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Isn't It Ironic, Dontcha Think? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and jere Bears here too, And this is Stuff
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: you should Know, the irony edition. It's a little on
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: the nose, isn't it?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I think?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: So? Sorry, let me try again. The isn't it ironic?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Don't you think? Addition?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean if you are our age or above,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: maybe a few below, or.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: A weird younger person.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you might have made fun of Alanis Morissett for
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: that whole thing, because I remember at the time, like
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: people dissing on that song because they were like, basically,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: none of what she mentions is ironic.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: No rain on your wedding day. I mean, yes, it's
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: not expected, but it can be. You know, it's a
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: pretty it's very possible. It's just bad luck in that situation.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: That's one good example.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what else a free ride when.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: You're already there? No, not really no. Basically, nothing that
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: she said was technically ironic, but the fact that Atlantis
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Morris set Canada's greatest hero felt okay with basically saying
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: this is all irony and ironic, so much so that
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna name my song ironic. Yeah, that just kind
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: of goes to show like how wide open everyone's interpretation
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of what irony is is.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's kind of notoriously hard to define.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Olivia helped us with this, and she, you know, the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: other sort of cultural example she gave initially was Reality Bites,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And in that movie, it's like it's not a plot point,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: but I mean it's sort of not a plot point,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: but at some point when on a rider, you know,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: is asked to define irony and she really can't. And
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: then Ethan Hawk, who you know at the time was
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: supposed to be like this super cool guy, but you
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: know that movie, the way that movie has age, like
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you look back and you're like, he was kind of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a big jerk in that movie.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw something about that that Ben Stiller was
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: actually the nice guy, but he was, you know, part
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: of the establishment.
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  Speaker 1: Where Ethan Hawk was not totally.
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  Speaker 2: Nice, but he was like the cool dude, but he
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: was like that that's a guy that she wanted, right.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the irony of the movie. But yeah, Ethan Hawk,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: he kind of makes her feel dumb by like defining
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  Speaker 1: irony really plainly it's when the actual meeting is the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: complete opposite from the literal meeting, which is, you know,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: at the time it seemed like, oh, how clever, but
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: it's really not just to read some explicit definition of
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: one type of irony to prove you're smart. Is they
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: missed the mark in retrospect?
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Sure, and even still like he's talking about such a
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: narrow definition of irony that he might as well just
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: kept his darn mouth shut.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but that's kind of like you said, the
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: whole point of this is a really hard thing to define.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I think Lyvia did a great job with a tough topic,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I think helps.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to jump in. I was silent
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: because I didn't agree, but I want to say Lyvia
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: did a great job with this. I think this was
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: a bit of a a vision quest maybe for her.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's the right term, but it
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: was very difficult assignment.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've been throwing out a lot of these very
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: esoteric topics lately.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why. I guess I don't know why.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I know you think it's because I just turned fifty
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: but I don't think that's it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to say.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: That, Okay, Well, at any rate, Yeah, this is something
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: that I've wanted to do for a while, and some
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: people have written in and asked for it. But yeah,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons I wanted to tackle
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: is because I don't no exactly yeah what it is,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: but also in the like myriad ways that it's played
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: like a really big role in shaping society. In fact,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: there's this whole kind of schism between the ironic and
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  Speaker 2: people who resent the ironic. Yeah, as we'll see, that
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  Speaker 2: dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, chuck,
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  Speaker 2: because irony is nothing new like this. The nineties gen
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  Speaker 2: X slackers didn't invent.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It, No, not at all. The term itself comes from
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  Speaker 1: a character actually not really a thing yet in classical
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Greek I guess drama. The character was E I R
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  Speaker 1: N with a little rooftop over.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: The little puff of smoke coming out the chimney.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, ieron, I guess or iron.
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  Speaker 2: I'm going with iron.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but
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  Speaker 1: that's German, not about Greek. But yeah, irony, let's go
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  Speaker 1: with iron, Okay, but that means one who disassembles. And
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  Speaker 1: that was like, like I said, that was a character,
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of Greek drama and comedy and comedy
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: writers would insert that character to accomplish like a dramatic
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  Speaker 1: or comedic goal. And one of the ways that they
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  Speaker 1: would do this, they would do it in a lot
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of ways, but one of the ways was as sort
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of a sort of like a detective who would play
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: dumb in order to sort of sniff sniff someone off
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the case and reveal them as.
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  Speaker 2: A fool, right, or a fraud or somebody who knows
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  Speaker 2: much less than they they like to think that they do. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and it's in a way, it's you're setting them up
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  Speaker 2: to make a fool of themselves. You call it like
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: paying out the rope that somebody's hanging themselves with. Entire
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: is what they did. And I guess Plato used to
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  Speaker 2: love this stuff. He would take off his robe and
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: like twirl it over his head. Yeah, he would get
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: so excited about using Socrates as an iron. And so
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Socrates is basically like he would be really like smarmy,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: overly flattering, essentially basically saying please you know so much,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: please teach me, and then he would eventually assemble them
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: in their entire identity.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In Latin, that iron word became erronia I r
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: O n I A. And there was a Roman orator
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: in the first century name Quintilian who said, it's basically
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: saying something contrary to what you mean, which is what
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  Speaker 1: Ethan Hawk would kind of intimate many years later, and
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  Speaker 1: the Europeans in the Middle Ages they were like, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's that Quintilian definition is the one that we're going
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to use as like a like an allegory on a contradiction.
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  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, And it was basically a devisive speech. It
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  Speaker 2: wasn't like like a whole book could be ironic or
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: a whole TV show could be ironic, in part because
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: there weren't TV shows back then, but you get the point.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: It's like a one liner.
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  Speaker 2: It was, yeah, exactly, that's what irony was. And it
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  Speaker 2: was no broader than that. It was a very narrow
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  Speaker 2: definition for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and they the Renaissance people were like, oh, okay, we
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: really like this stuff. They I guess got back into
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Socratic irony, which was using people playing dumb essentially to
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: show how actually dumb someone else was. But they also
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: identified the irony of fate, which is far and away
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  Speaker 2: the greatest type of irony. It's also called situational irony today,
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  Speaker 2: and that's the one where instead of somebody making a
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  Speaker 2: one liner or Socrates playing dumb, this is like the
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  Speaker 2: universe does this to you, or life does this to you.
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  Speaker 2: Just something happens that no one had any control over,
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  Speaker 2: but it's just indisputably ironic. And that's to me, that's
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  Speaker 2: the money irony.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too, because it's a recognition of
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  Speaker 1: a thing that happened that wasn't like set up or
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  Speaker 1: contrived or written to be clever or something like that.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm with you totally.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that that's a big distinction, is we'll
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  Speaker 2: see like being clever and being the hapless subject of irony.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's a big distinction.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The German Romantics really got into it. Again, they,
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  Speaker 1: like most people, had a lot of trouble defining it,
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  Speaker 1: but they were very into Like they were into it
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  Speaker 1: in a sense of like, hey, this is how we
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  Speaker 1: can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the way that they did it. So I
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: was looking into this because I didn't it took me.
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, what are they talking about? Essentially, the Romantics
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  Speaker 2: were the first postmodern people. They were the first to
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  Speaker 2: basically say, hey, you know, life, have you ever stopped
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  Speaker 2: and thought about life? Like? Are there other ways life
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  Speaker 2: could go? What are other things you can do with
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  Speaker 2: your life? And they were essentially like the first to
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  Speaker 2: challenge conventional wisdom in the West as a group, and
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  Speaker 2: they essentially became they prized irony because to them that
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  Speaker 2: was a way of like thinking about things, of like
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  Speaker 2: turning things over in your mind. So that's what the
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  Speaker 2: German Romantics were into. And there were opponents to that
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  Speaker 2: who are like, yeah, no, this is you're going down
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  Speaker 2: a really bad path here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. One guy in particular, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, he
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  Speaker 1: was a German philosopher but not a Romantic. He was like,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I don't like any of that stuff. And I think
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  Speaker 1: it seems like he kind of saw it as like
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  Speaker 1: a sort of a smart alecky way to go through life,
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  Speaker 1: like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not
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  Speaker 1: committing to anything, kind of like the like hipster irony
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  Speaker 1: now maybe.
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  Speaker 2: Right exactly, Yeah, kind of like you know, coming up
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  Speaker 2: on something that, oh, you love your life of milk
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  Speaker 2: and cows. Huh, I guess that's all there is to life.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So that was Hegel Kurkerguard, who was the Christian ethicist.
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  Speaker 2: He really hated irony as well. He called it infinite
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: absolute negativity. And so in the way that Hegel like
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: identified hipster irony as being just annoying and kind of
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: looking down on people, Kirkerguard kind of took that and
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: multiplied it by all the people doing this and found
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  Speaker 2: like you could actually as a society lose your way
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  Speaker 2: and like lose meaning to life if you examine stuff
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  Speaker 2: too much rather than just living it. And so he
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: essentially predicted the postmodern age which we're in right now,
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  Speaker 2: that loss of meaning that happened because people started thinking
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: about the possibilities that are out there not rather than
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: just actuality.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. As far as like you know, as
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: time marched on in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: became a big thing in like the literary world. There
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: was a essay in eighteen thirty three from a classical
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: scholar an English scholar name Connop Thirwall who he was
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: into the irony of faith, meaning, like you said, that's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: what we call situational irony now. But he was doing
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: that through the lens of like you know, works of
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: literature basically, and that's where we get dramatic irony basically
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: was from him, which is the idea that the audience
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: knows something that the characters don't, and when that plays out,
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  Speaker 1: that's a dramatic irony.
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  Speaker 2: Right, and he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex.
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  Speaker 1: Lots of irony there.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: There really is. There's a lot, So there's some in that.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: So King LEAs and Queen Jacosta get get rid of
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: their baby because it's been predicted that their baby's going
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: to grow up and kill his father, so they're like, well,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: let's get this baby away from us. By doing so,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: their kid grew up without knowing who his father and
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: mother were, So he actually grows up to slay King
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Leis without realizing that this is his father. So it
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: happened anyway. They maybe if they had brought him up
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: That was a pretty big ironic twist in that whole play.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if Alanis Morsat had a sung lines
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  Speaker 1: like that, it's like Oedipis, that's right, killing his dad.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: And then there's more irony heaped up on top of that,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: which is later on. Of course, he didn't know that
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: he had killed Leis, so he seeks vengeance against his
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the king's murderer, who is himself.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Right, And then there's also a bit of dramatic irony.
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  Speaker 2: The audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: his own eyes out. Yeah yeah, And at one point
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: he mocks a blind man for being blind, which is
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: just cruel. No matter when you you're speaking.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the audience is like, oh, yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean like there's a lot of irony,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: and here's this is the thing. So what was the
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: guy's name? Again? I know it's made up, but.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Come up with Thurwall?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: No way, that's real, weird. So mister Thurtwall basically shows like,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: here's irony. Here's irony too, here's irony. But if if
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: you pin him or anybody else down and saying great,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: can you make a universal definition for irony, I'm sure
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: he would have thrown his hands up, and that's just it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: I think Winona Ryder even says in reality bites like
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: I can tell when I see it, I know it,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: but you can't really come up with a good universal
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: definition for it. But you can go back and be like,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: that's ironic. That's ironic. It's almost like humans have a
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: innate like sense of irony.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is funny now that I think about it,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: that is so iron that Ben Stiller was the good
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: guy m because he was genuinely like a really nice
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: guy and treated her very well in that movie. But yeah,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: he was part of he was part of the establishment,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: so he wasn't cool and Ethan Hawk, Like, what's he doing?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Not Ethan Hawk? But what would that character be doing?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Now, I don't know. I mean, I hesitate to say,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: but I'm sure you know he would have a.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Podcast still, be right.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: He would be very much in love with his own
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: you know, mind or intellect.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, so he'd have a podcast.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he nailed it.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Actually, All right, let's take a break and we'll come
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: back and talk about irony a little more. All right,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: So we've defined, or at least talked about a couple
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of different types of irony. But here comes some more
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: everybody verbal irony. This gets a little dicey because verbal
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: irony and sarcasm are like sarcasm is is sort of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a way of being ironic, but to me, it's different
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: because there's a smarminess to it. Yeah, they're lumped together
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: a lot like sarcasm and irony. So if you know,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: if you were to say, like if it's really raining
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: outside and the weather is really bad and you're like nice
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: weather like that, that is irony. It's got a little
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: smart but not as smarmy as like, oh, that speech
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: you gave was so great, you know, to a bad
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: speech like that is super sarcastic and smarmy.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you said. One of us said that
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: tear flesh. Yeah, you know, and that really kind of
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: goes to show you like they both do something similar,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: but one's way more vicious than the other. Yeah, sarcasm
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: is pretty lame. It's just a I think it's meant
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: to be a phase in the development of a person's
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: sense of humor. It's supposed to come early on and
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: be abandoned eventually, but some people don't abandon it and
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: they love Deadpool. Yeah.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: I try not to be sark Oh, I take that back.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I'm I don't try to not be sarcastic. I think
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I think it just sort of fades away. I'm sure
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I am sarcastic sometimes, but I don't know. It's not
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the greatest look once you're a certain age.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I can't think of any of you being sarcastic.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Oh you can't.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: I can.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think unless you're
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: just trying to get it, like get a laugh or something.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I mean that's definitely My humor is fairly ironic.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: But I like to think it's not at the expensive
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: not anybody. And usually it's if it's at the expense
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: of somebody, it's at the expense of myself.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, sepricat.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another way to put it. Sure, that's how
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Ethan Hawke's character would put it. Uh.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Here's a word that I never knew, but I knew
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: it was a thing. I've never heard of Latote's before
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: me either. But that's a word that is like a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: verbal like understated verbal irony, like if someone asks you
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: if if you if you like something or not that
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: you really really hate, and you say, like, not the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: biggest fan of that. That is called a.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Litot's I'm so glad you're the one who said that,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: because that's not how I was going to pronounce that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: We can say lightotes. Well, I looked it up because
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I get I'm frankly tired of being made fun of
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you Mal You're a professional, I'm getting there.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I'm just well, I'm just a lump. So yeah, that's
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: it has to negate what the like, I don't know
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: any better way to put it, Like, yeah, I'm not
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: a big fan, meaning you really don't like something, so
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: it's an understatement, but at the same time you're negating
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: the fan part. I don't fully understand it in the
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: in the sense that like, if you think about something
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: too hard like economics, right, yeah, yeah, you can suddenly
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: like lose it and not understand it anymore. That's that's
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: kind of how that is with me.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just breeze right on by the light of tease exactly.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Let's talk situational irony, because this is the whole reason
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: for this episode. Man, Like, there's nothing more delightful than
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: me than a really good ironic twist.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like this can be played in well,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I mean it happens in real life, of course, but
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: can be played in in you know, literature and movies
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and TV and stuff like that as like a as
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: like a come up. And sometimes like sometimes it can
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: be very sad when situational irony strikes, but sometimes it's
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: like somebody gets what they deserved in a yeah, ironic
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: way for.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Sure, and then sometimes it's just like an impressive other times,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: most of the time, if not always, there's a black
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: comedic sense to it, or if you look at it
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: deeply enough, there is something funny about it, even if
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: it is sad, even if it is tragic, if it's
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: still ironic, there's something there's something more to it. There's
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: something more valuable to it than just what it is
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: on its surface. Like a lifeguard drowning, right, Like that's sad,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: of course, Like if you put yourself in the if
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: you know the person's name, you know the situation of
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: their death, Like they were trying to save someone and
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: they drowned. They had like this life ahead of them.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: They left a child behind, you know, as a survivor.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Once you know that stuff, it's it's not funny at all.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: But if you just step back and you say a
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: lifeguard drowned, there's something just in that irony. There's something
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: blackly comedic about it. There's something funny about it. I
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: think everything has something funny about it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I laughed instinctively the second you set
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a lifeguard dround because I didn't know it was coming. Yeah,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: it just made me laugh. There's nothing funny about anyone dying.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: But since that didn't really happen and you just said it,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: it was funny.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: But even still, it's not like you're celebrating that person's
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: death by laughing, or you don't care that that person died.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: This is something different. It's separate. It's larger than that
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: person's individual death in that sense, but it's tied directly
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: to it.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw a comedian the other day. I can't
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: remember her name, Oh what was it? But she was
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: talking about like her worst death would be to be
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: like the only person that died in a plane crash. Yeah,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't figure out where she was going. I
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: was like, I sort of get it, but I don't
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: fully get it. And then she was explaining, like when
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: you see the news reports, you know, there was a
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: plane crash and everyone's horrified, and then it's like one
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: person dies and everyone's like, oh, well that wasn't that bad.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: You're just the one person.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Oh man, you need to introduce me to that friend.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: It's not a friend. It was a comedian.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, we'll make friends with them, and they introduce me.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: All right. Maybe someone will write in it, or maybe
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: she will. You never know.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: There's there's some others too, like a fire station burning
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: down so funny, especially especially if no one got hurt. Well,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying. There's like, you might not think
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: it's funny. I don't even think that's particularly funny. It's ironic,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: But I get tee there's somebody out there who finds
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: that funny. That's the thing. It's not always funny to
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: everyone all the time, that it could just be one person.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: My theory is that everything is funny at least to
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: one person. No.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I totally agree. And I think what's getting me here
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: with the the this kind of irony being played when
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I think there's a sometimes karma attached to it.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: You know what? I mean, yeah, like that lifeguard hit
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: a drifter with his car and drove off.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Well, which kind of plays into the next one, which
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: is cosmic irony, which is a little bit like karmic irony,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and that it's situational irony where you know, the gods
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: or whatever fate caused something.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's essentially the same thing if you ask me
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: lifeguard drowning or something. George Carlin, did you see his example? No? Oh,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I sent it to you. George Carlin, he basically did
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: a bit where he explains the difference between what's ironic
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: and what's actually not ironic. May I Yeah, you sent
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: this to me, Yeah, I did. He basically said this.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: He said that if you are a let's say there's
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: a diabetic and he's on his way to buying insulin
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: and he gets hit by a delivery truck. If yeah, see,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: if the delivery truck was carrying sugar, that would be
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: like poetic and pretty funny, but just bad luck really,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: according to George Carlin, Sure, he said, if the delivery
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: truck was carrying insulin, now you've got irony. I think
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: both of those things are ironic, whether it's sugar or insulin. Yeah,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: but that was his distinction.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: That's good. Well, we've already talked about dramatic irony. That's
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the next one on the list. And that's again when
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the audience knows something that the characters don't. And Hitchcock
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: had a very famous example of like Lessie has seen
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: with a couple of characters and a restaurant diner just
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: talking about whatever, and a bomb goes off under the table.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: If the audience doesn't know that's happening, it's some great
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: tragedy or a shock. If you do know, I mean,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: it still might be a tragedy, but it's not a shock.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: If the audience knows that that bomb is under there,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, that adds this real dramatic
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: tension to what's happening.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or like the audience knowing Oedipus will tear his
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: eyes out, just kind of laughing at him, laughing at
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: the blind guy, right.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Right, like you got to come in your way, buddy.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: There's another one. I didn't ever hear this term for it.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: I've always heard it as breaking the fourth wall, but
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: that is actually called romantic irony, and it's where the author,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the narrator, I guess probably even the character basically breaks
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: out of the realm of fiction and seart addressing you,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the reader or the viewer. That's romantic irony. And the
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: reason I think it's called romantic based on the German
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Romantics and their love of irony, that in its purest form,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: the author is basically stopping the narrative to talk to you,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: the reader and say, look at how this guy's you know,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: ideals and hopes and dreams are so far off from reality. Right,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I take it as like them spelling things out for
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: the reader.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I like it, you know, for the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: sake of comedy. Like it made me think of like
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Albert Brooks and broadcast news. I don't remember that, you
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: don't remember seeing that, or you never saw that, or
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: you don't remember that part?
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Is it the one where I'm mad as heck and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to take it anymore?
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: No, that's network broadcasting. I've never seen It was a
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: James L. Brooks romantic comedy. One of the great movies,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: by the way, I got to see it, especially if
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: you like Albert Brooks.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I do. I love him. I think he's an international treasurer.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: That's right. He was obviously born Albert Einstein. Fun fact,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: what that was his name? The two fun facts about
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Albert books as he was Albert Einstein and changed his name,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and the other is that he was brothers with the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: super Dave Osborne. Wow, and The Outsiders was written by
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a teenage girl.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It's the fact of every podcast now. Yeah, wow, thank
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: you for that, chuck. Yeah, see broadcast news. It's great,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: like look at great movies. Have you ever seen Network?
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I liked it too.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't say I liked it, No, I loved it.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Okay. So getting back to irony. You know one thing also,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: I'm proud of us for not being like, was that ironic?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Were you being ironic? We're not doing that, and that
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: would have been really annoying, So kudos to us. If
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: you ask me, maybe we'll edit that out.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I was just thinking in my head how funny it
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: would be if I was just about to say that,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and like the words were sitting in my mouth. That's
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: why I was being silent. No, I just was saying
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that would be funny. Back to iron specifically though, right, yeah.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: The socratic irony is what it's also called or philosophical
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: irony where you know again you're playing. I think dumb
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: is usually the way that it's most often described or presented,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: but it can be other things, like I think Randall P.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: McMurphy Jack Nicholson's character from One Flu Over the Cuckoo's
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Nest is considered philosophically ironic by being a sane person
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: in a mental hospital, and in doing so he shows
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: like just the unjustness of life in that mental hospital
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: seems a little I don't know if off is the
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: right term, but like here's where it's like, Okay, maybe
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: we need to come up with other terms for stuff
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: like this and stop using ironic like that.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where like when we get into talking about
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: satire and parody, like they always use irony. So I
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: guess it's just sort of like a subgenre or maybe
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: you know, not a subgenre but its own thing where
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: irony comes into play.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Sure, let's talk satire. I have a pet theory that
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: satire is actually super harmful for society.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I love satire.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: It can take I like parody, but satire I feel
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: like it can take the actual like anger and discontent
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: and just release it as it acts as a pressure
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: valve for society. Oh okay, we'll just laugh all this
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: off and then the status quo can continue on. And
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I think it actually is harmful to society. The better
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: and more widespread the satire is, the less change will
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: actually come along. Like society has to go through really
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: rough periods where it's really upset to affect real change,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and satire kind of prevents that from happening.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I guess that's a kind of satire because there's so
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: much comedic satire that you love in your life, you know.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'll go with like spinal tap.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, I mean The Simpsons is a satire, is it? Yeah?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: You think? I don't know. Are you saying is it ironic?
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Do I think?
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: No? No? No, I mean we agreed to not do that.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, really it is. I think it's
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: a satire, isn't it. I don't know, man, I think
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I like American life and family and stuff.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I can definitely see that, Like, I
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: definitely see where you're coming from. I don't know. I
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: always kind of associate satire almost exclusively with like having
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: a really important message, which is why to me, it
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: takes that important message and kind of uses it to
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: deflate any true feelings about it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, okay, like social satire. Yeah yeah, all right, yeah,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Like I.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Get where it's coming from too, where it's saying like, hey,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: we need to let more people know about this. A
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: good example is, oh, who was it? I think as
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer or essayist. I think he came
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: up with a modest proposal in seventeen twenty nine, and
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: he'd written a bunch of essays about how the Irish
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: were starving and how they needed help, and he just
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: got crickets in return. And then he wrote a modest
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: proposal and in it he basically talks about how the
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Irish just need to eat their babies and that will
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: solve the hunger issue and a lot of other problems too.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Then he got, you know, all sorts of attention for that. Yeah, yeah,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: of course he got attention for it. It's nuts in
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: some ways, it's funny, in some ways, it's just abhorrent,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: and it's very attention getting. But how much change did
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: it actually affect? I don't know enough about eighteenth century
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Irish history to tell you how much change it affected,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: but based on my understanding of satire over the years,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: especially socio political satire. It probably didn't actually have that
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: much effect aside from making more people aware of it.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: But does that actually make things change? That's my question.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. I think the proponents of
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: satire would say just getting the conversation around it going
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: is the point, and the change comes because of those conversations.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: But I'm not taking a stance either way. I see
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: your point fair enough.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: And at the same time, one last thing. My position
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: isn't that we all just need to put up with
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: the status quo. Oh sure, that's what I'm saying. Like
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: satire inadvertently can make the status quote continue on when
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: it shouldn't.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're talking about getting some bricks and baseball bats. Yeah,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and really doing something that's.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Right, taking it to the streets. As Michael McDonald.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Said, Uh, camp is another sort of irony, and that's
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: a little more of the.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Hate.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I love camp, so I hate to lump
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it in with the hipster irony. But that's kind of
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: what they're talking about, like an ironic appreciation of something.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: If something is campy, that's kind of what you're talking about.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And you know, in a lot of cases, right, yeah.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: John, Speaking of the Simpsons, John Waters was on The
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Simpsons once.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember that one he gave.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: He gave a throwaway a definition of camp. He said,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic, and then Homer said,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, like when a clown dies. John Waters goes, well,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: sort of, that's funny.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I think that's a good time for
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: a break, and we'll be right back right after.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: This, okay, Chuck. So I think I said, like, I
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: feel like humans have like a hard wire intuition for
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: noticing irony, for being able to pick it out, and
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: it's been used as a device for a really long time,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: so much so that it's been found that verbal irony
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: saying the opposite of what you mean is basically universal,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: which is great. And kindergarten children have been shown to
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: be able to pick up verbal irony, like at that
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: young of an age. What's kindergarten age these days? Like five?
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like five or six? I think, not bad? Yeah, agreed.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I love the example Livia uses to She's like every
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: society comes up with ideas like nicknaming a big guy tiny, right,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: But I love that I mean that is sort of
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: a universal thing. Like I love the idea that in
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: any culture if you had like a very large person
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and their nickname was whatever that word is in their
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: language for like small or tiny, and like everyone gets
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: that joke.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. So, yeah, it is universal, and it's been
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: used as a device long before anybody identified it what
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: irony was. Like. Remember, Oedipis Rex was written long before Irony,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: even though I was dripping with irony. So that in
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: and of itself kind of shows that it's definitely been
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: a part of human communication and I guess human understanding
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: of the world for from time imorial.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. She gives a lot of examples. One
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: of my favorites here is and I think we've talked
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: about the huang Xi before the Taoist text, and this
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: was in like fourth century bcees it was a very
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: long time ago, and there was a story about a
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: tree that was so twisted and gnarl that it couldn't
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: be used for lumber, so it was useless, and because
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: it was so useless, it lived a very long life
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: as a tree, which is like that was the tree's
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: purpose in use, you know, right there.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I think that disproves my everything is funny in some way.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Theory though, well, that that's the jhuang Zi from Force
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Entry BC, not a noted comedic dome.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: There's trickster stories also, are always dripping with irony, and
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: they are super duper old Tom so well, way older
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: than Tom Sawyer. But the one that always comes to
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: mind for me is Tom Sawyer using reverse psychology to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: trick his friends into taking over painting the fence for
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: him because he talks about how much fun it is
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: and he doesn't want to share. So now all of
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: a sudden, they all want to paint, so he just
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: gets to sit back and kind of laugh at him.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: That is really old archetype. I think Joseph Campbell even
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: talked about that. Yeah, whole Mythology series, which I've not seen,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: have you uh nold to watch it together?
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: He knew a thing or two about archetypes.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: He was he was an archetype type archetypist. Don Quixote,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: you knows, of course, is maybe the first modern There's
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of irony in that. The biggest one is
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: just that Quixodi himself is a very elevated sort of
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: ideas about his adventures and the reader knows the whole
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: time like this guy, it's got that kind of thing.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So that's that's also sort of dripping with irony.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my favorite ironist of all time is Oh Henry.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: He was, yeah, well known as the master of like
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: the ironic twist, like the Gift of the Magi and
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: getting better than that, you know, Yeah, I mean that's
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: just the one that everyone's read, Like every one of
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: his stories has an ironic twist to it, and you
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: know it's coming, and he's so good at it, you
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: very rarely can see what's coming, but it's never you know,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: quickly assembled at the end out of whatever parts are
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: at hand, like it's it's the point of the story
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: all the way along. He was just a master of it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: And then another one that always stands out to me
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: is the Monkey's paw.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you do?
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: You you remember that one?
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I remember a little bit about it. I remember being scary,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: like the monkeys Paul moves in your hand or something. Yeah.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, granted wishes, but those wishes always came with an
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: ironic consequence, like right, the father wishes for one hundred
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: pounds sterling and he gets it, but it's as compensation
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: because his son died at a factory. So like all
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: of the wishes, the way that they're granted are in
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: ironic twists that don't pan out very well for the
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: family involved.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes that's funny, but a lot of times
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: it's tragic. Like I don't know if the gift of
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the Magi was supposed to be funny. Yeah, good point,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: you know, but yeah, lots of ironic to us. I
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: guess he was the m Knight Shammelin of the literary world.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: There is something to that though, if you're known for
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: something like when you go see the m Night movies,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: you're just waiting for it, you know.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's like, oh, Henry, Like you don't really
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: see it coming.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes some are better than others.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I will watch every single one of that guy's movies.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: I love them.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're entertaining. Did you finally see the
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: one at the concert the pop star? I did?
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: That was his daughter who directed it? Right? No?
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: No, no, he directed it, so he did. She was
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: in it.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Oh she was the pop star?
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah it was. It was entertaining and it went
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: just totally nuts. At the end, didn't it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I thought it was a very fun
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: bad movie.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say all of his movies are bad movies,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: but he has made some bad movies. But yes, agreed,
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: they're all fun.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't see the last one, old or whatever.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: It's good. Yeah, I mean it's an m Night Shawmala movie.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: It's a little like a bottle episode. It's a little okay,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: it all takes place on this beach, almost entirely takes
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: place on this beach, and that gets a little old
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: as it were, but you know, it still moves along
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: pretty quickly.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I remember early in his career when it
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: was like he was the with Sky and Seeing and
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: there's some spoilers coming everyone if you haven't seen these
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: very old movies. But when was it The Village? Yeah,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: that was what it was called. Like I remember seeing
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that movie and the whole time, I'm like, this is
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: so like gonna be revealed that it's modern times. Like
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I was just waiting on it.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: I had I was totally maybe that's it. Maybe I'm
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: just like super dupable because I had no idea that
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: was coming. I knew that the twist to the sixth
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: sense because some jackass told me before I went into it,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: which is mean, and then all the other ones, I'm
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: like what every time, which I need to.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Did he say, hey, have you seen that new movie
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: where Bruce Willis is dead? The whole time? Yeah? I
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: don't think that makes you dupable. I think that means
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: you're like into it and like, can park park that stuff?
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: That's a good trait, Okay, as long as it's not
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: on the dance floor, right, no parking on the dance floor?
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: What else, chuck, Well, I mean we can keep going
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: through literary examples. Well, I mean we should probably definitely
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: mention catch twenty two because we'll get emails if we don't,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: because that's sort of well, it's a satire, of course,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: so you hate it, but it's built on it's built
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: on irony. The whole title is an ironic paradox in
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: that the catch twenty two of the film is that
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: anyone who wants to fly in one like a combat
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: mission as a pilot in war should be removed for
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: mental health reasons. But if you try to get out
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: of it by saying like I'm a Section eight or whatever,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: then you're obviously sane for doing so.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: So you have to fly. That's where you should be flying. Yeah,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: it's a great, great ironic paradox of all time. And
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: so I okay, I figured out why I dislike satire,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: because it hits you over the head with like this
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: is a problem, this is wrong. Of course it is,
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: like I think, that's what I don't like about it.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: I already know that there's a problem with that. I
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: already know there's something wrong with it. I guess I've
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: never seen satire that I didn't already agree was a problem.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: So therefore, there was never any satire that really changed
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: my mind about something.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I get you. I get what you're saying.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Sometimes I just have to reflect on something for
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes and then I come to the
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: basis of it.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Then you got it.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Uh, something that I missed that I don't know if
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: you noticed too. But in Fight Club, apparently it was
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: meant to be ironic and that like, these guys were
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: rebelling against society and like a conformist society, and then
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: in doing so they ended up creating their own fascist
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: society of their own club.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, super conformist.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Sure, So did you recognize that that was basically the
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: theme of the movie.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I don't, you know. When I saw that movie, I
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: was in my twenties, and so I think I was
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: just more like I think I just were like like
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: the movie at chase value and it was like, oh
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: my god, here we go with spoilers again. It's like,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: oh my god, there was no Tyler Durdon the whole time.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Like it's just kind of like I thought it was
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: a cool twist. Yeah, but yeah, like being older now
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and looking back, it's like, yeah, these dopes wanted to
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: you know, they're doing the very thing that they said
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: they weren't. You know, we're fighting against right.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was totally lost on me too. I was
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: too busy going like maybe I should wear like floor
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: length for coats and underneath it's a good look. So
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: I guess we can kind of get to that last point,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: like whether or not irony is not a good thing.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: And I think overall, if I'm tossing out my two cents,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: which I've basically tossed out fifty dollars already so far,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I think cosmic in situational irony is great and there's
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: nothing we can do about it but appreciate it. And
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: then on the other hand, Billy, I've heard human created irony.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: If done well, then it's great, But most of the
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: time it's not done very well.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean. David Foster Wallace, you know, the great
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: writer and essayist, wrote that irony and ridicule were agents
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of a great despair and stasis in US culture and
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: that like in the fifties and sixties, irony had like
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: great use in breaking down the hypocrisy of the establishment,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: but since then it has sort of I think he
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: felt like it was overused in the literary world and
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: that sincerity had kind of been abandoned.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that even if you were being sincere, the
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: reader wouldn't recognize it because they were so primed to
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: write things as ironic. Right, So he had a really
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: good point, like JEDIXX really hammered the ironic thing home,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: and part of it was elevating yourself above other people
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: who just kind of accepted things as they were and
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: couldn't see the reality of something right. And there was
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: a backlash to that what was called the Death of irony,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: which lasted about ten years, where people like Dave Eggers
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: came along and were like, no, I'm earnest I really
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: am just gonna share everything, wear my heart on my sleeve,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: and you're gonna suck it all down whether you like
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: it or not. And it came across as smarmy to
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of people. A lot of people consider Dave
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Ager's work is very smarmy, where it's forced earnestness or
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: forced sincerity and it clubs you over the head with it.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: And there's actually a gen z term now for that
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: little period through you know, the early twenty tens where
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: that kind of smarminess was very popular, I guess, especially
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: in literature.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, has that millennial cringe. That's the zinger that is
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: a singer. Yeah, I mean again, back to the generational
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: look at things. I'm a big fan of Beggers, by
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the way, I just want to say that out loud.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I haven't read the most stuff, but I've read a
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: couple of his books and I like them both. I was.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: I liked McSweeney's humor a lot for a.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: While, Yeah, for sure. And he does great work through
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: his charity eight twenty six Valencia and eight twenty six
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: National I did a thing recently for them. I read
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: a I read like a passage from a book that
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: a kid wrote through his charity, and it was cool.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: They did good horrible?
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, was it any good?
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah? It was good.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, good because they don't publish bad kids books.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, But back to millennial cringe. That's what
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: gen Z is about, right, Yeah, And we.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Should kind of wrap it up with gen Z because
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: they have come up with their own version of irony.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: They're pretty preoccupied with it too, but they've taken it
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: to such a degree that it's become absurdism rather than irony.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: Whereas irony is very very well defined. It either is
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: or it isn't ironic, whatever the thing is. Gen Z
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: just mashes all sorts of stuff up and you can't
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: tell whether they're supposed to be ironic or not by
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: the end of it.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's their aim, confuse the olds.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they do a good job of it. There's
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: it's called meta irony, where if you're an outsider looking in,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: especially if you're not in the gen Z age group,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: so you're not tapped into what's going on. We we
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: have a tendency to really kind of read into stuff
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: and try to find the answer to whatever the thing
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: is or understand it. Yeah, and if you do that
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: with like gen z meta ironic stuff or memes or whatever,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: it's that there, there's that. That'd be madness. There be madness.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Madness. I like that better.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like I've been hanging on by my
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: fingernails this whole episode, and I hate those.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Well. Well, I mean this is a tough one. Again.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: It's hard to define irony and it's hard to talk
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: forty five minutes about.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: It, which is why we talked forty eight minutes about
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: good point. You got anything else?
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I have nothing else.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: All right, Well that's it for irony, everybody, and that
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: means it's time for listener.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: May Hey, guys love the podcast, look forward to new episodes.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I wanted to mention a couple of clarifications. The first
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: one from the White Boy Rick episode was the pronunciation
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: of his last name to pronounce worshe as in Hershey,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I don't remember what we said. I don't either, Okay,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: it's worshy. The second was Josh kept saying the phrase
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: East Detroit, White Boy Rick, the Curry Brothers, etc. Were
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: based out of the east side of Detroit at the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: time of their prominence in the drug trade. We mentioned
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: this because there was a city just north of Detroit
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: called East Detroit. They're not the same place. In fact,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the city of East Detroit even voted to change their
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: name to East Point due to confus and negative connotations
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: about the East side of Detroit. Well, keep up the
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: great work. We can heard from a couple of people.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: But that is from Mike in East Point, Michigan.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Nice. Thanks a lot, Mike. We appreciate that. Of course,
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: there was an East Detroit, right, Yeah.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like East Atlanta is an actual neighborhood in Atlanta,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: which is east of Atlanta. But it's still not the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: same as saying the east side of Atlanta.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: No, and I think there's an East Point around Atlanta too, right,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: thinking of Athens.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, there's an East Point. Okay, but I believe
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: East Point is south. Isn't that down near the airport?
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I have blood trickling out of my ears.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: All right, let's just wrap it up, Okay.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Well, who was that from.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: That's from Mike.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: All right, Mike, thank you very much for that email.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: We appreciate it. And if you want to be like
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Mike and send us well an email address, it to
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.