ORIGINALLY RECORDED: January 5, 2018
ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: january 14, 2018
Human beings are joke tellers. We take great satisfaction in making people laugh and have warm feelings for those who we think are funny. But what makes a joke work and why can only some people tell them? Are there subjects we shouldn’t joke about and is it true that humor is dangerous? On this episode of Why? Radio, we ask these questions, examining the philosophy of jokes, while host Jack Russell Weinstein and his guest Al Gini swap some of their favorites.
Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. For over twenty-seven years he was the Resident Philosopher on National Public Radio’s Chicago affiliate, WBEZ-FM, and can currently be heard on WGN/Tribune Radio. His books include: My Job My Self: Work and the Creation of the Modern Individual (Routledge, 2000); The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure and Vacations (Routledge, 2003); Why It’s Hard to Be Good (Routledge, 2003); Seeking the Truth of Things (ACTA, 2010); The Ethics of Business with Alexei Marcoux (Rowman Littlefield, 2012); and, 10 Virtues of Outstanding Leaders with Ronald M. Green (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). His most recent book is The Importance of Being Funny: Why We Need More Jokes in our Lives.
Al’s website can be found at www.algini.net
The Why? Radio subscription is free. To subscribe, click on the relevant banner, or follow the instructions below.
To subscribe using other platforms, copy and paste the following RSS Feed into your program:
http://news.prairiepublic.org/podcasts/11132/rss.xml