Hello and welcome back to the Curious Kid podcast.

Humans interact with each other in so many different ways.

And one of those ways is through touch.

Something as simple as a hug can feel so good.

It also feels great to give someone a high five after your

favorite team scores a touchdown. There is even a way to touch someone that can result in

uncontrollable laughter. Let's learn more about that. Mailbag! Mailbag!

Mayor H-6 from Long Island, New York, is curious about what makes us ticklish and why tickling makes us laugh and why you can't tickle yourself.

Thank you for doing the podcast.

The whole family loves listening together.

And we love that you love listening to us. We are getting curious about tickling this week for Mayor.

We sure are. And Mayor also had a great idea for the question of the week.

The question of the week is, why can't you tickle yourself? That's a fantastic question. Have you ever

tried tickling yourself? Go ahead and try. I bet it didn't work. It's actually impossible to get the

same results tickling yourself as you would get from being tickled. We are going to explain why in just a few minutes. But before we

do that, let's learn a little bit about the science of tickling. Laughing when you are tickled is an

involuntary response. That means that you can't control it. That's true, but we didn't always know that.

About 150 years ago, a scientist by the name of Charles Darwin had a theory about tickling. That is the same scientist that's best known

for his theory of evolution. That's him. He's a very well-respected scientist, and his theories are still well-regarded today.

But he got it wrong about tickling of all things.

He thought that the laughter from tickling was the same as the laughter we make when we find

something funny, like a good joke.

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