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How Filthy Jokes Led to the Creation of the Laugh Track

Those of us who grew up with TV sitcoms are well acquainted with the laugh track, that unseen chorus of chucklers that lets everybody know when something is supposed to be funny. If not for the laugh track, Friends would have been a depressing, awkward pause-filled drama. 

Obviously a lot of famous sitcoms have been filmed in front of live studio audiences, but networks also “sweeten” audience laughter with pre-recorded tracks, or just add laughs to scenes where no audience was present — hence why the disembodied sounds of cracking up were still present when the Full House gang took a corporate-mandated trip to Disney World.

Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg Went to Bat for the Unhoused at the U.S. Senate

“Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg head to the U.S. Senate” sounds like the premise of a wacky comedy, but it’s a thing that actually happened back in 1990. 

Williams and Goldberg testified before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee (chaired by Ted Kennedy) in an effort to voice their support for the “Homelessness Prevention and Community Revitalization Act” of 1990, which “called for more affordable housing, among other measures.”

At the time, the comedy superstars were some of the best-known advocates for the unhoused community, thanks mostly to Comic Relief, the series of televised charity shows, which originated in the U.K., and was adapted by comedy writer (and former Andy Kaufman co-conspirator) Bob Zmuda for American audiences.

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