# Isn't It Ironic, Dontcha Think?

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 18 Aug 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/f18f3b06-13e9-436c-87f5-b4a500dc39b6/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Irony is one of those things that you know when you see it, but it’s almost impossible to define. Well, that’s not quite right – there are a ton of definitions for irony but none of them quite capture it fully. Want to know what irony is? So do we! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[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.
[2:21] Speaker 1: Where Ethan Hawk was not totally.
[2:23] 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
[2:34] 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
[4:15] Speaker 2: people who resent the ironic. Yeah, as we'll see, that
[4:18] Speaker 2: dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, chuck,
[4:21] Speaker 2: because irony is nothing new like this. The nineties gen
[4:25] Speaker 2: X slackers didn't invent.
[4:26] Speaker 1: It, No, not at all. The term itself comes from
[4:31] 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
[4:40] 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.
[4:50] Speaker 2: I'm going with iron.
[4:52] Speaker 1: Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but
[4:55] Speaker 1: that's German, not about Greek. But yeah, irony, let's go
[4:58] Speaker 1: with iron, Okay, but that means one who disassembles. And
[5:02] Speaker 1: that was like, like I said, that was a character,
[5:04] 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
[5:12] Speaker 1: or comedic goal. And one of the ways that they
[5:15] 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.
[5:28] Speaker 2: A fool, right, or a fraud or somebody who knows
[5:31] Speaker 2: much less than they they like to think that they do. Yeah,
[5:35] Speaker 2: and it's in a way, it's you're setting them up
[5:38] 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
[5:47] 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
[6:29] Speaker 1: Ethan Hawk would kind of intimate many years later, and
[6:33] Speaker 1: the Europeans in the Middle Ages they were like, yeah,
[6:35] 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.
[6:44] Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, And it was basically a devisive speech. It
[6:47] 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.
[6:58] Speaker 2: It was, yeah, exactly, that's what irony was. And it
[7:01] Speaker 2: was no broader than that. It was a very narrow
[7:04] 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
[7:29] Speaker 2: the greatest type of irony. It's also called situational irony today,
[7:34] Speaker 2: and that's the one where instead of somebody making a
[7:38] Speaker 2: one liner or Socrates playing dumb, this is like the
[7:42] Speaker 2: universe does this to you, or life does this to you.
[7:46] Speaker 2: Just something happens that no one had any control over,
[7:49] Speaker 2: but it's just indisputably ironic. And that's to me, that's
[7:54] Speaker 2: the money irony.
[7:55] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too, because it's a recognition of
[7:58] Speaker 1: a thing that happened that wasn't like set up or
[8:01] Speaker 1: contrived or written to be clever or something like that.
[8:04] Speaker 1: So I'm with you totally.
[8:06] Speaker 2: And I think that that's a big distinction, is we'll
[8:07] Speaker 2: see like being clever and being the hapless subject of irony.
[8:15] Speaker 2: I think that's a big distinction.
[8:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The German Romantics really got into it. Again, they,
[8:22] Speaker 1: like most people, had a lot of trouble defining it,
[8:24] Speaker 1: but they were very into Like they were into it
[8:29] Speaker 1: in a sense of like, hey, this is how we
[8:30] Speaker 1: can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints.
[8:37] 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.
[8:42] Speaker 2: I'm like, what are they talking about? Essentially, the Romantics
[8:45] Speaker 2: were the first postmodern people. They were the first to
[8:49] Speaker 2: basically say, hey, you know, life, have you ever stopped
[8:52] Speaker 2: and thought about life? Like? Are there other ways life
[8:54] Speaker 2: could go? What are other things you can do with
[8:57] Speaker 2: your life? And they were essentially like the first to
[9:00] Speaker 2: challenge conventional wisdom in the West as a group, and
[9:06] Speaker 2: they essentially became they prized irony because to them that
[9:11] Speaker 2: was a way of like thinking about things, of like
[9:13] Speaker 2: turning things over in your mind. So that's what the
[9:16] Speaker 2: German Romantics were into. And there were opponents to that
[9:20] Speaker 2: who are like, yeah, no, this is you're going down
[9:23] Speaker 2: a really bad path here.
[9:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. One guy in particular, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, he
[9:30] 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
[9:36] Speaker 1: it seems like he kind of saw it as like
[9:38] Speaker 1: a sort of a smart alecky way to go through life,
[9:44] Speaker 1: like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not
[9:47] Speaker 1: committing to anything, kind of like the like hipster irony
[9:51] Speaker 1: now maybe.
[9:51] Speaker 2: Right exactly, Yeah, kind of like you know, coming up
[9:55] Speaker 2: on something that, oh, you love your life of milk
[9:57] Speaker 2: and cows. Huh, I guess that's all there is to life.
[10:00] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[10:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, So that was Hegel Kurkerguard, who was the Christian ethicist.
[10:07] 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
[10:28] Speaker 2: like you could actually as a society lose your way
[10:32] Speaker 2: and like lose meaning to life if you examine stuff
[10:36] 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,
[10:43] 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,
[11:35] Speaker 1: that's a dramatic irony.
[11:37] Speaker 2: Right, and he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex.
[11:42] 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
[12:24] 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.
[12:49] 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.
[13:04] 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.

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