23: Puns, Jokes, and Serious People feat. Ben Wurgaft

Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby and Patrick welcome intellectual historian, writer, editor, and noted wordsmith Ben Wurgaft. They talk about Ben’s experiences with long-term analysis and discuss ways of accessing low-cost options for psychoanalysis before collectively digging into Freud’s 1905 book on humor, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious – especially Freud’s jokes about beggars, millionaires, and salmon mayonnaise. They get into Freud’s hydraulic model of jokes as a release of pressure; Freud’s obsession with Jewish humor; what makes jokes funny, what makes them pleasurable, and what emotions they can express; the relationship of jokes to play, childhood, and the process of education; and what it means to be a serious person.
Ben’s essay “The Punning of Reason” is here: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-punning-of-reason/
His essay “The Recline of the West: Couches and Psychoanalysis” is here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-recline-of-the-west-couches-and-psychoanalysis/
His book Thinking in Public: Strauss, Levinas, Arendt is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/thinking-in-public-strauss-levinas-arendt-benjamin-aldes-wurgaft/11655520?ean=9780812224344
His book Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/meat-planet-artificial-flesh-and-the-future-of-foodvolume-69-benjamin-aldes-wurgaft/16590129?ean=9780520379008
His new book Ways of Eating: Exploring Food Through History and Culture, co-authored with Merry White, comes out later this month: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ways-of-eating-exploring-food-through-history-and-culture-volume-81-merry-white/19949891?ean=9780520392984
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107
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