http://www.radiolab.org/2008/feb/25/contagious-laughter/
This audio piece about a boarding school of girls in 1962 Tanzania, where an epidemic of contagious laughter took over. When Producer Ellen Horne travels to Tanzania, she finds that contagious laughter is a teenage girl disease; it has to do with the transitions of female adolescence. She also finds that laughter is a symbol for freedom and independence.
I think this is an unbelievable and creative story topic. I love the overlapping echoes of girls laughing in the background, the way that every time the principal closes the school you hear a boom of doom. I like the eerie music of the doctors getting in their Land Rover and researching the science behind the contagious laughter and the faint, suspenseful music of the walk to the witch doctor. The way the interviews are intermittently sewn in through Horne's voice makes the piece sound like all the more of a captivating tale.
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