The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode 10.1: Comedy

General Introduction
- An apology for Nathan Gilmour’s absence
- A plug for our website
- A eulogy for J.D. Salinger

What Is Comedy?
- Comedy in a cosmic sense
- Comedy as humor
- Aristotle on comedy
- What makes us laugh?
- In which we talk about “Weird Al” Yankovic for 45 minutes

Aristophanes
- Does he hold up?
- How do you translate comedy?
- Aristophanes’ “postmodern” technique
- Socrates in The Clouds
- Michial consistently mispronounces Lysistrata
- Hymnody meets deflated content
- From Aristophanes to Vincent Price to Frasier

Shakespeare’s Comedies
- A wedding instead of a funeral
- Battles of wit and malapropisms
- Teaching Shakespearean comedy
- Shakespeare’s godlike cultural status
- Misreading Twelfth Night

Comedy and Christianity
- Are Jesus’ parables jokes?
- Humorous juxtaposition of absurdities
- Did Jesus ever laugh?
- Is all humor mocking humor?

A Christian Theory of Comedy
- What do we even mean?
- We throw Chesterton in Nathan’s face
- Why the postmodern novel is witty, not humorous
- Why humor requires meaning
- Michial recommends a few books
- Where does your plot line end?
- The crucifixion as practical joke

Movies
- We give our picks
- Why we live in a Monty Python movie
- In which we forget we’re doing a podcast
- Mel Brooks
- The repetition principle in comedy
- The Coen Brothers
- Donald Duck as impotent everyman
- Why Family Guy isn’t funny and why King of the Hill is
- Praise for Mystery Science Theater and Bethel University

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aristophanes. Lysistrata and Other Plays. Trans. Alan H. Sommerstein. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Malcolm Heath. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Buechner, Frederick. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. New York: HarperOne, 1977.

Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. New York: Penguin, 1950. 3 volumes.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. Harold F. Brooks. London: Arden, 1979.

—. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Claire MacEachern. London: Arden, 2005.

—. Twelfth Night. Ed. Keir Elam. London: Arden, 2009.

Wood, Ralph C. The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1988.

Film, Literature, Podcast Aristophanes, Bible, Podcast, William Shakespeare