Isn't It Ironic, Dontcha Think?

Defining an elusive concept

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1:52Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

2:01Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jer Bear's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the irony edition. It's a little on the nose, isn't it? I think so. Oh, sorry. Let me try again. The Isn't It Ironic? Don't You Think? edition. Yeah, well, I mean, if you are our age or above, maybe a few below.

2:33Or a weird younger person. Yeah, you might have made fun of Alanis Morissette for that whole thing. Because I remember at the time, like, people dissing on that song because they were like, basically, none of what she mentions is ironic. No, Rain on Your Wedding Day? I mean, yes, it's not expected, but it can be, you know, it's a pretty, it's very possible. It's just bad luck in that situation. That's one good example. Yeah, what else? A free ride when you're already there? I don't even know what that means.

3:04No, not really. No, basically nothing that she said was technically ironic. But the fact that Alanis Morissette, Canada's greatest hero, felt okay with basically saying, this is all irony and ironic. So much so that I'm going to name my song ironic, that just kind of goes to show, like, how wide open everyone's interpretation of what irony is, is. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of notoriously hard to define.

3:37Livia helped us with this, and she, you know, the other sort of cultural example she gave initially was Reality Bites. And in that movie, it's like, it's not a plot point, but, I mean, it's sort of not a plot point. But at some point, Winona Ryder, you know, is asked to define irony, and she really can't. And then Ethan Hawke, who, you know, at the time was supposed to be, like, this super cool guy. But, you know, that movie, the way that movie has aged, like, you look back and you're like, he was kind of a big jerk in that movie. Yeah, I saw something about that, that Ben Stiller was actually the nice guy, but he was, you know, part of the establishment where Ethan Hawke was not nice, but he was, like, the cool dude.

4:16But he was, like, the guy that she wanted, right? Yeah, that's the irony of the movie. But, yeah, Ethan Hawke, he kind of makes her feel dumb by, like, defining irony really plainly. And it's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning, which is, you know, at the time it seemed like, oh, how clever. But it's really not. Just to read some explicit definition of one type of irony to prove you're smart is, they missed the mark in retrospect. Sure. And even still, like, he's talking about such a narrow definition of irony that he might as well just kept his darn mouth shut.

4:52Yeah, but that's kind of, like you said, the whole point of this is a really hard thing to define. I think Livia did a great job with a tough topic.

5:04And, like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective, I think, helps. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in. I was silent because I didn't agree, but I want to say Livia did a great job with this. I think this was a bit of a vision quest, maybe? For her. I don't know if that's the right term, but it was a very difficult assignment. Yeah. You've been throwing out a lot of these very esoteric topics lately.

5:31Yeah. I don't know why, I guess. I don't know why. I know you think it's because I just turned 50, but I don't think that's it. I wasn't going to say that. Okay. Well, at any rate, yeah, this is something that I've wanted to do for a while. And some people have written in and asked for it, but I think one of the reasons I wanted to tackle it is because I don't know exactly what it is, but also in the myriad ways that it's played like a really big role in shaping society.

6:01In fact, there's this whole kind of schism between the ironic and people who resent the ironic. Yeah. As we'll see, that dates back hundreds of years.

Ancient roots of irony

6:11So let's get into it, Chuck, because irony is nothing new. Like the 90s Gen X slackers didn't invent it. No, not at all. The term itself comes from a character, actually, not really a thing yet. In classical Greek, I guess, drama, the character was E-I-R-O-N with a little rooftop over the O. A little puff of smoke coming out the chimney. Yeah. Eiron, I guess, or I-ron.

6:41I'm going with I-ron. Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but that's German. I don't know about Greek. But yeah, I-ron-y. Let's go with I-ron. Okay. But that means one who disassembles. And that was like, like I said, that was a character in a lot of Greek drama and comedy. And comedy writers would insert that character to accomplish like a dramatic or comedic goal. And one of the ways that they would do this, they would do it in a lot of ways, but one of the ways was as sort of a, sort of like a detective who would play dumb in order to sort

7:15of sniff someone off the case and reveal them as a fool. Right. Or a fraud or somebody who knows much less than they like to think that they do. Yeah. And it's, in a way, it's, you're setting them up to make a fool of themselves. You call it like paying out the rope that somebody's hanging themselves with essentially is what they did. And I guess Plato used to love this stuff. He would take off his robe and like twirl it over his head. Yeah. He would get so excited about using Socrates as an iron.

7:46And so Socrates is basically like, he would be really like smarmy, overly flattering, essentially. Yeah. Basically saying, please, you know so much, please teach me. And then he would eventually disassemble them in their entire identity. Yeah. In Latin, that iron word became ironia, I-R-O-N-I-A. And there was a Roman orator in the first century named Quintilian who said, it's basically saying

8:18something contrary to what you mean, which is what Ethan Hawke would kind of intimate many years later. And the Europeans in the Middle Ages, they were like, yeah, that's, that Quintilian definition is the one that we're going to use as like a, like an allegory on a contradiction, basically. Yeah. And it was basically a divisive speech. It wasn't like, like a whole book could be ironic. Yeah. Or a whole TV show could be ironic in part because there weren't TV shows back then, but you get the point. It's like a one-liner.

8:49It was. Yeah, exactly. That's what irony was. And it was, it was no broader than that. It was a very narrow definition, um, for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along. And, um, they, the Renaissance people were like, oh, okay, we really like this stuff. They, they, I guess, got back into Socratic irony, which was using people, um, playing dumb essentially to show how actually dumb someone else was. But they also identified the irony of fate, which is far and away the greatest type of irony.

9:21It's also called situational irony today. Um, and that's the one where instead of somebody making a one-liner or Socrates playing dumb, this is like the universe does this to you. Right. Or life does this to you. Just something happens that no one had any control over, but is just indisputably ironic. And that's, that's, to me, that's the money irony. Yeah. I think so too, because it's a recognition of a thing that happened that wasn't like set up or contrived or written, written to be clever or something like that.

9:55So I'm with you. Totally. And I think that that's a big distinction is we'll see like being clever and being, uh, the hapless subject of, of irony. I think that's a big distinction. Yeah, for sure. Uh, the German romantics really got into it. Uh, again, they, like most people had a lot of trouble defining it, but they were very into like, um, they're into it in a sense of like, Hey, this is how we can question conventional wisdom by throwing out, uh, ironic viewpoints.

10:28Yeah. And the way that they did it. So I was looking into this because I, I didn't, it took me, I'm like, what are they talking about? Essentially the romantics were the first postmodern people. They were the first to basically say, Hey, you know, life, have you ever stopped and thought about life? Like, are there other ways life could go? Um, what are other things you can do with your life? And they were essentially like the first to challenge conventional wisdom in the West as a group. And they essentially became, they, they prized irony because to them, that was a way of like

11:03thinking about things of like turning things over in your mind. And so that's what the German romantics were into. And there were opponents to that who were like, no, this is, you're going down a really bad path here. Yeah. One guy in particular, uh, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he was a German philosopher, but not a romantic. He was like, I don't like any of that stuff. And I think he, it seems like he kind of saw it as like a, um, sort of a, uh, smart alecky way to go through life.

11:35Like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not committing to anything kind of like the, like hipster irony now, maybe. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Kind of like, you know, coming up on somebody that, oh, you love your life of milk and cows, huh? I guess that's all there is to life, huh? Yeah. Yeah. So that was Hegel. Kierkegaard, who was the Christian ethicist, um, he, he really hated, um, irony as well. He called it infinite, absolute negativity.

12:05Yeah. And so in the way that Hegel like identified hipster irony as being just annoying and kind of looking down on people, Kierkegaard kind of took that and, and multiplied it by all the people doing this and found like you could actually as a society lose your way and like lose meaning to life if you examine stuff too much rather than just living it. And so he, he essentially predicted the postmodern age, which we're in right now, that loss of meaning that happened because people started thinking about the possibilities that are out

12:40there, not rather than just actuality. Yeah, for sure. Uh, as far as like, um, you know, as time marched on in the 19th and 20th centuries, um, it became a big thing and like, uh, the literary world, uh, there was a essay in 1833 from a classical scholar, uh, an English scholar named, uh, Conop Thurwall, who he was into the irony of fate meaning. Uh, like you said, that's what we call situational irony now, uh, but he was doing that through

13:12the lens of like, you know, works of literature basically. And that's where we get dramatic irony basically was from him, which is the idea that the audience knows something that the characters don't. And when that plays out, that's a dramatic irony. Right. And he, um, he retroactively applied it to, uh, Oedipus Rex. Lots of irony there. There really is. There's a lot. So there's some in that, um, so, uh, King Laius and Queen Jocasta get, get rid of their

13:43baby because it's been predicted that their baby's going to grow up and kill his father. So they're like, well, let's get this baby away from us. Well, by doing so, their kid grew up without knowing who his father and mother were. So he, he actually grows up to slay King Laius without realizing that this is his father. So it happened anyway. They, maybe if they had brought him up, uh, and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them. Um, that was a pretty big ironic twist in that whole, uh, play. Yeah. I think Alanis Morissette had a sung lines like that.

14:16It's like, uh, that's right. Killing his dad. Uh, and then there's more irony heaped up on, uh, on top of that, which is later on, of course, uh, he didn't know that he had killed Laius. So he seeks vengeance against his, the King's murderer, who is himself. And then, um, there's also a bit of dramatic irony. The audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw his own eyes out. Yeah. And at one point he mocks a blind man for being blind, which is just cruel.

14:49No matter when you're, you're speaking. I'm sure the audience is like, Ooh. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. I mean, like there's a lot of irony and here's, this is the thing. So, uh, what was the guy's name again? I know it's made up, but, um, Conop Thurwall. Thurwall. Yeah. No way that's real. The first name is weird. So, um, Mr. Thurwall basically shows like, here's irony. Here's irony too. Here's irony. But if, if you pinned him or anybody else down and saying, great, can you make a

15:22universal definition for irony, I'm sure he would have thrown his hands up. And that's just it. I think, um, uh, Winona Ryder even says in Reality Bites, like I, I can tell when I see it, I, I know it, but you can't really come up with a good universal definition for it, but you can go back and be like, that's ironic. That's ironic. It's almost like humans have a, um, innate like sense of irony. Yeah. And it is funny now that I think about it, that is so ironic that Ben Stiller was the good guy because he was genuinely like a really nice guy and treated

15:56her very well in that movie. Uh, but he, yeah, he was part of, he was part of the establishment. So he wasn't cool. Right. And Ethan Hawke, like what's, what's he doing? Not Ethan Hawke, but what would that character be doing now? I don't know. I mean, I, I hesitate to say, but I'm sure, you know, he would probably still be, right. He would be very much in love with his own, you know, mind or intellect. I'm sure. So he'd have a podcast. Yeah. I think you nailed it actually. All right. Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about irony a little more.

16:31Before you jump back in, you know, that feeling when feedback notes and data are coming in from every direction, chat GPT work can make sense of it all. Turning scattered inputs into ready to review work with your permission, chat GPT work can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help

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Verbal irony and sarcasm

19:29So we've defined or at least talked about a couple of different types of irony, but here comes some more, everybody. Verbal irony. This gets a little dicey because verbal irony and sarcasm are like sarcasm is a sort of a way of being ironic. But to me, it's different because there's a smarminess to it. Yeah. They're lumped together a lot, like sarcasm and irony. So if you were to say, like if it's really raining outside and the weather is really bad

20:01and you're like, yeah, nice weather, like that, that is irony. It's got a little smarm, but not as smarmy as like, oh, that speech you gave was so great, you know, to a bad speech like that is super sarcastic and smarmy. Yeah. I think you said one of us said that irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to tear flesh. Yeah. You know, and that really kind of goes to show you like they both do something similar, but one's way more vicious than the other.

20:33Yeah. Sarcasm is pretty lame. It's just a, I think it's a, it's meant to be a phase in the development of a person's sense of humor. It's supposed to come early on and be abandoned eventually, but some people don't abandon it and they love Deadpool. Yeah. I try not to be sarcastic. Oh, I take that back. I'm, I don't try to not be sarcastic. I think, uh, I think it just sort of fades away. I'm sure I am sarcastic sometimes, but I don't know. It's not the greatest look once you're a certain age.

21:04I can't think of any of you being sarcastic. Oh, you can't. Oh, no, I can. You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think. Unless you're just trying to get a, like, get a laugh or something. Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely, my humor's fairly ironic, but I like to think it's not at the expense of anybody. And usually if it's at the expense of somebody, it's at the expense of myself. Yeah. Self-deprecating. Yeah. That's another way to put it. Sure. That's how Ethan Hawke's character would put it.

21:36Uh, here's a word that I never knew, but I knew it was a thing. I've never heard of Lido T's before. Me either. But that's a word that is like a verbal, like understated verbal irony. Like if someone asks you if, um, if you, if you'd like something or not that you really, really hate and you say like, hmm, not the biggest fan of that. That is called a Lido T's. I'm so glad you're the one who said that because that's not how I was going to pronounce that. Were you going to say Lido T's? Mm-hmm. Well, I looked it up because, uh, I get, I'm frankly tired of being made fun of in listener mail.

22:09You're a professional. I'm getting there. I'm just, uh, well, I'm just a lump. Um, so yeah, that's, it has to negate what the, like, um, I don't know any better way to put it. Like, yeah, I'm not a big fan, meaning you really don't like something. So it's an understatement, but at the same time, you're negating the fan part. I don't fully understand it in the, in the sense that like, if you think about something too hard, like economics, you can suddenly like lose it and not, not understand it anymore.

22:45Um, that's, that's kind of how that is with me. Yeah. Just breeze right on by the Lido T's.

Situational and cosmic irony

22:50Exactly. Let's talk situational irony because this is the whole reason for this episode, man. Like there's nothing more delightful to me than a really good ironic twist. Yeah. And I, I, I feel like this can be played in, well, I mean, it happens in real life, of course, but can be played in, in, you know, literature and movies and TV and stuff like that is like a, uh, uh, is like a comeuppance sometimes. Like sometimes it can be very sad when situational, situational irony strikes,

23:20but sometimes it's like somebody gets what they deserved in an ironic way. For sure. And then sometimes it's just like, uh, impressive other times, most of the time, if not always, there's a black comedic sense to it. Or if you look at it deeply enough, there is something funny about it. Even if it is sad, even if it is tragic, if it's still ironic, there's something, there's something more to it. There's something more valuable to it than just what it is on its surface.

23:51Like a lifeguard drowning, right? Like that's sad, of course. Like if you put yourself in the, if you know the person's name, you know, the situation of their death, like they were trying to save someone and they drowned, they had like this life ahead of them. They left a child behind, you know, uh, as a survivor. Once you know that stuff, it's, it's not funny at all. But if you just step back and you say a lifeguard drowned, there's something just in that irony, there's something blackly comedic about it.

24:22There's something funny about it. I, I, I think everything has something funny about it. Yeah. I mean, I laughed instinctively the second you said a lifeguard drowned because I didn't know, I didn't know it was coming. Yeah. It just made me laugh. There's nothing funny about anyone dying, but since that didn't really happen and you just said it, it was funny. But even so, it's not like you're celebrating that person's death by laughing or you don't care that that person died. This is something different. It's separate. It's, um, it's, it's larger than that person's individual death in that sense, but it's tied directly to it.

24:58Yeah. I saw a comedian the other day. Uh, I can't remember her name. Oh, what was it? But she was talking about like her worst death would be to be like the only person that died in a plane crash. Yeah. And I couldn't figure out where she was going. I was like, I sort of get it, but I don't fully get it. And then she was explaining, like, when you see the news reports, you know, there was a plane crash and everyone's horrified. And then it's like one person dies and everyone's like, oh, well, that wasn't that bad.

25:26You're just the one person. Oh man, you need to introduce me to that friend. Uh, it's not a friend. It was a comedian. Oh, well, make friends with them and introduce me. All right. Maybe someone will write in it or maybe she will. You never know. There's a, there's some others too. Um, like a fire station burning down. Mm. So funny. Especially, especially if no one got hurt. Well, that's what I'm saying. There's like, I, you might not think it's funny. I don't even think it's particularly funny. It's ironic, but I guarantee there's somebody out there who finds that funny.

25:56That's the thing. It's not always funny to everyone all the time that it could just be one person. I, my theory is that everything is funny at least to one person. No, I totally agree. Uh, and I, I think what's getting me here with the, the, uh, this kind of irony being played, uh, when I think there's sometimes karma attached to it. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like that lifeguard hit a drifter with his car and drove off.

26:28Well, which kind of plays into the next one, which is cosmic irony, which is a little bit like karmic irony in that it's situational irony where, you know, the gods or whatever fate caused something. Yeah, um, that's essentially the same thing, if you ask me, a lifeguard drowning or something. Um, George Carlin, did you see his example? No. Oh, um, I sent it to you. George Carlin, he basically did a bit where he explains the difference between what's ironic and what's actually not ironic.

27:00May I? Yeah. You said this to me? Mm-hmm. Yeah, um, I did. He basically said this. He said that if you are a, uh, let's say there's a diabetic and he's on his way to buying insulin and he gets hit by a delivery truck. If the, yeah, see, if the delivery truck was carrying sugar, that would be, like, poetic and pretty funny, but just bad luck, really, according to George Carlin. Sure. He said if the delivery truck was carrying insulin, now you're, now you've got irony.

27:35I think both of those things are ironic, whether it's sugar or insulin. Yeah. But that was his, his distinction.

Dramatic and romantic irony

27:42That's good. Well, we've already talked about dramatic irony. That's the next one on the list. Uh, and that's, again, when the audience knows something that the characters don't, uh, and Hitchcock had a very famous example of, uh, like, let's see a scene with a couple of characters in a restaurant diner, um, just talking about whatever. And a bomb goes off under the table. If the audience doesn't know that's happening, it's some great tragedy or a shock. Uh, if you do know, I mean, it still might be a tragedy, but it's not a shock if the audience knows that that bomb is under there.

28:15And all of a sudden that adds this real dramatic tension to what's happening. Yeah. Or like the, the, um, audience knowing Oedipus will tear his eyes out. Right. And they're just kind of laughing at him, laughing at the blind guy. Right. Right. Like, you got to come in your way, buddy. There's another one I didn't, um, ever hear this term for. I've always heard it as breaking the fourth wall, but that is actually called romantic irony. And it's where the author, the narrator, I guess probably even the character basically breaks out of the, the, the realm of fiction and starts addressing you, the reader or the viewer.

28:51That's romantic irony. And the reason I think it's called romantic based on the German romantics and their love of irony, um, that in its purest form, the author is basically stopping the narrative to talk to you, the reader and say, look at how this guy's, you know, ideals and hopes and dreams are so far off from reality. Right. I take it as like them spelling things out for the reader, I guess. Yeah. I like it, you know, for the sake of comedy, like it made me think of like, uh, Albert Brooks and broadcast news.

29:25I don't remember that. You don't remember seeing that or you never saw that or you don't remember that part when you saw it? Is that the one where, um, I'm mad as heck and I'm not going to take it anymore? No, that's network. Broadcast news was a, uh, James L. Brooks romantic comedy. Okay. One of the great movies, by the way. I got to see it then. Especially if you like Albert Brooks. I do. I love him. I think he's a international treasure. That's right. He was obviously born Albert Einstein. Fun fact.

29:55What? That was his name.

29:59Really? The two fun facts about Albert Brooks is he was Albert Einstein and changed his name. And the other is that he was brothers with, uh, Super Dave Osborne.

30:10Wow.

30:12And, uh, the Outsiders was written by a teenage girl named Essie Hinton. It's the fact of every podcast now. Yeah. Wow. Thank you for that, Chuck. Yeah. See broadcast news. It's great. Like one of the great movies. Have you ever seen network? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. I liked it too. No, I didn't say I liked it. No, I loved it. Um, okay. So getting back to irony, um, you know, one thing also, I'm proud of us for not being like, was that ironic? Were you being ironic?

30:43We're not doing that. And that would have been really annoying. So kudos to us, if you ask me.

30:51Maybe we'll edit that out. I was just thinking in my head how funny it would be if I was just about to say that. And like the words were sitting in my mouth. That's why I was being silent. No, I just was thinking that would be funny.

Philosophical irony and satire

31:04Back to Iran specifically though, right? Uh, yeah, the Socratic irony is what it's also called or philosophical irony where, you know, again, you're, you're playing, I think dumb is usually the, the way that, um, it's most often described or presented, but it can be other things. Like, uh, I think, um, Randall P. McMurphy, Jack Nicholson's character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is considered philosophically ironic by being a sane person in a mental hospital

31:35and in doing so, he shows like just the unjustness of life in that mental hospital. Um, seems a little, I don't know if off is the right term, but that's like, here's where it's like, okay, maybe we need to come up with other terms for stuff like this and stop using ironic like that. Yeah. I, that's where, like, when we get into talking about satire and parody, like they always use irony. So I guess it's just sort of like a, a, a sub genre or, or maybe, you know, not a sub

32:10genre, but its own thing where irony comes into play. Sure. Well, let's talk satire. I have a, um, a pet theory that satire is actually super harmful for society. Oh, interesting. I love satire. It can take, um, I like parody, but satire, I feel like it can take the actual, like, anger and discontent and just release it as it's, it acts as a pressure valve for society.

32:41Oh, okay. We'll just laugh all this off. And then the status quo can continue on. And I think it actually is harmful to society, um, the better and more widespread the satire is. The less change will actually come along. Like, society has to go through really rough periods where it's really upset to affect real change. And satire kind of prevents that from happening. I guess that's a kind of satire, because there's so much comedic satire that you love in your life, you know?

33:11Okay. I'll go with, like, Spinal Tap. Okay. I mean, The Simpsons is a satire. Is it? Yeah. Is it? Don't you think? I don't know. Is it? Are you saying, is it ironic, do I think? No, no, no. I mean, uh, we agreed to not do that. I mean, I mean, really, I, it is, I think it's a satire, isn't it? I, I don't know, man. I think it's a satire of, like, American life and family and stuff. Yeah. I mean, I, I can definitely see that. Yeah.

33:41Like, I definitely see where you're coming from. I, I don't know. I always kind of associate satire almost exclusively with, like, having a really important message, um, which is why, to me, it, it takes that important message and kind of, um, uses it to deflate any true feelings about it. Oh, interesting. Okay. Like, social satire? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Like, I get where it's coming from, too, where it's saying, like, hey, we need to let more people know about this. A good example is, um, oh, uh, who was it?

34:15I think it was Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer or essayist, I think. He, um, came up with a modest proposal in 1729, and he'd written a bunch of essays about how the Irish were starving and how they needed help, and he just got crickets in return. And then he wrote a modest proposal, and in it, he basically talks about how the Irish just need to eat their babies, and that will solve the hunger issue and a lot of other problems, too. Then he got, you know, all sorts of attention for that. Yeah, yeah. Of course he got attention for it.

34:46It's, it's nuts. In some ways, it's funny. In some ways, it's just abhorrent, and it's very attention-getting. But how much change did it actually affect? I don't know enough about 18th century Irish history to tell you how much change it affected, but based on my understanding of satire over the years, especially sociopolitical satire, it probably didn't actually have that much effect, aside from making more people aware of it. But does that actually make things change?

35:17That's my question. Yeah, that's a good question. Thanks, man. I think the proponents of satire would say, like, just getting the conversation around it going is the point, and the change comes because of those conversations. But I'm not, I'm not taking a stance either way. I see your point. Fair enough. And at the same time, one last thing. My position isn't that we all just need to put up with the status quo. Oh, sure. That's what I'm saying. Like, satire inadvertently can make the status quo continue on when it shouldn't.

35:48Yeah. You're talking about getting some bricks and baseball bats and really doing something. That's right. Taking it to the streets, as Michael McDonald said. Camp is another sort of irony, and that's a little more of the, I mean, I love camp, so I hate to lump it in with the hipster irony, but that's kind of what they're talking about, like an ironic appreciation of something. Like, if something is campy, that's kind of what you're talking about, you know, in a lot of cases.

36:19Right. Yeah. John, speaking of The Simpsons, John Waters was on The Simpsons once. Oh, yeah. I remember that one. He gave a throwaway definition of camp. He said, the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic, and then Homer said, oh, yeah, like when a clown dies. And John Waters goes, well, sort of. That's funny. Yeah. All right. I think that's a good time for a break.

36:49And we'll be right back, right after this. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, ChatGPT work can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming

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Universal human intuition

38:57Okay, Chuck, so I think I said like I feel like humans have like a hardwire intuition for noticing irony, for being able to pick it out. And it's been used as a device for a really long time, so much so that it's been found that verbal irony, saying the opposite of what you mean, is basically universal, which

39:29is great. And kindergarten children have been shown to be able to pick up on verbal irony, like at that young of an age. What's kindergarten age these days? Like five? Yeah, like five or six, I think. Not bad. Yeah, agreed. I love the example Livia uses, too. She's like, every society comes up with ideas like nicknaming a big guy tiny. But I love that. I mean, that is sort of a universal thing. Like, I love the idea that in any culture, if you had like a very large person and their

40:03nickname was whatever that word is in their language for like small or tiny, like everyone gets that joke. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it is universal. And it's been used as a device long before anybody identified it, what irony was. Like, remember, Oedipus Rex was written long before irony, even though it was dripping with irony. So that in and of itself kind of shows that it's definitely been a part of human communication and I guess human understanding of the world from time immemorial.

40:35Yeah, for sure. She gives a lot of examples. One of my favorites here is, and I think we've talked about the Zhuangzi before, the Taoist text. And this was in like fourth century BCE. So it was a very long time ago. And there was a story about a tree that was so twisted and gnarled that it couldn't be used for lumber. So it was useless. And because it was so useless, it lived a very long life as a tree, which is like that that was the tree's purpose in use, you know, right there. I think that disproves my everything is funny in some way theory, though.

41:09Well, that that's the Zhuangzi from fourth century BCE, not not a noted comedic dome. There's trickster stories also are always dripping with irony and they are super duper old. Tom Sawyer, well, way older than Tom Sawyer. But the one that always comes to mind for me is Tom Sawyer using reverse psychology to trick his friends into taking over painting the fence for him because he talks about how much fun it is and he doesn't want to share. So now all of a sudden they all want to paint.

41:39So he just gets to sit back and kind of laugh at them. That is a really old archetype. I think Joseph Campbell even talked about that whole mythology series, which I've not seen. Have you? No. We'll have to watch it together. He knew a thing or two about archetypes. He did. He was he was an archetype type. Archetypist. Don Quixote, you know, of course, is maybe the first modern novel. There was there's a lot of irony in that.

42:11The biggest one is just that Quixote himself is a very elevated sort of ideas about his adventures. And the reader knows the whole time like this guy. And it's got that kind of thing. So that's that's also sort of dripping with irony.

Literary twists and masters

42:28Yeah.

Literary twists and masters

42:29My favorite ironist of all time is O. Henry. He was well known as the master of like the ironic twist, like the gift of the Magi. Doesn't get any better than that, you know. Yeah. I mean, that's just the one that everyone's read. Like every one of his stories has an ironic twist to it. You know, it's coming and he's so good at it. You very rarely can see what's coming, but it's never, you know, quickly assembled at the end out of whatever parts are at hand. Like it's it's the point of the story all the way along.

43:00He was just a master of it. And then another one that always stands out to me is the monkey's paw. Yeah. Do you do you you remember that one? I remember a little bit about it. I remember being scary like the monkey's paw moves in your hand or something. Yeah. Yeah. Granted wishes, but those wishes always came with an ironic consequence. Like the father wishes for a hundred pounds sterling and he gets it, but it says compensation because his son died at a factory. So like all of the all of the wishes, the way that they're granted are in ironic twists

43:35that don't pan out very well for the family involved. Yeah. And sometimes that's funny, but a lot of times it's tragic. Like, like, I don't know if the gift of the Magi was supposed to be funny. Yeah. Good point. You know, but yeah, lots of ironic twists. I guess he was the M. Night Shyamalan of the literary world. That's right. There is something to that, though. If you're known for something like when you go see the M. Night movies, you're just waiting for it, you know? Yeah. But he's like, oh, Henry, like you don't really see it coming.

44:07So, you know, sometimes some are better than others. I will watch every single one of that guy's movies. I love them. Yeah. I mean, they're entertaining. Did you finally see the one at the concert, the pop star? I did. That was his daughter who directed it, right? No, no, no. He directed it. Oh, he did. She was in it. Oh, she was the pop star? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was entertaining, and it went just totally nuts at the end, didn't it? Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a very fun bad movie. Yeah.

44:37Yeah. I wouldn't say all of his movies are bad movies, but he has made some bad movies. But, yes, agreed, they're all fun. Yeah. I didn't see the last one old or whatever. Is it called old? It's fine. It's good. Yeah. I mean, it's an M. Night Shyamalan movie. It's a little like a bottle episode. It's a little. Oh, okay. It all takes place on this beach, almost entirely takes place on this beach, and that gets a little old, as it were, but, you know, it still moves along pretty quickly. Yeah. And I remember early in his career when it was like he was the twist guy and seeing, and

45:11there's some spoilers coming, everyone, if you haven't seen these very old movies. Okay. But when, was it The Village?

45:20Yeah, that was what it was called. Yeah. Like, I remember seeing that movie, and the whole time, I'm like, this is. So, like, gonna be revealed that it's modern times. Like, I was just waiting on it. I had, I was totally, maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just, like, super dupable, because I had no idea that was coming. I knew that the twist to The Sixth Sense, because some jackass told me before I went into it, which is mean. And then all the other ones, I'm like, what? Every time. Which I love.

45:50Did he say, hey, have you seen that new movie where Bruce Willis is dead the whole time?

45:57Yeah. I don't think that makes you dupable. I think that means you're, like, into it, and, like, can park that stuff. That's a good trait. Okay. As long as it's not on the dance floor. Right. No parking on the dance floor. Mm-hmm. What else, Chuck?

46:16Well, I mean, we can keep going through literary examples. Well, I mean, we should probably definitely mention Catch-22, because we'll get emails if we don't, because that's sort of, well, it's a satire, of course, so you hate it. But it's built on irony. The whole title is an ironic paradox, in that the Catch-22 of the film is that anyone who wants to fly in, like, a combat mission as a pilot in war should be removed for mental health reasons. But if you try to get out of it by saying, like, I'm a Section 8 or whatever, then you're

46:50obviously sane for doing so. So you have to fly. That's who should be flying. Yeah. It's a great, great ironic paradox of all time.

The cultural weight of irony

46:58And so I, okay, I figured out why I dislike satire, because it hits you over the head with, like, this is a problem, this is wrong. Of course it is. Like, I think that's what I don't like about it. I already know that there's a problem with that. I already know there's something wrong with it. I guess I've never seen satire that I didn't already agree was a problem, so therefore there's never any satire that really changed my mind about something. Oh, yeah, yeah. I get you. I get what you're saying. Yeah. Sometimes I just have to reflect on something for 10, 15 minutes, and then I come to the

47:32basis of it. Then you got it. Something that I missed that I don't know if you noticed, too, but in Fight Club, apparently it was meant to be ironic in that, like, these guys were rebelling against society, and like a conformist society, and then in doing so, they ended up creating their own fascist society of their own, you know, club. Yeah, super conformist. Sure. So did you recognize that that was basically the theme of the movie? I don't, you know, when I saw that movie, I was in my 20s, and so I think I was just

48:06more like, I think I just more liked the movie at face value, and was like, oh my God, here we go with spoilers again. It's like, oh my God, there was no Tyler Durden the whole time. Like, it's just kind of like, I thought it was a cool twist. But yeah, like, being older now and looking back, it's like, yeah, these dopes wanted to, you know, they're doing the very thing that they said they weren't, you know, were fighting against. Right. Yeah. I was totally lost on me, too. I was too busy going like, maybe I should wear like floor length fur coats and no shirt

48:38underneath. And it's a good look.

48:42So I guess we can kind of get to that last point, like whether or not irony is not a good thing. And I think overall, if I'm tossing out my two cents, which I've basically tossed out $50 already so far. Yeah. I think cosmic and situational irony is great, and there's nothing we can do about it but appreciate it. And then on the other hand, belabored human created irony, if done well, then it's great.

49:15But most of the time, it's not done very well. So, yeah, I mean, David Foster Wallace, you know, the great writer and essayist, wrote that irony and ridicule were agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture. And that like in the 50s and 60s, irony had like great use in breaking down the hypocrisy of the establishment. But since then, it is sort of, I think he felt like it was overused in the literary world. Yeah. And that sincerity had kind of been abandoned.

49:49Yeah. And that even if you were being sincere, the reader wouldn't recognize it because they were so primed to read things as ironic, right? So, he had a really good point. Like, Gen X really hammered the ironic thing home. And part of it was elevating yourself above other people who just kind of accepted things as they were and couldn't see the reality of something, right? And there was a backlash to that, what was called the death of irony, which lasted about 10 years, where people like Dave Eggers came along and were like, no, I'm earnest.

50:25I really am just going to share everything. I'm going to wear my heart on my sleeve and you're going to suck it all down whether you like it or not. And it came across as smarmy to a lot of people. A lot of people consider Dave Eggers' work as very smarmy, where it's forced earnestness or forced sincerity, and it clubs you over the head with it. And there's actually a Gen Z term now for that little period through, you know, the early 2010s, where that kind of smarminess was very popular, I guess, especially in literature.

51:03Yeah, is that millennial cringe?

51:08That's a zinger. That is a zinger.

51:12Yeah, I mean, again, back to the generational look at things. I'm a big fan of Eggers, by the way. I just want to say that out loud. Okay, great. I haven't read the most stuff, but I've read a couple of his books, and I like them both. I liked McSweeney's humor a lot for a while. Yeah, for sure. And he does great work through his charity, 826 Valencia and 826 National. I did a thing recently for them. I read a passage from a book that a kid wrote through his charity, and it was cool.

51:46They did good work. Yeah. Was it any good? Yeah, it was good. Okay, good. Because they don't publish bad kids' books. That's right.

Gen Z and meta-irony

51:56Yeah, but back to millennial cringe. That's what Gen Z is about, right? Yeah, and we should kind of wrap it up with Gen Z, because they have come up with their own version of irony. They're pretty preoccupied with it, too. But they've taken it to such a degree that it's become absurdism rather than irony. Whereas irony is very well-defined. It either is or it isn't ironic, whatever the thing is. Gen Z just mashes all sorts of stuff up, and you can't tell whether they're supposed

52:26to be ironic or not by the end of it. Maybe that's their aim, confuse the olds. Yeah, and they do a good job of it. It's called meta-irony, where if you're an outsider looking in, especially if you're not in the Gen Z age group, so you're not tapped into what's going on, we have a tendency to really kind of read into stuff and try to find the answer to whatever the thing is or understand it. And if you do that with Gen Z meta-ironic stuff or memes or whatever, that'd be madness.

52:59There'd be madness. That'd be madness. I like that better. Thanks. Yeah, I feel like I've been hanging on by my fingernails this whole episode, and I hate those. Well, I mean, this is a tough one. Again, it's hard to define irony, and it's hard to talk 45 minutes about it. Which is why we talked 48 minutes about it. Good point. You got anything else? I have nothing else. All right.

Listener mail and clarifications

53:21Well, that's it for irony, everybody, and that means it's time for Listener Mail.

53:27Hey, guys. Love the podcast. Look forward to new episodes. I wanted to mention a couple of clarifications. The first one, from the White Boy Rick episode, was the pronunciation of his last name. It's pronounced Wershey, as in Hershey. I don't remember what we said. I don't either. Okay. It's Wershey. The second was, Josh kept saying the phrase East Detroit. White Boy Rick, the Curry Brothers, et cetera, were based out of the east side of Detroit at the time of their prominence in the drug trade. And we mentioned this because there was a city just north of Detroit called East Detroit.

54:02They're not the same place. In fact, the city of East Detroit even voted to change their name to East Point due to confusion and negative connotations about the east side of Detroit. Wow. Keep up the great work. We heard from a couple of people, but that is from Mike in East Point, Michigan. Nice. Thanks a lot, Mike. We appreciate that. Of course there was an East Detroit. Right. Yeah. Well, it's like East Atlanta is an actual neighborhood in Atlanta, which is east of Atlanta, but it's

54:33still not the same as saying the east side of Atlanta. No. And I think there's an East Point around Atlanta too, right? Am I thinking of Athens? No, no, no. There's an East Point. Okay. But I believe East Point is south? Is it? Isn't that down near the airport? I don't know. I have blood trickling out of my ears. All right. Let's just wrap it up. Okay. Well, who was that from? That's from Mike. All right, Mike. Thank you very much for that email. We appreciate it. And if you want to be like Mike and send us, well, an email, address it to stuffpodcast

55:05at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

55:27One last thing before you go. You know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, work in ChatGPT can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients. Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with ChatGPT work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work.

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56:31It feels good to be understood. Amika goes above and beyond to customize the right coverage for you by taking the time to really understand your needs. Because creating peace of mind is at the heart of Amika's mission. Whether you're at home or on the road, Amika knows it's not just about where you're going, but who you go with. Go with the insurer that truly understands you. As a mutual company, Amika puts its customer needs first. Just visit amika.com and get a quote today. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.