Smith & Waugh Talk About Satire

We need to talk about campus satire, again. Jo and Adam take a deep dive into two recent cultural takes which wear their satirical ambitions very much on their sleeves: the movie American Fiction , written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright and based on the novel by Percival Everett, and the controversial new novel by Lionel Shriver, Mania . Each examine their respective satir...

Hot on the heels of their recent foray into the Brontë “Potatoverse” (see Ep61), Jo and Adam stumble upon what alleges to be a complete history of English Humour which manages to condense women’s contribution to the comic canon into just 7 pages, badging what it terms the distinct humour of the female sex as a kind of “small beer and small potatoes.” This account is written by none other than the...

Hot on the heels of their sell-out live show at the York Literature Festival (which only saw a slight drop off on the day in terms of the expected number of visitors), Jo and Adam return to investigate a series of urgent satirical questions. Was Anne Brontë the most satirical Brontë? Did Charlotte Brontë like Jonathan Swift? Are the viral Reborn Doll videos on TikTok sincere or satirical? And wher...

Jo and Adam celebrate their 60th episode by each taking a deep dive into a work of satire very deep to them but that they've never discussed at length on the podcast before. For Jo, it's the funniest book of all time, George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody (1892), which unleashed upon the world the character of Charles Pooter, the godfather of so many sitcom characters, ra...

For the lucky ones who presented this podcast to Episode 59, they have the chance of winning a life-changing amount of low-key kudos. But if a Traitor remains undetected, they’ll steal all their credibility... So, Adam and Jo, are you Faithful, or are you Traitorish Behaviour? Smith & Waugh return for their first episode of 2024, taking a mediumish dive into the phenomenon of character comedy...

One magical winter's night, a Satireman comes to life and a magical adventure begins... That's right! They'll be satire tonight, and you'll soon be walking in a winter hinterland, because it's time again for the most festive of all festive traditions: the annual Smith and Waugh Talk About Satire Christmas Special! First up, Jo and Adam read the magical picture-book tale of a li...

Universities are home to reality warping bureaucracy, towering moral hubris, endemic charlatanism and rampant neoliberalism... according to the campus satire Jo and Adam discuss in this episode. Inspired by the new Nic Cage movie Dream Scenario and the return of Frasier Crane (this time returning as a Harvard professor), Adam and Jo are taking a deep dive into a world of satire that hits very clos...

Jo and Adam dish up a meaty treat for you to get your teeth into this spoOoky season, with a bumper Halloween investigation into satire's long-standing fascination with cannibalism. From Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal of 1729 (that the best way to solve the Irish famine would be for absent English landlords to eat the babies of their beleaguered tenants), to Chelsea G Summers' 2020...

Jo & Adam draw this year's "Smith & Waugh Big Satirical Summer Read" to a close with a deep dive into the novel everyone is reading, Rebecca F. Kuang's Yellowface . What is it actually a satire of? How is the satire working? And to what extent is satire an appropriate tool for interrogating questions about race and representation in contemporary culture? Adam & Jo als...

Jo and Adam take a deep dive into the film everyone is [being compelled to keep] talking about: Greta Gerwig's Barbie . Is it a satire, and if so, what are the its targets? Can you really critique the relationship between systemic capitalist patriarchy, gender stereotypes and artificial manifestations of female emancipation in a film which is itself a vast corporate endeavour designed to ensur...

In a desperate bid to amass quantifiable impact for their research... Adam and Jo talk about the satire they've identified in their recent projects, both of which involve the relationship between literature and medicine. From 'living barometers' to 'fits of apoplectic rage', it seems when it comes to discussions of wellness and weather, satire is never far away. They also take...

Right, deep breath. Firstly, are you OK? After checking in with Holly & Phil (stalwart re-occurring secondary characters on their podcast since at least 2020), Jo and Adam turn their attention to the latest season of Black Mirror before discussing the increasingly popular genre of "satirical podcast." These are fictional podcasts that pretend they're real to perform varying degre...

Horatian, Juvenalian, Menippean? Jo and Adam examine some of the big satirical moments of the coronation of Charles III to work out what kind of satire they were, what they were targeting and, more importantly, whether or not they were funny. From "Poundland" Penny Mordant's big sword, to the spare Camillas and the King's revision cards, all the way through to the things that no...

Jo and Adam prepare to celebrate the momentous, landmark, historic event everyone is talking about... that's right: their 50th episode! This time they're talking about satire and privilege, as seen in Otessa Moshfegh's stratospherically popular novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) and the recent films (now available for streaming on Amazon Prime and Disney Plus): The Menu (2022)...

Jo and Adam speak to Drs Jasmine Jagger and Heather Hind, curators of ' Comic Women's Poetry of the 19th Century ': an ever-growing, open access digital archive which, at the time of writing, holds over 1000 comic poems written by more than 200 19th-century women. After talking about the enormous volume of hilarious and prescient comic works that Jasmine and Heather have found, Adam an...

In a very special episode, join Jo and Adam as they perform a set at the Farsely Constitutional in Leeds in late October 2022. And the question Adam and Jo decide to tackle, unscripted,  in front of a live, public audience is: What has satire ever done for us? Satire is great at calling things out, but has it ever actually - even once - ever made an actual difference? To answer the timeless q...

Satirists ricochet, take their aim, and fire away, fire away at Harry, Prince Andrew, MFA students and horror writers. This month, Adam and Jo discuss Spare and M3GAN, and discover a surprising amount of parallels with two other satirical novels: Garth Marenghi's "Terrortome" and Mona Awad's "Bunny". Truth, todgers, AI, and the creative process feature throughout the show. Also, what would the pod...

Would you like to hear a (satirical) Christmas story? Then wrap yourselves up warm, settle down, and listen as Mama Satyre tells a heart-warming festive tale that has to be heard to be believed... That's right! It's that most magical time of year: time for the annual Smith & Waugh Christmas Special! Join us for the story of Snarky, the human boy inexplicably raised as a Satyre (a male nature s...

Forty-five episodes into the podcast, the focus finally turns to Jo’s specialist trivia subject: the life, work and legend of the Brontë sisters. Best known for their novels, poetry, their tragic and untimely deaths and for inspiring a song by Kate Bush, Jo reveals that the Brontës also have a fascinating (and entertaining!) relationship with satire. Charlotte, for instance, bitingly satirised her...

Jo and Adam take on the big questions: what is TikTok? What is irony? Is rain on your wedding day more ironic than ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, or not as ironic as that? Once this is sorted, they chat to novelist, poet, and regular SAWTAS guest, Leigh Stein, about her recent adventures on TikTok and her observations about the way its users respond to irony and satire (or don't...

From the moment Joe Lycett appeared on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 4 Sept and (ironically) offered the incoming Prime Minister a ringing endorsement, a veritable Tsunami of satire was unleashed across the UK. Wave after wave of satire swept through the internet. From the bin bag stuck on a the podium outside 10 Downing Street, to the This Morning Energy Bills themed Wheel of Fortune, to Chris...

This was going to be the Smith & Waugh Satirical Summer Reading Challenge episode, but after the summer news cycle was flooded with comedy headlines – almost all in someway dealing with controversy or cancellation – Jo and Adam have put their satirical fun in the sun on hold to think about one of the biggest questions in contemporary comedy:  is it funny to say the unsayable? And, more to...

After a thoroughly uneventful week in British politics Jo and Adam struggle to think of any topical satire that they can meaningfully talk about... NOT! In the immediate wake of the "Pincher Affair" and the revelation that he met - unaccompanied - with a former KGB agent during his time as Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson is hit with a world beating volume of government resignations: over 50 in le...

Did you have a good street party this weekend? Did you get tangled up in bunting? Did you wrestle with a gazebo? Did your neighbor try to start a conga? Did you encounter a Platinum Pudding Maker? No, neither did Adam and Jo. As the nation is strongly encouraged to partake in a frenzy of patriotic worship and monarchical affirmation, Jo and Adam consider the long tradition in British Royal Satire...

Jo and "Adam" bring listeners up to speed on some shocking backstage drama in the land of Smith & Waugh before taking a deep dive into the weird world of satirical hoaxing. On a quest to clarify the difference between a regular hoax and a satirical hoax, your intrepid hosts gloss the history of literary hoaxes before examining a series of mind-bending modern examples of the form. Did a stand-u...