Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.

Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand.

Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time.

From startups to scaleups, online, in person and on the go shopify is made for

entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at shopify dot com slash setup

it's friday july 22nd, 2022. I'm Jackson Bird today. Why do we laugh? And what causes us to do so?

Was laughing at one point an evolutionary advantage? Plus, the reason for a mysterious pink glow

over a small Australian town on Wednesday, and the

latest contender in Home Depot's line of extremely large yard decorations. Here's some cool

stuff for your ride home. Why do we laugh? How are different senses of humor formed? And what does humor even really mean?

The Scientific American delved into this topic a couple of years ago, speaking with psychologists

and mapping out the history of theories for humor in Western societies.

Starting with the ancient Greeks, those philosophers largely thought that people mainly laughed at the misfortune of others, or of our own earlier selves.

Humor was born out of a sense of feeling superior.

By the 18th century, there was a new theory called Release, a breaking of pent-up nervous energy.

Years later, Sigmund Freud would solidify this theory, quoting Scientific American.

According to Freud, this process explains why tabooed, scatological, and sexual themes and jokes that brooch, thorny, social, and ethnic topics can

amuse us. When the punchline comes, the energy being expended to suppress inappropriate emotions,

such as desire or hostility, is no longer needed and is released as laughter. End quote.

Another popular theory over the years is that people laugh at juxtapositions,

things that don't go together or defy expectations, weird offbeat comedy, basically. And this is called

the theory of incongruity. But there's also a subcategory of it called

...