Ha! (10 page)

Before going on to the next chapter, let's revisit our old friend the anterior cingulate—the brain region that manages conflict by listening to all the voices in our head and telling the unwanted ones to shut up. We know that in a brain populated by billions of neurons, the anterior cingulate is a conflict mediator, a sort of United Nations surrounded by countries that frequently disagree. Clearly, it didn't evolve just so we can find jokes funny. On the contrary, it multitasks, and nowhere is this more apparent than when we're examining its role in political beliefs.

Colin Firth, the English actor who won an Oscar for his portrayal of King George VI in
The King's Speech,
isn't the kind of guy you'd expect to be conducting a serious academic study. And, for that matter, politics isn't a topic you'd expect to be researched at the University College of London Institute of Neuroscience. This makes the study Firth conducted
with Geraint Rees, the institute's director, doubly surprising. The idea for the study came to Firth when he was asked to participate in a guest editorship program at the BBC. Firth asked Rees to scan the brains of British conservative Alan Duncan and Labor Party leader Stephen Pound, because he wanted to see if it was possible to differentiate their brains based on their opposing political beliefs. “I took this on as a fairly frivolous exercise initially,” says Firth. “I mean, I just decided to find out what was biologically wrong with people who don't agree with me—and see what scientists had to say about it.”

Various parts of the politicians' brains did indeed light up when they talked about their jobs. This in itself made for some entertaining anecdotes to share on the air, but even more interesting was what happened when Firth and Rees extended the experiment to a wider sample of ninety randomly chosen subjects. Specifically, they asked subjects to identify their political orientation along a 5-point scale, from very liberal to very conservative, and then put them in a scanner and measured the size of two structures within their brains: the amygdala and the anterior cingulate.

The first thing Firth saw is that the anterior cingulate in liberals' brains was far bigger than in conservatives'. And conservatives? Their amygdalae were bigger than for liberals. We haven't talked much about the amygdala yet, but it's part of the reward circuit, which delivers dopamine throughout the brain. There's something else it's responsible for too—fear, especially as it's related to learning and making decisions. So, by showing that conservatives have a larger amygdala and that liberals have a larger anterior cingulate, Firth and Rees demonstrated that these individuals are likely specialized for different things. Liberals are more highly tuned for conflict detection. Conservatives, for emotional learning.

This difference was big enough that Rees and Firth were able to correctly classify subjects as either very liberal or very conservative with 72 percent accuracy just by looking at their brains. By contrast, religious intensity—one of the most influential factors in political belief—predicts liberal or conservative leanings at only about 60 percent.

Speaking of religion, you might be surprised to know that this is linked with anterior cingulate activity too. One study at the University of Toronto found that when religious people think about God, activity in their anterior cingulate decreases, suggesting that, for them, spirituality is a conflict-reducing process. The exact opposite result was found among atheists, whose anterior cingulate activity
increased
when they thought about God. For atheists, faith in a supernatural higher power doesn't resolve conflict. It increases it.

Does this finding mean that liberals and atheists are wired to be funnier people? Probably not. What it does suggest, however, is that liberals are more attuned to noticing conflict. And given that the anterior cingulate helps resolve ambiguity, liberals might also be more capable of adapting to complexities and contradictions. Conservatives, on the other hand, are probably more emotional. They tend to resolve complexity through their feelings—which isn't a bad thing either, because without feelings, humor wouldn't exist.

The anterior cingulate and the amygdala surely evolved for a reason other than just to identify funny jokes. They help us make sense of our world by seeking out conflicts and complexities, and then by resolving those conflicts in an emotionally satisfying way. Liberalism and conservatism, like jokes and religion, are just different ways of dealing with confusion. And without that confusion, we would never laugh.

3

   
S
TOPOVER AT THE
E
MPIRE
S
TATE
B
UILDING

              
Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.

—F
RIEDRICH
N
IETZSCHE

              
“Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

—U
NKNOWN

I
F
S
EPTEMBER
11, 2001,
WAS THE DAY THAT FOREVER CHANGED
American politics, then September 29, 2001, was the day that forever changed humor.

Most people don't think of that day as particularly special, but New Yorkers know better. It wasn't the day that marked the United States' invasion of Afghanistan, which wouldn't happen for another week. And it wasn't passage of the Patriot Act, which was still over a month
away. No, September 29, 2001, was the premiere of
Saturday Night Live
's twenty-second season.

Just as we all remember the tragic events of 9/11, we also recall the somber mood that followed. Television stations stopped showing sitcoms and anything other than twenty-four-hour news. Musicians canceled concerts, professional football and baseball games were suspended, and for only the second time in its fifty-six-year history, Disney World closed its doors. As Gilbert Gottfried discovered when he tried to make a joke about the tragedy at the Hugh Hefner roast, the country wasn't yet ready to laugh.

The challenge facing Lorne Michaels, the producer of
Saturday Night Live
with its audience of millions, was enormous. Eighteen days after an incident that took the lives of more than twenty-five hundred New Yorkers, over four hundred of whom were police, firefighters, and paramedics, he was supposed to air a show whose sole purpose was—comedy. Nobody would have blamed him if he had canceled the show. Only a handful of entertainment programs were back on the air, yet Michaels knew that
Saturday Night Live
was special. It represented the city itself, and if the premiere didn't air on time, an unacceptable message would be sent to the rest of the country.

“What am I doing here?” asked the actor Stephen Medwid, an extra for the show who was scheduled to audition for a talent coordinator only two days after the tragedy. Sirens still blared throughout the city, and through a window he could see the smoldering afterglow of ground zero. “The only answer I could come up with was: maybe laughter is the best medicine.”

When the show aired, it opened with New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani standing center stage, surrounded by two dozen members of the New York City Fire and Police Departments.

“Good evening. Since September 11th, many people have called New York a city of heroes. Well,
these
are the heroes. The brave men and women of the New York Fire Department, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department, Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen, and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.”

Then, after a brief discussion about the heroism of those who perished, Giuliani introduced Paul Simon, who began singing “The Boxer,” a song about New York City originally recorded only a short distance away at St. Paul's Chapel. When the song concluded, the camera returned to Giuliani, who was now standing next to producer Michaels.

“On behalf of everyone here, I just want to thank you all for being here tonight. Especially you, sir,” Michaels told the mayor.

“Thank you, Lorne,” Giuliani replied. “Thank you very much. Having our city's institutions up and running sends a message that New York City is open for business.
Saturday Night Live
is one of our great New York City institutions, and that's why it's important for you to do your show tonight.”

Michaels paused.

“Can we be funny?”

Though Giuliani wasn't a comedian, he certainly knew how to work a camera. His delivery was as deadpan as you get.

“Why start now?”

It wasn't a joke that made people laugh out loud, but it was a line that everyone remembers. We desperately wanted permission to laugh again—and only approval from the mayor of the city could have made that possible. Somehow, Giuliani made it feel as though we were being unpatriotic if we didn't.

I start this chapter with the story of
Saturday Night Live'
s return following the terrorist tragedy because it shows how sensitive laughter can be. Still, the show wasn't particularly cutting-edge that night. For example, the opening monologue was supposed to begin with the guest host, Reese Witherspoon, telling a joke about a polar bear cub:

              
There once was a polar bear couple who had a beautiful polar bear baby. He was the cutest baby, and could run really fast and talk very early. His first question to his mother was “Mom, am I a real polar bear?” And his mother says, “Of course you're a polar bear. I'm a polar bear, and your daddy's a polar bear, so of course you're a polar bear.”

              
So the baby bear keeps growing, learning how to fish and making his parents very proud. Then, after a few months again he asks, “Mom, are you sure I'm a polar bear?” “Yes, honey, we're polar bears,” answers his mom. “Your grandma and grandpa are polar bears. You're pure polar bear.” And he says, “Okay.”

              
Then, on his first birthday, his parents throw him a huge party, telling him how proud they are of him, and just as he's about to blow out the candles to the cake he asks, “Mom, are you sure that I'm 100 percent pure polar bear?” The mother, flustered, asks, “Why do you keep asking that? Of course you're pure polar bear!”

              
“Because I'm fucking freezing!”

Up to the moment the show aired, Witherspoon worried about the joke, particularly the ending. Michaels pleaded with her to tell it, profanity and all. He offered to pay whatever fines the FCC lobbied against her, saying that it was worth the cost to prove to the viewers that New York City was back and running. Witherspoon understood the argument, but she still changed the ending. “I'm freezing my balls off!” she said. Everybody laughed, and nobody knew she had censored the joke, though the effect wasn't the same.