February 18, 2023 • 33 mins
Say hello to Brianne. You will adore her.
Epic conversation ensues.
See the video here: https://youtu.be/CjCRT_URl4c
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back, welcome back to the laughing matters podcast.
(00:04):
I'm your host WS Walker, who also happens to be the author of the laughing matters and
the host of the could help channel on YouTube.
I feel like I should be playing some of the like, the come on down music from is it prices
right or the prices right?
Huh.
Interesting, interesting.
Uh, let me, I gotta look that up real quick.
(00:30):
Did I just find a Mandela effect?
Okay.
Uh, so I, all right.
So I looked it up.
Uh, interesting.
It is the prices, right?
Which I do not remember.
Okay.
Interesting, but not nearly as interesting as what we're doing here today.
You see, I have a friend of mine that I decided to have the conversation about the genuine
(00:54):
laugh and breaking laugh with, you know, I wanted to do a, just a simple, straightforward
episode that like hit some of the key points just right out of the gate on one episode
and made even better because I'm explaining it to someone else in front of you.
Instead of just talking to the camera, you know, I can express myself a little better
(01:16):
when I'm actually talking to a person that I can see and get feedback from.
And I ended up really thoroughly enjoying the conversation and we shot it for a could
help episode.
So if you're wondering why the mic sound not super great, they don't sound anywhere near
as good as I sound right now.
(01:37):
It's because we basically were wearing lavalier mics under our shirts and it's, uh, I didn't
really have a chance to prep the rooms first room for sound because I was having to rush
around, get the camera and the light set up since it was at their house, never shot there
before had to kind of figure out outlets.
And anyhow, we had this conversation and it's, it's a very solid one that hits the core
(02:01):
of the things that set this whole thing off.
So I definitely wanted to do this one as a podcast episode as well.
I really, really hope you'll enjoy it cause I know you're going to enjoy her.
She's I adore her.
So we're going to hop over to our two reporters in the field and send it over to will help
(02:23):
in just a moment.
But before we do that, I also wanted to take a second so you guys could hear the rather
supreme quality of the mic that I'm using today.
What you are hearing is the sure SM seven B. This is the gold standard for the broadcasting
(02:43):
industry.
And yes, I've said that about 17 times to friends, family, and myself, re-justifying
the purchase.
It's something that I've had an eye on for over a year now.
And I've, you know, they, for a while there was like, I should, I get it.
And then eventually I came to the point of like, yeah, I want to get this.
(03:04):
Let's, let's go ahead and step it up.
It was an investment, but I'm glad I did it.
Cause I mean, listen to that.
Now you've probably seen this mic, pretty much any professional podcasting thing you've
ever seen.
Joe Rogan show definitely has one in front of his face.
And I got to tell you, I've been doing some like online performances.
(03:27):
I sing and play guitar as well.
And, uh, Oh, it sounds so good.
I've never had a, a microphone boost my confidence so much as what I'm hearing back as I need.
I hear this live on going out and just, Oh my God, I sing better than I thought I sing.
(03:51):
And I'll get a little more into that, uh, you know, later on coming soon, we're going
to talk about something I've been doing recently online.
But I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be popping in at least one more to
fill in the gap that was left because, uh, a part of it we discussed before we started
rolling and part of it was cut out because there was like a severe audio issue that popped
(04:15):
up and we missed part of the conversation because of it.
But yeah, I got you.
I got you fans.
So without further ado, I introduce you to Brienne.
And clap.
Looking at the car wash.
(04:38):
Oh, whoa.
At the car wash.
Yeah.
How did you get so much taller than me?
I'm a Capricorn.
I'm six foot four.
That doesn't triple Capricorn.
That's not a thing.
It's a comfy coat.
(04:58):
Yeah.
I straightened out my spine for your nice.
Oh my God.
I'm still shorter than you.
You're in my spot.
I look like I'm slouching right now.
No, here.
Hi.
You're welcome.
Hello.
Hey guys.
(05:19):
Will Help here from the Could Help channel and WS Walker from the Laughing Matters podcast.
I am here today with Brienne, a good friend of mine for how long have we known each other?
Since I got out of high school.
So 2016, 2017.
(05:40):
I hit up Brienne maybe like once every couple of months and I'm like, hey, we should jam
Jam.
Hey. Jam.
We've got similar energy.
And then she out of the blue was like, hey, I'm working on improving myself and I also
am like really kind of focusing on having a better spiritual self.
I was like, well, I'm getting ready to maybe launch a series of interviews with people
(06:03):
where I explain some of this stuff to them.
One thing led to another.
This happened.
You're witnesses, like, you can't deny it.
It's been observed.
Exactly.
It's been measured.
Quantum-ly, it's certainty is certain.
It's happening.
My God, sorry.
(06:26):
I've been down the rabbit hole recently on some quantum theory.
I've been reading a book by Michael Connolly.
Michael Conner?
Michael Connolly?
I'm going to use one of these takes.
But he's a former NASA scientist that worked at the Jet Propulsions Lab at JPL.
And he grew up Christian and everything.
(06:48):
He tried to resolve his faith because he believed in God.
He just needed to understand it a little bit better.
And he found him in science, like I did.
Through my personal, my own personal journey, I think finding God through science first
and then kind of like building off that spiritually.
(07:09):
Especially if you're on the spectrum.
It really helps.
It really helps.
Like right here, this is one of the things I'm going to have to pop in on.
Right here should have been some talk between us about other elements of nonverbal expressions
that people with autism struggle with.
Brianne shares several traits with people who are on the spectrum.
(07:31):
And we got into a bit of a conversation over how actively learning your nonverbal expressions,
for those of us who excelled at it at least, it can result in becoming adults that read
nonverbal cues that others might miss as people who picked it up naturally haven't trained
(07:53):
as much active focus on these things as those who had to learn them non-intuitively.
But those that have, have this reinforced active attention that they've spent so long
pointed directly at this and the brain is trained to expect input to analyze whenever
we look at a person.
Again, granted, not everybody develops this as a result, but for those that do, it's a
(08:18):
valuable gift.
And we went on to talk about how it can be difficult sometimes for us when we are still
micromanaging all of those nonverbal expressions.
You know, we're doing it actively, consciously.
At least for me, it had this unpleasant underbelly of an emotion to it.
(08:39):
Even though the emotions I was expressing with my body and my, you know, my body language,
my face, my sounds were a hundred percent genuine emotions that I was expressing that
in no way differed in shape, volume or validity from anybody else's emotions.
Having to actively move my face and body, you know, consciously, almost like puppeteering,
(09:04):
it gave me this questioning of the genuineness of my emotions.
Like I was, I was worried that because I was essentially acting to show consciously how
I felt much as an actor might.
And because that meant that I was having to, and I use air quotes here, fake the emotions
(09:28):
on my face.
I couldn't help but feel somewhat that this means that my emotions weren't as real or
as valid as other people who naturally respond nonverbal.
And it was axiomatic, you know, it was because this on my face is not real.
(09:49):
And again, I knew that the feelings I had were real and you know, were genuine.
It's like they got discounted as soon as they pass through that filter of being expressed
in this way.
And I know as a heck of a thing to be like laid out on the head of a 12 year old, but
(10:12):
you know, this was only a problem for my adolescence and my young adulthood.
I eventually pretty much get to the point where my face and body react automatically
with the appropriate nonverbal sounds and face embodied.
Believe me, I occasionally do still spit out the wrong thing, but the closer that I got
to this goal, the less and less that there were any real feelings of disingenuousness
(10:39):
to my emotions because there was no longer an act involved anywhere in it.
Right?
Sorry.
So that brings us up to speed now.
Apologize for me butting in, but hopefully you enjoyed the microphone.
Something I think about often is like a lot of the time is like I'm really like conscious
(11:03):
of like what I'm doing with my body, even if like it's kind of spontaneous.
I'm always thinking about like my facial expressions and the amount of eye contact I'm maintaining
and the way I'm moving my body.
It's just a very confusing scape sometimes.
But it also helps to know like when you're trying to express yourself, how to express
yourself in all these different mediums and human beings are incredible at basically finding
(11:29):
a way to share that which they think or that which they feel or that which they have found
and it was good.
And you know, we came up with language.
You know, we found ways to express it through the sounds we can make and the shapes we
can make with our mouths and our tongues.
Like we're like, and I'm going to shove air at you and hear my thoughts.
(11:51):
It's pretty crazy.
Here's up here, just emptying out up here and let me hit everything that's of all these
molecules are bumping into each other in the air in a very specific pattern.
Like electricity and make it into something everyone else can understand.
Exactly.
And we put it in, we find intonation and we find ways to further color what we're saying
(12:14):
by the way we're saying it.
And then we're like, you know what?
It's not enough that we're saying it when we're saying it.
Let's make it stick around.
So we figured out ways to make it stick around in written language where you put dark little
squiggles on slices of tree and then your voice can be heard in somebody else's head
(12:35):
exactly as you said it.
Like your thoughts can withstand millennium.
There's so many different ways we've come up with expressing ourselves, but there were
things that were not expressible by ways of literal, you know, expressions like how we
feel as a big one.
(12:56):
You know, when you undergo grief, when you undergo being in love, when you undergo all
these different things, there's a...we found that there's ways to express them in going
abstract and not saying it, but saying the things around it, allowing them to see the
process of it, allowing people to see little slices of it in action to describe what it
(13:18):
is or all that, you know, photography, art, music.
But there is one that we go to automatically since birth pretty much.
I mean, it's a learned behavior, sure.
Nonverbal communications, you know, face movements, body language and the sounds we make that
(13:39):
aren't the word sounds.
My favorite kinds of sounds.
Your favorite.
You can ask anybody like every time, have you met anybody who I have a sound effect
for everything?
Like it's almost uncomfortable.
I can't stop.
I couldn't stop even if I wanted to.
I don't have that many.
I do occasionally throw like a...I mean, like, of course, involuntarily, I'm like, I'll do
(14:03):
my...A lot of nonverbal language is stuff that you have to pick up and you have to understand
it kind of as you go.
But a lot of it's almost seemingly automatic for most people.
And if I told you an emotion, you could think of it pretty much.
You can close your eyes and you can think to yourself of any emotion.
(14:24):
Like, think of an emotion.
Lock one down for me.
I got it.
Think of what it looks like, what it sounds like.
Like you can immediately think of the sound, the look.
In fact, most of the time it has a descriptor, a word that you can use to describe the sound
and for nonverbal communication that people like if it's sad, crying.
(14:45):
Which emotion was it?
Oh, anxiety.
Anxiety.
What is the sound of anxiety?
Oh, it's like a static TV, but it's like hot.
Oh, no.
No, I mean, when I say nonverbal communication, when you're trying to communicate to somebody
that you feel anxiety, you don't look at them and go...
No, I do.
You obviously don't know me.
(15:06):
What's a sound someone would make to express that they're anxious?
I've made that one quite a few times.
Sleep.
What's another emotion?
Jealousy.
Okay, what's a jealousy sound?
A jealousy sound.
I've made that one before.
(15:27):
That is really good.
Ten rays, there's all sorts of...
Oh, okay.
You threw a little sass in yours.
I'm sassy.
That's fair.
A lot of sass.
I'm a lot of sass.
That's why I don't subscribe to that emotion.
There is one emotion out there that there is no...
(15:50):
Let me rephrase.
I can almost guarantee you, you cannot right now tell me the descriptor word for what the
sound and nonverbal communication is.
It's easily the most important one of all the emotions.
People have described it as being like oxygen, all you need.
(16:13):
It's the only thing worth both living and dying for.
That's me, by the way.
That's a quote of me.
Somebody else might have said it at some point, but I came up with that on my own.
Love.
Right?
What is the nonverbal sound that you make when you love?
(16:37):
What's a nonverbal body language and facial movements that you make when you love?
I promise you, there is one that you can name right now, but it's going to be elusive to
you because it's a riddle.
It's something that's been hidden from you your whole life.
It's been right under your nose.
(16:57):
I know there's been times with Kelly where it's like, I've been feeling the love so hard,
it just makes me want to laugh.
Or just smiling real big.
I don't know.
It's just funny to me that I can love something that hard, that another person can make me
(17:18):
feel that alive.
I have asked hundreds of people this question.
I talked to a lot of people about this and you just walked directly into the right answer.
(17:39):
But if I said, laughter is the sound that we make when we love, most people would argue,
I mean not really.
Laughter is joy, man.
And joy and love.
But it's not always.
You don't laugh because you're loving all the time.
That's not the whole reason you laugh.
(18:01):
It does sound like kind of, most people, you may not need any spiritual help.
You kind of floored me with that.
Most people would argue that, yeah, kind of, but wait, steal my thunder.
Let's roll back.
I'm sorry.
So, Brianne, what would you say is the sound of love?
(18:28):
Not a clue, right?
No, I have no clue.
I don't know what it could be.
Tell me, Will.
What could it be?
The reason that it is a riddle is because it's not the kind of love that most people
automatically think of.
And I think about it, and you and Kelly are both very much the type of people that would
(18:52):
get this concept.
But when most people think of love, they think about a very aimed variety of it.
A type that is sent in a specific direction because you can't widen it out to everybody.
You can't...
Guys, I'm going to wait until they're pulled away just a little bit.
(19:17):
We'll roll room sound real quick because we still haven't done that.
Kelsen, you had 18 jobs.
Can you do at least one of them?
Okay.
Very good.
The reason it's a riddle is because he'll never tell you why it's a riddle.
(19:45):
Fair enough.
I figured it out, guys.
And we tend to do that aiming because, well, we can't trust everybody, you know?
We've got that in our heads in society.
Damn sure doesn't let us forget that.
We fire love through arrow slits and castle walls.
So you have our defenses and we decide who's worthy of coming the inner castle gates and
(20:06):
then coming inside that.
But when we are not aiming at love, there's moments when we're like...
I've used this example in my book.
I've used a lot of this in my book.
Just the best ways I've found to describe them is like when you're sitting at dinner
with friends you haven't seen in a long time and that you adore, or family members you
haven't seen in a while, or having that 3 a.m. porch set with somebody that you adore and
(20:29):
it's just things are quiet and you can't help but laugh.
You just love everything and everyone in those moments.
You don't have your defenses up.
You become giggly when you're trying to make that person you love laugh.
In those moments your defenses are down.
You're not worried about who you're keeping out.
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You're just letting in.
You're taking a hill on a sled when you're raising your arms about to do the dip in the
roller coaster.
You just, your smile turns into a grin which boils over and cracks into a billion pieces
into a laugh and you let it out into the world and anybody that catches it gets some.
(21:11):
That's the sound of love.
We instantly recognize it and it's musical and when we feel that way...
When we feel like that, sadly this did not get included in the conversation, but when
you feel like that your defenses drop.
They come tumbling right down.
You are existing in that moment as you were designed to best function.
(21:36):
That's right.
You have reached zenith tier.
You've been optimized to do this and that love comes pouring out of you and you do not
care who it hits.
When you laugh like this and you love un-aimed like this, you feel complete, right?
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Like all of this is going to be okay and you can choose and what's insane is you can choose
to do this anywhere, anytime because you don't need to find a roller coaster or sledding
(22:22):
hill or front porch.
You can instead simply decide to drop the walls and love them all and to be ready to
share that love with them with a very specific kind of laughter.
(22:44):
The absolute purest kind of laughter.
When you just open up and let in and it just comes naturally, that is the genuine laugh.
Trademark pending.
(23:04):
That's something I have labeled the genuine laugh is when you just let it out because
you're overflowing with joy and love and you're not concerned about who it hits.
You're not concerned about who's going to take advantage of it.
Love love.
What do you mean love love?
I love love.
(23:24):
It's a good thing.
Just absolute, just completely like vulnerable like joy.
Like how's that feeling?
But this is the hard part.
I talk a lot about on the channel how the secret to happiness is doing for others.
(23:52):
It's caring about others.
It's loving others.
Nobody gets happiness by themselves.
Not real happiness.
You can get kind of a tied you over kind of happiness.
Like when you do for self, when you buy something you want, when you do whatever for self to
try and go for happiness, it's all the excitements before you get the thing and then like you
(24:18):
get the thing you're like alright and then it just becomes another thing you own so quickly.
The best analogy that I've come across, let me look at you, maybe, the best analogy that
I've come across so far is essentially one that states doing for self is kind of like
eating.
What's your favorite candy?
Reese's Pieces.
Oh a lot of Reese's Pieces.
(24:41):
Mini M&M's.
Mini M&M's?
Yeah the small ones.
Because you like get more candy coating in it.
They're so much better.
They are too aren't they?
They're a bit sweeter.
It's the perfect candy to chocolate ratio.
Interesting.
I'm just thinking about getting some on the way home.
It's like eating your favorite candy, Reese's Pieces, as many as you want for dinner.
(25:03):
I've done that.
But you don't feel good after.
Like it doesn't feel like you had dinner, you don't feel like you've completed your
night.
And it's just when you wake up, like you're not super hungry because it kind of sits like
a dead weight in there.
It's not good.
But when you do for others, it's like eating a three course meal.
(25:27):
It leaves you satisfied and full and you just, I don't know, you feel satiated.
It feels better.
It lasts for longer.
It does.
So Reese's Pieces do not last for long.
Unfortunately, there's this other type of laughter out there that, well it's a bit like
(25:47):
that.
It's a bootleg laughter.
It's like a $10 Rolex kind of laughter.
It doesn't satiate.
It's a quick little boost, but then it's over as quickly as it was.
Yeah, that made sense.
No, it does.
It's like when you see a video of a guy and like a bucket hits his head or something and
(26:11):
you laugh and it feels good for a second.
I hit you right now.
But it doesn't last for long.
Why are you stepping on my lines?
Is that really your line?
Why are you running up on what I'm about to address?
How did you guess?
Okay.
Well, yeah, that's where we're going with this.
(26:34):
There's this theory out there by Peter McGraw, genius.
He's a researcher and professor at the University of Colorado.
He wrote a brilliant book, well co-wrote it with a journalist where they went around the
world and they specifically looked at why each culture laughs.
(26:55):
Like what did they find funny?
I like that.
He runs the HURL, which stands for the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado.
But the thing that struck me was benign violation theory.
This man jumped on board with a theory on humor that we've had three pretty much over
(27:15):
the last several, several centuries of philosophy.
Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, they tried their hand at it.
The very first philosophers, why we find something funny?
They went with superiority theory, which basically said that you feel you're laughing because
you're better than them and you're acknowledging that you're better than them.
(27:36):
They had incongruity theory, which was basically that what happened was not what you expected.
And then there's relief theory that states that basically that we laugh to show that
everything's okay, that it's all right.
Like whatever scared us is fine.
(27:56):
But there's no theory that fit all the different types of laughter.
And then this man, and I kind of hate that he came out with it like a year after I discovered
mine.
And he wrote about it.
He did several, several papers about it.
He did this one brilliant paper in 2014 that everybody should read because it's like a
(28:19):
page and a half.
And it just so succinct.
But essentially you have a Venn diagram, which is two circles overlapping.
And on one side you have benign, right, which is things that are predictable, things that
you can see coming, things that are unchanging, things that are safe, things that don't really
have any violation to them.
(28:41):
And then you have violation.
And violation are all the things that make a joke not okay, that take a joke too far.
It's that vein of things.
And all humor lies somewhere in there.
Somewhere, you know, but where it lies, the amount of benign versus violation, the levels
(29:05):
are picked based on your relationship between the viewer, the laugher, and the victim.
If you're really close, it only takes just a little bit of violation in a perfectly safe
setting.
And not even completely trip and fall, put the other person burst out laughing if you
guys are besties.
(29:25):
You know, and it's made funnier by the fact that they weren't hurt because you don't want
to see them hurt.
Whereas because we do not care about other people as much when they're fictional, which
a lot of readers would argue that.
But in general, if you create a fictional character, it's okay to laugh about, you know,
(29:49):
you can have the worst things in the world happen to a movie character.
And it's hilarious.
And then you hear stories on the news and there's some hilarious stuff there, but those
are real people.
And then, you know, you see stuff happening in the world when you're out and about.
And sometimes we make fun of that.
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There's this type of laughter that we have that falls under benign violation, but it
tends to be when more violation occurs because we've geared a style of thinking towards,
I can get more for myself if I care about others less.
(30:34):
The less I care about others, the better off I can be.
I can pick my path better.
I make my way towards what I want more easily.
And I have a higher chance of getting what I want from me.
This is where all that starts coming full circle here.
(30:57):
And in this newer focus that we've had that keeps progressing more and more towards a
self-centered kind of hero.
All the different capitalistic pushes that we have and which it is better to do for yourself.
We wind up with the necessity of lowering our compassion.
(31:21):
Of basically deadening ourselves a bit so that we don't feel as bad for other people.
We don't feel it's obligated to help other people.
And we use the breaking laugh from that.
We use this style of laughter and you see it in shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
is an excellent example.
(31:42):
I'm sure you can just off the top now you know what you're looking for.
There's a lot of breaking laugh television out there.
There's a lot of breaking laugh movies out there.
There's a lot of focus on helping us kill off our compassion just a little more each
time.
This kind of laughter again it's this bootleg version of the real sound.
(32:07):
And we're using the sound of loving all to help as a salve on the wound of each time
we break our compassion off just a little more.
Just each time we pulverize and reduce our ability and empathy a little more so that
(32:29):
we can laugh off things that we don't want to feel bad about.
So that we can move past the stuff that we've done to other people that we don't want to
feel bad about.
It's a training laugh and it's a breaking laugh.
(32:54):
And it's a salve and it's a dime store knockoff and it's that's the breaking laugh.
It's any laugh that takes you further from our interconnection takes you further from
each other.
And it was from here that I found everything else.
(33:17):
That I found everything else.
To be continued.
Welcome back, welcome back to the laughing matters podcast.
(00:04):
I'm your host WS Walker, who also happens to be the author of the laughing matters and
the host of the could help channel on YouTube.
I feel like I should be playing some of the like, the come on down music from is it prices
right or the prices right?
Huh.
Interesting, interesting.
Uh, let me, I gotta look that up real quick.
(00:30):
Did I just find a Mandela effect?
Okay.
Uh, so I, all right.
So I looked it up.
Uh, interesting.
It is the prices, right?
Which I do not remember.
Okay.
Interesting, but not nearly as interesting as what we're doing here today.
You see, I have a friend of mine that I decided to have the conversation about the genuine
(00:54):
laugh and breaking laugh with, you know, I wanted to do a, just a simple, straightforward
episode that like hit some of the key points just right out of the gate on one episode
and made even better because I'm explaining it to someone else in front of you.
Instead of just talking to the camera, you know, I can express myself a little better
(01:16):
when I'm actually talking to a person that I can see and get feedback from.
And I ended up really thoroughly enjoying the conversation and we shot it for a could
help episode.
So if you're wondering why the mic sound not super great, they don't sound anywhere near
as good as I sound right now.
(01:37):
It's because we basically were wearing lavalier mics under our shirts and it's, uh, I didn't
really have a chance to prep the rooms first room for sound because I was having to rush
around, get the camera and the light set up since it was at their house, never shot there
before had to kind of figure out outlets.
And anyhow, we had this conversation and it's, it's a very solid one that hits the core
(02:01):
of the things that set this whole thing off.
So I definitely wanted to do this one as a podcast episode as well.
I really, really hope you'll enjoy it cause I know you're going to enjoy her.
She's I adore her.
So we're going to hop over to our two reporters in the field and send it over to will help
(02:23):
in just a moment.
But before we do that, I also wanted to take a second so you guys could hear the rather
supreme quality of the mic that I'm using today.
What you are hearing is the sure SM seven B. This is the gold standard for the broadcasting
(02:43):
industry.
And yes, I've said that about 17 times to friends, family, and myself, re-justifying
the purchase.
It's something that I've had an eye on for over a year now.
And I've, you know, they, for a while there was like, I should, I get it.
And then eventually I came to the point of like, yeah, I want to get this.
(03:04):
Let's, let's go ahead and step it up.
It was an investment, but I'm glad I did it.
Cause I mean, listen to that.
Now you've probably seen this mic, pretty much any professional podcasting thing you've
ever seen.
Joe Rogan show definitely has one in front of his face.
And I got to tell you, I've been doing some like online performances.
(03:27):
I sing and play guitar as well.
And, uh, Oh, it sounds so good.
I've never had a, a microphone boost my confidence so much as what I'm hearing back as I need.
I hear this live on going out and just, Oh my God, I sing better than I thought I sing.
(03:51):
And I'll get a little more into that, uh, you know, later on coming soon, we're going
to talk about something I've been doing recently online.
But I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be popping in at least one more to
fill in the gap that was left because, uh, a part of it we discussed before we started
rolling and part of it was cut out because there was like a severe audio issue that popped
(04:15):
up and we missed part of the conversation because of it.
But yeah, I got you.
I got you fans.
So without further ado, I introduce you to Brienne.
And clap.
Looking at the car wash.
(04:38):
Oh, whoa.
At the car wash.
Yeah.
How did you get so much taller than me?
I'm a Capricorn.
I'm six foot four.
That doesn't triple Capricorn.
That's not a thing.
It's a comfy coat.
(04:58):
Yeah.
I straightened out my spine for your nice.
Oh my God.
I'm still shorter than you.
You're in my spot.
I look like I'm slouching right now.
No, here.
Hi.
You're welcome.
Hello.
Hey guys.
(05:19):
Will Help here from the Could Help channel and WS Walker from the Laughing Matters podcast.
I am here today with Brienne, a good friend of mine for how long have we known each other?
Since I got out of high school.
So 2016, 2017.
(05:40):
I hit up Brienne maybe like once every couple of months and I'm like, hey, we should jam
Jam.
Hey. Jam.
We've got similar energy.
And then she out of the blue was like, hey, I'm working on improving myself and I also
am like really kind of focusing on having a better spiritual self.
I was like, well, I'm getting ready to maybe launch a series of interviews with people
(06:03):
where I explain some of this stuff to them.
One thing led to another.
This happened.
You're witnesses, like, you can't deny it.
It's been observed.
Exactly.
It's been measured.
Quantum-ly, it's certainty is certain.
It's happening.
My God, sorry.
(06:26):
I've been down the rabbit hole recently on some quantum theory.
I've been reading a book by Michael Connolly.
Michael Conner?
Michael Connolly?
I'm going to use one of these takes.
But he's a former NASA scientist that worked at the Jet Propulsions Lab at JPL.
And he grew up Christian and everything.
(06:48):
He tried to resolve his faith because he believed in God.
He just needed to understand it a little bit better.
And he found him in science, like I did.
Through my personal, my own personal journey, I think finding God through science first
and then kind of like building off that spiritually.
(07:09):
Especially if you're on the spectrum.
It really helps.
It really helps.
Like right here, this is one of the things I'm going to have to pop in on.
Right here should have been some talk between us about other elements of nonverbal expressions
that people with autism struggle with.
Brianne shares several traits with people who are on the spectrum.
(07:31):
And we got into a bit of a conversation over how actively learning your nonverbal expressions,
for those of us who excelled at it at least, it can result in becoming adults that read
nonverbal cues that others might miss as people who picked it up naturally haven't trained
(07:53):
as much active focus on these things as those who had to learn them non-intuitively.
But those that have, have this reinforced active attention that they've spent so long
pointed directly at this and the brain is trained to expect input to analyze whenever
we look at a person.
Again, granted, not everybody develops this as a result, but for those that do, it's a
(08:18):
valuable gift.
And we went on to talk about how it can be difficult sometimes for us when we are still
micromanaging all of those nonverbal expressions.
You know, we're doing it actively, consciously.
At least for me, it had this unpleasant underbelly of an emotion to it.
(08:39):
Even though the emotions I was expressing with my body and my, you know, my body language,
my face, my sounds were a hundred percent genuine emotions that I was expressing that
in no way differed in shape, volume or validity from anybody else's emotions.
Having to actively move my face and body, you know, consciously, almost like puppeteering,
(09:04):
it gave me this questioning of the genuineness of my emotions.
Like I was, I was worried that because I was essentially acting to show consciously how
I felt much as an actor might.
And because that meant that I was having to, and I use air quotes here, fake the emotions
(09:28):
on my face.
I couldn't help but feel somewhat that this means that my emotions weren't as real or
as valid as other people who naturally respond nonverbal.
And it was axiomatic, you know, it was because this on my face is not real.
(09:49):
And again, I knew that the feelings I had were real and you know, were genuine.
It's like they got discounted as soon as they pass through that filter of being expressed
in this way.
And I know as a heck of a thing to be like laid out on the head of a 12 year old, but
(10:12):
you know, this was only a problem for my adolescence and my young adulthood.
I eventually pretty much get to the point where my face and body react automatically
with the appropriate nonverbal sounds and face embodied.
Believe me, I occasionally do still spit out the wrong thing, but the closer that I got
to this goal, the less and less that there were any real feelings of disingenuousness
(10:39):
to my emotions because there was no longer an act involved anywhere in it.
Right?
Sorry.
So that brings us up to speed now.
Apologize for me butting in, but hopefully you enjoyed the microphone.
Something I think about often is like a lot of the time is like I'm really like conscious
(11:03):
of like what I'm doing with my body, even if like it's kind of spontaneous.
I'm always thinking about like my facial expressions and the amount of eye contact I'm maintaining
and the way I'm moving my body.
It's just a very confusing scape sometimes.
But it also helps to know like when you're trying to express yourself, how to express
yourself in all these different mediums and human beings are incredible at basically finding
(11:29):
a way to share that which they think or that which they feel or that which they have found
and it was good.
And you know, we came up with language.
You know, we found ways to express it through the sounds we can make and the shapes we
can make with our mouths and our tongues.
Like we're like, and I'm going to shove air at you and hear my thoughts.
(11:51):
It's pretty crazy.
Here's up here, just emptying out up here and let me hit everything that's of all these
molecules are bumping into each other in the air in a very specific pattern.
Like electricity and make it into something everyone else can understand.
Exactly.
And we put it in, we find intonation and we find ways to further color what we're saying
(12:14):
by the way we're saying it.
And then we're like, you know what?
It's not enough that we're saying it when we're saying it.
Let's make it stick around.
So we figured out ways to make it stick around in written language where you put dark little
squiggles on slices of tree and then your voice can be heard in somebody else's head
(12:35):
exactly as you said it.
Like your thoughts can withstand millennium.
There's so many different ways we've come up with expressing ourselves, but there were
things that were not expressible by ways of literal, you know, expressions like how we
feel as a big one.
(12:56):
You know, when you undergo grief, when you undergo being in love, when you undergo all
these different things, there's a...we found that there's ways to express them in going
abstract and not saying it, but saying the things around it, allowing them to see the
process of it, allowing people to see little slices of it in action to describe what it
(13:18):
is or all that, you know, photography, art, music.
But there is one that we go to automatically since birth pretty much.
I mean, it's a learned behavior, sure.
Nonverbal communications, you know, face movements, body language and the sounds we make that
(13:39):
aren't the word sounds.
My favorite kinds of sounds.
Your favorite.
You can ask anybody like every time, have you met anybody who I have a sound effect
for everything?
Like it's almost uncomfortable.
I can't stop.
I couldn't stop even if I wanted to.
I don't have that many.
I do occasionally throw like a...I mean, like, of course, involuntarily, I'm like, I'll do
(14:03):
my...A lot of nonverbal language is stuff that you have to pick up and you have to understand
it kind of as you go.
But a lot of it's almost seemingly automatic for most people.
And if I told you an emotion, you could think of it pretty much.
You can close your eyes and you can think to yourself of any emotion.
(14:24):
Like, think of an emotion.
Lock one down for me.
I got it.
Think of what it looks like, what it sounds like.
Like you can immediately think of the sound, the look.
In fact, most of the time it has a descriptor, a word that you can use to describe the sound
and for nonverbal communication that people like if it's sad, crying.
(14:45):
Which emotion was it?
Oh, anxiety.
Anxiety.
What is the sound of anxiety?
Oh, it's like a static TV, but it's like hot.
Oh, no.
No, I mean, when I say nonverbal communication, when you're trying to communicate to somebody
that you feel anxiety, you don't look at them and go...
No, I do.
You obviously don't know me.
(15:06):
What's a sound someone would make to express that they're anxious?
I've made that one quite a few times.
Sleep.
What's another emotion?
Jealousy.
Okay, what's a jealousy sound?
A jealousy sound.
I've made that one before.
(15:27):
That is really good.
Ten rays, there's all sorts of...
Oh, okay.
You threw a little sass in yours.
I'm sassy.
That's fair.
A lot of sass.
I'm a lot of sass.
That's why I don't subscribe to that emotion.
There is one emotion out there that there is no...
(15:50):
Let me rephrase.
I can almost guarantee you, you cannot right now tell me the descriptor word for what the
sound and nonverbal communication is.
It's easily the most important one of all the emotions.
People have described it as being like oxygen, all you need.
(16:13):
It's the only thing worth both living and dying for.
That's me, by the way.
That's a quote of me.
Somebody else might have said it at some point, but I came up with that on my own.
Love.
Right?
What is the nonverbal sound that you make when you love?
(16:37):
What's a nonverbal body language and facial movements that you make when you love?
I promise you, there is one that you can name right now, but it's going to be elusive to
you because it's a riddle.
It's something that's been hidden from you your whole life.
It's been right under your nose.
(16:57):
I know there's been times with Kelly where it's like, I've been feeling the love so hard,
it just makes me want to laugh.
Or just smiling real big.
I don't know.
It's just funny to me that I can love something that hard, that another person can make me
(17:18):
feel that alive.
I have asked hundreds of people this question.
I talked to a lot of people about this and you just walked directly into the right answer.
(17:39):
But if I said, laughter is the sound that we make when we love, most people would argue,
I mean not really.
Laughter is joy, man.
And joy and love.
But it's not always.
You don't laugh because you're loving all the time.
That's not the whole reason you laugh.
(18:01):
It does sound like kind of, most people, you may not need any spiritual help.
You kind of floored me with that.
Most people would argue that, yeah, kind of, but wait, steal my thunder.
Let's roll back.
I'm sorry.
So, Brianne, what would you say is the sound of love?
(18:28):
Not a clue, right?
No, I have no clue.
I don't know what it could be.
Tell me, Will.
What could it be?
The reason that it is a riddle is because it's not the kind of love that most people
automatically think of.
And I think about it, and you and Kelly are both very much the type of people that would
(18:52):
get this concept.
But when most people think of love, they think about a very aimed variety of it.
A type that is sent in a specific direction because you can't widen it out to everybody.
You can't...
Guys, I'm going to wait until they're pulled away just a little bit.
(19:17):
We'll roll room sound real quick because we still haven't done that.
Kelsen, you had 18 jobs.
Can you do at least one of them?
Okay.
Very good.
The reason it's a riddle is because he'll never tell you why it's a riddle.
(19:45):
Fair enough.
I figured it out, guys.
And we tend to do that aiming because, well, we can't trust everybody, you know?
We've got that in our heads in society.
Damn sure doesn't let us forget that.
We fire love through arrow slits and castle walls.
So you have our defenses and we decide who's worthy of coming the inner castle gates and
(20:06):
then coming inside that.
But when we are not aiming at love, there's moments when we're like...
I've used this example in my book.
I've used a lot of this in my book.
Just the best ways I've found to describe them is like when you're sitting at dinner
with friends you haven't seen in a long time and that you adore, or family members you
haven't seen in a while, or having that 3 a.m. porch set with somebody that you adore and
(20:29):
it's just things are quiet and you can't help but laugh.
You just love everything and everyone in those moments.
You don't have your defenses up.
You become giggly when you're trying to make that person you love laugh.
In those moments your defenses are down.
You're not worried about who you're keeping out.
(20:50):
You're just letting in.
You're taking a hill on a sled when you're raising your arms about to do the dip in the
roller coaster.
You just, your smile turns into a grin which boils over and cracks into a billion pieces
into a laugh and you let it out into the world and anybody that catches it gets some.
(21:11):
That's the sound of love.
We instantly recognize it and it's musical and when we feel that way...
When we feel like that, sadly this did not get included in the conversation, but when
you feel like that your defenses drop.
They come tumbling right down.
You are existing in that moment as you were designed to best function.
(21:36):
That's right.
You have reached zenith tier.
You've been optimized to do this and that love comes pouring out of you and you do not
care who it hits.
When you laugh like this and you love un-aimed like this, you feel complete, right?
(22:01):
Like all of this is going to be okay and you can choose and what's insane is you can choose
to do this anywhere, anytime because you don't need to find a roller coaster or sledding
(22:22):
hill or front porch.
You can instead simply decide to drop the walls and love them all and to be ready to
share that love with them with a very specific kind of laughter.
(22:44):
The absolute purest kind of laughter.
When you just open up and let in and it just comes naturally, that is the genuine laugh.
Trademark pending.
(23:04):
That's something I have labeled the genuine laugh is when you just let it out because
you're overflowing with joy and love and you're not concerned about who it hits.
You're not concerned about who's going to take advantage of it.
Love love.
What do you mean love love?
I love love.
(23:24):
It's a good thing.
Just absolute, just completely like vulnerable like joy.
Like how's that feeling?
But this is the hard part.
I talk a lot about on the channel how the secret to happiness is doing for others.
(23:52):
It's caring about others.
It's loving others.
Nobody gets happiness by themselves.
Not real happiness.
You can get kind of a tied you over kind of happiness.
Like when you do for self, when you buy something you want, when you do whatever for self to
try and go for happiness, it's all the excitements before you get the thing and then like you
(24:18):
get the thing you're like alright and then it just becomes another thing you own so quickly.
The best analogy that I've come across, let me look at you, maybe, the best analogy that
I've come across so far is essentially one that states doing for self is kind of like
eating.
What's your favorite candy?
Reese's Pieces.
Oh a lot of Reese's Pieces.
(24:41):
Mini M&M's.
Mini M&M's?
Yeah the small ones.
Because you like get more candy coating in it.
They're so much better.
They are too aren't they?
They're a bit sweeter.
It's the perfect candy to chocolate ratio.
Interesting.
I'm just thinking about getting some on the way home.
It's like eating your favorite candy, Reese's Pieces, as many as you want for dinner.
(25:03):
I've done that.
But you don't feel good after.
Like it doesn't feel like you had dinner, you don't feel like you've completed your
night.
And it's just when you wake up, like you're not super hungry because it kind of sits like
a dead weight in there.
It's not good.
But when you do for others, it's like eating a three course meal.
(25:27):
It leaves you satisfied and full and you just, I don't know, you feel satiated.
It feels better.
It lasts for longer.
It does.
So Reese's Pieces do not last for long.
Unfortunately, there's this other type of laughter out there that, well it's a bit like
(25:47):
that.
It's a bootleg laughter.
It's like a $10 Rolex kind of laughter.
It doesn't satiate.
It's a quick little boost, but then it's over as quickly as it was.
Yeah, that made sense.
No, it does.
It's like when you see a video of a guy and like a bucket hits his head or something and
(26:11):
you laugh and it feels good for a second.
I hit you right now.
But it doesn't last for long.
Why are you stepping on my lines?
Is that really your line?
Why are you running up on what I'm about to address?
How did you guess?
Okay.
Well, yeah, that's where we're going with this.
(26:34):
There's this theory out there by Peter McGraw, genius.
He's a researcher and professor at the University of Colorado.
He wrote a brilliant book, well co-wrote it with a journalist where they went around the
world and they specifically looked at why each culture laughs.
(26:55):
Like what did they find funny?
I like that.
He runs the HURL, which stands for the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado.
But the thing that struck me was benign violation theory.
This man jumped on board with a theory on humor that we've had three pretty much over
(27:15):
the last several, several centuries of philosophy.
Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, they tried their hand at it.
The very first philosophers, why we find something funny?
They went with superiority theory, which basically said that you feel you're laughing because
you're better than them and you're acknowledging that you're better than them.
(27:36):
They had incongruity theory, which was basically that what happened was not what you expected.
And then there's relief theory that states that basically that we laugh to show that
everything's okay, that it's all right.
Like whatever scared us is fine.
(27:56):
But there's no theory that fit all the different types of laughter.
And then this man, and I kind of hate that he came out with it like a year after I discovered
mine.
And he wrote about it.
He did several, several papers about it.
He did this one brilliant paper in 2014 that everybody should read because it's like a
(28:19):
page and a half.
And it just so succinct.
But essentially you have a Venn diagram, which is two circles overlapping.
And on one side you have benign, right, which is things that are predictable, things that
you can see coming, things that are unchanging, things that are safe, things that don't really
have any violation to them.
(28:41):
And then you have violation.
And violation are all the things that make a joke not okay, that take a joke too far.
It's that vein of things.
And all humor lies somewhere in there.
Somewhere, you know, but where it lies, the amount of benign versus violation, the levels
(29:05):
are picked based on your relationship between the viewer, the laugher, and the victim.
If you're really close, it only takes just a little bit of violation in a perfectly safe
setting.
And not even completely trip and fall, put the other person burst out laughing if you
guys are besties.
(29:25):
You know, and it's made funnier by the fact that they weren't hurt because you don't want
to see them hurt.
Whereas because we do not care about other people as much when they're fictional, which
a lot of readers would argue that.
But in general, if you create a fictional character, it's okay to laugh about, you know,
(29:49):
you can have the worst things in the world happen to a movie character.
And it's hilarious.
And then you hear stories on the news and there's some hilarious stuff there, but those
are real people.
And then, you know, you see stuff happening in the world when you're out and about.
And sometimes we make fun of that.
(30:13):
There's this type of laughter that we have that falls under benign violation, but it
tends to be when more violation occurs because we've geared a style of thinking towards,
I can get more for myself if I care about others less.
(30:34):
The less I care about others, the better off I can be.
I can pick my path better.
I make my way towards what I want more easily.
And I have a higher chance of getting what I want from me.
This is where all that starts coming full circle here.
(30:57):
And in this newer focus that we've had that keeps progressing more and more towards a
self-centered kind of hero.
All the different capitalistic pushes that we have and which it is better to do for yourself.
We wind up with the necessity of lowering our compassion.
(31:21):
Of basically deadening ourselves a bit so that we don't feel as bad for other people.
We don't feel it's obligated to help other people.
And we use the breaking laugh from that.
We use this style of laughter and you see it in shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
is an excellent example.
(31:42):
I'm sure you can just off the top now you know what you're looking for.
There's a lot of breaking laugh television out there.
There's a lot of breaking laugh movies out there.
There's a lot of focus on helping us kill off our compassion just a little more each
time.
This kind of laughter again it's this bootleg version of the real sound.
(32:07):
And we're using the sound of loving all to help as a salve on the wound of each time
we break our compassion off just a little more.
Just each time we pulverize and reduce our ability and empathy a little more so that
(32:29):
we can laugh off things that we don't want to feel bad about.
So that we can move past the stuff that we've done to other people that we don't want to
feel bad about.
It's a training laugh and it's a breaking laugh.
(32:54):
And it's a salve and it's a dime store knockoff and it's that's the breaking laugh.
It's any laugh that takes you further from our interconnection takes you further from
each other.
And it was from here that I found everything else.
(33:17):
That I found everything else.
To be continued.
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