The Laff Box
99% Invisible1 Mai 2018

The Laff Box

For nearly five decades, the laugh track was ubiquitous on television sitcoms, but in the early 2000s, it began to disappear. What happened? How did we get from the raucous canned laughter of the Beverly Hillbillies to the silent, sly “joke every 20 seconds” of 30 Rock? The curious story of the laugh track starts with one man who created the laugh track as a homemade piece of technology that took over the sound of television and then fell out of fashion with the rise of a more modern sense of humor. What happened to the laugh track is one of the cultural mysteries that are being explored on Slate’s new monthly podcast: Decoder Ring with Willa Paskin

The Laff Box

Plus, Roman talks to The West Wing Weekly co-host Joshua Malina about his time acting on Sports Night, which was a turning point in the history of the television laugh track.

Learn more and subscribe to Decoder Ring

Subscribe to The West Wing Weekly

Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early.

Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episoder(772)

Model Village

Model Village

For decades, society has dealt with people with dementia and other forms of cognitive decline by storing them away in unstimulating, medicalized environments. But around the world, a new architectural...

24 Okt 202335min

Devolutionary Redesign

Devolutionary Redesign

It’s hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music in the days before people downloaded everything. Visuals were a key part of one's experience with a record or tape or CD. The de...

17 Okt 202331min

You Ain’t Nothin But a Postmark

You Ain’t Nothin But a Postmark

Over a decade after Elvis Presley’s death, the king of rock & roll took over headlines once again as Americans weighed in on which portrait of Elvis would be forever immortalized on a 29 cent US posta...

10 Okt 202332min

The Big Dig

The Big Dig

Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the central highway in the heart of the city, encountered every hurdle...

3 Okt 202355min

Devil in the Details

Devil in the Details

This week we have two stories featuring the devil.An infamous "training video" teaching cops how to spot and stop "satanic crimes." And a stretch of highway with the misfortune of being officially nam...

26 Sep 202334min

Cautionary Tales of the Sydney Opera House

Cautionary Tales of the Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House is one of the most iconic and distinctive buildings in the world. It took a relative newcomer and architectural outsider to dream it up, but the saga of making this world herita...

19 Sep 202340min

Blood in the Machine

Blood in the Machine

Brian Merchant is a tech reporter, and he'd been covering the industry for years when he started to notice a term that kept coming up. When he wrote a story that was critical of tech, he'd be accused ...

12 Sep 202329min

Whomst Among Us Let the Dogs Out AGAIN

Whomst Among Us Let the Dogs Out AGAIN

All kinds of songs get stuck in your head. Famous pop tunes from when you were a kid, album cuts you've listened to over and over again. And then there's a category of memorable songs—the ones that we...

5 Sep 202338min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
e24-podden
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
finansredaksjonen
pengesnakk
utbytte
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
pengepodden-2
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
rss-markedspuls-2
okonomiamatorene
lederpodden
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
rss-investering-gjort-enkelt
rss-finansforum-2
flypodden