The Laff Box
99% Invisible1 Maj 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.

Avsnitt(777)

Turf Wars of East New York

Turf Wars of East New York

Neighborhoods are constantly changing, but it tends to be the people with money and power who get to decide the shape of things to come. New York City has an especially long history with change driven...

11 Maj 201627min

The Grand Dame of Broad Street

The Grand Dame of Broad Street

The Bellevue-Stratford opened in 1904 and quickly became one of the most luxurious hotels of its time, rivaling the Waldorf Astoria in New York. The building was an incredible work of French Renaissan...

4 Maj 201619min

Unseen City

Unseen City

Humans form cities from concrete, metal, and glass, designing structures and infrastructure primarily to serve a single bipedal species. Walking down a familiar city street, it is easy to overlook squ...

27 Apr 201626min

Supertall 101

Supertall 101

Starting in the late 1990s, the government of Taipei began looking into how they could turn global attention to their city, the capital of the small island of Taiwan. The initial idea was to create tw...

20 Apr 201615min

Vox Ex Machina

Vox Ex Machina

In 1939, an astonishing new machine debuted at the New York World’s Fair. It was called the “Voder,” short for “Voice Operating Demonstrator.” It looked sort of like a futuristic church organ. An oper...

13 Apr 201622min

Soul City

Soul City

In the late 1960s, a civil rights leader named Floyd B. McKissick, at one time the head of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality) proposed an idea for a new town.  He would call this town Soul City an...

6 Apr 201630min

The White Elephant Of Tel Aviv

The White Elephant Of Tel Aviv

Israeli buses regularly make international headlines, be it for suicide bombings, fights over gender segregation, or clashes concerning Shabbat schedules. One particular ill-fated megastructure, howev...

30 Mars 201634min

Flying Food

Flying Food

The last hundred years or so of food advertising have been shaped by this one simple fact: real food usually looks pretty unappetizing on camera. It’s static and boring to look at, and it tends to wil...

23 Mars 201614min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
varvet
rss-jossan-nina
rss-svart-marknad
rss-borsens-finest
uppgang-och-fall
avanzapodden
fill-or-kill
lastbilspodden
svd-tech-brief
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
bathina-en-podcast
dynastin
borsmorgon
rss-veckans-trade
rss-dagen-med-di
24fragor
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
rss-borslunch