If you’ve ever laughed at a joke (or at anything, for that matter), you’ve experienced something puzzling: you were just rewarded with a flood of feel-good neurotransmitters—without any obvious evolutionary reason. Pleasure from satisfying thirst or hunger keeps you alive and your metabolism running. Pleasure from love (very broadly speaking) helps you procreate. But what’s the evolutionary logic behind giving us so much neurological reward for something as laughable—and seemingly impractical—as laughter? My talk will explore several already suggested hypotheses and introduce a new one.