In short
The podcast episode explains what “irony” is and why it’s hard to define, tracing the concept from Greek/Latin rhetoric (eirōn/ironia) through Socratic irony, situational (“irony of fate”), dramatic irony, verbal irony/sarcasm, and later literary uses (romantic irony, satire, camp, cosmic irony). It also debates whether irony is socially harmful or helpful, referencing “death of irony,” sincerity backlash, and Gen Z “meta-irony.”
Guests
No guests are featured. Hosts are Josh, Chuck, and Jer Bears (co-hosts during the discussion).
Key claims
Irony has multiple types and no universal definition; situational/cosmic irony is “the money irony”; verbal irony is broadly universal and understood by young children; satire can act like a pressure valve that reduces pressure for real change; overused irony can lead to despair/stasis, while forced sincerity can feel smarmy.
Notable examples
Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” (often misclassified); Oedipus Rex (dramatic/situational irony); Reality Bites (Winona Ryder can’t define irony); Hitchcock’s bomb-under-table; lifeguard drowning; George Carlin’s insulin vs sugar truck; Catch-22; Fight Club; “gift of the Magi”; “monkey’s paw”; Zhuangzi’s useless tree; Tom Sawyer’s reverse psychology.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Irony Through Alanis Morissette
1:22 to 1:49
Discussion on Alanis Morissette's song and the public's perception of irony.
“It's no wonder that Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One.”
Understanding Irony Through Alanis Morissette
2:24 to 3:08
Discussion on Alanis Morissette's song and the public's perception of irony.
“Yeah, well, I mean, if you are our age or above, maybe a few below.”
Defining Irony: Cultural References
3:08 to 5:26
Exploration of how irony is defined through cultural references like 'Reality Bites'.
“That just kind of goes to show like how wide open everyone's interpretation of what irony is, is.”
The Historical Context of Irony
5:26 to 6:10
Examining the historical roots of irony from Greek drama to modern implications.
“You've been throwing out a lot of these very esoteric topics lately.”
The Evolution of Irony Through the Ages
6:10 to 9:21
Discussion on how the concept of irony has evolved through literature and philosophy.
“So let's get into it, Chuck, because irony is nothing new.”
Dramatic Irony in Literature
9:21 to 14:00
Analysis of dramatic irony, using Oedipus Rex as a key example.
“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.”
Exploring Irony through Oedipus
14:00 to 17:25
Learn about various forms of irony illustrated through the story of Oedipus.
“Maybe if they had brought him up and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them.”
Nourish and Bloom Market
18:46 to 19:59
Explore the innovative grocery solution by Nourish and Bloom Market.
“Hey everybody, it's Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and that was Jaleah Hemings.”
Diving Deeper into Irony
19:59 to 27:33
A thorough conversation on different types of irony and their implications.
“So we've defined or at least talked about a couple of different types of irony.”
Dramatic Irony and Its Impact
27:33 to 28:00
Understanding dramatic irony with examples from literature and film.
“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.”
Show all 19 chapters
Exploring Different Types of Irony
28:00 to 31:05
Learn about various forms of irony, including dramatic and romantic irony, through examples and discussions.
“He said if the delivery truck was carrying insulin, now you've got irony.”
The Role of Satire in Society
31:05 to 36:29
Understand the complexities of satire and its potential effects on societal change and awareness.
“You know, one thing also, I'm proud of us for not being like, was that ironic?”
The Universality of Irony
40:46 to 42:08
Discover how the understanding of irony is innate to humans and its historical significance.
“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.”
Exploring Irony Through Literature
42:08 to 44:40
Learn about various literary examples of irony and their impact.
“It's been used as a device long before anybody identified it, what irony was.”
The Master of Ironic Twists
44:40 to 45:52
Discover O. Henry's contributions to ironic storytelling.
“Yeah, I mean, that's just the one that everyone's read.”
Satire and Its Ironic Impact
45:52 to 48:28
Understand how satire utilizes irony and its effects on culture.
“There is something to that, though, if you're known for something.”
Generational Shifts in Irony
48:28 to 51:30
Explore how different generations perceive and use irony.
“The whole title is an ironic paradox in that the Catch-22 of the film is that anyone who wants to fly in a combat mission as a pilot in war, should be removed for mental health reasons.”
Meta-Irony in Gen Z Culture
51:30 to 54:08
Learn about the concept of meta-irony and its prevalence in Gen Z.
“But since then, it has sort of, I think he felt like it was overused in the literary world.”
Discussion on East Detroit and Neighborhoods
56:02 to 56:59
Learn about the confusion surrounding names like East Detroit and its neighborhoods.
“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.”
Transcript
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1:51Josh Clark:Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. a production of iHeartRadio.
2:00Chuck Bryant: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. It's a little on the nose, isn't it? I think so. Sorry. Let me try again. The Isn't It Ironic? Don't You Think? edition.
2:24Josh Clark:Yeah, well, I mean, if you are our age or above, maybe a few below.
2:32Chuck Bryant:Or a weird younger person.
2:34Josh Clark: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.
2:45Chuck Bryant: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.
2:56Josh Clark:Yeah. What else?
2:58Chuck Bryant:A free ride when you're already there.
3:02Josh Clark:I don't even know what that means. No, not really.
3:03Chuck Bryant: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.
3:33Josh Clark:I mean, it's kind of notoriously hard to define. Uh, Livia helped us with this and she, you know, the other sort of cultural example she gave initially was, uh, 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
4:03Chuck Bryant: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 totally nice but he was like the cool dude but he was like that's the guy that she wanted right yeah that's the irony of the
4:20Josh Clark:movie but yeah ethan hawk he kind of makes her feel dumb by like defining irony really plainly uh what 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
4:41Chuck Bryant: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. Yeah,
4:53Josh Clark: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. And like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective, I think helps.
5:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I just want to jump in. I was silent because I didn't agree, but I want to say Olivia 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.
5:26Josh Clark:You've been throwing out a lot of these very esoteric topics lately.
5:30Chuck Bryant: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.
5:37Josh Clark:I wasn't going to say that.
5:38Chuck Bryant: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 is because I don't know exactly what it is. But also in the myriad ways that it's played 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. Yeah. As we'll see, that dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, Chuck, because irony is nothing new. Like the 90s Gen X slackers didn't invent it.
6:17Josh Clark:No, not at all. The term itself comes from a character, actually, not really a thing yet. Yet, in classical Greek, I guess, drama, the character was E-I-R-O-N with a little rooftop over the O.
6:34Chuck Bryant:A little puff of smoke coming out the chimney.
6:37Josh Clark:Yeah, E-ron, I guess, or I-ron.
6:40Chuck Bryant:I'm going with I-ron.
6:42Josh Clark:Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but that's German. I don't know about Greek. But yeah, I-ron-ee. Let's go with I-ron.
6:49Chuck Bryant:Okay.
6:49Josh Clark:Uh, but that means one who disassembles. And that was like, like I said, that was a character and a lot of Greek drama and comedy and comedy writers would, uh, insert that character to accomplish, uh, 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, uh, a detective who would play dumb in order to sort of, uh, sniff, sniff someone off the case and reveal them as a fool.
7:19Chuck Bryant:Right, or a fraud or somebody who knows much less than they like to think that they do. Yeah. And in a way, 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. He would get so excited about using Socrates as an iron. And so Socrates is 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 disassemble them in their entire identity.
8:03Josh Clark: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 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.
8:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and it was basically a divisive speech. It wasn't like a whole book could be ironic 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. It was, yeah, exactly. That's what irony was. And it was no broader than that. It was a very narrow definition for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along. And the Renaissance people were like, oh, okay, we really like this stuff. They, I guess, got back into Socratic irony, which was using people playing dumb, essentially, to show how actually dumb someone else was.
9:14Chuck Bryant: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, 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 it's just indisputably ironic. And that's, to me, that's the money irony.
9:45Josh Clark: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 to be clever or something like that. So I'm with you.
9:55Chuck Bryant:Totally. And I think that that's a big distinction is we'll see like being clever and being the hapless subject of irony. I think that's a big distinction.
10:07Josh Clark: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, they were into it in a sense of, like, hey, this is how we can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints.
10:27Chuck Bryant: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.
11:05Chuck Bryant: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.
Read the full transcript
11:14Josh Clark: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 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 hipster irony now, maybe.
11:41Chuck Bryant:Right. Exactly. Yeah. Kind of like, you know, coming up on something like, oh, you love your life of milk and cows, huh? I guess that's all there is to life, huh?
11:50Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah.
11:50Chuck Bryant:So that was Hegel. Kierkegaard, who was the Christian ethicist, he really hated irony as well. He called it infinite absolute negativity. Yeah. 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 rather than just actuality.
12:41Josh Clark: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 a essay in 1833 from a classical scholar, an English scholar named Conop Thurwall, 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. And when that plays out, that's a dramatic irony.
13:27Chuck Bryant:Right. And he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex.
13:32Josh Clark:Lots of irony there.
13:33Chuck Bryant:There really is. There's a lot. So there's some in that. So King Laos and Queen Jocasta 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 actually grows up to slay King Laos without realizing that this is his father. So it happened anyway. 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.
14:12Josh Clark:Yeah. I think Alanis Morissette had sung lines like that. It's like, Oedipus. That's right. Killing his dad. And then there's more irony heaped up on top of that, which is later on, of course, he didn't know that he had killed Laos. so he seeks vengeance against his the king's murderer who is himself right and then um there's
14:37Chuck Bryant:also a bit of dramatic irony the audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw his own eyes out yeah yeah and at one point he mocks a blind man for being blind which is just cruel no
14:49Josh Clark:matter when you're you're speaking I'm sure the audience is like oh yeah exactly so yeah I mean
14:55Chuck Bryant:And 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 Conop Thurwall.
15:05Josh Clark:Thurwall, yeah.
15:06Chuck Bryant:No way that's real.
15:08Josh Clark:The first name is weird.
15:10Chuck Bryant:So Mr. Thurwall basically shows like, here's irony. Here's irony too. Here's irony. But if you pinned him or anybody else down and say, 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.
15:46Josh Clark: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 her very well in that movie but yeah he was part of the establishment so he wasn't cool and Ethan Hawke like what's he doing not Ethan Hawke but what would that character be doing now
16:09Chuck Bryant:I don't know I mean I hesitate to say but I'm sure you know he would probably He would be very much in love with his own mind or intellect, I'm sure. So he'd have a podcast. Yeah. I think you nailed it, actually.
16:25Josh Clark:All right. Let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk about irony a little more.
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19:58All right.
19:59Josh Clark: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 like sarcasm is 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 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 smarmy, 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.
20:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think you said one of us said that irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to tear flesh.
20:55Josh Clark:Yeah.
20:56Chuck Bryant: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 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.
21:18Josh Clark:Yeah, I try not to be sarcastic. Oh, I take that back. I don't try to not be sarcastic. 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.
21:33Chuck Bryant:I can't think of you being sarcastic.
21:36Josh Clark:Oh, you can't? No, I can. You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think. Unless you're just trying to get a laugh or something.
21:47Chuck Bryant:Sure, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely my humor is 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.
22:06Josh Clark: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 you like something or not that you really, really hate and you say like, not the biggest fan of that. That is called a light o'tees.
22:27Chuck Bryant:I'm so glad you're the one who said that because that's not how I was going to pronounce that word.
22:32Josh Clark:Were you going to say light o'tes?
22:33Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.
22:34Josh Clark:Well, I looked it up because I get, I'm frankly tired of being made fun of in Lister Vale. You're a professional. I'm getting there.
22:42Chuck Bryant:I'm just a lump. So, yeah, it has to negate what the, like, 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 sense that, like, if you think about something too hard, like economics. you can suddenly like lose it and not understand it anymore. That's kind of how that is with me.
23:17Josh Clark:Yeah, just breeze right on by the light of T's.
23:20Chuck Bryant: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.
23:32Josh Clark: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, you know, literature and movies and TV and stuff like that 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. For sure.
23:55Chuck Bryant: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 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, you know, as a survivor.
24:39Chuck Bryant:Once you know that stuff, 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 think everything has something funny about it.
24:57Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, I laughed instinctively the second you said a lifeguard drowned because 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.
25:11Chuck Bryant: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.
25:27Josh Clark:Yeah. I saw a comedian the other day. I can't remember her name. 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 it's like one person dies and everyone's like oh well that wasn't that bad you'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
26:08Chuck Bryant:there's uh there's some others too um like a fire station burning down so funny 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 that it could just be one person i my theory is that everything is funny
26:36Josh Clark:at least to one person no i totally agree uh and 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
26:50Chuck Bryant:you know what i mean yeah like that lifeguard hit a drifter with his car and drove off
26:58Josh Clark: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 cause something.
27:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's essentially the same thing, if you ask me, a lifeguard drowning or something. George Carlin, did you see his example? No. 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? Yeah. You sent this to me? 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 delivery truck was carrying sugar, that would be like poetic and pretty funny, but just bad luck, really, according to George Carlin.
28:00Chuck Bryant:Sure. He said if the delivery truck was carrying insulin, now you've got irony. I think both of those things are ironic, whether it's sugar or insulin. Yeah. But that was his distinction.
28:12Josh Clark: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 a 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.
28:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Or like the audience knowing Oedipus will tear his eyes out. Right. Just kind of laughing at him, laughing at the blind guy. Right.
28:57Josh Clark:Right. Like you got to come in your way, buddy.
28:59Chuck Bryant:There's another one I didn't ever hear this term for. I've always heard it is 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.
29:43Chuck Bryant:Right. I take it as like them spelling things out for the reader, I guess.
29:47Josh Clark:Yeah. I like it. You know, for the sake of comedy. Like, it made me think of, like, Albert Brooks and Broadcast News. I 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?
30:01Chuck Bryant:Is that the one where I'm mad as heck and I'm not going to take it anymore?
30:05Josh Clark:No, that's network. Broadcast News was a James L. Brooks romantic comedy. One of the great movies, by the way. I got to see it then. Especially if you like Albert Brooks.
30:17Chuck Bryant:I do. I love him. I think he's an international treasure.
30:21Josh Clark:That's right. He was obviously born Albert Einstein. Fun fact.
30:25Chuck Bryant:What?
30:26Josh Clark:That was his name. Really? 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. Wow. And The Outsiders was written by a teenage girl named Essie Hinton.
30:47Chuck Bryant:It's the fact of every podcast now.
30:50Josh Clark:Yeah.
30:50Chuck Bryant:Wow. Thank you for that, Chuck.
30:52Josh Clark:Yeah. See Broadcast News. It's great. Like one of the great movies.
30:55Chuck Bryant:Have you ever seen Network?
30:56Josh Clark:Oh, yeah.
30:57Chuck Bryant:Okay. Yeah, I liked it too.
31:00Josh Clark:I didn't say I liked it.
31:02Chuck Bryant:Okay. No, I loved it. 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.
31:21Chuck Bryant:Maybe we'll edit that out.
31:24Josh Clark: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. Back to Iran specifically, though, right?
31:38Chuck Bryant: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, 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.
32:27Josh Clark: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 sub genre or maybe, you know, not a sub genre, but its own thing where irony comes into play.
32:43Chuck Bryant:Sure. Let's talk satire. I have a pet theory that satire is actually super harmful for society.
32:52Josh Clark:Oh, interesting. I love satire.
32:54Chuck Bryant: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. Oh, 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.
33:33Josh Clark:I guess that's a kind of satire because there's so much comedic satire that you love in your life, you know.
33:41Chuck Bryant:Okay, I'll go with like Spinal Tap. Yep.
33:45Josh Clark:Okay. I mean, The Simpsons is a satire.
33:48Chuck Bryant:Is it? Yeah. Is it? Don't you think? I don't know. Are you saying is it ironic, do I think?
33:56Josh Clark:No, no, no. I mean, we agreed to not do that. I mean, really, I think it's a satire, isn't it? I don't know, man. I think it's a satire of American life and family and stuff.
34:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I mean, I can definitely see that. 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.
34:31Josh Clark:Oh, interesting. OK. Like social satire. Yeah. Yeah.
34:34Chuck Bryant: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, oh, who was it? I think it was 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.
35:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, yeah. 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.
35:48Josh Clark: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 taking a stance either way. I see your point.
36:04Chuck Bryant:Fair enough. And at the same time, one last thing. I my my position isn't that we all just need to put up with the status quo. Oh, sure. That's that's what I'm saying. Like satire inadvertently can make the status quo continue on when it shouldn't.
36:18Josh Clark:Yeah. You're talking about getting some bricks and baseball bats and really doing something.
36:23Chuck Bryant:That's right. Taking it to the streets, as Michael McDonald said.
36:27Josh Clark:uh camp is another sort of irony and that's a little more of the um i 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 and you know in a lot of cases right uh yeah john i'm john speaking of the simpsons
36:53Chuck Bryant: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.
37:14Josh Clark:That's funny.
37:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah.
37:16Josh Clark:All right. I think that's a good time for a break. And we'll be right back right after this.
37:36Chuck Bryant:You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. That's right.
37:53Josh Clark:From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system, a constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeartRuby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.
38:20Chuck Bryant:Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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40:14Josh Clark:Yeah, that's what's great about it. It's flexible, everybody. You can start online, finish at the dealer. Start at the dealer, finish online. Your info stays with you so you're not starting the process from scratch.
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41:02Chuck Bryant: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. Right. 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?
41:38Josh Clark:Yeah, like five or six, I think.
41:40Chuck Bryant:Not bad.
41:42Josh Clark:Yeah, agreed. I love the example Livia uses, too. She's like, every society comes up with ideas like nicknaming a big guy tiny.
41:50Chuck Bryant:Right. But I love that.
41:52Josh Clark: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.
42:07Chuck Bryant: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 human communication and I guess human understanding of the world from time immemorial. memorial.
42:34Josh Clark: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 was the tree's purpose in use, you know, right there.
43:04Chuck Bryant:I think that disproves my everything is funny in some way theory, though.
43:08Josh Clark:Well, that's the Zhuangzi from 4th Century B.C. Not a noted comedic dome.
43:15Chuck Bryant:Trickster stories also are always dripping with irony, and they are super-duper old. 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 in the whole mythology series, which I've not seen. Have you? No. We'll have to watch it together.
43:57Josh Clark: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. 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. It's got that kind of thing. So that's that's also sort of dripping with irony.
44:27Chuck Bryant:Yeah, my favorite ironist of all time is O. Henry. He was well-known as the master of the ironic twist, like the gift of the Magi.
44:38Josh Clark:Doesn't get any better than that, you know?
44:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I mean, that's just the one that everyone's read. Every one of his stories has an ironic twist to it. 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 quickly assembled at the end out of whatever parts are at hand. like it's the point of the story all the way along. He was just a master of it. And then another one that always stands out to me is the monkey's paw.
45:06Josh Clark:Yeah.
45:07Chuck Bryant:Do you remember that one?
45:10Josh Clark:I remember a little bit about it. I remember being scary, like the monkey's paw moves in your hand or something. Yeah.
45:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, granted wishes, but those wishes always came with an ironic consequence. Like I think the father wishes for 100 pounds sterling and he gets it, but it's as compensation because his son died at a factory. So 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.
45:38Josh Clark: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. 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?
46:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah, but he's like, oh, Henry, like you don't really see it coming.
46:06Josh Clark:You know, sometimes. Some are better than others.
46:09Chuck Bryant:I will watch every single one of that guy's movies. I love them.
46:14Josh Clark: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.
46:25Chuck Bryant:Oh, she was the pop star?
46:26Josh Clark:Yeah.
46:27Chuck Bryant:Okay. Yeah, it was entertaining. And it went just totally nuts at the end, didn't it? Yeah.
46:33Josh Clark:I mean, I thought it was a very fun bad movie.
46:36Chuck Bryant: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.
46:43Josh Clark:Yeah. I didn't see the last one old or whatever. Is it called old? It's fine. It's good.
46:49Chuck Bryant:I mean, it's an M. Night Shyamalan movie. It's a little like a bottle episode. It's a little. Oh, OK. 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.
47:05Josh Clark: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. OK. but uh when was it the village uh 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 that it's modern times like i
47:29Chuck Bryant:was just waiting on it i had i was told 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 as 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.
47:50Josh Clark:Did he say, hey, have you seen that new movie where Bruce Willis is dead the whole time? Yeah. 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.
48:05Chuck Bryant:Okay. As long as it's not on the dance floor.
48:08Josh Clark:Right.
48:09Chuck Bryant:No parking on the dance floor. Mm-hmm. What else, Chuck?
48:15Josh Clark:Well, I mean, we can keep going through literary examples. Well, 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 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 obviously sane for doing so.
48:51Chuck Bryant:So you have to fly. That's who should be flying. Yeah. It's a great, great ironic paradox of all time. And so, 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.
49:24Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, yeah. I get you. I get what you're saying.
49:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Sometimes I just have to reflect on something for 10, 15 minutes and then I come to the basis of it.
49:32Josh Clark:Then you got it.
49:33Chuck Bryant: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.
49:53Josh Clark:Yeah, super conformist.
49:55Chuck Bryant:Sure. So did you recognize that that was basically the theme of the movie?
49:59Josh Clark:I don't you know when I saw that movie I was in my 20s and so I think I was just more like I think I just more like like 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 yeah 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, we're fighting against.
50:30Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. I was totally lost on me too. I was too busy going like, maybe I should wear like floor length for coats and no shirt underneath. It's a good look. 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, if I'm tossing out my two cents, which I've basically tossed out$50 already so far.
50:57Josh Clark:Yeah.
50:58Chuck Bryant: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. But most of the time, it's not done very well.
51:17Josh Clark: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 has sort of, I think he felt like it was overused in the literary world. Yeah. And that sincerity had kind of been abandoned.
51:48Chuck Bryant: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 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.
52:33Chuck Bryant:And it came across as smarmy to a lot of people. A lot of people consider Dave Ager's work is 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 that kind of smarminess was very popular, I guess, especially in literature. Yeah.
53:03Josh Clark:Is that millennial cringe?
53:07Chuck Bryant:That's a zinger.
53:09Josh Clark: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. Okay, great. I haven't read the most stuff, but I've read a couple of his books, and I like them both.
53:23Chuck Bryant:I liked McSweeney's humor a lot for a while.
53:26Josh Clark: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.
53:46Chuck Bryant:That's adorable.
53:47Josh Clark:Yeah.
53:47Chuck Bryant:Was it any good? Yeah, it was good. Okay, good. Because they don't publish bad kids' books.
53:54Josh Clark:That's right. Yeah, but back to Millennial Cringe, that's what Gen Z is about, right?
53:59Chuck Bryant: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.
54:28Josh Clark:Maybe that's their aim, confuse the olds.
54:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and they do a good job of it. But 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 like Gen Z meta-ironic stuff or memes or whatever, that'd be madness. There'd be madness.
55:00Josh Clark:That'd be madness. I like that better. Thanks.
55:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I feel like I've been hanging on by my fingernails this whole episode, and I hate those.
55:08Josh Clark: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.
55:14Chuck Bryant:Which is why we talked 48 minutes about it. Good point. You got anything else?
55:19Josh Clark:I have nothing else.
55:20Chuck Bryant:All right. Well, that's it for irony, everybody. And that means it's time for Listener Mail.
55:26Josh Clark: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. 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. We mentioned this because there was a city just north of Detroit called East Detroit. they're not the same place.
56:03Josh Clark: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.
56:18Chuck Bryant:Nice. Thanks a lot, Mike. We appreciate that. Of course there was an East Detroit. Right. Yeah.
56:26Josh Clark: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.
56:34Chuck Bryant:No. And I think there's an east point around Atlanta too, right? Am I thinking of Athens?
56:40Josh Clark:No, no, no. There's an east point, but I believe east point is south?
56:45Chuck Bryant: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 at iheartradio.com.
57:10Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
57:48Chuck Bryant:We'll see you next time.
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From the publisher
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!
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