Cut the Levity!

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Armstrong & Getty On Demand
Episode: "Cut the Levity!"
Date: February 5, 2026
Theme:
This episode centers on the concept of levity—specifically, the fascinating science of babies laughing. With cohost Katie recently pregnant, the group explores why babies laugh, the evolutionary and developmental significance of laughter in early childhood, and share personal anecdotes about humor, music, and parenthood.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Meaning of "Cut the Levity" (00:00–03:14)

• Origin Story: The show begins with a humorous anecdote about the phrase "cut the levity," recalled from one host's stern band teacher.
  • "He started, cut the levity. You hear me? Cut the levity. And there wasn't a one of us that had the idea what the word levity meant." (A, 00:25)
• Band Teachers & Motivation: The hosts discuss why band teachers can be so intense—often highly skilled musicians required to instruct less-than-motivated students.
  • "Being surrounded by people that don't care about what you've dedicated your life to would make you angry." (A, 01:46)
  • "It's for many, many people the best option for making a living at the only thing you really care about and are really good at." (B, 01:38)
• Practicing Instruments: Reflecting on youthful reluctance to practice versus adult appreciation.
  • "I practice a musical instrument every single day...But I hated it in high school. I don't know why." (A, 02:23)
  • "The end goal was being reasonably capable at some piece of music you would never listen to willingly." (B, 02:41)

2. The Science and Importance of Babies Laughing (03:14–10:37)

• Introduction to Topic: The conversation shifts to recent scientific interest in why and how babies laugh, referencing a New York Times guest essay.

  • "The evolutionary brilliance of the baby giggle..." (A, 03:50)
  • "There's hardly any research on this at all...there's been this belief that there's lots of research on humor...but they had nothing on babies." (A, 04:16)

• Babies Use Laughter Intentionally:

  • By six months, infants can laugh intentionally to prolong interaction or signal a desire to join in.
    • "By six months, the lab found infants can intentionally produce a laugh." (A, 05:49)
    • "Six month olds will deploy laughter to prolong a game of peekaboo or to signal a desire to join in. Yeah, all these things ring true to me." (A, 05:58)

• Laughter Indicates Cognitive Development:

  • Babies laughing at incongruities (e.g., wearing a spoon as a mustache) shows they have formed ideas of what things are and recognize when those are playfully violated.
    • "When an infant laughs at a dad wearing a spoon as a mustache, it reveals the baby's knowledge about spoons and mustaches as well as about the person wearing it. Which actually is a fairly sophisticated thought if you think about it." (A, 06:34)

• Therapeutic Value of Baby Laughter:

  • Hosts joke about the positivity of baby-laughing videos:
    • "That ought to be part of therapy for people." (B, 07:20)
    • "Why don't I watch a montage of YouTube videos...of babies laughing at various things every morning or afternoon or whenever." (A, 07:23)

3. Personal Stories About Babies’ Humor (07:34–09:26)

• Repeatability of Humor: Babies love repetitive jokes and never tire of their favorite bits.

  • "That's the great thing about babies. You can lean on your best bits. They don't get tired of them." (B, 07:59)
  • "Rarely get heckled by a baby." (A, 08:09)
  • "Baby's got zero appreciation for irony." (B, 08:11)

• Gravity as Comedy: Babies find repeating simple experiments like dropping things hilarious and educational.

  • "The best form of humor for them is discovering gravity." (A, 08:24)

• Learning Through Play: Dropping objects is a vital part of learning, and parents shouldn't rush to correct it.

  • "They're actually...learning a lot for that. So don't leap right to the no, no, no card." (B, 08:41)

4. Milestones and Measuring Infant Humor (09:26–11:44)

• New Milestones: Unlike walking or talking, laughter isn’t typically tracked as a developmental marker, though it can reflect cognitive progress.
  • "Simply laughing is just as important a milestone. And to understand if they're cognitively complex, brain is coming along at the right speed...they've just never measured." (A, 10:29)
• First Jokes: When a baby tries to make others laugh (like pretending to offer food then eating it themselves), it's an important social and cognitive step.
  • "It's when you cross the milestone into you're doing humorous bits...that's also a fantastic milestone." (A, 11:13)

5. Parenting, Humor, and Bonding (11:44–12:21)

• Advice for Parents: Explore and engage with your child's world—talk, read, and share in wonder.

  • "Talk to your baby, read your baby, take your baby for walks, talk to them." (B, 11:50)

• Classic Baby Humor Trick: Physical comedy ("pratfalls") and peekaboo always succeed.

  • "For me, it was peekaboo and physical comedy. That always got the good laughs." (C, 12:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |---------------|-------------|-----------| | 00:25 | A | "He started, cut the levity. You hear me? Cut the levity. And there wasn't a one of us that had the idea what the word levity meant." | | 01:46 | A | "Being surrounded by people that don't care about what you've dedicated your life to would make you angry." | | 03:50 | A | "The evolutionary brilliance of the baby giggle. It's a guest essay in the New York Times today by somebody who studies this sort of stuff." | | 05:49 | A | "By six months, the lab found infants can intentionally produce a laugh." | | 06:34 | A | "When an infant laughs at a dad wearing a spoon as a mustache, it reveals the baby's knowledge about spoons and mustaches as well as about the person wearing it." | | 07:20 | B | "That ought to be part of therapy for people." | | 07:59 | B | "That's the great thing about babies. You can lean on your best bits. They don't get tired of them." | | 08:24 | A | "The best form of humor for them is discovering gravity." | | 10:29 | A | "Simply laughing is just as important a milestone. And to understand if they're cognitively complex, brain is coming along at the right speed...they've just never measured." | | 11:13 | A | "It's when you cross the milestone into you're doing humorous bits...that's also a fantastic milestone." | | 11:50 | B | "Talk to your baby, read your baby, take your baby for walks, talk to them." |

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:14: The "cut the levity" story and reflections on music education
• 03:14–07:34: The science and curiosity around baby laughter
• 07:34–09:26: Personal anecdotes about babies’ humor, why repetition is funny, and learning through comedy
• 09:26–11:44: Discussion about laughter as a milestone and its absence from pediatric tracking
• 11:44–12:21: Final thoughts, advice for parents, and classic baby jokes

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Takeaways

• Baby laughter is both a delight and a sign of developing cognition.
• Simple acts that induce laughter aren’t just fun—they’re learning opportunities.
• Laughter, often overlooked as a milestone, deserves recognition alongside walking and talking.
• Sharing joy and levity with children builds connection, fosters learning, and can even boost adults’ moods.
• Personal anecdotes from the hosts demonstrate cultural, emotional, and cognitive layers to both humor and parenting.

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Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human Cut the levity. It's one more thing. Armstrong and Getty. One more thing. We are not going to cut the levity. As a matter of fact, we're going to focus on levity, particularly the levity of babies and the science around that, which is kind of interesting. And you know, Katie's pregnant, so that makes it extra exciting. My cut the levity is a line from my band teacher when I was about 15 years old, Gladys, 15 years old in band and somebody made a joke or something, we're supposed to be paying attention and practicing. And my band teacher, as band teachers will, got very, very angry that we weren't taking this music as seriously as he would like. And he started, cut the levity. You hear me? Cut the levity. And there wasn't a one of us that had the idea what the word levity meant. We were just looking at each other and we just looked wide eyed. I mean, he was really angry. And then when he went back to working with the oboes or something like that, we were like, what's levity?

[B]

Well, you learned something that day and.

[A]

It was a teacher and it was pre smartphone, so it wasn't like we could look it up real quick. So we left the room, not having any idea in what way we had angered him, what our offense was.

[C]

He was an angry man, wasn't he?

[A]

Band teachers are, as Joe and I explained, class. Yes, we've explained it and it makes sense. But because you are really, really, really good at something, playing a musical instrument, reasons of bad luck or choice, you're now trying to teach people who don't give a crap about playing the trombone how to play the trombone. It makes you angry.

[B]

It's for many, many people the best option for making a living at the only thing you really care about and are really good at.

[A]

And being surrounded by people that don't care about what you've dedicated your life to would make you angry.

[C]

So this might be a dumb question, but I take it the kids in the band class don't want to be in that. I would think you would take that class because you want to learn the instrument.

[A]

Well, some people, Some people really, really want to learn it. And then there are people who kind of do. But you know, I'm not going to make it my life. I'm going to spend all day on it. And then there are people that do it because their parents wanted them to or whatever.

[B]

Yeah, because it's good for you to learn a musical instrument, but you're not motivated. Yeah. Oh, I hated practicing my trombone.

[A]

How come? I think back on that because, like, boring. I practice. I practice a musical instrument every single day. Very, very rare that I don't practice musical instrument at this point in my life and. But I hate it in high school. I don't know why. I wish I'd have practiced. Yeah.

[B]

I just.

[A]

The end goal, I think it was.

[B]

The end goal was being reasonably capable at some piece of music you would never listen to willingly.

[A]

That's part of it. Yeah. I'm not. Yeah. I'm not at home practicing stuff I have no interest in, obviously. Why would I do that? I remember when I got into high.

[B]

School and, like, I was in the jazz band and. And we had a pretty good program. I. I would practice relentlessly on my bass guitar parts.

[A]

Yeah. I practiced number one.

[B]

They were hard. And number two, the idea of being bad. Oh, I hated the idea of, like, the judges saying, yeah, rhythm section was sloppy.

[A]

That would have killed me. I. I practiced for pep band because we would play pop tunes, popular songs that were on the radio or whatever, and I like practicing those and being good at it and, you know. Yeah. Anyway, the levity thing was not meant to turn into a conversation about high school band. It was meant restart the levity. It was meant to get us into this conversation about the science of babies laughing. Here's a baby laughing now.

[B]

That baby's weirdly demonic.

[A]

Do we have a different baby? Yeah.

[B]

Is that a shocking.

[A]

No. I don't know about you. If you can listen to a baby laughing or watch a baby laughing and not smile, you should be locked up. You're gonna do something awful with your life. The evolutionary brilliance of the baby giggle. It's a guest essay in the New York Times today by somebody who studies this sort of stuff. They got their PhD as a psychologist, and they were having become a mom and, you know, just observing the baby laugh and what makes the baby laugh. And then the baby starts doing things to make you laugh and all that sort of stuff. And then. And then found out that, like, there's hardly any research on this at all. For some reason, there's been this belief that there's lots of research on humor and what. What is humor and why we do it and all this stuff for. For older people and, you know, surprise, incongruity, things that make people laugh. And it's a bonding experience and you're likely not to get punched if you're laughing with somebody. All these different things. But they had nothing on babies and There was been an assumption. This person says do. They started studying it recently. There's been an assumption that it was just kind of like a nothing for babies. Their brains aren't developed enough to have any, like, rhyme or reason behind it, which I was kind of surprised by. I feel like having had a couple of babies and I've been around lots of babies in my life, but having had two myself, I didn't think it was meaningless.

[B]

Did you, being something of an authority on humor? That's a ridiculous notion.

[A]

Have you much experience with babies laughing, Katie? Oh, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Oh, my nieces, I. I had like little things that I knew each one of them. I would. I could get them both.

[B]

Oh, yeah. It's like as close to God as you can get with a baby.

[C]

But if there's, if there's no rhyme or reason behind it, how come specific things make them laugh?

[A]

It's driven by the brain's limbic system. You see, structures crucial for emotion, memory and motivation.

[B]

As I suspected.

[C]

Thank you for clearing that up.

[A]

By six months, the lab found infants can intentionally produce a laugh. I don't remember when it happened, but I could have told you in my own house when they were. When one of them, when either Sam or Henry was intentionally trying to make me make laugh, I wouldn't have needed a lab, I wouldn't needed a white coat. I wouldn't need PhD letters in front of my name. But they've studied this. Six month olds will deploy laughter to prolong a game of peekaboo or to signal a desire to join in. Yeah, all these things ring true to me. But laughter does more than increase pleasurable social contact. Infant laughter, especially when it occurs in response to humor, signals a cognitive achievement. When an infant laughs at a dad wearing a spoon as a mustache, it reveals the baby's knowledge about spoons and mustaches as well as about the person wearing it. Which actually is a fairly sophisticated thought if you think about it.

[B]

Yeah. Huh.

[A]

I've grasped the fact that you have something on your face that's always there and it's never been a spoon before. Right now it's a spoon, which normally we use for eating that is funny.

[B]

Hit you with a spoon instead of.

[A]

A mustache you cut up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This New York Times article has endless clips of babies laughing at different things. And some of the reviews of this article were like, I feel like you just wrote this so you could have lots of videos of babies laughing, which.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

Which might be the truth. The truth. But I'll tell you what. Going through all the different babies laughing on here, I am happier for the experience.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

That.

[B]

That ought to be part of therapy for people.

[A]

Oh, I love that idea. I was just thinking, why don't I watch a montage of YouTube videos? There's probably millions of them of babies laughing at various things every morning or afternoon or whenever.

[C]

My algorithm is very aware that I'm pregnant. And I am getting all of the adorable baby videos that you can imagine.

[B]

Yeah, that's nice.

[C]

Wonderful.

[A]

Yeah, they have a couple examples of videos, like when something really incongruent happens, like mom is putting the balloon in front of her face and moving the balloon in the face is there, or whatever, and the baby just busting a gut, laughing over and over again. And it's so. I know.

[B]

Oh, that's the great thing about babies. You can lean on your best bits. They don't get tired of them.

[A]

They never say. Heard it.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, this old.

[A]

Rarely get heckled by a baby.

[B]

Tell you what, though. Baby's got zero appreciation for irony. I mean, they just. You can explain it to them over and over.

[A]

They just don't get it. Complex wordplay, right?

[B]

Exactly. Wordsmithery. Right.

[A]

I like when they reach the point where the. The best form of humor for them is discovering gravity. Basically sitting in the high chair, and I can take this cup of milk, turn it upside down and pour it on the floor. Isn't that funny? And they just laugh and laugh and laugh.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, I was so glad.

[B]

I read some great books when Kate. When Judy was pregnant with Kate, our first kid, about how what a learning experience that is for kids, and if they throw something off of their little tray or whatever, they're actually. They're learning a lot for that. So don't leap right to the no, no, no card. You know, you can. You can correct the behavior, but it's. And once you get hip to that and you see kids interacting with the world and looking at, you know, flowers and birds and clouds and the rest.

[A]

Of it, it's just.

[B]

It's magical. Which is why it just breaks my heart to see, you know, at least the mom's taking the kid for the walk, but the mom's taking the kid to the walk, and they're just on their cell phone scrolling through it or looking at. Not talking to the kid, not pointing out what they're seeing and stuff like that. Oh, it's terrible.

[C]

So I have a question about what you just said. They learn a lot from throwing things off of the tray and whatnot. I Just saw an ad for this product that is a mat and it has a bunch of little attachments with little bungees so that when they throw the thing off of the tray, it falls. And then the video, it shows the baby like realizing it's still there and picking it back up. Do you think that's a bad thing?

[A]

I doubt any harm would be done, but.

[B]

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

[A]

Another thing, they're figuring out the baby bungee. Getting back to the seriousness of about this again, this woman, this PhD, is kind of confused that we haven't done this in the past. But as every parent knows, there's all kinds of milestones that you keep an eye on and your pediatrician asks you about and stuff like that. Walking, talking, you know, making sounds, just all kinds of different things if you're on schedule or not. But for whatever reason, they've never done that with humor. Although walking and talking tend to steal the show, simply laughing is just as important a milestone. And to understand if they're cognitively complex, brain is coming along at the right speed and they've just never measured. Does your kid laugh at stuff as opposed to have they started walking or.

[C]

Talking or what's a milestone? Now I know a few of my friends, they, they've been keeping very close track to when their baby starts to laugh.

[B]

Oh really?

[A]

That's interesting. I don't remember anybody asking when has he started laughing yet? Oh yeah. Of course, the answer might be maybe you're not funny, maybe you're just really not funny. You are not funny. You think you're funny. You're Trevor Noah. You think Trevor Noah's baby ever laughed? Probably not, no. I doubt it. In the video below, a 14 month old baby offers food to his dad, then suddenly reneges, feeding himself instead to entertain his laughing parents. It's when you cross the milestone into you're doing humorous bits like you're not laughing at the incongruity or something or the surprise somebody else is doing to you, you're doing it to someone else. And that's also a fantastic milestone. The comedian, when they decide they can make you laugh with. You want some of my food? I put it in my mouth.

[B]

Think about what's happening neurologically.

[A]

Right? That's what it says in the article, like how complex that is. It's actually pretty complicated. That's awesome.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If I could get a smile out of my high schooler and be something.

[B]

Talk to your baby, read your baby, take your baby for walks, talk to them.

[A]

Trevor knows baby just sit there stone faced.

[B]

Hey, Mommy, look. He seems like a nice enough fella, but what's the appeal? He's not funny.

[C]

For me, it was peekaboo and physical comedy. That always got the good laughs. Pretending to hurt yourself.

[B]

So, yes, Pratt Falls, that sort of thing.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

Well, I guess that's it.

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.