Dial A Laugh web app launched!

April first, 2026.  Yes it's April Fool's Day, rabbit rabbit.  

My new friend Claude (not the original Claude Shannon, but his namesake) helped me make an online app that looks like the dialpad of a phone, and models the behavior of a telephone system that anyone can call and get their laughter fix for the day.

If you find 10 seconds is not long enough for the laugh you wish to submit to the World Laughter Library (via option 9) record it and email it to me at haha@dialalaugh.com 

The web app is available at https://dialalaugh.com/ and there is a User Guide if you need it.  

If you happen to use Safari, you can select the "add to HomePage" to make a shortcut that you can put on your phone screen so it behaves like any other app.  Just tap it to access DialALaugh.

 https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/laughter-in-the-time-of-cholera (long form essay)

Essays

Laughter in the Time of Cholera

By Vlad Solomon

Political instability, popular unrest, and an impending pandemic? Welcome to France in the early 1830s. Vlad Solomon explores what made Parisians laugh in a moment of crisis through the prism of a vaudeville play.

Published

November 10, 2021

Detail from Honoré Daumier’s Croquis pris au théatre series, 1864 — Source.

The year 1832 in France still conjures up images of rebellion and barricades thanks to the enduring pathos of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. For the real-life Parisians, however, who inspired the novel’s iconic characters, it was not only a year of lost causes, bloody street battles, and political disillusionment. It was also, in the parlance of our times, a “pandemic year” during which thousands — more than 18,000 in Paris; 100,000 across France1 — succumbed to a wave of cholera that had been causing havoc throughout Asia, Russia, and parts of East Central

Sophie Scott with Shankar Vedantam on NPR

 https://www.npr.org/2020/09/25/916997530/laughter-the-best-medicine 

Shankar Vedantam talks with Sophie Scott about laughter: 

Laughter Yoga

Laughter Yoga report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Laugh Mob June 12, 2012

 Opening Day at the Winchester Farmers Market, a Laugh Mob happens!