Positive Propaganda: Dave Chappelle and his White Buddy “Chip”
This video highlights, via humorous understatement in a brief narrative, the very different experiences white and black people often have with the police. An...
George Carlin and the Philosophy of Religion
In this clip from the 1999 stand-up comedy special You Are All Diseased, the late comedian George Carlin offers a scathing attack on religion...
Thought Experiments, “Reverse-Racism,” and Comedy
In the following clip from comedian Aamer Rahman, the concept of “reverse racism” is considered. Is it a meaningless rhetorical construction, or does it...
Irony and Analogy: Uncovering Implicit Biases – Wanda Sykes on the Opioid Health Crisis
In the following, comedian Wanda Sykes wonders why African Americans have suffered much less, if at all, from the current opioid health crisis. Ironically,...
Special Pleading in Fox and Friends’ Lingerie Football Romp: A Critical Thinking Lesson.
I employ a segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart titled “Fox & Friends’ Lingerie Football Romp” (2009 season) in my critical thinking...
Of Validity, Soundness, and Sarah Palin as a Russian Spy: A Critical Thinking Lesson.
I employ a segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart titled “From Russia with Gov” (2011 season) in my critical thinking class to...
Did You Get the Memo? Marx, Alienation, and Office Space
Few comedies depict the banal, Kafkaesque day-to-day of working life as well as Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space. When teaching Marx on the...
Reality Shows and Appeal to Emotion
The appeal to emotion fallacy can be introduced via the Key & Peele (Comedy Central) video "Who Thinks They Can Dance?" In the video,...
A Boring Class and Philosophy of Education
A Boring Class is a short animated film about the monotony of traditional education, viewed in a comic and relatable way. The video raises...
Should Robots Have Rights? Lt. Commander Data v. The United Federation of Planets
In the following clip from “The Measure of a Man,” episode nine of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989), we...