You have to have all of your senses very heightened, like an animal in the jungle.

This is Yolana Zimmerman.

You have to be hypersensitive to what the medical staff needs.

Sometimes you have to feel like what the parents need.

For 10 years, Yolana reported to work at a hospital, but not as a doctor or a nurse.

She didn't wear scrubs, but she did have a uniform.

The red nose is a mask, like the smallest mask in the world.

Immediately, whoever sees you knows that you're different.

Yolana is a clown.

Very specifically, she's a medical clown.

It's a profession just like any other profession,

even though we're being silly.

I'm Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas Obscira,

celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

And we are all going to pile in to the clown car today.

Or better yet, we are all going to pile into the clown ambulance.

Because today, we are headed to medical clown school.

That's after this. Clowning goes way, way, way back.

Mimes, court jesters, there have been clowns essentially as long as there have been people.

And almost for as long, there have been medical clowns.

Clowns that work specifically with sick people.

Researchers believe that clowns have worked in hospitals all the way since the time of Hippocrates,

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