Sophie Scott

speaker

374 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 2 Jul

Sophie Scott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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3 Takeaways™ · The Surprising Science of Why We Laugh (#285) · 20 Jan 2026 podcast

Yeah.

And it's happening in a highly communicative way as well as a sort of basic emotional expression way.

So people will use laughter to show that they know and they're affiliated with the people that they're talking to.

And also it's worth taking seriously because it works.

We will use laughter for lots of different reasons, but a really important reason why humans will use laughter is to reduce stress.

And it's very effective at that as long as everybody joins in.

If you share laughter together, you will feel better together.

You can actually use it to negotiate a better mood together, which makes it a very important emotion.

So if you want people to laugh, what do you do?

It's interesting because there's no one thing that everybody finds funny.

And that's like a truism for humor.

There is no one joke everybody finds funny.

There's no one comedian everybody finds funny.

Even slapstick humor, which is much more broad in its reach.

There'll be somebody somewhere going, that's not funny.

My brother died that way.

So I don't try to get people laughing nowadays when I'm doing things in the lab.

I don't bother trying to use humor at all.

What we use are videos of normally television presenters who get the giggles while they're broadcasting.

And they have to keep talking because they're on air.

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