The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast · Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, Rose de Castellane, Gregory Mill

Episode 146, The Philosophy of Comedy (Part II - The Ethics of Humour)

August 24, 2025·38 min·3 clips

What if everyone laughed at genocide? Philosopher Patrick Todd reveals the shocking implication of comic amoralism.

Humour does real social work. The episode starts with comedy as bonding, norm-making, community, and change, then asks what happens when that same force cuts badly. Easy answers do not get much comfort here. Comedians in the excerpt treat outrage as moral showmanship, while the panel keeps pressing the harder question: can joking ever sit outside ethical judgment? Jimmy Carr becomes the main test. His Holocaust joke is treated as a sensitive case made bigger by a huge live audience and a Netflix release. Comic amoralism gets a fair hearing. On that view, a joke should be judged as comedy first, by whether it works comically rather than morally. Then the focus shifts to the audience. The panel asks whether comedians may know comedy best while audiences may still be better judges of moral and social meaning. Eddie Murphy gives the historical test. A speaker recalls Dan Savage objecting to an old Murphy set with a rampantly homophobic opening that the crowd loved. Taste moves. The point is that the set lands differently now because American society, or at least that setting, changed around it. That matters. If a comedian says it is only a joke, the episode asks why the joke's shifting moral meaning should suddenly stop counting. Edginess needs boundaries. The panel sounds wary of comic innocence, since pushing a boundary already admits the boundary exists. Bo Burnham, Bob Mortimer, and a quick promise of Pop Pop Philosophy let the ending breathe a little.

As heard by us

A careful argument about humour, outrage culture, and who gets to judge moral weight.

The episode treats comedy as a live moral problem: jokes can build social bonds, and they can also become flashpoints, so the argument keeps returning to where that line sits.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want humour's ethics argued without pretending the punchline settles it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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