WEBVTT - Isn't It Ironic, Dontcha Think? 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.720 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.760 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.320 Chuck and jere Bears here too, And this is Stuff 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:23.479 you should Know, the irony edition. It's a little on 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:24.360 the nose, isn't it? 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:25.800 I think? 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:32.159 So? Sorry, let me try again. The isn't it ironic? 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:33.839 Don't you think? Addition? 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:39.160 Yeah, well, I mean if you are our age or above, 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:42.839 maybe a few below, or. 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:44.120 A weird younger person. 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:46.879 Yeah, you might have made fun of Alanis Morissett for 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:49.839 that whole thing, because I remember at the time, like 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.040 people dissing on that song because they were like, basically, 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:54.760 none of what she mentions is ironic. 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.040 No rain on your wedding day. I mean, yes, it's 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.200 not expected, but it can be. You know, it's a 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:05.080 pretty it's very possible. It's just bad luck in that situation. 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:06.400 That's one good example. 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.759 Yeah, what else a free ride when. 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:15.640 You're already there? No, not really no. Basically, nothing that 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:20.280 she said was technically ironic, but the fact that Atlantis 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:26.800 Morris set Canada's greatest hero felt okay with basically saying 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.240 this is all irony and ironic, so much so that 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:34.720 I'm gonna name my song ironic. Yeah, that just kind 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:39.840 of goes to show like how wide open everyone's interpretation 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:42.800 of what irony is is. 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.840 Yeah, I mean it's kind of notoriously hard to define. 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:48.120 Olivia helped us with this, and she, you know, the 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:52.480 other sort of cultural example she gave initially was Reality Bites, 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:56.160 And in that movie, it's like it's not a plot point, 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.440 but I mean it's sort of not a plot point, 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:00.280 but at some point when on a rider, you know, 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.640 is asked to define irony and she really can't. And 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.680 then Ethan Hawk, who you know at the time was 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.840 supposed to be like this super cool guy, but you 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:11.920 know that movie, the way that movie has age, like 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:13.560 you look back and you're like, he was kind of 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:15.720 a big jerk in that movie. 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.320 Yeah, I saw something about that that Ben Stiller was 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:20.679 actually the nice guy, but he was, you know, part 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:22.160 of the establishment. 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.040 Where Ethan Hawk was not totally. 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.040 Nice, but he was like the cool dude, but he 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.400 was like that that's a guy that she wanted, right. 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.480 Yeah, that's the irony of the movie. But yeah, Ethan Hawk, 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.440 he kind of makes her feel dumb by like defining 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:39.120 irony really plainly it's when the actual meeting is the 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.640 complete opposite from the literal meeting, which is, you know, 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:44.320 at the time it seemed like, oh, how clever, but 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.640 it's really not just to read some explicit definition of 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:51.160 one type of irony to prove you're smart. Is they 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:53.000 missed the mark in retrospect? 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:55.880 Sure, and even still like he's talking about such a 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.480 narrow definition of irony that he might as well just 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:01.040 kept his darn mouth shut. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:05.000 Yeah. Yeah, but that's kind of like you said, the 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:07.880 whole point of this is a really hard thing to define. 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.480 I think Lyvia did a great job with a tough topic, 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.720 and like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective, 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:17.960 I think helps. 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.840 Yeah, I just want to jump in. I was silent 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.440 because I didn't agree, but I want to say Lyvia 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.920 did a great job with this. I think this was 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:31.720 a bit of a a vision quest maybe for her. 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.160 I don't know if that's the right term, but it 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:35.600 was very difficult assignment. 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:37.800 Yeah, you've been throwing out a lot of these very 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:39.280 esoteric topics lately. 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.080 Yeah, I don't know why. I guess I don't know why. 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:45.960 I know you think it's because I just turned fifty 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:47.440 but I don't think that's it. 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:48.640 I wasn't going to say. 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:52.080 That, Okay, Well, at any rate, Yeah, this is something 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:54.360 that I've wanted to do for a while, and some 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.560 people have written in and asked for it. But yeah, 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:58.480 I think one of the reasons I wanted to tackle 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:03.160 is because I don't no exactly yeah what it is, 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.560 but also in the like myriad ways that it's played 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:11.400 like a really big role in shaping society. In fact, 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.880 there's this whole kind of schism between the ironic and 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.159 people who resent the ironic. Yeah, as we'll see, that 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.440 dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, chuck, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:25.440 because irony is nothing new like this. The nineties gen 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:27.200 X slackers didn't invent. 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:31.000 It, No, not at all. The term itself comes from 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.960 a character actually not really a thing yet in classical 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:39.600 Greek I guess drama. The character was E I R 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.400 N with a little rooftop over. 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:47.560 The little puff of smoke coming out the chimney. 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.120 Yeah, ieron, I guess or iron. 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:51.560 I'm going with iron. 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.359 Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.240 that's German, not about Greek. But yeah, irony, let's go 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:02.120 with iron, Okay, but that means one who disassembles. And 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:03.840 that was like, like I said, that was a character, 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:07.039 and a lot of Greek drama and comedy and comedy 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:12.360 writers would insert that character to accomplish like a dramatic 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.120 or comedic goal. And one of the ways that they 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:16.600 would do this, they would do it in a lot 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:18.719 of ways, but one of the ways was as sort 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:22.440 of a sort of like a detective who would play 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:26.880 dumb in order to sort of sniff sniff someone off 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:28.320 the case and reveal them as. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.520 A fool, right, or a fraud or somebody who knows 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:35.680 much less than they they like to think that they do. Yeah, 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:38.400 and it's in a way, it's you're setting them up 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:40.560 to make a fool of themselves. You call it like 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.440 paying out the rope that somebody's hanging themselves with. Entire 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.960 is what they did. And I guess Plato used to 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.080 love this stuff. He would take off his robe and 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:51.839 like twirl it over his head. Yeah, he would get 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.359 so excited about using Socrates as an iron. And so 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:02.159 Socrates is basically like he would be really like smarmy, 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:07.120 overly flattering, essentially basically saying please you know so much, 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:11.159 please teach me, and then he would eventually assemble them 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:12.680 in their entire identity. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:17.920 Yeah. In Latin, that iron word became erronia I r 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:23.239 O n I A. And there was a Roman orator 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:27.080 in the first century name Quintilian who said, it's basically 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.400 saying something contrary to what you mean, which is what 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.960 Ethan Hawk would kind of intimate many years later, and 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:35.320 the Europeans in the Middle Ages they were like, yeah, 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.240 that's that Quintilian definition is the one that we're going 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:44.280 to use as like a like an allegory on a contradiction. 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.840 Basically, yeah, And it was basically a devisive speech. It 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:52.520 wasn't like like a whole book could be ironic or 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.080 a whole TV show could be ironic, in part because 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.280 there weren't TV shows back then, but you get the point. 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:58.320 It's like a one liner. 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:01.400 It was, yeah, exactly, that's what irony was. And it 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:04.559 was no broader than that. It was a very narrow 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:08.840 definition for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:13.280 and they the Renaissance people were like, oh, okay, we 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.560 really like this stuff. They I guess got back into 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:21.880 Socratic irony, which was using people playing dumb essentially to 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.480 show how actually dumb someone else was. But they also 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:29.280 identified the irony of fate, which is far and away 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:33.240 the greatest type of irony. It's also called situational irony today, 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.160 and that's the one where instead of somebody making a 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:42.520 one liner or Socrates playing dumb, this is like the 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:46.080 universe does this to you, or life does this to you. 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.040 Just something happens that no one had any control over, 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:54.160 but it's just indisputably ironic. And that's to me, that's 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:55.120 the money irony. 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.000 Yeah, I think so too, because it's a recognition of 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:00.480 a thing that happened that wasn't like set up or 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.720 contrived or written to be clever or something like that. 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:06.040 So I'm with you totally. 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:07.840 And I think that that's a big distinction, is we'll 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:15.040 see like being clever and being the hapless subject of irony. 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:16.720 I think that's a big distinction. 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:21.600 Yeah, for sure. The German Romantics really got into it. Again, they, 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.080 like most people, had a lot of trouble defining it, 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:29.000 but they were very into Like they were into it 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:30.600 in a sense of like, hey, this is how we 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:36.640 can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints. 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:39.280 Yeah, and the way that they did it. So I 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.040 was looking into this because I didn't it took me. 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.479 I'm like, what are they talking about? Essentially, the Romantics 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.320 were the first postmodern people. They were the first to 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:52.600 basically say, hey, you know, life, have you ever stopped 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:54.880 and thought about life? Like? Are there other ways life 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.720 could go? What are other things you can do with 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.520 your life? And they were essentially like the first to 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:05.720 challenge conventional wisdom in the West as a group, and 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:11.280 they essentially became they prized irony because to them that 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.560 was a way of like thinking about things, of like 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.200 turning things over in your mind. So that's what the 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:20.120 German Romantics were into. And there were opponents to that 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.160 who are like, yeah, no, this is you're going down 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:24.600 a really bad path here. 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:30.640 Yeah. One guy in particular, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, he 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:33.960 was a German philosopher but not a Romantic. He was like, 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:36.480 I don't like any of that stuff. And I think 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:38.320 it seems like he kind of saw it as like 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:44.199 a sort of a smart alecky way to go through life, 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.280 like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.959 committing to anything, kind of like the like hipster irony 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:51.839 now maybe. 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.360 Right exactly, Yeah, kind of like you know, coming up 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:57.559 on something that, oh, you love your life of milk 0:09:57.600 --> 0:09:59.800 and cows. Huh, I guess that's all there is to life. 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:00.439 Yeah. 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:06.199 Yeah, So that was Hegel Kurkerguard, who was the Christian ethicist. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:13.040 He really hated irony as well. He called it infinite 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.840 absolute negativity. And so in the way that Hegel like 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:21.400 identified hipster irony as being just annoying and kind of 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.800 looking down on people, Kirkerguard kind of took that and 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:28.760 multiplied it by all the people doing this and found 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.679 like you could actually as a society lose your way 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.760 and like lose meaning to life if you examine stuff 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.480 too much rather than just living it. And so he 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.560 essentially predicted the postmodern age which we're in right now, 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:46.960 that loss of meaning that happened because people started thinking 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:50.600 about the possibilities that are out there not rather than 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:51.679 just actuality. 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:56.600 Yeah, for sure. As far as like you know, as 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.920 time marched on in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:05.280 became a big thing in like the literary world. There 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.359 was a essay in eighteen thirty three from a classical 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:14.000 scholar an English scholar name Connop Thirwall who he was 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.520 into the irony of faith, meaning, like you said, that's 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.440 what we call situational irony now. But he was doing 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:23.760 that through the lens of like you know, works of 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:27.280 literature basically, and that's where we get dramatic irony basically 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.720 was from him, which is the idea that the audience 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:35.400 knows something that the characters don't, and when that plays out, 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:37.120 that's a dramatic irony. 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:41.640 Right, and he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex. 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:43.559 Lots of irony there. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.439 There really is. There's a lot, So there's some in that. 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:52.400 So King LEAs and Queen Jacosta get get rid of 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.200 their baby because it's been predicted that their baby's going 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.760 to grow up and kill his father, so they're like, well, 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.839 let's get this baby away from us. By doing so, 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.200 their kid grew up without knowing who his father and 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.760 mother were, So he actually grows up to slay King 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.920 Leis without realizing that this is his father. So it 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:14.720 happened anyway. They maybe if they had brought him up 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:17.800 and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them. 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.800 That was a pretty big ironic twist in that whole play. 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:24.800 Yeah, I think if Alanis Morsat had a sung lines 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:30.920 like that, it's like Oedipis, that's right, killing his dad. 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.319 And then there's more irony heaped up on top of that, 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.240 which is later on. Of course, he didn't know that 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:42.560 he had killed Leis, so he seeks vengeance against his 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:45.720 the king's murderer, who is himself. 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.440 Right, And then there's also a bit of dramatic irony. 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.439 The audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:54.400 his own eyes out. Yeah yeah, And at one point 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:57.640 he mocks a blind man for being blind, which is 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.920 just cruel. No matter when you you're speaking. 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.640 I'm sure the audience is like, oh, yeah, exactly. 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:06.960 So yeah, I mean like there's a lot of irony, 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.599 and here's this is the thing. So what was the 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:11.839 guy's name? Again? I know it's made up, but. 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:15.760 Come up with Thurwall? 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:24.680 No way, that's real, weird. So mister Thurtwall basically shows like, 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:27.760 here's irony. Here's irony too, here's irony. But if if 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.199 you pin him or anybody else down and saying great, 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.320 can you make a universal definition for irony, I'm sure 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.760 he would have thrown his hands up, and that's just it. 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:41.360 I think Winona Ryder even says in reality bites like 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:44.080 I can tell when I see it, I know it, 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.280 but you can't really come up with a good universal 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:49.560 definition for it. But you can go back and be like, 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:53.160 that's ironic. That's ironic. It's almost like humans have a 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.119 innate like sense of irony. 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.080 Yeah, and it is funny now that I think about it, 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:01.560 that is so iron that Ben Stiller was the good 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:05.080 guy m because he was genuinely like a really nice 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:10.480 guy and treated her very well in that movie. But yeah, 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:12.440 he was part of he was part of the establishment, 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:15.960 so he wasn't cool and Ethan Hawk, Like, what's he doing? 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:18.120 Not Ethan Hawk? But what would that character be doing? 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:21.920 Now, I don't know. I mean, I hesitate to say, 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:24.160 but I'm sure you know he would have a. 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.080 Podcast still, be right. 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.520 He would be very much in love with his own 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:30.920 you know, mind or intellect. 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:32.640 Yeah, sure, so he'd have a podcast. 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:34.600 Yeah, I think he nailed it. 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.680 Actually, All right, let's take a break and we'll come 0:14:37.720 --> 0:15:05.960 back and talk about irony a little more. All right, 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.440 So we've defined, or at least talked about a couple 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:10.760 of different types of irony. But here comes some more 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:16.360 everybody verbal irony. This gets a little dicey because verbal 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:21.840 irony and sarcasm are like sarcasm is is sort of 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:25.000 a way of being ironic, but to me, it's different 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.840 because there's a smarminess to it. Yeah, they're lumped together 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:32.400 a lot like sarcasm and irony. So if you know, 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.200 if you were to say, like if it's really raining 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.320 outside and the weather is really bad and you're like nice 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.680 weather like that, that is irony. It's got a little 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.920 smart but not as smarmy as like, oh, that speech 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.400 you gave was so great, you know, to a bad 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:52.960 speech like that is super sarcastic and smarmy. 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:56.200 Yeah, I think you said. One of us said that 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:00.840 irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.520 tear flesh. Yeah, you know, and that really kind of 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.360 goes to show you like they both do something similar, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.760 but one's way more vicious than the other. Yeah, sarcasm 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.160 is pretty lame. It's just a I think it's meant 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:16.520 to be a phase in the development of a person's 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.080 sense of humor. It's supposed to come early on and 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.440 be abandoned eventually, but some people don't abandon it and 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:25.680 they love Deadpool. Yeah. 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.880 I try not to be sark Oh, I take that back. 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.160 I'm I don't try to not be sarcastic. I think 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:35.480 I think it just sort of fades away. I'm sure 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:37.600 I am sarcastic sometimes, but I don't know. It's not 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:40.200 the greatest look once you're a certain age. 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.040 I can't think of any of you being sarcastic. 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:44.520 Oh you can't. 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:47.480 I can. 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.680 You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think unless you're 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:52.600 just trying to get it, like get a laugh or something. 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:58.280 Sure, yeah, I mean that's definitely My humor is fairly ironic. 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:00.840 But I like to think it's not at the expensive 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:03.360 not anybody. And usually it's if it's at the expense 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:05.200 of somebody, it's at the expense of myself. 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:06.800 Like yeah, sepricat. 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:09.920 Yeah, that's another way to put it. Sure, that's how 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:12.600 Ethan Hawke's character would put it. Uh. 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:14.720 Here's a word that I never knew, but I knew 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.199 it was a thing. I've never heard of Latote's before 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:20.280 me either. But that's a word that is like a 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.320 verbal like understated verbal irony, like if someone asks you 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.679 if if you if you like something or not that 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:30.159 you really really hate, and you say, like, not the 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.640 biggest fan of that. That is called a. 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.679 Litot's I'm so glad you're the one who said that, 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:38.800 because that's not how I was going to pronounce that. 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.159 We can say lightotes. Well, I looked it up because 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:45.119 I get I'm frankly tired of being made fun of 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:48.360 you Mal You're a professional, I'm getting there. 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:53.120 I'm just well, I'm just a lump. So yeah, that's 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:59.199 it has to negate what the like, I don't know 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:01.359 any better way to put it, Like, yeah, I'm not 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:04.280 a big fan, meaning you really don't like something, so 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:07.240 it's an understatement, but at the same time you're negating 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.840 the fan part. I don't fully understand it in the 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.439 in the sense that like, if you think about something 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:18.360 too hard like economics, right, yeah, yeah, you can suddenly 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.720 like lose it and not understand it anymore. That's that's 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:24.000 kind of how that is with me. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:27.359 Yeah, just breeze right on by the light of tease exactly. 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.520 Let's talk situational irony, because this is the whole reason 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:35.040 for this episode. Man, Like, there's nothing more delightful than 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:38.040 me than a really good ironic twist. 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:42.800 Yeah, And I feel like this can be played in well, 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:44.480 I mean it happens in real life, of course, but 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:48.639 can be played in in you know, literature and movies 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.240 and TV and stuff like that as like a as 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:54.560 like a come up. And sometimes like sometimes it can 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:57.840 be very sad when situational irony strikes, but sometimes it's 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.280 like somebody gets what they deserved in a yeah, ironic 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:01.560 way for. 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.240 Sure, and then sometimes it's just like an impressive other times, 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:10.000 most of the time, if not always, there's a black 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.879 comedic sense to it, or if you look at it 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.760 deeply enough, there is something funny about it, even if 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:19.720 it is sad, even if it is tragic, if it's 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:24.920 still ironic, there's something there's something more to it. There's 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.239 something more valuable to it than just what it is 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:32.920 on its surface. Like a lifeguard drowning, right, Like that's sad, 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.400 of course, Like if you put yourself in the if 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.800 you know the person's name, you know the situation of 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:39.919 their death, Like they were trying to save someone and 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:42.120 they drowned. They had like this life ahead of them. 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.440 They left a child behind, you know, as a survivor. 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.400 Once you know that stuff, it's it's not funny at all. 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:50.960 But if you just step back and you say a 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:55.600 lifeguard drowned, there's something just in that irony. There's something 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.240 blackly comedic about it. There's something funny about it. I 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.199 think everything has something funny about it. 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.520 Yeah, I mean I laughed instinctively the second you set 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.760 a lifeguard dround because I didn't know it was coming. Yeah, 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.359 it just made me laugh. There's nothing funny about anyone dying. 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.399 But since that didn't really happen and you just said it, 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:18.000 it was funny. 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.240 But even still, it's not like you're celebrating that person's 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.960 death by laughing, or you don't care that that person died. 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:29.880 This is something different. It's separate. It's larger than that 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:33.640 person's individual death in that sense, but it's tied directly 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:34.120 to it. 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.040 Yeah. I saw a comedian the other day. I can't 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.480 remember her name, Oh what was it? But she was 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:42.720 talking about like her worst death would be to be 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.679 like the only person that died in a plane crash. Yeah, 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:48.560 and I couldn't figure out where she was going. I 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:50.480 was like, I sort of get it, but I don't 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.000 fully get it. And then she was explaining, like when 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:55.240 you see the news reports, you know, there was a 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.040 plane crash and everyone's horrified, and then it's like one 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.040 person dies and everyone's like, oh, well that wasn't that bad. 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:04.199 You're just the one person. 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:07.119 Oh man, you need to introduce me to that friend. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:09.400 It's not a friend. It was a comedian. 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.439 Oh, we'll make friends with them, and they introduce me. 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:14.440 All right. Maybe someone will write in it, or maybe 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:15.239 she will. You never know. 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.959 There's there's some others too, like a fire station burning 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:24.400 down so funny, especially especially if no one got hurt. Well, 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:27.080 that's what I'm saying. There's like, you might not think 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:29.960 it's funny. I don't even think that's particularly funny. It's ironic, 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.280 But I get tee there's somebody out there who finds 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.480 that funny. That's the thing. It's not always funny to 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.679 everyone all the time, that it could just be one person. 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.760 My theory is that everything is funny at least to 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:45.600 one person. No. 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.880 I totally agree. And I think what's getting me here 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:54.120 with the the this kind of irony being played when 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.240 I think there's a sometimes karma attached to it. 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:01.200 You know what? I mean, yeah, like that lifeguard hit 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:03.520 a drifter with his car and drove off. 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:07.160 Well, which kind of plays into the next one, which 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:10.160 is cosmic irony, which is a little bit like karmic irony, 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:14.640 and that it's situational irony where you know, the gods 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:16.680