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Do you ever wonder… what’s the point? Liars and cheats prosper and gain power, the hypocritical, the criminal, the venal, the self-interested, the arrogant and the cruel seem to get away with whatever they want. Statistics and figures are cynically manipulated for cynical ends. The average person has no voice and no power, no real chance to change anything or be heard. Everything gets worse and worse, we’re all afraid, nothing really seems stable, and nobody with power can be trusted. Well, satire can help! Adam and Jo are joined by Dr Dieter Declercq, author of Satire, Comedy and Mental Health: Coping with the Limits of Critique, to talk about the extent to which satire can help sustain good mental health in a troubled socio-political world.
In this episode, Jo and Adam and Dieter talk about:
1984
A Bit of Fry and Laurie
A Modest Proposal
Alexander Pope
Animal Farm
Balms
Bernard Williams
Bon Jovi
Boris Johnson
Brass Eye
Brexit anxiety
Catharsis
Climate change and climate grief
Covid
Depression
Dominic Cummings
Dustin Griffin
Hello Tushie Bidets
Horace
John Dryden
John Wright
Jonathan Swift
Juvenal
Medical models of satire
Michael Gove
Mock the Week
Nietzsche
Political burnout
Rain
Rishi Sunak
Satire and magic
Satirical poetry
The Handmaid’s Tale
Theme tunes (US sitcoms)
Trump blimp