2 Spring Conversations:
In his book, Laughter — 'An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic', Henri Bergson proposes that humour derives fundamentally from rigidity in human behaviours and affairs.
Origins & oddities of Totalitarianism
1. The Richie Allen Show, February 2nd, 2026
A conversation to kick off a new phase in the War Against Humanity, about to enter its sixth year. Richie and I discuss the wrong and right ways of protesting tyranny; Mattias Desmet’s theory of the complex nature of the nouveau totalitarianism, and Ireland as probably the birthplace of the totalitarian, decades before Mao, Hitler or Stalin.
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(My conversation with Richie starts at 42 minutes in)
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/richieallen/episodes/2026-02-02T11_23_42-08_00
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2. Tommy’s PodCast, February 1st, 2026
What’s so funny about a world without honour and violence?
In the latest in our series of exchanges on matters arcane and esoteric, EM Burlingame and I start out from the hypothesis of French philosopher Henri Bergson who, in his book Laughter — An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, proposes that humour derives fundamentally from rigidity in human behaviours and affairs. We find funny, he says, anything that breaks away from the natural patterns of human life, by becoming mechanistic and predictable. Hence, what makes people laugh is the absence of alertness and elasticity in the object of ridicule, i.e. forms of sclerosis arising from the culture of the group, things that deviate from the law of life, which abjures rigidity and mechanisation. But, here, the rigidities are not simply those of sclerotic authority, or bureaucracy, or power, but of our friends and neighbours, our brothers and sisters, our parents and children, the man behind the cash desk in the supermarket who used to be so friendly and, well, funny — all these and many more, who for a half-dozen years and counting, became the attack dogs from the Valley of the Squinting Windows where the Stasi live.
In these strange times. why are all (or most of) the funniest voices on the wrong side of history? What does is mean when we say that Trump might be a Court Jester, even a Fool, the one who speaks the truth to the King that no one else dares to? And who then is the King? Questions which lead us out of the contemporary zone, backwards, but this time not necessarily in a bad way.
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If you are not a full subscriber but would like to support my work on Unchained with a small donation, please click on the ‘Buy John a beverage’ link above.