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It's fall and many kids are headed back to school and they're on the hunt for the perfect book to read. Don't forget to check out our But Why book series. We have two books perfect for young readers about age 8 to 10. Look for Our Llamas Ticklish and Do Fish Breathe Underwater wherever you buy your books. And if you prefer to listen to books, check out the audiobook versions as well. You can find out more at butwhykids.org books.
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public Radio.
I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions from curious kids around the world, and it's my job and the job of the show's co-producer, Melody Beaudet, to find interesting people to help answer them. If you want to send a question of your own, have an adult record you. If someone in your family has a smartphone, they can do it by using the built-in voice memo app. Tell us your first name, where you live, and how old you are, and what it is you want us to find out for you.
Today we're re-airing a show we made last year around this time, and you'll soon discover why. So sit back and enjoy this laugh-along episode sure to tickle your funny bone. My name is Emily. I'm nine, and I'm from Essex, Vermont. My favorite joke is, why did the lollipop cross the road? Because it was stuck to the chicken's back. Good one, Emily.
That one's funny if you already know the many, many versions of the why did the chicken cross the road jokes. We're putting this episode out just a few days before an American tradition that happens every April 1st. You know what it is? Yeah, April Fool's Day. No pranks from us today, I promise. But we did think it would be good timing to talk about humor and what makes us laugh and a little bit about why we laugh.
Before we get to that, did you know that other parts of the world also have traditions that involve some funny business on the 1st of April? We asked those of you who live in French-speaking countries to tell us about something we've heard of called Poisson d'Avril, and a couple of you took us up on it. This is Molly from Nice, France. On the 1st of April, we stick fish on the back.
of people and they don't know. Wait, what? You stick fish on the back of people without them knowing about it? Here's Yael to tell us a little bit more about this tradition. Hi, my name is Yael and I'm eight years old. I go to a French school in Cambodia.
I don't call it April Fool's Day. I call it Poisson d'Avril. That means fish of April. It's like a really funny day at home or at school. We take papers and we draw fish and we color them and cut them out and then we put sketch pieces on them and then we need to put it on someone's back without him knowing and then we need to write on the fish something like...
Kiss my back or like things like that. So in France and Quebec and some other countries, there's an April 1st tradition of poisson d'avril where you stick paper fishes on people's backs. That sounds both fun and silly.
In the United States, people often pull pranks on one another on April Fool's Day. When they're done right, they can be surprising and fun. When they're done wrong, they're a little too scary, or they make the person experiencing the prank feel bad. We don't want to do that. Here's Lila talking about her favorite prank. Hi, I'm Lila. I'm nine years old, and I live in Garriston, New York. One of my favorite pranks to do, especially Easter pranks or April Fool's Day pranks,
is have a bucket of Peeps over my sleeping mom or my sleeping family members that are visiting or whoever. I put a bucket of Peeps, and when they wake up, I dump the Peeps on their head. It's so amazing. Also, one of my favorite jokes is, what do you give a pig to make a cup feel better? Oink mint. Oink mint. Get it?
But why do we find things funny? And how does our sense of humor develop as we grow older? I want to introduce you to someone whose work totally fascinates me. You could say Dr. Gina Moreau or you could say Professor Gina Moreau. Gina Moreau runs something called the Infant Laughter Project at Northern Vermont University. I study babies and how babies grow and develop and what babies think about them.
How do you know what babies think about if they can't tell you?
It is very tricky to figure that out. So we use some really creative approaches to try to figure out what babies are thinking about. And usually what we do is we give them different things to look at where they can make a choice, for example, or we time how long they look at one thing versus another. And if they look at one thing longer than another thing, then we know they're more interested in that one thing. You run the Infant Laughter Project. Yes.
What do you do? You don't just tickle babies all day. We actually don't tickle babies at all. We do research studies. So these are like little science projects where we are trying to figure out one thing. And that one thing is how babies figure out what's funny. How do they know when something is funny?
We have been getting a lot of great jokes from our listeners around the world who've been telling us what they think is funny. But you have learned the basics of when we develop a sense of humor as babies and what kinds of things we find funny at different stages as we get older. Can you talk a little bit about what you know? Sure.
Yes. Yeah. The first thing I would say is that there isn't one thing that makes all babies laugh. And what makes one baby laugh today, they might not find so funny tomorrow. So we actually don't look at the specific thing that babies find funny. We don't look for a specific joke, for example, that all babies would find funny. What we do know is that very young babies around four to six months age,
tend to find sounds really funny. So unusual sounds like popping your lips or sometimes an ordinary sound that's just surprising to them, like a sneeze will make them start laughing. I don't mean surprising in terms of loud. I just mean an unusual sound like popping your lips or blowing raspberries.
They also tend to like very light tickling or any kind of a sensation on their skin, on the sensitive areas like their tummy, for example, or their armpits, or maybe the bottom of their feet. You know, that tends to be enough to get them to at least smile. And then when they go, when they get closer to their first birthday, they tend to start to like funny sights and particularly something that we call clowning. So clowning is,
it means some sort of unusual silly behavior. Like, yeah, when a older sibling throws themselves on the ground.
Or maybe when you put a stuffed animal on your head, because we know that's not where stuffed animals go. And babies at that age know that as well. So they start to understand that those silly behaviors are not typical and that what you're doing is telling a little bit of a joke to them.
We got several voice memos from kids who would like to know why people actually physically laugh. Hi, my name is Amitai. I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I am eight years old, and I want to know why do we laugh?
Hi, my name is Kendall and I'm nine years old and I live in Bethesda, Maryland. My question is, why is it when you hear something funny that you start to laugh? My name is Leah. I'm eight years old and I live in Oberlin, Ohio. And my question is, why do people laugh? Do you know the answer to that?
Well, there's a few different guesses, pretty good guesses about why that is. And laughter, as it turns out, is really a lovely way to be together. So it seems that laughter is more about being with other people than it is about something being funny.
And what we know is that people are a lot less likely to laugh when they're by themselves. Even if they're reading something funny or watching something funny, they're much more likely to laugh when there are other people around. And that's true about smiling, too, that people are much more likely to smile when they're with other people.
So that tells us something. It tells us that laughter is a way of sharing something, of being with people in a way that feels really, really good. And it's also part of play. It's part of the way we play, especially when we're younger. Kids are particularly good at playing. Adults are not as good at playing, but kids are natural at playing. It's one of their superpowers.
And when we play, we're much more likely to be laughing or smiling, and we're much more likely to be doing that with others. So smiling and laughter really seem to be a way to say to each other, I like you.
I trust you. I enjoy being with you. You make me happy. And that's good for all of us. Being together is kind of how people are designed. We're designed to be together, not to be alone. So you're sort of getting to another question that we've gotten. My name is Annabelle. I am six years old. I'm from Youngerth, Maine. My question is, why does someone tickle you and you feel ticklish?
Hi, my name is Alan. I am seven years old. I live in Prosper, Texas. My question is why can't you tickle yourself?
They want to know why you don't laugh when you tickle yourself. Oh.
Oh, that's such a great question. And it's such a good observation to just to even notice that, that you can't tickle yourself into laughter. And scientists tend to think that tickling is something that came up through evolution, if you know what that is. So it's probably a little...
that our bodies protect ourselves from bugs crawling on us or from big mean predators trying to get us. And that is that if you think about tickling, tickling really happens on very sensitive parts of the body like the tummy or the armpits or behind the knees or something like that. Or the bottom of your feet. The bottom of your feet.
Right, right, right. So tickling, scientists think, probably evolved as a protection because it only works on sensitive parts of the body. And because the overwhelming response when you get tickled is to get away from it. So we try to huddle against it, or we try to run away from it, or we try to get the tickler away from us. So scientists have generally guessed that this evolved as something protective.
Okay, that might explain why we laugh when we're tickled. But why doesn't it work when we do it ourselves? Now, don't you just want to become a scientist and researcher so you can answer fun questions like that? Maybe your whole job would be finding the answer.
Researchers at University College London looked into that very question, and what they've come up with is that you laugh when you're tickled because you're surprised. Even if you know that someone is going to tickle you, you don't know exactly what it's going to feel like or how it's going to happen or when, so your laughter is in response to an unexpected sensation, the tickling.
But when you tickle yourself, it's your brain telling your hand to touch another part of your body. So your brain already knows what you're doing. And you can't really trick your own brain in that way. So you don't laugh because your brain already knew what you were going to do. There's no unexpected sensation.
But here's what I want to know. How come sometimes you start laughing before someone else tickles you, and it almost feels like your skin is electric, even when they haven't touched you yet? It's anticipatory laughter. You start laughing because you know you're about to be tickled. Now that's an experiment I want to run. Here's a question from Max. And I am 8 years old, and I live in Brookline, Massachusetts.
And my question is, why don't grown-ups think the word poop is funny?
I think I can take a little bit of a guess at it. So one of the reasons that what I call potty humor is funny when we're young, and you know, it really is funny when we get older as well, too. We just don't really, I think adults don't admit that they like potty humor. Adults are just maybe more embarrassed by it. So kids tend to be less likely to become embarrassed and
Kids also, when they use potty humor, they're really trying to get other people to laugh for the most part. And they know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, but it's harmless. It's not going to scare somebody, but it's just enough to tease someone and provoke them just a little bit into playing. They know that it'll get mom or dad's attention, for example, and probably mom's
mom or dad has laughed in the past when someone's used a potty joke. So kids know maybe that's a way I can get mom or dad to play with me, you know, or to laugh with me, really. So I think that's why. And then as we get to be adults, just as we're not as good at just playing spontaneously, we tend to follow the rules a little more closely around what's appropriate to talk about and what isn't in certain circles.
And moms and dads might discourage potty humor because they want to make sure their kids know the rules about that. So that's my guess about it. What do you think the secret of humor is? Well, I think the secret is being with others. That's where real joy and real humor comes from. It's from connecting with somebody over something funny. In just a minute, we'll be hearing more of your jokes and thinking more about what makes something funny.
This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. Today we're talking about laughter and humor and what we find funny. A while back we did a math episode and we actually asked you to send your favorite math jokes our way. Here's one of them. Hi, my name is Shania from Raleigh, North Carolina, and I'm eight years old. I have two math jokes. The first one is, why was six afraid of seven? Why? Because seven ate nine! Ha ha ha!
And the second one is, what does the triangle say to the circle? What did it say? Your life is so pointless. Get it? Pointless? Because it's a circle? A circle has no points? I love it.
We wanted to go a little deeper into what is funny and how we make people laugh. So we found someone who knows a thing or two about comedy. Josie Levitt, Vermont comedy diva and regular stand-up comic. Josie has even taught stand-up comedy. That's when someone stands in front of a crowd, I guess they could sit too, with a microphone and makes people laugh by telling funny stories or jokes.
I had a theory I wanted to run by Josie. So I asked her to ask me about the secret to humor. What is the secret of humor? Timing. Yes, sometimes it is. And timing is important, as you will all come to know. Timing also is finding your own rhythm.
So don't let anyone else's timing affect you. How you tell a joke or how you tell a story is how you how that's going to work innately for you. So stick to that and then work around it. So how do we know what's funny and what is funny? I mean, is there a definition of what's funny? Does it depend on who we are? To me, what I told my comedy students was if whatever you're talking about makes you laugh, it's almost always going to make the audience laugh.
So if you don't find joy in what you're talking about or delight in your knock-knock joke, my grandfather was a great knock-knock joke artist, and he would start giggling before we'd even get started.
to the second who's there. And because he loved it so much, we were laughing right there with him. And don't try to be funny for the sake of being funny. Be funny because it's already striking you as funny. So don't try to show off so that other people will laugh, but you don't actually think it's funny. Right. And you have to find it funny. Otherwise, I mean, people can use humor for mean. And it's easy to make fun of people with humor if you're quick and someone comes in and gets a bad haircut. Right.
and you make fun of them, well, you know what? They already know they have a bad haircut. And your role as a humorist, especially in school, is to use humor kindly. Can we listen to some of the jokes that our listeners have been sending? Yes. Oh, my God. I'd love to. Yes. Yes. We've been getting some fabulous jokes. So I'm just going to go through a few of them and we'll listen to a few of them here. Okay.
Hi, my name's Arthur, and I'm six. I'm from Portland, Oregon, and my favorite joke is, knock, knock. Who's there? Banana. Banana who? Knock, knock. Who's there? Banana. Banana who?
Knock, knock. Who's there? Orange. Orange who? Orange, you glad I didn't say banana again? That's a classic. I love that one. And God bless children who do knock-knock jokes because that's where you learn timing. Yes. Yeah. And that one, that whole, I mean, the reason that one always works for me is like, heck yes, I'm really glad you didn't say banana again. Right, right. Thank goodness. You're thrilled. Exactly. All right. Here's another knock-knock.
Okay, my name is Judah. I'm eight years old. I live in Centerton, Arkansas, and this is my joke. Knock, knock. Who's there? To. To who? To whom?
Now, I want to explain for some young listeners who may think, I don't get it. You expect him to say to who, but the proper grammar is to whom. To whom am I speaking? That is fabulous. I love the jokes about language and how we use it. And that's a sophisticated joke for an eight-year-old. Yeah, I agree. And yeah, we've been laughing about that one here at Bow Why. I'm sure. Here's another one. My name is Emmy, and I'm four years old.
And I live in Chicago. What time is it when the elephant sits on your fence? Time to get a new fence. My name is Ellie. I live in Chicago. I'm four years old. He got to live in a farm.
All right, so if you couldn't hear those, the first one was, what time is it when an elephant sits on your fence? Time to get a new fence. And the second joke is about Pikachu. And we asked, now, what is this joke? And Pikachu lives on a farm. And Ellie's parents said, the joke here is that that's ridiculous. Pikachu would never live on a farm. So she's trying out different ideas about what's normal and what we expect.
And then funny things are often what we don't expect. Right. And that's called misdirection. So we have a joke that's going like boom, boom, boom, straight in a straight line one way. And then you veer off and you do something completely different that's utterly unexpected.
This is a total surprise that can get a bigger laugh. So sometimes if you're telegraphing your ending, especially with a knock knock joke, which is why good knock knock jokes can be so disarmingly hilarious because you're doing something unexpected. I love that she's four and she's sending in a joke. And apparently has been thinking they've been talking a lot. So it's two sisters there. They've been talking a lot about humor and how to craft humor and what is actually funny. So obviously I love that. That's wonderful. Already thinking about it. All right. Here's another.
Hi, my name is Logan. I'm from Clearwater, Florida. I am eight years old. And my best joke is that, why were all the people looking at the ceiling and cheering? Answer, because they were ceiling fans. Hee hee hee. Hee hee hee hee. Ha ha ha.
He's here all week. So that's another one where you're using words, but the meaning of the words changes. And so again, it's not what you expect. That's a riddle. So what happens for kids is they start with, you can track the progression. They start with knock-knock jokes, easy convention. Then they shift to riddles because that's what they can read about and learn. And then they take all of that and then they start molding it when they're
My guess is the kids I've seen, like 9, 10, 11, that's when they start sort of working on their own jokes. Hmm. All right. So we've got a couple more. Yeah. Do you mind hearing a few more? Oh, I'd love to hear more. Okay. Here's Lulu. My name is Lulu, and I live in Williamsburg, Virginia, and I'm four years old. Knock, knock. Who's there? Cow. Cow who? Cows don't say who, they say moo. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
I like that. Good one, Lulu. All right, here's another. My name is Preston, and I'm from North Carolina, and I'm five years old. And my joke is, what's a cow's favorite holiday? New Year's Eve. That's sweet. We're all about cows here in Vermont. They are, and they're picking the right state for this, yes. That's right. All right. Hi, my name is Rilo, and I'm five years old.
And this is my joke. What's a ghost's favorite ride at the carnival? A roller coaster. Good one.
So, Josie, anything else that you think we should know about and young people should know about, about cultivating humor and thinking about how to be funny but not trying too hard? I think for younger kids, especially kids who aren't teenagers yet, one of the best things to do is take improv classes. And they have improv classes now for kids from like five on up.
And it's what's lovely about improv that you have to work together and you learn how to just – you train your mind how to be quick and think in a funny way. But you're not – it's not you alone on the stage and you learn how to work collaboratively with other people, which I think is lovely. And then you learn how to quickly get in and out of things, which as a comic is going to be a very, very useful skill. Timing. Exactly. And then just keep writing. If you think things are funny –
Keep a journal and make that just your journal for comedy thoughts. It can be comedy thoughts, comedy drawings, jokes. And just keep writing and keep laughing and be kind. Use your humor with kindness and it will serve you well. And keep laughing. Your jokes are amazing. It's been so much fun to hear. That was Vermont comedian and stand-up comedy teacher Josie Levitt. And we have one more math joke for you today. Hey, my name is Brendan. Got a math joke.
And it is, what's one times banana? One banana. I think it's a given that a good joke should always have a banana in it. Thanks, Brendan. And thanks to all the rest of you who sent us jokes, too. Thanks as well to the adults who helped you with your knock-knock jokes.
That's it for today. If you have a question about anything, have an adult record it on a smartphone and send it to questions at butwhykids.org. Don't forget to tell us your first name and where you live and how old you are. We'll do our best to get an answer for you. But Why is produced by me, Jane Lindholm, and Melody Beaudet at Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. We had additional music today from Poddington Bear.
We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PR.
