Some amusing humor sites, some of which are also educational!

 

• Philosophical Humor.  There are a number of humor sites for philosophy including Daniel Dennett's Philosophical Lexicon, Matt Russell and Nick Gibb's Dead Philosophers in Heaven, and a humor site by David Chalmers.  

• Existential Comics: This site updates every week, specializing in comics about "the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world.  Also jokes." 

• "I Hung Out with Jeremy Bentham's Severed Head, and This is What I Learned." 

• The 21st Century Monads: a band full of philosophy professors, whose songs include titles like "A Priori" and "Synthesize the Manifold."

• Tom Wayman's poem, "Did I Miss Anything?" is apparently a classic in certain circles, giving an answer to the perennial question from students who miss class.  I like the beginning, where the poem answers the question this way: "Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here we sat with our hands folded on our desks in silence, for the full two hours." 

• This list of "teaching tips" by David Galey is sort of hysterical, partly because some of these are actually good ideas. 

• Partially Examined Life is a fascinating website, created by some philosophy graduate school dropouts, who create podcasts and a blog on various philosophical topics.  There is some humor here, but also just some good discussion about the topics. Their podcasts are also available on iTunes (search for "partially examined life"). We listened to the one on Nietzsche, which was quite interesting.

• Donald Palmer's text, Looking at Philosophy: the Unbearable Heavyness of Philosophy Made Lighter uses cartoons and drawings to explain philosophical points. 

• Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein illustrates philosophical theories with jokes.  

• Professor Peter Singer interviewed on the Colbert Report.  During its run, this political satire was extremely popular with young people, who might find it interesting to see an interview with one of the most important (and controversial) philosophers of our day.

 

 

Update: 17 Dec. 2015 (E. Tarver)