August 15, 2008
1712 drawing by Charles Le Brun
“Laughter,” wrote Thomas Hobbes, “is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”
Putting an evolutionary tweak on that idea, Albert Rapp, in his 1951 treatise Origins of Wit and Humour, opined that “all laughter has developed from one primitive behavior, the roar of triumph in an ancient jungle duel.”
It seems a bit of a stretch to lump all of laughter together like that, but it is instructive to note just how ubiquitous sadistic laughter is.
To cite but a few famous examples: Romans laughed heartily at Christians being mauled by lions; and torture and execution were considered fun for the whole family until practically yesterday—in the late Middle Ages, the citizens of Mons actually purchased a condemned man from a neighboring town so they could have the pleasure of quartering him themselves. In the 18th century, the well-heeled would visit insane asylums to amuse themselves by taunting the inmates.
Laughter was widely reported during the ethnic violence in Kosovo, Indonesia, and Rwanda; and was allegedly present at many lynchings in the South. The boys who shot up Columbine were said to have been laughing throughout much of the massacre.
And it could be plausibly argued that such gleeful sadism is very much in evidence in some versions of so-called “reality television.”
Type “face plant” into YouTube and ask yourself why, oh why it’s so irresistibly funny to watch people fall down. (There’s an especially pleasing subgenre of falling models, among which videos you will find a pole-dancer face-plant that’s a touch too racy for this family program.)
If you’re too sophisticated or compassionate to laugh at suffering, remember the last time you laughed at Bush’s verbal blunders, or even a malapropism in Shakespeare, and consider Rapp’s claim that “frailty, deformity, and error are modern substitutes for the battered appearance of one’s opponent.”
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Posted by Elizabeth Giddens under:
The Centrifuge
August 12, 2008
Flickr/cayusa
Have you wondered if there is another you out there? Somewhere? Sitting in the same chair, reading the same blog post, wearing the same clothes and thinking the same thoughts? Well, Brian Greene says there must be one. Or two. Or lots and lots and lots and lots and… Why? You ask, well listen to Greene’s argument in this week’s podcast.
We are still furiously working on Season 5, so while you wait we bring you today’s podcast of a conversation between Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene, physics and mathematics professor and director of the Institute of Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University. The interview is part of a series called “Giants of Science” hosted by venerable New York institution, the 92nd St Y.
Robert and Brian discuss what’s beyond the horizon of our universe, what you might wear in infinite universes with finite pairs of designer shoes, and why the Universe and swiss cheese have more in common than you think.
Take a listen here:
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PLEASE NOTE: Our apologies, there’s some noise at the end of the recording, please don’t be alarmed! It’s us, not you.
You can see a video of Brian talking about string theory here.
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Posted by Radiolab under:
Podcasts
August 08, 2008
wildphotons/flickr
Here at Radiolab we’ve been known to tinker with sound…. cutting music, ambi, and big ideas all together to get the point across in the most fun, interesting and understandable way. It’s not your typical public radio interview. Recently, we decided to check in with some of the guests on past episodes to see what they thought. Were they over-edited? Mis-represented? Did they love the show? Hate it?
In the Stress episode Dr. Sapolsky explained the physiological representations of stress and how it helps and hurts us today.
You can hear Dr. Sapolsky in the Stress episode here:
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Linda Evarts recently asked Dr. Sapolsky what he thought of the episode:
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Posted by Radiolab under:
Listenables
