In honor of Radiolab’s season premiere episodes entitled LAUGHTER, the Angelika brings you more exclusive video clips. In our first clip, we watch Joe Randazzo, associate editor of The Onion, and Radiolab host Jad Abumrad discuss the evolution and anatomy of the laugh (and watch as they demonstrate some of their favorite laughs).
[QUICKTIME http://www.angelikablog.com/_Content/laughtermov.mov 320 257]
This second clip is best left to be explained by Abumrad: â??The first episode of our new season is all about why we laugh. I know, it seems like a stupid question. We laugh because something is funny, right? Actually, the scientists we talked to say that laughter has little to do with humor. It’s usually about social interactions, and, more specifically, power. Tyler Stillman, a psychologist at Florida State University, used a joke about a two muffins in an oven to show that a bad joke can get a big laugh, so long as a boss is telling it to an employee. Sadly, it doesn’t work the other way around. It seems the person in power laughs least. Here at Radio Lab, we like to test things out for ourselves. So we used the WNYC offices as our own little laboratory, and tried to find out if it’s true that our bosses are funnier than us, even when they aren’t. Here’s what we saw.â?
[QUICKTIME http://www.angelikablog.com/_Content/muffin.mov 320 257]
Don’t forget about the listening premiere this Thursday, Feb. 21 at the Angelika New York.