Isn't It Ironic, Dontcha Think?

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 https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:52Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:02Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jer Bears here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. The irony edition.

• 2:13Josh Clark?

  It's a little on the nose, isn't it?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 2:18Josh Clark?

  Sorry. Let me try again. The Isn't It Ironic? Don't You Think Edition?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, if you are our age or above, maybe a few below.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  Or a weird younger person.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you might've 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.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  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.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, what else?

• 2:59Josh Clark?

  Free Ride When You're Already There?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  I don't even know what that means.

• 3:04Josh Clark?

  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.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24Josh Clark?

  That just kind of goes to show like how wide open everyone's interpretation of what irony is, is.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of notoriously hard to define. Livia 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.

• 4:06Josh Clark?

  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

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 4:14Josh Clark?

  Nice, but he was like the cool dude, but he was like the guy that she wanted, right?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 4:43Josh Clark?

  Sure. And even still, like he's talking about such a narrow definition of irony that he might as well have just kept his darn mouth shut.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  And like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective, I think helps.

• 5:09Josh Clark?

  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, um,

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  a vision quest, maybe for her. I don't know if that's the right term, but it was very difficult assignment.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've been throwing out a lot of these very esoteric topics lately.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, 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.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  I wasn't going to say that.

• 5:40Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, at any rate, um, yeah, this is something that I've wanted to do for a while. And some people have written in and asked for it, but

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:47Josh Clark?

  I think one of the reasons I wanted to tackle is because I don't know exactly what it is. But also in the like myriad ways that it's played like a really big role in shaping society. In fact, there's this whole kind of schism between the ironic and people who resent the ironic.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:08Josh Clark?

  As we'll see, that dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, Chuck, because irony is nothing new. Like the nineties Gen X slackers didn't invent it.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  No, not at all. The term itself comes from a, a character, actually, not really a thing yet. In classical Greek, I guess drama, uh, the character was E I R O N, uh, with the little rooftop over the O.

• 6:36Josh Clark?

  A little, a little puff of smoke coming out the chimney.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, Iron, I guess, or Iron.

• 6:41Josh Clark?

  I'm going with Iron.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but that's German, I don't know about Greek, but yeah, irony. Let's go with Iron.

• 6:50Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  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 of sniff, sniff someone off the case and reveal them as a fool.

• 7:20Josh Clark?

  Right, or a fraud, or somebody who knows much less than they, they like to think that they do.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:26Josh Clark?

  And it's, in a way, it's, you're setting them up to make a fool themselves. You call it like, um, 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.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  He would get so excited about using Socrates as an Iron. And so Socrates was basically like, he would be really like smarmy, overly flattering, essentially. Basically saying, please, you know so much, please teach me. And then he would eventually

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Roll his eyes.

• 8:01Josh Clark?

  disassemble them and their entire identity.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. In Latin, that Iron word became erroneous, I R O N I A. And there was a Roman orator in the first century named Quintilian who said, it's basically saying something 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.

• 8:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it was basically a divisive speech. It wasn't like, like a whole book could be ironic.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:43Josh Clark?

  Or a whole TV show could be ironic, in part because there weren't TV shows back then, but you get the point.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  It's like a one liner.

• 8:49Josh Clark?

  It was, yeah, exactly. That's what irony was. And it was, it was no broader than that. It was a very narrow definition for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along. And 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 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. It's also called situational irony today. And that's the one where instead of somebody making a one liner or Socrates playing dumb,

• 9:32Josh Clark?

  this is like the universe does this to you 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.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  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. So I'm with you.

• 9:56Josh Clark?

  Totally. And I think that that's a big distinction is we'll see like being clever and being the hapless subject of, of irony. I think that's a big distinction.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. The German romantics really got into it. Again, they, like most people, had a lot of trouble defining it, but they were very into like,

• 10:19Speaker 02

  they were into it in a sense of like, hey, this is how we can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints.

• 10:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the way that they did it, so I was looking into this because 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? 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 prized irony because to them, that was a way of like thinking about things of like turning things over in your mind. So that's what the German Romantics were into. And there were opponents to that who were like,

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Josh Clark?

  No, this is, you're going down a really bad path here.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, one guy in particular, 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, sort of a smart alecky way to go through life. Like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not committing to anything. Kind of like the, like hipster irony now, maybe.

• 11:42Josh Clark?

  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?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:52Josh Clark?

  So that was Hegel. Kierkegaard, who was the Christian ethicist, he really hated irony as well. He called it infinite absolute negativity.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:06Josh Clark?

  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 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 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 there, not rather than just actuality.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. As far as like, you know, as time marched on in the 19th and 20th centuries, it became a big thing in like the literary world. There was an essay in 1833 from a classical scholar, an English scholar named Konop Thirwall, who, he was into the irony of fate meaning. Like you said, that's what we call situational irony now. But he was doing that through the 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.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  And when that plays out, that's a dramatic irony.

• 13:28Josh Clark?

  Right, and he, he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Lots of irony there.

• 13:34Josh Clark?

  There really is, there's a lot. So there's some in that. So King Laus and Queen Jocasta give, get rid of their baby 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 Laus without realizing that this is his father. So it happened anyway. They, maybe if they had brought him up and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them. That was a pretty big ironic twist in that whole play.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think if Alanis Morissette had sung lines like that.

• 14:17Josh Clark?

  It's like Oedipus.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  That's right. Killing his dad. And then there's more irony heaped up on, on top of that, which is later on, of course, he didn't know that he had killed Laus. So he seeks vengeance against his, the king's murderer, who is himself.

• 14:36Josh Clark?

  Right. And then there's also a bit of dramatic irony. The audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw his own eyes out.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:44Josh Clark?

  And at one point, he mocks a blind man for being blind, which is just cruel, no matter when you're, you're speaking.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I'm sure the audience was like, ooh.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I mean, like, there's a lot of irony. And here's, this is the thing. So what was the guy's name again? I know it's made up, but Konop Thirwall.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Thirwall, yeah.

• 15:07Josh Clark?

  No way that's real.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  The first name is weird.

• 15:11Josh Clark?

  So Mr. Thirwall 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 universal definition for irony? I'm sure he would have thrown his hands up. And that's just it. I think Winona Ryder even says in Reality Bites, like, I can tell when I see it, 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 innate like sense of irony.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it is funny now that I think about it, that is so ironic that Ben Stiller was the good guy. Cause he was genuinely like a really nice guy and treated her very well in that movie. But he, yeah, he was part of, he was part of the establishment, so he wasn't cool.

• 16:04Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  And Ethan Hawke, like, what's, what's he doing? Not Ethan Hawke, but what would that character be doing now?

• 16:10Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I mean, I hesitate to say, but I'm sure, you know, he would probably still be, he would be very much in love with his own, you know, mind or intellect, I'm sure.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  So he'd have a podcast.

• 16:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think you nailed it, actually.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  All right, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about irony a little more.

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• 18:57Josh Clark?

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• 20:07Speaker 02

  All right, so 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,

• 20:22Speaker 02

  like sarcasm is sort of a way of being ironic, but to me, it's different because there's a smarminess to it.

• 20:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  They're lumped together a lot, like sarcasm and irony. So if, you know, if you were to say, like if it's really raining outside and the weather is really bad and you're like, yeah, nice weather. Like, 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.

• 20:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think you said, one of us said that irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to tear flesh.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:04Josh Clark?

  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. Yeah, sarcasm is pretty lame. It's just a, I think it's, 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.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I try not to be sarcastic. Oh, I take that back. I'm, I don't try to not be sarcastic. I think,

• 21:35Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:42Josh Clark?

  I can't think of you being sarcastic.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Oh, you can't?

• 21:48Josh Clark?

  No, I can't.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think. Unless you're just trying to get a, like, get a laugh or something.

• 21:55Josh Clark?

  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, like.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, self-deprecating.

• 22:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's another way to put it. Sure. That's how Ethan Hawke's character would put it.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Here's a word that I never knew, but I knew it was a thing. I've never heard of leitotes before.

• 22:19Josh Clark?

  Me either.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  But that's a word that is like verbal, like understated verbal irony. Like if someone asks you if, if you, if you like something or not that you really, really hate and you say like, mm, not the biggest fan of that. That is called a leitotes.

• 22:35Josh Clark?

  I'm so glad you're the one who said that because it's not how I was going to pronounce that.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Were you gonna say lightotes? Well, I looked it up because I get, I'm frankly tired of being made fun of in lists of mail.

• 22:48Josh Clark?

  You're a professional.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  I'm getting there.

• 22:50Josh Clark?

  I'm just, well, I'm just a lump. So yeah, that has to negate what the, like,

• 23:00Josh Clark?

  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.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:19Josh Clark?

  You can suddenly like lose it and not understand it anymore. That's, that's kind of how that is with me.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, just breeze right on by the leitotes.

• 23:28Josh Clark?

  Exactly. 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.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and 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 as like a, as like a comeuppance sometimes. Like, sometimes it can be very sad when situational irony strikes, but sometimes it's like somebody gets what they deserved in an ironic way.

• 24:03Josh Clark?

  For sure. And then sometimes it's just like 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. Like 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,

• 24:45Josh Clark?

  you know, 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. There's something funny about it. I, I, I think everything has something funny about it.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:20Josh Clark?

  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, it's, it's larger than that person's individual death in that sense, but it's tied directly to it.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw a comedian the other day, I can't remember her name.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  You're just the one person.

• 26:06Josh Clark?

  Oh man, you need to introduce me to that friend.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  It's not a friend, it was a comedian.

• 26:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, well, make friends with them and introduce me.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  All right, maybe someone will write in it. Or maybe she will, you never know.

• 26:17Josh Clark?

  There's, there's some others too, like a fire station burning down.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Hmm, so funny.

• 26:23Josh Clark?

  Especially, especially if no one got hurt. Well, that's what I'm saying. There's like, 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. That's the thing. It's not always funny to everyone all the time. It could just be one person. My theory is that everything is funny at least to one person.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  No, I totally agree. And I think what's getting me here with the, this kind of irony being played, when, I think there's sometimes karma attached to it. You know what I mean?

• 27:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like that lifeguard hit a drifter with his car and drove off.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Well, 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.

• 27:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's essentially the same thing, if you ask me, a lifeguard drowning or something. George Carlin, did you see his example?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 27:29Josh Clark?

  Oh, 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. May I?

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you said this to me?

• 27:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I did. He basically said this. He said that if you are a, 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.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 28:08Josh Clark?

  He said if the delivery truck was carrying insulin, now you're, now you've got irony. I think both of those things are ironic, whether it's sugar or insulin.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:18Josh Clark?

  But that was his, his distinction.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  That's good. Well, we've already talked about dramatic irony. That's the next one on the list. And that's again, when the audience knows something that the characters don't. And Hitchcock had a very famous example of, like, let's see a scene with a couple of characters in a restaurant diner, 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 shock. 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. And all of a sudden that adds this real dramatic tension to what's happening.

• 28:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or like the, the audience knowing Oedipus will tear his eyes out and they're just kind of laughing at him, laughing at the blind guy, right?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Right, like you gotta come in your way, buddy.

• 29:07Josh Clark?

  There's another one. I didn't ever hear this term for it. 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 realm of fiction and starts addressing you, the reader or the viewer. That's romantic irony. And the reason I think it's called romantic, based on the German romantics and their love of irony, 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.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:52Josh Clark?

  I take it as like them spelling things out for the reader, I guess.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like, you know, for the sake of comedy, like it made me think of like Albert Brooks and Broadcast News.

• 30:03Josh Clark?

  I don't remember that.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  You don't remember seeing that or you never saw that? Or you don't remember that part when you saw it?

• 30:09Josh Clark?

  Is that the one where I'm mad as heck and I'm not going to take it anymore?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  No, that's network. Broadcast News was a.

• 30:16Josh Clark?

  No, I've never seen it.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Was a James L. Brooks romantic comedy. One of the great movies, by the way.

• 30:23Josh Clark?

  I gotta see it then.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Especially if you like Albert Brooks.

• 30:26Josh Clark?

  I do. I love him. I think he's an international treasure.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  That's right. He was obviously born Albert Einstein. Fun fact.

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  What?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  That was his name.

• 30:37Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 30:38Speaker 02

  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 Super Dave Osborne.

• 30:48Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  And The Outsiders was written by a teenage girl named Asy Hinton.

• 30:56Josh Clark?

  It's the fact of every podcast now.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:59Josh Clark?

  Wow. Thank you for that, Chuck.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. See Broadcast News. It's great. Like one of the great movies.

• 31:03Josh Clark?

  Have you ever seen Network?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:05Josh Clark?

  Okay. Yeah, I liked it, too.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  I didn't say I liked it.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  No, I loved it.

• 31:12Josh Clark?

  Okay, so getting back to irony. You know, one thing also, I'm proud of us for not being like, was that ironic? Were you being ironic? We're not doing that. And that would have been really annoying. So kudos to us, if you ask me.

• 31:30Josh Clark?

  Maybe we'll edit that out.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  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.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Back to iron specifically, though, right?

• 31:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the Socratic irony is what it's also called, or philosophical irony. Where, you know, again, you're playing, I think dumb is usually the way that it's most often described or presented, but it can be other things like, I think 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. And in doing so, he shows like just the unjustness of life in that mental hospital. Seems a little, I don't know if off is the right term, but that's

• 32:28Josh Clark?

  like, here is where it's like, okay, maybe we need to come up with other terms for stuff like this and stop using ironic like that.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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 subgenre, or maybe, you know, not a subgenre, but its own thing where irony comes into play.

• 32:52Josh Clark?

  Sure. Well, let's talk satire. I have a pet theory that satire is actually super harmful for society.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. I love satire.

• 33:02Josh Clark?

  It can take, I like parody, but satire, I feel like it can take the actual like, anger and discontent and just release it. It acts as a pressure valve for society. 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. 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.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  I guess that's a kind of satire, because there's so much comedic satire that you love in your life, you know?

• 33:49Josh Clark?

  Okay, I'll go with like Spinal Tap.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Okay. I mean, The Simpsons is a satire.

• 33:56Josh Clark?

  Is it?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Don't you think?

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  I don't know. Is it, are you saying, is it ironic to, I think?

• 34:04Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I mean, we agreed to not do that. I mean, I mean, really, it is, I think it's a satire, isn't it?

• 34:12Josh Clark?

  I don't know, man.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  I think it's a satire of like, American life and family and stuff.

• 34:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, I can definitely see that. I like, I definitely see where you're coming from. I don't know. I always kind of associate satire almost exclusively with like, having a really important message, which is why, to me, it takes that important message and kind of uses it to deflate any true feelings about it.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Okay. Like, social satire?

• 34:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right.

• 34:44Josh Clark?

  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, oh, who was it? I think it's Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer or essayist, I think. He 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.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:23Josh Clark?

  Of course, he got attention for it. 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? That's my question.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good question.

• 35:59Josh Clark?

  Thanks, man.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  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.

• 36:12Josh Clark?

  Fair enough. And at the same time, one last thing. My, my position isn't that we all just need to put up with the status quo.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 36:19Josh Clark?

  That's what I'm saying. Like satire inadvertently can make the status quo continue on when it shouldn't.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're talking about getting some bricks and baseball bats. And really doing something.

• 36:32Josh Clark?

  That's right. Taking it to the streets, as Michael McDonald said.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Camp is another sort of irony, and that's a little more of the,

• 36:45Speaker 02

  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. If something is campy, that's kind of what you're talking about, you know, in a lot of cases.

• 36:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:00Josh Clark?

  John, John, speaking of The Simpsons, John Waters was on The Simpsons once.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I remember that one.

• 37:06Josh Clark?

  He gave, 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.

• 37:21Josh Clark?

  And John Waters goes, well, sort of.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  That's funny.

• 37:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  All right. I think that's a good time for a break. And we'll be right back, right after this.

• 37:45Josh Clark?

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• 39:35Josh Clark?

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• 39:56Speaker 02

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• 39:59Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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• 40:10Josh Clark?

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• 40:28Josh Clark?

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• 41:04Josh Clark?

  Okay 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 is 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?

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, like five or six, I think.

• 41:42Josh Clark?

  Not bad.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed. I love the example Olivia uses too. She's like, every society comes up with ideas like nicknaming a big guy tiny.

• 41:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  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 nickname was whatever that word is in their language for like small or tiny, like everyone gets that joke.

• 42:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it is universal. 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, of human communication and I guess human understanding of the world for, from time immemorial.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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 4th 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.

• 43:05Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm. I think that disproves my everything is funny in some way theory, though.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Well, that, that's the Zhuangzi from 4th century BCE, not, not a noted comedic tome.

• 43:16Josh Clark?

  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, so 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.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  The whole mythology series, which I've not seen. Have you?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 43:58Josh Clark?

  We'll have to watch it together.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  He knew a thing or two about archetypes.

• 44:01Josh Clark?

  He did. He was, he was an archetype type.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Archetypist. Don Quixote, you know, of course, is maybe the first modern novel. There was, there's a lot of irony in that. The, the 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.

• 44:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah. My 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.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Doesn't get any better than that, you know?

• 44:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, that's just the one that everyone's read. Like, every one of his stories has an ironic twist to it.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  And 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. He, he was just a master of it. And then another one that always stands out to me is The Monkey's Paw.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:09Josh Clark?

  Do you, do you, you remember that one?

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Uh, I remember a little bit about it. I remember being scary, like the monkey's paw moves in your hand or something. Yeah.

• 45:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, granted wishes, but those wishes always came with an ironic consequence. Like, I think the, the father wishes for 100 pounds sterling and he gets it, but it's as 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 that don't pan out very well for the family involved.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And sometimes that's funny, but a lot of times it's tragic. Like, I don't know if The Gift of the Magi was supposed to be funny.

• 45:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, good point.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  You know? But, uh, yeah, lots of ironic twists. I guess he was the M. Night Shyamalan of the literary world.

• 45:57Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  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?

• 46:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But he's like O. Henry, like you don't really see it coming.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Eh, so you know, sometimes. Some are better than others.

• 46:11Josh Clark?

  I will watch every single one of that guy's movies. I love them.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they're entertaining. The, did you finally see the one at the, the concert, the pop star?

• 46:20Josh Clark?

  I did. That was his daughter who directed it, right?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  No, no, no, he directed it.

• 46:25Josh Clark?

  Oh, he did?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  She was in it.

• 46:26Josh Clark?

  Oh, she was the pop star?

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:28Josh Clark?

  Okay. Yeah, it was, it was entertaining and it went just totally nuts at the end, didn't it?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a very fun, bad movie.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah, 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.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't see the last one, Old or whatever. Is it called Old?

• 46:50Josh Clark?

  It's fine. It's good.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:51Josh Clark?

  I mean, it's a M. Night Shyamalan movie. It's a little, like a bottle episode. It's a little, all takes place on this beach, almost entirely takes place on this beach and that gets a little old, as it were, but, um, you know, it still moves along pretty quickly.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I remember early in his career when it was like he was the twist guy and seeing, and there's some spoilers coming, everyone, if you haven't seen these very old movies.

• 47:15Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  But, uh, when, was it The Village? Yeah, that was what it was called. Like, I remember seeing that movie and the whole time, I'm like, this is so like gonna be revealed at its modern times. Like, I was just waiting on it.

• 47:31Josh Clark?

  I had, I was total, maybe that's it. Maybe I'm just like, super dupable because I had no idea that was coming. I knew that the sick, the, the twist to the sixth sense because some jackass told me before I went into it, which is mean. And then, uh, all the other ones, I'm like, what? Every time, which I love.

• 47:52Speaker 02

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

• 47:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think that makes you dupable. I think that means you're like into it and, and like can park, park that stuff. That's a good trait.

• 48:07Josh Clark?

  Okay. As long as it's not on the dance floor.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Right. No parking on the dance floor.

• 48:12Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm. What else, Chuck?

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I mean, we can keep going through literary examples. Well, I, we should probably definitely mention Catch 22 because we'll get emails if we don't, because that's sort of, uh, well, it's a satire, of course. So you hate it, but it's built, 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 one of, in like a combat mission as a pilot in war, uh, should be removed for mental health reasons, but if you try to get out of it by saying like, I'm a section eight or whatever, then you're obviously sane for doing so.

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  So you have to fly. That's who should be flying. Yeah. It's a great, great ironic paradox of all time. And 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, 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.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I get you. I get what you're saying.

• 49:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Sometimes I just have to reflect on something for 10, 15 minutes and then I come to the basis of it.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Then you got it.

• 49:35Josh Clark?

  Uh, 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.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's super conformist.

• 49:56Josh Clark?

  Sure. So did you recognize that that was basically the theme of the movie?

• 50:01Speaker 02

  I don't, you know, when I saw that movie, I was in my twenties and so I think I was just more like, I think I just more like, 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.

• 50:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  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 were, you know, were fighting against.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. I, 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 underneath.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  It's good luck.

• 50:43Josh Clark?

  So 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...

• 50:53Josh Clark?

  If I'm tossing out my two cents, which I've basically tossed out $50 already so far.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:00Josh Clark?

  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, belavored, human-created irony, if done well, then it's great. But most of the time, it's not done very well.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  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 US 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.

• 51:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  And that sincerity had kind of been abandoned.

• 51:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, 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. I really am just gonna share everything. I'm gonna wear my heart

• 52:30Josh Clark?

  on my sleeve, and you're gonna 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.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, is that millennial cringe?

• 53:09Josh Clark?

  That's a zinger.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  That is a zinger. Yeah, 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.

• 53:20Josh Clark?

  Okay, great.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  I haven't read the most stuff, but I've read a couple of his books, and I like them both.

• 53:25Josh Clark?

  I liked McSweeney's humor a lot for a while.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  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, I read like a passage from a book that a kid wrote through his charity, and it was cool. They did good work.

• 53:48Josh Clark?

  That's adorable. Was it any good?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was good.

• 53:51Josh Clark?

  Okay, good. Because they don't publish bad kids' books.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah, but back to millennial cringe. That's what Gen Z is about, right?

• 54:00Josh Clark?

  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, 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 were supposed to be ironic or not by the end of it.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Maybe that's their aim, confuse the olds.

• 54:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they do a good job of it. There's, 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.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:52Josh Clark?

  And if you do that with, like, Gen Z meta-ironic stuff, memes, or whatever, it's, there's, that'd be madness. There'd be madness.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  That'd be madness. I like that better.

• 55:04Josh Clark?

  Thanks. Yeah, I feel like I've been hanging on by my fingernails this whole episode, and I hate those.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  Which is why we talked 48 minutes about it.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 55:19Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  I have nothing else.

• 55:21Josh Clark?

  All right, well, that's it for irony, everybody, and that means it's time for listener mail.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Hey, 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.

• 55:44Josh Clark?

  I don't either.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  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. We mentioned this because there was a city just north of Detroit called East Detroit. They are 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.

• 56:13Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Keep up the great work. We heard from a couple of people, but that is from Mike in East Point, Michigan.

• 56:20Josh Clark?

  Nice. Thanks a lot, Mike. We appreciate that. Of course, there was an East Detroit.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. Well, it's like, East Atlanta is an actual neighborhood in Atlanta, which is east of Atlanta, but it's still not the same as saying the east side of Atlanta.

• 56:36Josh Clark?

  No. And I think there's an East Point around Atlanta, too, right? Am I thinking of Athens?

• 56:42Speaker 02

  No, no, no. There's an East Point, but I believe East Point is south? Isn't that down near the airport?

• 56:49Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I have blood trickling out of my ears.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  All right, let's just wrap it up.

• 56:54Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, who was that from?

• 56:56Speaker 02

  That's from Mike.

• 56:57Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 57:12Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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