Smith & Waugh Talk About Satire

This is NOT a Halloween special.

Instead, this podcast is celebrating the 300th birthday of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels with something altogether more fantastical: a recording of our live event exploring fantastic voyages in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature.

Join us, as we journey from Swift's Gulliver's Travels to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, exploring how imaginary worlds allow writers to reflect on, critique and reimagine their own.

Along the way, we encounter some wonderfully strange and overlooked literary destinations, including Peter Wilkins's The Life and Adventures of Robert Paltock (1751) and Humphrey Lunatic's York-printed A Trip to the Moon (1764).

What do fantastic voyages reveal about the worlds we inhabit? Why are imaginary societies such fertile ground for satire? And might travelling to the moon be preferable to another hour of overly contrived Halloween sloppaganda?

A celebration of Swift, speculative fiction and the satirical possibilities of other worlds. No ghosts, no rustling, just three centuries of fantastic voyages.

Happy birthday Gulliver.

Jo and Adam explore satire across the generations in a new instalment that certainly isn't a belated grab bag episode. We begin with Gen Z slang and BBC Radio 4’s attempts to make sense of it, before turning to Bad Apples, the new satirical film about a teacher who kidnaps one of her Gen Alpha pupils in an attempt to improve everyone else’s education.

Then South Park becomes South America in a satirical assault on Donald Trump, leading us into the increasingly strange world of AI, including the recent claim that artificial intelligence could end human life within ten years and the satirical responses it has inspired. We also investigate a fully AI-generated sitcom about angel investors recently released on YouTube.

Finally, we travel back to the 1990s for Mrs Merton, the beloved satirical chat show now newly available in full on iPlayer.

From Gen Z slang to Gen Alpha classrooms, AI apocalypse to Gen X nostalgia: every generation gets the satire it deserves.

What makes a robot funny? And, more importantly, are they satire? Jo and Adam ask why robots seem to lend themselves so readily to satirical comedy. They look at the BBC sitcom ANN DROID, Apple TV's SUNNY and Channel 4's prank show BAD ROBOTS, alongside various satirical machines including Kryten from RED DWARF, Bender from FUTURAMA and ROBOCOP. There are also honourable mentions for robots who are decidedly less satirical (Vision, Data, the various artificial humans of HUMANS and BLACK MIRROR) as they consider what separates a robot who makes us laugh from one who simply makes us think (or are they perhaps the same, ahhhh....). Along the way, they discuss Isaac Asimov, The Bicentennial Man, and the peculiar relationship between robots, humanity and satire. And, because no episode is complete without getting distracted by something else, Jo and Adam share their thoughts on The Odyssey and the memes it has generated.

Jo and Adam unpack the extraordinary Clacton by-election, where Count Binface takes on Nigel Farage after the Reform leader resigns and re-contests his own seat, calling the election a referendum on his political credibility. As the campaign descends into surreal farce, we ask whether Count Binface is effective satire, and what happens when satire becomes an active participant in democracy?

Along the way, Jo and Adam discuss French satirical magazines, the comic response to Andy Burnham's rise to the premiership, and Burnham's own use of humour on social media.

And Adam shares his concept for a new spin-off solo podcast for Jo called "This Means Waugh" all about why you are wrong about things.

Jo and Adam discuss Send Help!, Sam Raimi's new satirical horror in which a woman escapes her toxic workplace only to find herself stranded on a desert island with her awful boss. From there, they explore the long history of satirical workplaces, from The Office and The Office to Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, asking why terrible managers have become such enduring comic figures.

The conversation also turns to the satirical response to the resignation of Keir Starmer and the accession of Andy Burnham. Adam also reports back from a Humour conference at Oxford and Jo pitches an idea for a brand-new podcast spin-off.

Jo and Adam discuss Louis Theroux's latest feature-length Netflix documentary, 'Inside the Manosphere'. exploring the role of humour in his filmmaking. From awkward timing and fourth-wall breaks to defamiliarisation and deadpan observation, they discuss what Theroux's distinctive (and often parodied) style owes to satire.

They then turn to one of the most talked-about novels of the summer, Caro Claire Burke's 'Yesteryear', a satirical take on influencer culture, tradwife aesthetics, and the manosphere. Along the way they consider the novel's controversial relationship to the real-world phenomenon of Ballerina Farm and the online debates it has inspired.

Also featuring: hot weather, Noel Coward, nipples and a update from Adam on his recent visiting fellowship at Ghent University, where he delivered a talk on cannibal satire.

This month, Jo and Adam unpack a hellish grab-bag of take on satire, ranging from campus culture wars to actual global wars. We begin with the Netflix adaptation of Vladimir, exploring the enduring appeal of the campus novel and the uneasy position of satire within the contemporary university. What does it mean to teach English Literature in the modern academy, and how well does Vladimir capture (or caricature) that world? From there, we turn to The Drama, asking whether its portrayal of the wedding industry lands as satire, critique, or something more ambivalent. The main focus of the episode, however, is the increasingly strange role of satire in digital conflict. As tensions escalate between the United States and Iran, satire has emerged as a visible , and volatile, part of the information landscape. We examine the implications of Donald Trump sharing a satirical sketch from Saturday Night Live UK moments before real diplomatic engagement; explore state-linked satirical media circulating from China; and consider the memes and videos posted by official Iranian channels themselves. We also unpack the controversy surrounding a series of viral Lego rap videos critiquing Trump, variously celebrated as satire, dismissed as propaganda, attributed to Gen Z creators in Iran, labelled as such by the BBC, and ultimately removed from YouTube. Across these case studies, we ask a pressing and increasingly difficult question: when satire becomes indistinguishable from strategic messaging, how do we tell the difference between satire and propaganda?

The episode our listeners demanded.

This March, Jo and Adam turn to the film everyone is arguing about: Wuthering Heights. From casting discourse to meme culture, the adaptation has generated an extraordinary wave of online reaction... and a surprising amount of satire.

Drawing on Jo’s expertise as a Brontë scholar (author of Charlotte Brontë and Contagion: Myths, Memes and the Politics of Infection and contributor to The Edinburgh Companion to the Brontës and the Arts), we unpack the film, the backlash, and the strange ecosystem of jokes, parodies, and hot takes that now surrounds it.

Along the way Jo gives her scholarly verdict on Emerald Fennell’s controversial adaptation, while Adam explains his growing concern about Jacob Elordi and the effect he may be having on a new generation’s understanding of classic literature.

We also dive into the satirical response to the film itself: what works, what feels justified, what misses the point, and what is simply very funny.

Because when the internet encounters Wuthering Heights, the result is apparently… satire.

In this episode, Jo and Adam trace the long, shuffling history of the satirical zombie, from the consumer cannibalism of Dawn of the Dead to the suburban self-recognition of Shaun of the Dead, and the bleak media mirror held up by Dead Set. Along the way, they consider the evolving satirical function of the undead in the 28 Years Later franchise, with passing reflections on the undying TV universe of The Walking Dead.

The main focus of the episode is the release of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a film that has already provoked confusion, fascination, and a number of deeply questionable audience participation trends. Jo and Adam examine the film’s unsettling satirical architecture through the figure of Sir Jimmy Crystal, asking what it means to construct a character so insistently entangled with Britain’s most toxic celebrity legacies. They explore the strange and troubling phenomenon of American cinemagoers attending screenings in costume, and ask what happens when satire escapes the screen and becomes a form of ritual. The conversation also considers the film’s deeper literary inheritance, tracing unexpected connections to Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, and reflects on how the zombie narrative continues to draw on older satirical traditions of isolation, scale, and estrangement.

Elsewhere, the episode briefly turns to the internet’s response to the arrest of Prince Andrew, asking what contemporary satire does with figures whose public identities already border on the grotesque.

Finally, Jo offers a preview of next month’s episode, which will explore the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Satire, as ever, refuses to stay buried.

Jo and Adam ease themselves into the new year by asking some deceptively simple questions about contemporary culture. They discuss Paul Feig’s latest film The Housemaid, and try to pin down why so many viewers are describing it as satire (and what, exactly, they mean by that).

Along the way, they turn to meme culture, looking at online responses to the latest series of The Traitors and the internet’s collective processing of the final season of Stranger Things. We also get to know Toast Man better, learn what a person sounds like when they’ve just finished buttering their toast, and discover, to Jo’s horror, that Adam cannot say “cutlery”.