His forays into drama notwithstanding--almost always as a shrink, itseems-Robin Williams is one of the funniest people in the world. I saw him do an apparently extemporaneous stand-up routine years ago at Harvard University, of all places. He was getting an award, behaving himself for the occasion, when, suddenly, his mouth exploded with a stream of insults, barbs, innuendoes, and accents of every color and flavor--all while 1,000 students variously shook, gasped and screamed with laughter. I could barely breathe, and the jokes (if you can call them that) came faster than I could decipher them. All the while, doing my thing as a graduate student in psychology, I was thinking, "How is he doing this to us? Why am I having these bizarre convulsions? And can I keep from peeing?"
Finally, some answers. In our feature article, "The Science of Laughter," Robert Provine, Ph.D., shares the surprising results of his first-ever large-scale study of laughter--which, it turns out, is pretty serious stuff, after all. In our continuing effort to leave no neuron unstimulated, in this issue of PT "cop doc" Alan Benner, Ph.D., takes you inside the heads of street cops; two distinguished therapists set you free of psychotherapy; and the world's leading expert on risk lets you know how likely you are to jump off a cliff--and that's just for starters.
