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