Humans laugh, rats laugh — did dionsaurs laugh? In this issue of KidSpirit, writers undertake the zany and often serious task of understanding how we laugh and why.

1. In the Big Question, Naomi Chasek-MacFoy describes the many kinds of laughter that humans use in different circumstances. Brainstorm situations in which you’ve laughed in the last day. What triggered your laughter. How did you feel when laughing? Did you have control over your laughter? Did it feel fake? Were you with other people? Did your laughter change because of your social circumstances?

2. Cartoons and comics have long been a source of humor and laughter. Sam Miller explores this medium in “Comix: A Distorted World.” This form can depict the absurdity of the world, contain a political or satirical message, or even explore philosophical concepts through the imagination. Create your own comic strip or single panel cartoon highlighting something you’ve found strange, funny, or philosophical. Mimic the style of a cartoonist you admire, or come up with your own unique take.

3. In her PerSpectives column, stand-up comedian Vanda Mikoloski, talks about how laughter allowed her to let go of some of the difficult moments of her past. Humor became a powerful tool for psychological health. The old saying goes that “laughter is the best medicine.” Why do you think laughter can be so powerful for healing? What is it about laughing that allows us to let go or feel better? Have you ever experienced a moment of catharsis, or letting go, like the one Vanda describes? Think about how laughing enabled you to move on.

Exploring Humor Group Guide

at my toes. I am standing in the water. I swim farther,

I love coming to this beach, I love to body surf.

The sun is burning our skin while we are laughing.

accidentally. I land on shore and don’t swim farther

I gaze back at my cousin as his body performs a body surf.

out in to the water until I don’t want to go farther

as the tide pushes me. We land on the shore laughing.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Matthew Madrid writes of swimming at Old Orchard Beach with his cousin and the laughter and joy it brings.

The Beach

People often ask comedians, “Were you the class clown?” Only a few of us can answer, “yes.”

I think many comics start out not as class clowns, but as serious class weirdos, class problems and class misfits. I remember wanting to fit in so badly, just hungry for validation and attention. I didn’t want to just be pretty. I wanted to be funny like the boys so that the boys would like me.

I came from a privileged background. We lived in a big, Victorian house on the top of what the townsfolk called “Snob Hill” — my two brothers, my sister, my parents, and me. My parents gave us everything: We had horses, snowmobiles, boats and lots of nature.

My father was a doctor and a strict disciplinarian. Dad had a sort of gallows humor I loved. He talked about making his rounds at the hospital to see what he called “the O’s and the Q’s”- the “O’s” were the poor souls lying in bed with their mouths open, and the “Q’s” were the ones with respirator tubes coming out of the corners of their mouths. My mom took care of us with flair and fun when she was happy. When she was unhappy, it seemed to cast a pall over the entire household for me. I loved when she would have a few glasses of wine with her girlfriends. They would sit around our big, wooden kitchen table and laugh uproariously about the absurdities of being homemakers of the 1950’s. They would get giddy and ridiculous about everything.

My mom dressed my sister and me up in little flowery dresses with crinolines under them and thick, white tights and shiny, white patent leather shoes and had my brothers looking spiffy, too, for church every Sunday. But I hated the God that was presented at church. He was the two things kids hate most: Mean and boring. It was here where I really felt strong sense of phoniness.

It all didn’t make sense. My parents had everything and were miserable. My brother Bryan drowned in the town reservoir at age 15. Six years later, my dad died in a car accident at age 48. It felt like an existential, unanswerable, red hot “WHY?” lodged in my throat, a sadness that I tried to run away from for years. It was weird to me that this whole creation went on and on no matter who lived or died.

It felt like an existential, unanswerable, red hot “WHY?” lodged in my throat, a sadness that I tried to run away from for years.

I was troubled and I was a rebel. When I was 17, I ran away from home and lived on the streets of New York City. I got in lots of trouble. It was around this time that I discovered the comedy of Richard Pryor. Pryor’s work was a departure from the uptight, appropriate, Catskills kind of funny of the day; he was radical funny. When I saw his film “Live on the Sunset Strip” I had a physiological laughter reaction in my body that I had never felt before. I had never heard an adult tell the truth like that.

I didn’t consider that I could be a comic at first. It didn’t even occur as possible. A few years later, I saw comedy live at a club. It took me a few years after that to get up the guts to do it. I didn’t think I was smart enough or funny enough. I took a class. I learned how. EVERYTHING is possible with a support structure and an environment that pulls for you to be greater than your fears. Once I did it onstage in public, I was hooked. EVERYTHING is possible with a support structure and environment that pulls for you to be greater than your fears. 

I began to look at other explanations and belief systems about life, exploring “fringier” ideas outside of the paradigm in which I was raised. I began to look into transformational work, shamanic work, yoga, spiritual stuff, quantum physics, channeled stuff, theosophists, New Thought churches, etc.

I had a sort of “enlightenment” experience during one of these courses, when I relinquished the scariness, drama, victimization and significance of some of the more difficult moments in my past. I saw that whatever I couldn’t laugh at owned me. I just laughed so hard at all of the pain and suffering and in a single moment, threw off the chains of self pity and fear.

I actually wouldn’t trade any of my life experiences for the world now, even though it’s very popular in our culture to be a “victim.” The trick was putting myself in an environment designed to have me try on a new perspective. As Parmahansa Yogananda says, “Environment is stronger than willpower.”

What was immediately there for me after taking this big chunk of my past out of my future was a great void … in which anything could be created. Now it was possible to create relationships where I was not trying to be interesting, not asking for “credit” for having lived such a hard life. I don’t walk into a room with a big question mark over my head anymore wondering if people like me. I don’t go onstage like that. I’m more of an exclamation point. I can have relationships that are spacious enough to be whimsical and present. Without agenda. I will not be using people as scratching posts for my unfulfilled needs.

That is the possibility I am creating to this day… Being an Enlightened Goofball.

I started doing comedy about spiritual and transformational stuff around this time, because the only thing you really want to do when you get freed up is give it away to others. We are generous like that, we human beings.

My personal sense of spirituality is sort of aligned with Socrates. He apparently had a mantra: “I know nothing.” I like that a lot. The great Indian saint Ramana Maharshi once asked “Why do we need beliefs?” I was wowed by what a good question that was. Why, indeed? I also like Byron Katie‘s idea of “God.” She says, “My God is reality because it rules … but only 100% of the time.” I’m attracted to non-dual, non-moral ideas of the Universe beyond our senses, the view that there’s a big soup of stuff happening and none of it is right or wrong. We’re here for experience and a lot of us want to experience extremes. It has to be sort of challenging, too, because we don’t want to play a game we know we can win.

The challenge is in riding the horse in the direction it’s going … that is my “religion,” I guess. That’s a metaphor. There’s no actual horse I refer to here. So, wherever I have a “should” or a “shouldn’t” about anything I’m disrespecting the great Way it is, also known as the Tao.

When I say “acceptance” a lot of people don’t like that because they hear “tolerance” and that’s intolerable to them. Acceptance isn’t tolerance. It’s acceptance. Here’s how you know if you’re in a state of non-acceptance or acceptance about anything or anyone: Either you’re disgruntled inside, or you’re 100% at peace.

So I wasn’t the class clown. I was the class disgruntled person feeling like a victim, trying to figure stuff out and hungry for approval. Now I’m a whimsical nutbar with a tendency toward self-righteousness who knows she doesn’t have any of the answers, loves people and laughter and truth. I’ve evolved into a clown. Serious!

In a KidSpirit PerSpectives article, comedian Vanda Mikoloski shares what humor has taught her about pain, growth, spirituality, and life itself.

Clowning Around: The Genesis of Comic Identity, or How to Be a Goofball

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Jesse Scheaffer narrates the experience of being outside during a thunderstorm, using the senses to describe the phenomenon. 

If You Sit on the Porch During a Thunderstorm

The beads of sweat drip down my forehead.

It was the biggest roller coaster in the park.

The screams on the cart were at volume 100,

I had a lot of fears but this conquers all,

just like the roller coaster the Goliath.

as it was I will never forget the thrill of

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Ben Vigue describes the experience of overcoming his fear of rollercoasters on the mighty "Goliath."

The Goliath

that belches out smoke into the atmosphere.

the latest oil spill, pictures of pelicans,

Reports of the disappearing Amazon, footage of trees falling,

bringing countless animals to their doom.

And the melting Arctic, a story of polar bears, not finding food

It puffs smoke from its stack as it goes.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Alex Lyon writes of the tragedies of human impact on the environment - oil spills, global warming, etc. - but assures the reader that it is not too late to change the course.

Yes We Can

I listen spellbound by this ancient song,

healing the soul with its archaic melody.

and finally making its way to healing scarlet.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Meenu Ravi describes the beauty and emotions associated with the ocean and sunset.

The Sunset of My Life

But I know the tree will grow tired and let me fall to the ground

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Lucia O'Corozine writes of dreaming in an orchard.

The dreaming orchard, the mother trees

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Tyler Stafflinger writes from the perspective of the wind. 

The Great Wind

My paddles pushed through the smooth surface of the water with ease. This didn’t seem like the same river that we had battled so fiercely only hours before.

The very water that had hurled waves, fast currents, and strong winds at us earlier peacefully yielded to us now that the sun had gone down. With only the reflection of the moon and a handful of stars to guide us, we paddled single-file out to the middle of the river. Everything was silent, but in a peaceful, rather than stifling, kind of way. Only our paddles made any sound, lightly dipping in and out of the water. We didn’t have any goal in mind, any destination in sight. We simply stopped paddling after a while, deciding that this seemed like the perfect spot. Now with our kayaks lined up side by side, we lodged our paddles between our legs, grabbed onto the kayaks on either side of us, and settled into the stillness of the river, gazing up at the sky. I was shocked to see how many stars there were. Since I live in a city that is brightly lit twenty-four hours a day, I was not accustomed to seeing more than a handful of stars at a time. It was only out here on the river, away from artificial light, that I could observe the infinite number of stars in the sky. As I watched the sky in awe, I took time to reflect on our other kayak trip, earlier that day.

Our trip earlier was meticulously planned. We were all bundled in layers of clothing, and we each had a change of clothes, along with food, water, and other necessary supplies, packed in dry bags and stored in our kayaks. We kayaked for a couple of hours before stopping for lunch. After eating, we continued on for another half hour or so. We had a tight schedule, one that depended on the currents and tides. This careful planning didn’t prevent us from having a great time. Instead, it offered a different kind of enjoyment from our night voyage. During the day, we were motivated, and had an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment when we were done. Meanwhile at night, we were able to paddle with a sense of purposelessness without worrying about where we were going or what we were doing. Neither experience would have been the same without the other. We needed the contradiction between light and dark, day and night, motivation and purposelessness, action and reflection, to fully appreciate all that the river had to offer.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Elizabeth Berg narrates an incredible evening she had kayaking in her city, and how the pairing of experiences can make each one more special.

Kayaking at Night

Laughter is the world’s most common language. I can’t imagine lifewithout laughter. It’s like cake without the yummy frosting.

I think of humor as a sister to love, because when someone is laughing, it seems they beam. When I’m laughing, the air smells sweeter to me, the colors around me are more vivid, nothing else seems to matter much at that moment.

We’re given the power of laughter, not only to laugh AT things, but to laugh things OFF. We’ll always overcome difficulties, but the happy person learns how to laugh most of them off. We must laugh and be merry. Remember: boost the world with a song. Boost the world with a laugh, or perhaps a giggle. Laugh, for the time is brief and we must savor it. Laugh and be proud to belong to the world of humor.

Humor is catching. The music of roaring laughter is far less contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. When laughter is shared, it bonds people of all cultures together and happiness forms. This priceless medicine is fun, free, and easy to use. Your sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain that your daily mood will to take care of itself. Laughter makes you feel confident. The good feeling that you get when you laugh remains with you even after the laughter ceases. Even in the most difficult of times, a laugh — or even simply a smile — can go a long way toward making you feel better.

As laughter and humor become tied to your life, your creativity will bloom and new discoveries for playing with friends and loved ones will occur to you daily. Humor takes you to a higher place where you can view the world from a more relaxed, positive, creative, joyful, perspective. A laugh costs nothing, but creates much. It enhances those who receive, without failing those who give. It happens in a blink and the memory of it lasts forever.

God made Heaven and Earth for joy. Made them, and filled them full of laughter. The splendid joy of the stars sing in the language everyone can make out, the language of Laughter. So we must laugh and drink from the deep turquoise cup of the sky, join the exultant song of the humorous stars giggling by, laughing in the blue-green land of Earth. Laughter creates a dent of happiness in life.

In a KidSpirit Features article, teen writer Meenu Ravi writes of the power of laughter and how it translates often into creativity. 

Laughter in My Heart

A few weeks ago I went with my best friend to a bookstore and picked up a copy of John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines. I opened the front cover to find a Post-It stuck to the first page. It read: “If you are reading this note you are probably a Nerdfighter. It’s totally OK. DFTBA!”

Part of what bonds people together in communities is a shared sense of humor. There is nothing more fun than rolling on the floor laughing — or than rolling on the floor laughing with other people that find something equally funny. People are attracted to people that they will have a good time with. Besides, laughing is fun — it releases chemicals in your brain that make you happier. And things are always more enjoyable when you share them with another person. What the Internet does is extend the number of people laughing together. The Internet is accessible all over the world and so people with unique talents or styles or senses of humor can find each other whether they live two or 2,000,000 miles away from each other. One of the ways people bond is through being able to see the same thing and laugh about it together.

One online video community has gone from laughing together to raising thousands of dollars together. This is a community is comprised of Nerdfighters; it calls itself Nerdfighteria. This humorous community was started by two brothers who communicated with each other through publicly viewable videos. They posted these videos on YouTube, which is where online video communities started.

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurly, Steve Chen, and Jawed Kairm. They were all employees of PayPal, which is a website that allows consumers to buy and sell things online without revealing personal financial information. The first YouTube office was founded in a garage in 2005. Then in November 2005 a venture capital firm called Sequoia Capital invested $3.5 million in the website. In the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest growing websites online and was ranked the fifth most popular website on Alexa Internet, Inc., even outpacing MySpace in its fast growth. According to a survey done on July 16, 2006, 100 million video clips were viewed on YouTube daily, and 65,000 new videos were uploaded every 24 hours. Now, the website has on average, nearly 20 million visitors per month and according to Nielsen NetRatings: 44% are female, 56% male, and most visitors are between the ages of 12 and 17. In October of that same year Google announced it would buy YouTube for 1.6 billion dollars in stock.

One of the reasons YouTube is so popular is its ability to allow viewers to watch whatever they want, when they want it. And more than allowing entertainment to be on demand, with YouTube, it’s the viewers, not corporations, who chose who will become popular. It is all the viewers that decide if something is funny or not, or if someone is talented or not; it’s not one person or even a group of people, it is the entire world. Entertainment is slowly becoming about what people want to watch. You could say that broadcasting has become more egalitarian or more democratic.

When particularly funny people upload videos to YouTube, they often create communities. Because these communities share a common sense of humor, they are often very tight-knit and together they can do incredible things.

One particular community seems to really embody all the great things that can come from sharing a sense of humor. This community is called Nerdfightaria. John and Hank Green are two brothers who co-created the popular YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers. John Green is a well-respected author who was awarded the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel for his book Paper Towns. Hank Green runs the environmental technology website EcoGeek and also is a singer/songwriter. In January 2007 they decided to stop communicating through anything text based (e-mails, letters etc.), and instead began communicating through public YouTube videos. The project was called Brotherhood 2.0 and during that year a community sprung up around their videos called Nerdfightaria. The Members of Nerdfightaria are called Nerdfighters, and they are described as, “Instead of being made of, like bones and skin and tissue, is entirely of awesome. ”

On December 31, 2007, John and Hank decided to continue making video blogs (or “vlogs) even though Brotherhood 2.0 had ended. John later said of their vlogs: “Really, it’s not about anything in particular. Whether we’re talking about our lives, making each other laugh, or trying to get something more important across, people seem to enjoy it.” Over the years this tight-knit community created lingo and phrases like “worldsuck,” which is anything and everything that is bad or unfair. Another unique turn of phrase is “French the llama” which replaces “Wow!” Or “Oh my gosh!” So instead of saying “Oh my gosh that whale is big!” a Nerdfighter would say: “French the llama, that whale is big.” “Notsome” is the opposite of awesome and my personal favorite: “DFTBA” which is an initialism that stands for “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome.” DFTBA has become a marker for Nerdfighters and appears all over the websites, blogs and forums.

In 2007 John and Hank introduced an idea they had for a charity project called Project for Awesome (P4A) it is one day of the year (usually December 17) when YouTube users upload a video of themselves talking about their favorite charity organization. The goal is to get these videos onto YouTube’s most viewed list and onto YouTube’s Most Discussed Page, so that more people become educated about really fantastic charities that work to decrease Worldsuck. In 2009, the P4A videos dominated YouTube’s most popular list and by the end of the project, the P4A videos made up the first six or seven pages of most commented, most viewed and most favorited on YouTube that week. In 2010 the project raised over $100,000 for charity. As P4A becomes an annual event, the YouTube staff has become more and more involved by hosting live streaming for events and providing space and equipment for P4A events.

Through the unusual spread of these videos, the nerdfighter community is getting bigger and more people are uniting through a shared sense of humor. Perhaps more strangers will get notes in books and more people will understand the Nerdfighter inside jokes, and more people will feel like they belong to something important, learn about great charities, read books together, and more people will laugh together because Hank Green is wearing a tiny cowboy hat.


If you want to check out the awesomeness of Nerdfighteria here are some links:

An introduction video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyQi79aYfxU

The Nerdfighter website: http://nerdfighters.ning.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube

In a KidSpirit Features article, teen writer Sofiy Inck writes about how humor is an essential aspect of any community, which she discovered after reading John Green's "An Abundance of Katherines" and learning about the "Nerdfighters."

Internet Humor: Nerdfighters DFTBA!

Laughter is nearly as mysterious as it is ubiquitous.

One might laugh at any kind of joke made by another person, any sort of regular comment made by a friend, something said on television, something on the Internet. But did you know that in Dr. Robert Provine’s study of laughter, only 10-20% of occurrences of laughter were in response to something overtly funny? That the presence of other people makes one far more likely to laugh (Douglas, et al., 2010)?

The field of humor, and the subfield of laughter in particular is not fundamentally understood. There is an International Society for Humor Studies, which has an entire journal (International Journal of Humor Research) dedicated to the study of humor as an “important and universal human faculty.” This journal covers topics from lawyers’ use of humor to differing ways that humor is used across gender lines to the 1962 Tanganyika laughter epidemic (see sidebar). Although this speaks to the ubiquity of humor, we still have no answers to the $64,000 questions: how does laughter affect our brain? Why, biologically, do we laugh?

The epidemic was an occurrence of mass psychogenic illness. It started in an all-girls school when a few girls began to laugh uncontrollably for hours at a time (up to 16 days). The laughter was so “contagious” that almost 2/3 of the school caught the bug, and the school was forced to close temporarily. The girls, upon returning home, spread the bouts of laughter to their families, and the pandemic spread across the Tanganyikan countryside, lasting for months. Hempelmann argues that the laughter was not humorous but rather caused by stress resulting from circumstances in the country, and was a “positive” symptom of a disease with very negative effects. For more information, see Hempelmann.

Crucial to our inquiry is the knowledge that laughter is not a solely human phenomenon. When apes pant, this is biologically analogous to laughing (Martin 2007; Laursen 2009). So are behaviors exhibited by other primates, by dogs, and even by rats (Tierney 2007). I personally would not recommend touching any critters on the New York City subway, but if you happen to own a rat you can experiment by tickling him. While rats do not laugh on frequencies that we can hear, they can easily be detected by ultrasound. Since humans and rats laugh in an analogous way, scientists can conclude that the common ancestor of humans and rats must have laughed. This species lived 75 million years ago — so there was laughter in the time of the dinosaurs! (Onion 2005)

Of course, this species is far too distant for us to understand. What can we know about life in the time of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptors? Evidently, the approach of trying to understand the biological origins from laughter and humor from this ancestor species is futile. How, then, are we to understand how we ever evolved to laugh? Laughing as a response to tickling, even a joke, seems arbitrary; we are hard pressed to explain humor.

Rather than attempting to derive reasons for laughter from the past, we can look at what laughter does to us in the present to attempt to explain why we grew to acquire it. There is no clear explanation for how tickling helps us, so let’s set aside tickling as a nervous system anomaly for now and look into other manifestations of laughter, and the utility of laughter in species today.

Laughter and humor both serve as forms of communication in both humans and animals.

Laughter and humor serve as forms of communication in both humans and animals. Why, one asks, do we need laughter to communicate, given our highly advanced vocal skills? True, in humans there are ample ways to communicate without laughter, but not so in other animals. Indeed, laughter manifests itself differently in other animals because they are not vested with the ability to speak (Onion 2005). This suggests that laughter was a way to communicate in our pre-vocal ancestors. Laughter is an evolutionarily developing form of communication – evolutionarily present before the ability to speak.

Of course, laughter can help convey the latest funny joke or story. But this is not the full meaning of the word “communicate.” Rather than merely communicating trivial matters, laughter can help us communicate more of the essence of life.

For example, laughter is used differently by men and women. A man generally courts women who laugh at his jokes, while a woman often desires a man who can make her laugh. In a relationship, though, it is often helpful for women to laugh to eliminate tension. Even though we might see laughter as merely jocular, then, or humorous on the surface, laughter is a representative of much deeper, more meaningful phenomena (Nicholson 2008).

It is clear that humor is a short-term stress reliever on the brain. Some theories claim that humor is the result when a mildly tense situation is relieved (Smuts 2011). In this scheme, humor is soothing in the short-term. When you stretch your arm and then release it, it feels good like this model of humor. But we have seen that humor is representative of something deeper, something with no analogue in muscles.

All of the creatures that laugh today do have commonalities. All of us, besides being social animals, are small animals. We conquer and live not by strength of body but by strength of mind. Yet perhaps this strength of mind causes us to make realizations: just how tenuous the thread we hang on to really is. Strong as we are, we are still far weaker than our environments. Far more than the lion or the bear or the eagle can appreciate, it’s a big place out there and we are small.

In base, then, we are insecure. Laughter is a tool that we can use to conquer that insecurity. Rather than building a superficial sense of soothing, like you might get from stretching your arm, the biological “reason” we have laughter – the “reason” it developed at first, and carried on for the 75 million years ensuing, laughter is a more deep tool to soothe that insecurity.

Perhaps this is why laughter more frequently happens in rather innocuous situations – in response to statements as commonplace as, “Where have you been?” or, “It was nice meeting you” (Onion 2005). Although we can use laughter to depose the tension resulting from a mildly threatening situation, we can also use laughter to destroy the tension that builds up from the mildly threatening situation that is simply the place that we are in. Everything that we do reflects our insecure place in the world, and this causes the tension that can be released by laughing.

The tension of insecurity can also be alleviated by associating with other people. This can help to explain why people are more likely to laugh when with others, or why you can’t laugh when you tickle yourself. Associating with yourself on a deep level is nice, but your brain is already hardwired to know that you yourself are there. Thus, we can understand where laughter came from, and why we inherited the biology over 75 million years of evolution: by associating on a deep level with other members of the same species, perhaps by laughing, our ancestors, and we still today, continually come to understand that we are not so alone: that the world is less large and dangerous than we think.


Douglas, Kate, Robson, David, Cox, Trevor (2010). “Laughter, the best medicine,” New Scientist, Vol. 207, Issue 2769.

Hempelmann, Christian (2007). “The laughter of the 1962 Tanganyika ‘laughter epidemic,’” International Journal of Humor Research, 1 January.

Laursen, Lucas (2009). “Human-ape links heard in laughter,” Nature Online, 4 June, http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090604/full/news.2009.541.html.

Martin, Rod (2007). The psychology of humor: an integrative approach (Burlington: Elsevier).

Nicholson, Christie (2008). “The Humor Gap: Men and Women See Laughter Differently in Romance,” Scientific American, 10 April.

Onion, Amanda (2005). “Studies Show Rats Enjoy Tickling,” ABC News, 31 March, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=626264&page=1>.

Smuts, Aaron (2011). “Humor,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 12 April, accessed 31 May 2011, http://www.iep.utm.edu/humor/.

Tierney, John (2007). “What Happens When You Tickle A Lab Rat? See for Yourself,” New York Times, 18 March. http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/what-happens-when-you-tickle-a-rat-see-for-yourself/.

In a KidSpirit Features article, teen writer Zachary Young writes of the mystery of laughter, and includes research to show that laughter is a biological phenomenon and a significant form of communication in humans.

 The Mystery of Laughter: A Philosophical Look at the Funny Bone

Comics are one of the great, unique art forms. Throughout history, comics have taken on a variety of approaches, and have evolved dramatically. Although comics are prevalent in our modern world, most people are unfamiliar with their history.

There is much debate about where the comic originated, but many experts agree that they were born with the invention of the printing press. This machine allowed the separation of images and words, eventually leading to the speech bubble. Simultaneously, artists began to satirize and use humor in their art. Although it wasn’t until the 19th century that comics and cartoons began to be seen as a true art form, the earliest known example of the satirical comic is William Hogarth’s, A Rake’s Progress, from 1732 to 1733. It was influential not only because it is considered the birth of the satirical cartoon, but also because Hogarth used separate panels to tell a story.

In addition to satire, humor is frequently portrayed in cartoons. One famous example of a comic illustrating humor is James Gillray’s 1792 piece, “French Liberty/British Slavery.” The strip poked fun at the French Revolution, using two caricatures talking through speech bubbles. Rodolphe Töpffer, one of the most influential early cartoonists, described comics as, “making a book: Good or bad, sober or silly, crazy or sound in sense.”  Throughout the mid 1800s, comics were used as pro-slavery advertisements as well. They frequently compared British and American slavery, in a style that greatly resembled “French Liberty.”

Cartoons involving humor date back to the 1880s, when PUNCH magazine was published. Published by Henry Mayhew, the British magazine helped coin the term “cartoon” and used comics to ridicule many political situations at the time. It introduced the very popular characters “Punch and Judy.”  PUNCH magazine helped launch many other comics and cartoons involving satire.

During the 1860s, the Asian form of comics Manhua (a Chinese word that became “Manga” in Japanese) began to form. Lithographic printing methods, inspired by the West were being used, along with vibrant colors. As in Europe and America, humorous and satirical drawings were used.

Another early comic magazine was published in 1884, Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday. It is said to be the first magazine to feature a constant set of characters, sharing similar themes. Half Holiday would be influential to many artists.

Comics continued to gain popularity throughout the early 1900s. In The Roaring 20’s, cartoons became extremely popular, the  time became known as “The Golden Age of Comics.”  Modern comic books were being produced on a very large scale, and amongst the most popular were superhero comic magazines such as Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel. These comics were created by the two biggest comic companies, DC and Marvel, founded in the 1930s. They specialized in creating action filled graphic novels, using “Ben-Day dots” for color. Later named by Roy Lichtenstein, Ben-Day dots were a way to color comics using many tiny dots, inspired by early printing.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, known as “The Silver Age of Comics,” many unique and new forms of cartoons were created in the United States. One of the most popular humor magazines was founded in 1952. MAD Magazine, founded by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, was intended to criticize almost everything from pop culture to current politics.  Kurtzman and Gaine’s sense of humor was made apparent in the first issue. On the cover it read, “This new magazine is vital for you to read and inside you will find a very important message.”  The “very important message” being: “PLEASE BUY THIS MAGAZINE!!” It is incredibly satirical, with many of the ideas expressed through the cartoon character, Alfred E. Newman.

For those that did not fit mainstream taste, a series of underground circuits came into being. This movement incorporated elements of avant-garde art into the cartoons, and two influential artists included Frank Stack and Robert Crumb. Magazines such as Rip off Comix, and Zap Comix, specialized in making controversial and experimental art, which never quite caught on. Throughout the 1960s, popular children’s comics included Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, and The Amazing Spider Man — inspiring many television series and films. As the 60’s came to a close, a new comic style was being born.

In 1976, alternative comics were forever changed with PUNK magazine. PUNK was a comic fanzine created by cartoonist John Holstom, which promoted the local music scene of NYC through comics. PUNK was extremely influential, launching an underground revolution of “zines,” associated with the punk rock scene. As important as this cartoon movement was, it never gained mainstream attention.

In addition to underground comics, newspaper comic strips continued to evolve throughout the 1980s and 90s. One of the most popular comic strips was Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. Told through an imaginary tiger and a little boy, the strip combined philosophical questions with extraordinary, colorful cartoons. It shows a seven-year-old boy’s view of the world. Another great comic strip, Doonesbury, by Garry Trudeau shows the life of a middle-aged father. Commonly political, Doonesbury has sparked much criticism because of Trudeau’s portrayal of various politicians. Although it was in existence since 1970, it gained popularity throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well.

In 1991, one of the most prominent and influential graphic novels of all time was released, Maus. Created by Art Spiegelman, it is the story of the Holocaust told through cartoons, with the Nazis portrayed as cats, and Jewish people as mice. Incredibly disturbing, touching, and intelligent, Maus bravely went where no comic had gone before. The book received a Pulitzer Prize as well. Another book released shortly after Maus was the highly acclaimed graphic novel, Persepolis. The two shared similar political themes, dark cartooning styles, and had a touching plot. Persepolis told the story of author Marjane Satrapi growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution. It has been translated into many languages, and sold 150,000 copies worldwide.

From the 1700s to this day, political cartoons continue to be a popular form of comics. A political cartoon usually contains a message, ridiculing current events or people. Political cartoons tend to be less silly, and take on a more intelligent and realistic approach.

Although some comics tend to be more serious, cartoons will always make us laugh. I think comics even give us a sense of security. I mean, has Snoopy ever made anybody sad? It is also a thrill knowing that there is always a character we can relate to, following their adventures.

Comics put our imaginative ideas into art, and can be daring and bold. Cartoons are a distorted view of the world, blowing things out of proportion. Cartoons make us laugh, think, and maybe even cry, but most of all, cartoons make us happy.

The future of comics is absolutely unpredictable. Throughout the history of this vast art form, comics have taken many unexpected twist and turns. Since the first cartoon, the art world has not been the same. Comics showed people they could make any kind of art they want to.

In a KidSpirit Features article, teen writer Sam Miller discusses the history of comics and the use of humor and satire over the years, dating back to the 1700s with William Hogarth and James Gillray, and taking a more funny tone in the 1800s with PUNCH Magazine.

The History of Comix: A Distorted World

As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary, to laugh is to show emotion (as in mirth, joy, or scorn), to find amusement or pleasure in something, or to produce the sound or appearance of laughter.

This basic definition of laughter will serve as a point of reference as I try to delve deeper into the causes of laughter. In addition, I want to add a distinction to this definition: There are two distinct forms of laughter, the social laugh, and the humorous laugh. The humorous laugh is fairly simple; it is a laugh triggered by something perceived as truly funny. However, the social laugh is most often triggered by a particular social interaction or the need to conform to social norms.

Laughter, a trait unique to humans and our primate cousins (or at least as we know it), is a phenomenon which has been discussed and studied for centuries. However, modern science and medicine have yet to pinpoint one definite cause for it. Not being a trained scientist or doctor, I can’t shed any light on the clinical causes of laughter, nor can I offer any data or statistics to back up my ideas. I am merely a teenager making observations in hopes of helping create a more nuanced picture of laughter. So, why do we laugh?

Laughing plays an integral role in normal human social interactions. It lends an immediate sense of freedom and carelessness to the moment. If you can laugh in a given situation, it is implicit that you can find the joy or happiness in that moment. It also suggests that you are unburdened with negative emotions. Because happiness is a generally pleasurable state of affairs, it’s logical that laughing, the projection of an image in which happiness abounds, would have some sort of social clout. Because of that, laughing has yet another positive connotation. It conveys a sense of ease with the world around us. As a result of the positive associations we have with laughter, we are sometimes expected to laugh.

With the sense of expectation around laughter comes the obligation of laughing. If everyone in a particular setting is laughing, how can we help but laugh, even if it’s only an attempt to blend in, or not being singled out. This is how laughing can become an obligation, not a display of mirth, or comfort, or ease. Although laughter is socially expected it manifests differently in people. By looking at these deviations in laughter, insight can be gained into the nature of society and the way individuals can fit into the larger fabric of the community. This raises the question: If laughing doesn’t come from inside, but is externally forced, does it become meaningless? What is laughing other than conforming to social norms when it’s forced? If laughing doesn’t lose its meaning entirely in these situations, then certainly it gains a new one. In fact, laughter is often an easily identifiable symbol for idle chatter.

While social laughs can be caused by plenty of things, laughing isn’t all about social interactions. Most basically, laughter is about humor. So why do we find things funny? What actually tickles our funny bone? My answer is, it depends. Your sense of humor is like a fingerprint, it’s unique to you. It depends on your personality and the experiences you’ve had in your life. That being said, it seems that people in general like things that they can relate to, things that make fun of the sheer absurdity of their everyday lives. Something that comes to mind when I think of real life humor, is the genius of Charlie Chaplin. In one of his silent films, The Immigrant, Chaplin portrays an immigrant on his way to America. With actions that are still utterly hilarious today for their downright silliness, Chaplin pokes fun at the immigrant experience. 1917, when the film was first released, was the end of a huge wave of immigration to the United States, which created a receptive audience for immigration related humor. Not surprisingly, the film was an enormous success. Overall, it does seem that hilarity most often ensues when we’re presented with familiar situations.

Although socially laughing can sometimes be awkward and oppressive, when your emotion is genuine, whether amused or happy, laughing is one of the best feelings. When you truly laugh, it fills you up for that moment, and forms connections and memories. Because moments of total laughter are so all consuming, laughter is in no danger of dying out. I know that when I really laugh, the laughter almost becomes a time marker, highlighting in my mind that moment, however short, of true bliss.

Ultimately, laughter is not only about humor (although when I told my mother about this assignment, she giggled a little), it is critical to the way we humans interact with each other. In society, often simply sticking to the normal rules of social interactions demands laughter. Sometimes, laughter can be caused by nerves, which can described as an attempt to pass fear off as something relaxed and happy. So why do we laugh? There is no one way to laugh, and no one reason for laughing. In its simplest form, laughter conveys “mirth, joy, or scorn,” but we all know it’s a little more complicated than that.

In a KidSpirit The Big Question article, teen writer Naomi Chasek-MacFoy digs deep into the meaning of laughter and its causes.

Why Do We Laugh?

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a comic science fiction novel about the intergalactic adventures of two humans from Earth: Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect.

This novel is the first in a series written by Douglas Adams. It was an adaptation of a radio comedy broadcast by Adams on the BBC and was later made into a movie, a television series, a computer game, and a comic book. The book has had a mass appeal since its publication in 1979, with references that have been incorporated into many aspects of popular culture.

The most appealing aspect of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is Adams use of gallows humor. Gallows humor is a type of humor that still manages to be funny in the face of a perfectly hopeless situation. It’s a kind of humor that a character has when he or she knows something awful is about to happen and there’s nothing they can do about it. Here’s an example of gallows humor from the novel: “If we’re unlucky, the captain might be serious in his threat that he’s going to read us some of his poetry [before he throws us into space]…” Whether or not the captain reading poetry to the two protagonists, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, is truly a harmful thing, the simple wording of the quote makes the reader laugh out loud at the thought of poetry being a viable and frightening threat. Quotations like these make the reader ask an absurd question before turning the page to find out the answer — in this case, What makes the captain’s poetry worse than being thrown off a spaceship?  While the book may not make everyone laugh, the completely off the wall questions are what’s funny.

The second thing that makes the book so popular is Adams’ factual style of writing and the third person omniscient narrative point of view. As a teacher of mine put it, third person omniscient is exactly like the third person ‘bird’ that sits on a character’s shoulder, except the bird switches between hovering on the characters shoulder and hovering far above the scene. One more important note about the ‘omniscient bird’ — it can see the future.

However, a narrative voice that can not only see into the future, but can also completely tell the reader what will  happen next, limits the suspense in the novel.

Spoilers ahead — read at your own risk: In addition, what suspense exists in the book is almost completely negated by the improbable occurrences that rescue the main characters from the conflicts they’re embedded in. I’m not just talking about a single lucky save, I’m talking about two space hitchhikers saved by a passing spaceship a second before they die, a live rocket turning into a whale, and two hostile policeman suddenly having their life support systems explode, saving the group of heroes from certain death by electric gun. Spoilers finished.

Of course, there still is suspense in the book because you never have an inkling that these improbable events keep happening. In my opinion, however, a resolution isn’t as satisfying to the reader if it’s is based on sheer luck alone. Once is fine, but three times is a bit overboard!

Douglas Adams’s use of gallows humor to provoke the reader to ask completely absurd questions, compounded with his easy to read, factual style contributes to the popularity and high quality of this novel. The two shortcomings of the book are the use of the third person narrative voice that lets the reader know things before the characters are aware of them, and the fact that many resolutions are based on luck alone. Some people may prefer reading about resolutions that are improbable and unlikely.

All in all, the book was an almost perfect read and as a review from The Washington Post Book World said, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is over much too soon.”

In a KidSpirit Media article, teen writer Khalid Husain reviews Douglas Adams' science fiction novel, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy," and discusses its humorous aspects.

A Review of: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It’s Kind of a Funny Story is definitely a funny story.

The novel follows the life of a clinically depressed teenager, Craig Gilner. He is under the pressure of an exclusive, demanding school in Manhattan, not-so-great friends and the ongoing sensation that he is a failure. You might think it would be depressing to read but it is anything but that! The book tackles large issues like mental illness, chronic unemployment, peer pressure and an intense school, but the light humor and situational irony all lightens up the story.

I would recommend this book to an older, high school-aged audience because of the sexuality, and the mature issues discussed in the book. The narrative voice of Craig sounded very genuine and real; however, it can be a bit difficult to read the raw details of his depression.

The book was a bit was too slow paced for my liking at the beginning, when he was describing his depression and childhood. The action didn’t start until about halfway through the book when he checked himself into an adult psychiatric hospital. Still, learning Craig’s interesting background kept me going and his road to recovery was inspirational and built up a lively spirit towards the end.

Humor played a very significant role throughout the story. Although Craig himself wasn’t particularly funny, the situations and other characters were definitely entertaining and fun to read about. Even when things went wrong, the carefully placed wit that is voiced by other characters lightens the plot.

The author uses humor to ease into the deep, painful issues of the novel. It makes it less scary for the reader and a very enjoyable read.

Bobby, the former drug-addict whom Craig meets on the tour around the psychiatric ward, was a fascinating character. The description of him painted a perfect picture in my mind:

“…a gaunt, hollow man with big circles under his eyes and a nose that looks like it’s been broken in about three places. In contrast to the floor policy, scruff lines his chin. He’s older but still has all his hair, a stately gray mop, combed half-heartedly. And he carries himself a little weird, leaning back as if he were on a headrest.”

It’s Kind of a Funny Story was also made into the movie, which I enjoyed as well. Even though the movie sped up the pace at the beginning, it delved deeper into some of the characters, fleshing them out more than what the book described. It also helped that the characters in the movie were cast very well. For instance, the actor playing Bobby fit the book’s description flawlessly.

This book has a wide range of absorbing characters. Even the minor characters had a problem or complexity that added more layers to the story. For instance, Noelle was very captivating: a teenage girl checked into the psychiatric hospital for self-harm. Her story illustrates the horrors of people taking advantage of her and the rough life she has lived. She is a very strong character who hides her past away and moves on. I kept on turning the pages to learn more about her and her history.

Craig also comes to realize that his issues are not nearly as big as some of the other adults in the ward. Some of them are struggling to find a home and job, battling drug and alcohol addiction and need money to support their family. This opens Craig’s eyes and eventually he gains insight into other people’s situations and his own problems. Craig changes as a person in those few days in the hospital. He finds his passion, himself, love and so much more. It was a pleasure to see the progression of his character unfold throughout the story.

The truly perplexing aspect of this book was the contrast between humor and depression and how the author, Ned Vizzini, somehow tied them together seamlessly. He might have done this to show that there is always a bit of humor and hope, even when it seems that nothing is going the way it should.

It’s ironic that a story tackling some big issues taking place in a psychiatric hospital can be such a ‘feel-good’ story. The book is complex yet light, hilarious yet deep and most of all a definite must-read. You will laugh and cry throughout Craig’s story but will definitely be smiling once you finish the book.

In a KidSpirit Media article, teen writer Gemma Laurence reviews Ned Vizzini's book, "It's Kind of a Funny Story," evaluating Vizzini's use of humor to delve into serious themes in the story.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story Book Review

have spent seven weeks every summer for the past seven years at a camp in a small town called Poland, Maine. Very few people have ever heard of Poland so I answer their puzzled looks with “Poland… you know, like the water.”

Poland Springs is the only major attraction in Poland and the town itself is tiny by my big city standards, but it is the perfect place to spend my summers. There I am surrounded by a few ice cream parlors and lobster restaurants, a beautiful lake, my best friends, and great tasting water. There are many places on the campus that I love, one of them being the darkroom in the photography lab. I love black and white film photography, especially when I get to develop pictures of one of my favorite places in the world.

One day this past summer I was lucky enough to be alone in the darkroom, something that rarely happens, since the darkroom is usually packed with all seven enlargers occupied. To those of you who have never been in a darkroom: number one, an enlarger is the machine that projects the image from your film onto paper, and number two, try your hardest to go into one some day, it really is an incredible experience that I highly recommend. It’s amazing to take a picture of something, to capture a single object or moment, and then to be able to watch the image slowly appear before your eyes. I was so incredibly happy during those forty-five minutes. I had absolutely nothing to worry about, and the images all came out better than I could have imagined. I still have one mounted on my wall in my room, of a loose single feather, alone on the gravel pathway. The room was filled with the strong smell of the photo chemicals and Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” was blasting from the iPod speakers (another benefit of being alone in the darkroom is being able to choose the background music without the opinion of ten other girls). “Cause I don’t know how it gets better than this,” I sang along to the familiar lyrics.

In that moment, I felt I could do anything. A wave of reassurance rushed over me, making me feel that no matter what happens in the future, everything would end up okay. I realized how incredibly lucky I am to be able to spend my summers in a place where I know my best friends are never farther than a two-minute walk away. I thought about how although I was alone during that time, camp is a place where I constantly feel surrounded by support and love. I promised myself that I would remember to be grateful for the small, seemingly insignificant moments like this one in my life that make me who I am, and to be grateful that I have been blessed with always being surrounded by an amazing group of friends.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Katie Hartman describes her summers spent in Poland, Maine, and how her love for photography grew there.

Alone in the Darkroom

Amy Liu

This issue explores the mystery of the funny bone. Really? You say. What was that bit in the KidSpirit tagline about tackling life’s big questions? Humor? You must be kidding…

Exploring Humor Group Guide

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