. We think it's about jokes and comedy, and it is about jokes and comedy, but it's actually one of the most

important ways that we communicate with each other. And that's what I study scientifically. And it's fascinating because everything I've read, people basically studied negative emotions, that was anxiety, fear, and we didn't pay much attention to the laughter and the more positive emotions. Why is that? It's a very good question, and I'm not certain I can give you a good answer. Well, you're on this podcast to give me a good answer, so I'm going to give you the very best answer

I let out of your ass. I think there's probably two main reasons. I think, first of all, the psychologists are relatively new science. It's only really been going around

for probably hundred thirty years or so. Um And when people were certainly in the West developing psychology, they were developed because he as a science where you would sort of understand where things had gone wrong in pace with where what people used to sort of talk about normal behavior, the sort of normal and abnormal behavior would have been

how it was described. And I was an undergraduate, so it made sense from that perspective to study negative emotions, because if you want to understand anxiety, you need to understand fear. If you want to understand depression, you need to understand sadness. So that kind of went out to affect everything to the extent which when we talk about emotions in my area, we largely mean negative emotions. There's very little research into anything else. And UM, I think

there's a bigger cultural problem. If you look back throughout relatively modern human history, we've had a bit of a downer on laughter. So there was quite a lively debate in the sort of medieval period. I think about whether or not Christ had ever laughed, with a very clear view that he would not have laughed. It's not a civilized behavior. I think he laughed his hours after don't you think they are drawn at the last Supper? And

just wonder aready joke after another? I am absolutely not saying that I agree with this, but the interesting is people wanted to argue it. The idea there that has kind of carried on that there's something not very grown up, not serious and sage about laughter. It's disruptive and it's naughty, and it basically look uncivilized and rude, and that I think also influences of view culturally, not just scientifically on laughter.

So comedies very rarely win Oscars, and it's much harder to make a funny film than a scary film, frankly, but it's very hard for people to actually value that skill, and you see it everywhere. People generally think that comedians are standing up and just improvising, rather than being incredibly skilled artists who have written and worked at honed amazing pieces of material. Don't you think that some of that

comes if for talking historically from gestures and clowns. I mean, these were kind of not the village idiot, but there were people that were kind of that would come in and be your lowest common denominator of humor for the king or the queen and literally be silly juggle balls and whatever, and so we equate that with sort of silliness and sort of not an intellectual thing. But I

actually think it's the greatest thing in the world. And I happen to know a stand up comedian who's a friend of mine, Jerry Seinfeld, And I can tell you he is at the office every day, all day long, writing and honing his skill. It's a full time job. It's not throwing balls and durables up in the air. It's it's a real thing. It really is. Just say again,

it's so much harder to make people laugh. And you know, if you're a stand up comedian, you know in the moment, if it's working, you're there with it happening or not happening. It's an unbelievably complex skill. Stand up comedy it's you know, combines writing and performance and commanding a room, holding attention. So I think, as you said, there's this kind of link to somehow foolishness, the full, the just, the clown, all of which is very skilled, somehow makes this it's

almost like it's a diminutive thing. It's a childish thing, and we never quite lose that at the same time as we value it greatly. Apparently, apparently King Henry the Eight, who was a bit of a capricious king, if his staff had to give him back news, they used to get his jester to do it, really, because he wouldn't stay cross with the jester where he might get really

crossed with someone else. He used to kill people when he got upset, so he probably went through a lot of jesters, the jest to kind of had license that other people didn't have, right, And I think that is that's again something that is a feature of comedians. There's we give them a certain sort of license that we

might not accept in other people. It's funny that you say that, because I sort of see a connection, huge connection with anxiety and depression and comedy and laughter, because having worked as a comedic actress for so many years. I've noticed a lot of comedians are funny because they've come from a place of anxiety or you know, there's some of the most happy people I've ever met in

my life. And it's interesting that I think because of need and trying to sort of fill a whole in their own emotional life, they've mastered the art of making other people feel good and make other people laugh. There there is a very interesting kind of set of studies looking at this. So there are some studies finding that if you just take comedians as a whole, their personalities are not different from in many features from that of

the normal population. So they are no more the unpleasant phrase uses neurotic, but basically that means like a tendency to have issues with mental health. They're no more likely as a group than any other group than I wonder when I look at that sort of data. Okay, I believe that, But what happens when you're really famous and you're really performing a lot, you know, it's not just the comedy, is that it's the sort of the life and the pressures that are on you that I'm sure

interact with that. But there are other interesting differences that you find in comedians that are there for all comedians and are very different from the normal population. And one of them is open mindedness, So they tend to be more kind of tree in they're thinking about things which you would expect in a comedian. They're not going to be funny if you're very narrow, I guess. And they also have less of a need for social approval than the normal population, where you find a need for social

approval quite a lot. And I think when I've asked comedians about this, they always say the same thing, which is I get it on stage. People laugh when I'm on stage. I don't need more than that. I get that feeling that lovely dopamine hit from the laughter then and there. So I think there's a lot more to know about it. And as you say, there are some very kind of famous cases of comedians who suffer terribly

with mental health issues. But it may just reflect a normal distribution where you find this anyway, and it may also I think, interact with with the lifestyle as well as the comedy. So this is when I won't call you professor, because you have done stand up comedy. So my question is why and don't you because you've researched this and you are a professor of laughter, you know are the tricks. I first did stand up comedy, Oh gosh, about ten years ago the universe said that I work

at University College London UM. About twelve years ago it started to do a lot more public engagement activities, do more stuff in our own community, and they started doing these stand up comedy nights where all the performers were staff and students from the university, and there'd be a professional comedian hosting the whole thing. And when I first heard about this, I thought, I've not doing that. That

sounds absolutely dreadful. You know, I've just been made a professor and I thought, I'm not busting myself through that. And then it had been going for a couple of years and one of my male colleagues about the same age as me, he said, oh, have you done this? So it's called Bright Club? He have you done Bright Club? He said, I've done it. I was brilliant. He went really well and everyone laughed and I thought, bastard, you haven't even asked me. You asked him and he was brilliant.

So two months later I would found myself locked in a pub toilet in London, going what thinking, you know, and then I did it and it went okay and people laughed, and I came off stage just thinking I've got to do that again and do it better. I want to learn how to do this. Um. I've found it very very interesting. I still do it whenever I get the opportunity. I make all my students do it because it's such a great opportunity to kind of really

improve your communication skills and your confidence. In the moment, you sort of feel you can do anything if you've done that. UM. I don't think I have an advantage from knowing about laughter. If anything, it's taught me a lot more about laughter having the experience of doing stand up comedy, because you see it from a completely different perspective.

And I used to think, because I was an idiot, that stand up comedians were sort of broadcasting a joke into the room, and I had never thought about it as an interaction. As soon as you're doing it from on the stage, you realize it's a complete interaction. You're having a weird conversation with the people in that room, where all other things being equal, they will laugh and

you're the only person talking. But sometimes they don't laugh, or sometimes they laugh when you didn't expect them to, and you have to be able to sort of cope with that in the moment. And actually, what's happening in that room. They may not all know each other, but they start to behave together, and what's actually happening there's quite extraordinary. I'd love to really get my I had

one big scientific ambition. It would be to actually try and understand what's happening in a comedy environment to the audience and how the comedian is sort of controlling that and responding to that because no one tells us how to do it, but it's something that sort of gets negotiated in that room and in that space, and it's it's an incredible thing. I was doing a sketch comedy show, you know, twenty years ago called in Living Color in America,

and it was predominantly men and on hiatus. They were going and doing stand up and making a fortune doing stand up. And my manager at the time said, Ali, you have to go do stand up. That's where the money is. And I went to a sports bar by l a X the Los Angeles International Airport and I got up and I was wearing a little sundress and little daisy sandals, and before I could even, you know, do my first joke, they all started yelling strip strip, strip strip, and so I dropped the mic and that

was it. But now that I'm an old hag, I think maybe I'll go back and try it, because I'm sort of fascinated like you are, about the annex of the room and what happens. And you know, I was. I was too young and terrified, and there was a hockey game out at the same time. It wasn't the best platform for it. But I agree with you. I think it's fascinating and I think there's something about that confidence. Yeah. The only thing that I think academics have is they

were very used to standing up and giving talk. So I was used to people shutting up and letting me speak, and that kind of I carry that on to the stage with me. You would be brilliant at doing it. Now. You would probably would have been brilliant Leonard. They'd let you. But you just we get more confidence as we get older, you know, and that's something you bring onto the stage with you. Well, now that i'm you know, a fifty

six year old woman. I'm gonna I'm gonna change it up and they're going to sit back and have a beer and get ready to laugh, and I'm gonna strap jokes on them, you know. But also if the audience pick up that are not and a comedian is unhappy or uncomfortable or anxious or unconfidence, then they're like, oh,

what's going on here, and they'll stop laughing. And it's a very interesting space where things can kind of change quite quickly, and it can we can't get an audience back if you're trying to be serious, yeah, and in fact they're still laughing, or if you want them to laugh and they've gone to a serious place. It's very hard to keep that balance, I think. Yeah, an audience is very instinctual and they can smell it too, kind

of when you're off for your insecure about something. So, going back to the science of laughter, the first sign of somebody noticing that laughter wasn't getting it to do kind of the research of it, and he thought it was important. Is Darwin correct that? Absolutely? Darwin was a shining license in love to science, and he wrote this beautiful book about the expressions of emotions in Man and other animals, and he basically started a lot of modern

psychology in that book. We think of him as being this kind of, you know, amazing progenitor of evolutionary theory. But by applying revolutionary theory to effectively psychological factors like emotional recognition and expression, that was a psychological theory that was a really important one and which we still have strong elements of. And he wrote so much about the real insight into lots of different emotions in that book. And he talked so much about laughter. He valued it,

he'd recognize it when he saw it another animals. He describes it beautifully, describes it because baboon being tickled at the zoo by a zoo keeper and the animal's eyes have become bright like jewels. And then we just a lot of the next century people picked up on Darwin's ideas about emotions and wrote a lot about them and

investigated them a lot, with the exception of laughter. So all this stuff on fear and anger and sadness, we're all, you know, kind of taken forward and and often acknowledges coming from him, and then we just we just ignored it.

And then Paul Ekman wrote a lot about it too. Yeah, I I owe everything I do and laughter to Paul Ekman actually because he took Darwin's ideas and was testing these ideas of you know, could you find facial expressions of emotion that we're recognized in all human cultures, for example, and that was things like fear, anger discussed, sadness, happiness, and surprise. You can go anywhere in the world and find those emotional expressions recognized and see similar expressions in

the humans that you meet. That I was at a conference because I was working on vocal versions of these um from the nineties, and I saw Paul Edwin giving a talk about this at a conference, and I asked him, why are they also negative? Like on a day to day basis, I feel like I experienced mostly positive emotions, little dips and dopts of negative ones. Most of the time is positive. It would seem strange to me that more of them wouldn't be represented in this sort of

evolutionarily important set of emotions. And he said he thought they were. They might not be well studied by static photographs of faces. He thought that what you might need to do was look at like body movement all voices, and I was like, great, I look at voices. So I started looking at positive as well as negative emotions. And he talked about relief, contentment, physical pleasure, triumph kind of an achievement, feeling, feeling proud, and what he called amusements.

And that's why I started looking at laughter. I never set out to look at laughter. If I hadn't gone to that talk by Paul Ekmand, none of this would have happened. I know, it's probably very upsetting for everyone to think about. And the sooner you start studying laughter as this set of much bigger emotions that you know it's one of setting up ten emotions I was now looking at, it just runs away from you because you realize it's everywhere. It's incredibly well recognized. We found it

is cross culturally recognized. It probably should be added to the list of basic emotions that Kman was studying. And it is not only found in humans. You find it in other animals. And then of course you go back to Darwin and realize, right, okay, and Darwin was talking about joy. He wasn't talking about amusement. He was talking about something much more elemental than that. So I think Okay,

we need to rethink this right from the beginning. So you're telling me other mammals laugh, they do the way we do. It's very easy to recognize if you look at other apes because it looks and it sounds like laughter. Um So, if you have a chance, gone to YouTube and google Cocoa, the gorilla and Robin Williams, and there's a clip of the late Robin Williams. Cocoa and Coca could sign in American sign language and she signs to him tickle me. And it's really hard to tickle a guerrilla.

It takes them a while to get in that. You've really got to get in there. And when he manages it, you see her start laughing, and he's absolutely recognizable her facial expressions, her movements, the movement of her body. Chimpanzee laughter, which again looks very similar. Is it sounds a bit like sound they breathe in and out when they're laughing sound, and again it looks very recognizably like laughter orangutang's banobos. You see a very similar pattern that they're not the

only animals that laugh. Probably there's very interesting work from another American scientist, Yeah Panks that who worked on rats, and he was working on rat vocalizations, and he was studying sounds rats made when they're unhappy. And rats are very small and they have high pitched voices, so you have to reduce their voices down in pitch to hear them.

And when they did that, they noticed that the rats made other sorts of sounds all the time, and they made a particular kind of chirping sound when they were playing with each other. And rats are very social and they play with each other a lot. So they started tickling the rats to see if it was associated with laughter. And the rats make the same sound when they're tickled, And if you tickle a rat and then take your hand away, it will make the sound to try and

get you to carry on doing the activity. So it's a It seems to be associated with play and social bonding. That's where you find it in common across other animals, right, panks That thought that at its heart, wherever you found laughter, it was the invitation to play. Come and take part in this delightful fun activity that's not going to be painful and not gonna be horrible. We're just gonna enjoy ourselves.

That seems to be very important to mammals, and it's associated with sounds, and that may well be the root of laughter. A few years ago, I was in Rwanda and I had climbed up this gigantic mountain and I was sort of in there, embedded with the gorillas. And

I'm just remembering this now and this silver back. You know, the Papa gorilla walked by me and used his ass to sort of pushed me and I went rolling backwards down the hill, I mean, like Lucille ball and he started making these noises, which of course I thought, you know, terror, he's going to kill me. And one of the guides with us says, no, he thought that was funny, you know,

that he pushed me and I had rolled backwards. I mean I was laughing hysterically, partly because I was terrified, but also I couldn't believe a gorilla just pushed me down the hill. But it's so interesting. I haven't thought about it in that way. But he probably thought it was funny, our little interaction. He was being playful. Yeah, amazing, and it's time for a short break. Great, let's get

back to it. When Paul Eckman, who talks a lot about as you just said how laughter is cross cultural, and you showed a video in one of your talks which I loved with Yelton and Clinton because I felt it really demonstrated how you can sort of cross what would be a very somber time these the two of them were doing a press conference, and in fact, my husband George Stephanopolis, who worked for Clinton, remembers that and remembers how even the two of them laughing got everybody

watching laughing, the press corps and everything. So to sum it up, basically, so Yelton was there, he had had meetings with Clinton. Clinton was sort of standing like a good soldier next to him. Yelton was talking, he was being interpreted. You take it from there. What was the shift and what happened and what made us all laugh? It has been quite a serious series of meetings, and yeah, and Yelson was prone to blaming the press for reporting on meetings and ways that he didn't appreciate. So he

comes out and he sank through the interpreter. You were all saying that this meeting was going to be a disaster, but actually you are the disaster, and you know, and it's funny now, at the time he was just quite cross. But the really interesting part is that right from the outset, Clinton is standing there very seriously, but he was also

watching Yelps him like an absolute hawk. And the first opportunity he got to laugh, and it's a little laugh, is when Yelson mentioned his name to this meeting with Bill Clinton, and then that was translated Bill Clinton, that laugh, that's my name. That's funny, and it gets a little bit of a laugh from that, and then that you

are the disaster bit. Clinton does an enormous laugh, and then that really starts to set other people off, and it makes Yelton smile, and he carries on, and now Clinton keeps laughing, and it's like everything that he's saying now is being treated as amusing and very witty, and Yeltsin starts to laugh as well. And it's a master class in somebody taking a very awkward situation and using laughter in a very targeted way to completely diffuse the tension and also to kind of include everybody in it.

He didn't laugh at Yeltson. He was behad because if Yelson was being very very witty, which was very clever, again, you could just look at look at this fool it was all laugh at him, which would have made everything worse. So Yelson felt included and like he was hilarious, and it was just it was a beautiful piece of work because it absolutely achieved its aim and it left him and Yelson looking closer and bonded and like presenting a

common front exactly. And as a bystander or certainly somebody watching the video, you have this kind of relief, Oh we're good. Oh yes, foreign relations are good because we're all laughing together, we all get the joke. And I mean, I'm surprised they don't try to do that more. And these those very uncomfortable press conferences. You have to play

your hand very carefully. And I think again this is a real hatic to Clinton's reading of the room, because you can't just start laughing and assume everything will make them work. Right. He makes a point in fact of sort of clapping on the back and pulling him into him to say, you know how right closely they are bonded over finding this hilarious. So it's he's very very careful to do in a respectful way, an inclusive way. But also you can imagine if the press courts hadn't

started laughing as well. If everyone's just mortified and he pressed on, it would have been awful. So you need to read the room. You need to you know, if the audience is not going with you in that journey, then stop because it will just make things worse. And then provide pointed this out. You know, laughter often works very very well to diffuse situations, except at the times when it doesn't, and then it makes think it's worse exactly.

You know, he was absolutely reading that environment and taking the laugh in the direction where it felt comfortable going, and it worked, and it worked. It made me think about how many times you've seen on stage when actors break, you know, where one of them kind of makes the other one laugh and they cannot get back to the dialogue and they're just cracking up, and you, as the audience, start cracking up too. You don't even know why they're laughing.

I mean, that is another very odd thing about laughter in the it's very very contagious. Very a lot of the laugh do you produce happens just because someone else is laughing. And in fact, that's a lot of what Clinton was doing was just just laughter will lead to laughter, and that's why we laugh when people corpse on stage

slight detour. There are quite a lot of contagious behaviors that we have as humans, So yawning is contagious, Scratching can be contagious, blinking as contagious, coughing, and all of those things are social. You're much more likely to catch them from someone you know than someone you don't know. And also there things we learned to do. Babies don't show contagious yawning. We don't really know the trajectory, but you have to be quite a good age for it.

We basically teach babies to do it. And also we're not the only animals that show it's so contagious. Yawning is actually found in many different social animals, including turtles as well as dogs and chimpanzees. However, the only animal that has been found to laugh contagiously is humans. So there is something very interesting going on there. Really, there's a there's something about yeah, and I wonder if that links in to maybe liketen can kind of jump the

gap between us. Whereas two chimpanzees they will laugh when they're playing with each other, but a third chimpanzee is not in the game. And just sitting next to them won't love at all. So there's something about its ability for us to share it at a distance that I wonder maybe that builds up two elements of our interactions with comedy, for example. Yeah, that's interesting. Another thing that comes to mind is a few years ago I was

in Burundi, Africa. Down there on a rather serious mission of building a hospital, and one afternoon I took a lot of the local girls, teenagers, and we were gonna beat necklaces together and I thought, oh, this will be so great, what a great bonding experience. And I had my teenage daughter with me, so we were all beating, and it was really awkward because we didn't speak the language, they didn't speak English. We all kind of looked at each other, Why are we even beating? What a stupid

thing to do. And at one point we gave all the girls Coca cola, which was like a big treat to have this sugary soda, and then one of the girls drank her Coca cola down and made the loudest burp I've ever heard in my life. Just this it was. It echoed through the whole room, and there was a pause. You know, just like dead silence, and then everybody started laughing, everybody,

and it completely changed the atmosphere of the afternoon. And then suddenly, after that burp and after fits of laughter, we all suddenly knew each other, like we all suddenly had a relationship. And I remember when I came back from Burundi, I said to my husband, I think there's a science to how laughter brings people together in a way that is so untangible, almost kind of this ethereal thing. And because that day it I can't explain to you

how much it pivoted. And I just thought, I mean, I think that after it's the greatest thing in the world, and I do it sometimes, probably when I shouldn't. But it was just a poignant moment in my life where I thought, yes, this is the great equalizer. But we have the phrase it breaks the ice, and what we mean is people laugh and the room warms up and you start to share something, and it's it's an incredible way of making maintaining social bonds laughter And as you say,

it changes things. Once you've learned the chance to laugh together, you're you have a different relationship with those people. So I think that's a that's a really lovely example of it transcending language and leading to a completely different emotional tone to the whole meeting. Um. I think the thing that's interesting is that you can't just make people laugh. So people laugh when they're in particular places with particular people.

So laugh to reflects not just the thing that's made you laugh, it also reflects who you're with and how you feel about them, and how comfortable you will feel. I remember before the pandemic there was something somebody put on them social media that made me smile, and it was a clip of the original Doctor Doolittle film, which came out in the sixes and has Rex Harrison sort of marching around the giant snails and things, and there's one bit in it where he sings a love song

to a seal dressed as a human woman. It's had a lovely song sing this and the seals are looking at him, and then he kisses the seal and then he throws the seal off a cliff into the sea and she swam with a lay really odd and it made me laugh and it made me smile, And as soon as I got home, I showed it to my partner and our son, and I said, you've got to see this, and then I became hysterical because watching them

laugh and find it funny magnified my laughter. Ten fifty hundred times I'd laugh with you know, when I'm with friends, but I really lose it most of all when i'm with people really i'm really really close to. And if I'm with people I don't like, I don't know, there might be a little laughter, but it's not you know,

it's much less likely to self conscious exactly. And so what you find actually is laughter act reflects people's feeling about who they're with, because it's primarily a social behavior. Or thirty times Robert Profile found too more likely to laugh if there's somebody else with you than if you're on your own. So it's already sort of promoted by social contact. But actually the who you are with really matters, and it will affect the amount of laughter and the

extent of laughter. And they went to sharing of the laughter. It's so interesting. Um So, the other thing I want to talk about is laughter as emotional health, because I truly believe that laughter is healing, and I've written some humor books and most of the compliments I get are from people who say, you know, my mother was sick or my father was in the hospital and I was reading your book aloud and it was making them laugh, and it actually it changed their physicality, it changed their mood.

And that is to me, the greatest compliment in the world. And I think that laughter, you know, the cliche j laughter as therapy. Laughter is the best medicine. I think it's true. And the more I've read about it, the more I've read that it does actually strengthen your immune system. It actually does real physical helpful things, So talk to

me about that. It is very, very interesting. So if you look at the physiological responses, so that you said, your body's responses to laughter, you get some things that happened really quickly, so very soon after you started laughing, you get an increased uptake of endorphins, and those are the bodies and actually circulating pain killers. And that's why you can literally tolerate pain more when you're laughing when you've been laughing. Um, I laugh when I'm in pain

quite a lot. It was the only thing on my birth notes was like, if I'm laughing, don't assume I'm more rights And some people do this. It seems to be quite random, and I suspect actually it's a deliberate strategy to get the endorphins going to cope with the pain. I can't say I don't have much insight into it, but it's certainly something I know I do a lot, and there's I'm really like a broken arm or something that doesn't really work then, but there's that element to it,

and it's a measurable effect. This change your thresholder pain. Coping with pain, you also get an immediate reduction in adrenaline. And adrenaline is that fight or flight hormone. So when you are feeling really anxious, if something scares you and your heart starts pumping, that is adrenaline. A drelling can work really really quickly. You can also get turned off

really really quickly. And if you measure someone's heart rate before they start laughing, and then show them something funny and then measure it again, because the heart your heart rate actually go up while you're laughing, but as soon as you stop laughing, you'll notice the heart rate drops back down lower than it was before. Really interestingly, and you can do this to yourself if you've got one of those little pulse oximeters that we all started buying

during COVID. If you sit down to watch something that will make you laugh, look at your pulse. But you'll notice is your pulse will probably drop just before you start watching, because you're actually anticipating the laughter is already making your adrenaline levels go down. It's extraordin And I would imagine the intake, the oxygen intake from laughing so hard. You must see that too. Well, that's a very good question, and I can't think of a good study that's actually

shown that. And I think one of the problems is when you're laughing really hard, humans laugh on an excelation ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, and that's actually just pushing air out of you, and you'll sometimes be aware you're you're desperately gasping for breath. I suspect your oxygen levels get a bit depleted as well, because you're really slowing down the normal rate at which you would breathe in, and then you gasp with great breath in.

So that's a good question. It'd be worth with you that with your pulse oximeter experiments to send me your results. You also get I love that we're working together as colleague. Well, there's so little science on this. It's it's all to be done. Yeah, there's another hormone which affects your is affected by laughter, and that's court is all. The courtisol is the stress hormone. It's the thing that wakes you

up in the morning. Is quite at point. You know when you wake up first thing and you feel a bit grotty, that is court is all. And you know when you're stressed out and you're not eating and sleeping properly and there's something bothering you all the time and you feel bad. That is courters are working in the long term. Courtersol levels that are high are not good for you. You need it a bit, you don't need lots of it, and it has a sluggish response. Unlike adrenaline,

which responds really quickly. Courssol levels vary more slowly. But it's again you find after people have been laughing slower time scale, you will see the courtsole levels reduced. So you're you're more relaxed because the adrenaline is going down, and you are less stressed because the cortisol is going down, and you feel good because that's the endorphins. Endorphins don't just act as a pain reliever. You feel nice. It's like that not a good feeling you get when you've

been exercising. There is and you've referred to it. One more thing that we do know about. And I have to be very cautious here because I don't we don't exactly know why it happens that when you are if you also get an increase in human growth hormone. Now, human growth hormone is a very very important hormone throughout your life when you are a growing in the womb, when you're a baby and a child, it's what's powering the changes in your body. Once you are a grown adult,

it doesn't stop its work. It continues playing an important role. But it's main role, which you've hinted at, is actually in the immune system. So it's hard to do the studies to actually prove the effect, but that's certainly a mechanism for it. So you've got these you've got these clear effects and your body that are affecting your mood, how you feel, and how relaxed you are and how

stressed you are. I read that laughter helps start dementia, and so now every day I called my mother who's eight, and tell her a dirty joke, just by a little way of helping her medically. Um. But here's my question to you, Sophie, and it's a confession. A couple of times in my life I've laughed so hard that I've peed my pants. Why is that? Um, it's actually quite

common in childhood. It's called giggle incontinence. And um, the actual mechanism for it seems to be and she's going to sound crazy, Okay, right now, I'm sitting in a chair and it feels like I'm not doing anything, but actually there's lots and lots of work that my body is doing to maintain my posture. As soon as you start laughing, that motor control over your body starts to get suppressed. And that's why you become very weak when you're laughing, and it's why you start to get floppy

and you may actually go onto the floor. We're rolling on the floor. Laughing is a thing I can I've seen that. We've all seen people do it. I've done it. Gee, it isn't it. And it's not just the postural control over the muscles in your body. And you know your urine is being kept in by motor control, So if you lose control of that, that's why it happens. So it's it's a market of the suppression of the motor system that happens when we laugh. And we understand very

little about this. If you think about it in evolutionary terms, it's absurd. Why would be so easily get into a state where you know, if a tiger came in at that exact point, it probably could just eat you without any problem. If you would not be able to defend yourself at all, And if you try and do something fiddle with your hands like do what buttons when you're laughing, you just can't do it. You just have lost all

that control. Yeah, I find that when I have been with friends and that happened and I paid my pants, I did lose the room, they did leave after they laughed at me. Um. I mean to me, there's no better feeling than being with your family, are close friends literally laughing or at us off. There's just no better feeling in the world. It's probably the most important part of your whole day, the times when you get to do that. When we went into the first lockdown in

the UK, just over two years ago. Because we're in a quite small, flattened someone's schooling from home and partner I both working from home. Been there, You probably have all been there with So okay, end of every day thirty for putting away the computers, We're going to watch something on television that makes us laugh. It almost didn't matter what it was, but we would do it together

and it would be funny. And actually we've carried on doing it because it's a silly half hour, but it's a effects and you know that we're all still alive, We're all still here. Let's spend that time making sure we spent some time laughing together. I agree with you. I feel like we spent COVID and I actually wrote a book about it that's coming out in May. We spent COVID during the day because George was doing Good Morning America from our dining room, just watching COVID numbers

and worrying about people getting sick. And I got sick very early on. It was very scary, and we did the exact same thing. We got addicted to a show called Love Island Australia, which I had to explain to George was just about people having sex and not getting kicked off an is lunch. But you know, we still watch something funny at night because I think, particularly now with what's happening in the world, we need that release,

We need that laughter. Um, I think it's so important. So, Sophie, I always ask all these questions to my poor guests when they come on my podcast, and so I always allow with my us to ask me a question. So you may ask me anything you want. Can you remember things that made you laugh when you were a kid that you might have shared with your family. Did you

have like family jokes? I did. So. I grew up in Washington, d C. And my parents were political journalists during Watergate, so it was very somber time and my parents were very serious, and dinner was you know, we've spent talking about, you know, what was going on with the hearings, and and I decided that we needed levity even as a young child. So I used to put on some silly outfit or like one of my mother's dresses, and I would do a show. I would stand on

the table and I would entertain. I would lip sync, and I remember one night it was very hard to get my parents to laugh I had not developed breasts yet, so I had a flat chest, and I put on black tights and I stuck a pillow down my tights and I pretended to be Barishnikov. And it was the first time that I saw my parents laugh really, really hard, and and for me, that was it. I thought, well,

then comedy, comedy is the way to go. So yeah, I do remember that, and I do remember thinking how great it was to make my parents laugh, how great it made them feel, and how great it made me feel to do it. So that's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, this has been so so helpful and so interesting, and it's really an area that I'm fascinated by. Couldn't agree more. Oh, excellent, Sophie, thank you so much. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. We'll be right back, and we're back. You have to

love a genius, funny lady like Sophie Scott. And I'm telling you, if I ever get a chance to see here do stand up, I can't wait. She almost inspired me to do stand up, although I'm a hundred and five years old, so there's no way I'm going to

try now, but I bet she's amazing. So, guys, this is the last episode of season two of Go Ask Gali, and one of my favorite things we did this season is answered listener questions, and so we've been stockpiling a bunch just for this occasion, and we've got a few of them. I'd like to have my way with This is from a listener in Wisconsin. Hi, Ali, love your podcast and recently listen to the Girlfriend Coach episode. I have a thirty plus year friendship with a treasured friend. However,

I often find myself envious of her. Things that I used to admire about her now make me jealous. She's pretty, thin, has a wonderful marriage, perfect children and grandchildren, her life has changed with retirement and has opportunities to travel and make new friends. I don't want to feel envious of her. I realized that's my problem. I just want to get some advice and how to change my feelings towards her. I treasure our friendship and don't want to do anything

to jeopardize it. Yeah, this is an excellent question, and I think that everybody at some point in their life has felt that towards a friend. Um. I recently went to visit a friend who's got this incredible house beautiful house right on the ocean, and it's interesting. I maybe twenty years ago I would have been jealous, but now I'm just so happy for her. So what you have to kind of say to yourself is that you're grateful for the friendship and that you truly are happy for her.

Because there are so many people now that are suffering, we do have to celebrate the people that are healthy and have great relationships with their children and are traveling. And the other thing is try to get in on that. In other words, try to get in on that joy. You've been friends with her for thirty plus years, Go enjoy her children and her grandchildren. If she travels, travel with her. You know, sometimes it feels good to be

around that. It inspires us, it makes us better. And you know, if you're at the playground with her grandchildren and her and you're laughing and you know, helping Timmy down the slide, you're participating and enjoying what you have seen as an enviable life. But now you're part of it. Okay, Brook, who's my producer? Let him roll? Hi, Ali, just curious, are you taking HRT sert any form as departments? Okay,

hormones um always a tricky conversation. I am not taking any hormones right now because my levels are very even, and I'm not experiencing any anxiety or depression or foggy brain or night sweats or no strong symptoms of perimenopause or menopause. And so because of that, I'm a big believer in let things lay if it's working for now. However, if I started to experience it's any of the you know, horrible side effects, I would definitely go to the doctor

and I would try something out. And again it's different for everybody. What kind of hormones you want to take, but I employ you to go to your doctor and get your hormone levels checked. Next question, Hi, Ali, I just would like to know who do you think is the funniest person, the one person that, no matter what,

can always make you laugh. It's hard to say who the funniest person is for me, um, because circumstances make me laugh, like when I wake up in the morning and my dog Cooper is eating a full box of dried spaghetti, or my husband is holding his keys and says he can't find them. But Ricky's your Vase, the stand up comedian really makes me laugh. And there's a video where Liam Neeson goes to him because he wants Ricky's your ves to teach him about comedy, and it

is so funny to me. It makes me laugh every time. And there's also a bit where rick use your vase is playing god and telling every breed of dog what their responsibility is, and that always makes me laugh. And there's links at the end of our show notes if you want to see some of the stuff. But you know, I feel like I can find one or two things a day that make me really laugh that are sometimes just completely mundane, but I always do look for things.

I always like to laugh at least twice a day. Oh, now we have a text here we go. How do you navigate girl clicks as an adult when you aren't in one, but maybe you'd like to be. This is a very relevant question because it's something that I have been talking about and thinking about in my own life, because I have a group of friends, and you know, we have a ball together, but I have other friends too, And I found that that a friend of mine who wasn't kind of featured in the squad photos had her

feelings hurt. And I actually I couldn't believe it, because you know, I think at a certain age we don't care about this stuff, but we actually do. And I've noticed that. There have been times when I've seen, you know, a post of a group of friends of mine having dinner or doing something fun, and I have that fomo feeling, and I realize, and I even say to my teenage daughters, I don't think you ever outgrow it. I think you always feel left out, and I think the important thing

to do is dive right in. And what I mean by that is, if they're girl clicks that you want to be part of, invite them all over, or you know, send them an email and say, hey, oh my gosh, I saw you guys on the beach. It looks so fun. I'd love to join you next time. Because as much as we internalize that that they are emitting us or not allowing us to be part of it, that's probably

not true. And if you did just reach out and say, hey, how about you know, drinks at my house or I'd love to take you guys guy diving or whatever your hobby is, I think you'll find that people, especially when

we get older or more inclusive. Okay, now, we have another audio question, being as you are the mother of daughters, how do you handle it when or if one of your girls brings home a young man that you immediately get a bad vibe off of, just by virtues, the fact that you've been around a lot longer than your daughter and around a lot of people, and you just

get a bad vibe, but your daughter is oblivious. Well, my daughters, who are still relatively young, there's only been two that they brought home and they were both very sweet, delightful boys. So I haven't yet experienced an older daughter bringing somebody home that she's very, very interested in. But I have no problem verbalizing my opinion because my feeling is, yes, we have been around longer. Listen, I dated a lot

of bad boys. I can sniff them before they walk in the door, so I would be honest and now it's it's going to make them angry. But there is a little bit of I told you so when he shows his true colors, and I actually think in some way, and it might not be on the surface or conscious, they do want to hear our opinions. So if somebody comes into your daughter's life and you get a really bad vibe from it, verbalize it truly. You might be saving her a lot of heartache in the future or

prison time, depending on the guy. Now, if this is a rebellious thing, if your daughter is defiantly dating somebody just to piss you off, then I would play it very cool because that's just a kid acting out, and so rather than give them the treats they're looking for, I would just say, you know, oh he's great. I mean, I actually love his tattoos. You know, I've never seen anybody with a pierced tongue before, but he wears it well.

And don't give her the satisfaction. Okay, give me another. Hi, Ali, I was wondering how the results for at this point of your blessed borrow plastic under eye surgery. I have the same thing I always have. I never chose to do anything about it, but I was envied and wondered how yours went, and how you feel about it now that you got it done. And it's been several years. Ah, yes, bleffero plastic. So I had the bags under my eyes done. Wow.

I think it was about ten years ago. And at first when I was getting the surgery, which basically just sucks out of the fat out of the under your eyes, which I inherited from my dad. Thank you very much, dad. Um. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know how much it was going to hurt. I was a little nervous beforehand, and I went on the internet. I couldn't find anything. And I used to ask women who clearly

had had a lot of stuff done. I would say, you know, does it hurt when you have bleff roplasty? And everyone would say, oh, I don't know, I've never done anything. I was like, okay, Joan Rivers. So I decided after I had the bluff roplasty, I wrote an article about it for l magazine. But I also videotaped every day like a video diary before the surgery and then my recovery after. And I think it was very helpful to people. Obviously it was helpful to you because

you knew to ask me this question. And now it's ten years later, I feel great that I did it. It was kind of my moby dick, the thing that really bothered me. And I'm absolutely one satisfied glad I did it. I would do it again if I needed to, but I don't and anybody that you know is thinking about it. I encourage you, Okay, Brook, I think we have time for one more. We've been married for a long time and your purpose is to um help your

husband raise your daughter. How president is is? Do you have a purpose and all of a sudden you get divorced and you find yourself make fifties, early sixties and there's no purpose? How do you find that? Okay, listen to me, all you women out there, late fifties, early fifties, late sixties. It doesn't matter how old you are. There are many, many, many chapters in our life. You know, my youngest daughter is going to go off to college in a year and we will be empty nesters. And

my feeling is, Okay, what's next? Do I want to write a book? Do I want to make textiles? Do I want to you know, make jam and sell it at the farmers market. I mean you have to look at it not as an end, but as a beginning. And I think so many women now, particularly middle aged women, are starting new chapters. So this is what I would do if I were you, because we all have purpose.

I think you take out a pen and paper and write down all your interests both charitable and you know self interest, Like I would love to make skirts and sell them, and you know I really care. I'm a big child advocate. What kind of charities that involved children could I be involved in? Or I love animals and make a list of things that you could actually go volunteer for, because I think that there's a great balance in life of giving back and what I call giving

to So why not start a new business? Why not go read to a boy or girl club? Why not do all of these things? Um, I have found that we are as women are the most prolific and the most creative at this point in our life. I know women have started painting. I know women that just wrote their first book in mid fifties. So you can do

it all, just it just have to simmer. Simmer it all down to what it is that makes you tick, what do you love, what interests you and take it from there and again make sure that you're sort of giving out to the world, which I think is more important than ever, and also pursuing things that maybe you

didn't have time to pursue before when you were married. Okay, guys, well, I wish I had a sound effect for the popping of a champagne cork because it's the last episode of season two and it has been such a ball for me. It has been so inspiring, so informative. I mean especially for me. My husband always jokes that it's like my master class. I get to talk to all these incredible people and learn so much. I've loved every single episode.

I hope you have UM before we get into season three, and don't worry, I will put everything out on social media when that's happening. Um. I have a book coming out May Tent called Allie's Well that ends well And so if you're missing me bad, go by a book. It's stories about how I dealt with COVID. UM. We all had our coping mechanisms. Mind was to eat a lot of ice cream and go clamming. And I look forward to hearing from you and talking to you in

season three. Yeah, thank you for listening to Go ask Ali. Check out our show notes for fun links and more info, and be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth. Now if you'd like to ask me a question or suggest a guest or a topic to dig into in season three. I would love to hear from you, and

there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can call or text me at three to three four six three five six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. And if you leave a question as you heard today, you may hear it. I Go Ask Alli, Go Ask Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.