Episode 4 - The Light was On

The guys are back at it! This time, in honor of Suicide Awareness Month, they do a crossover episode of Jokes and Sunshine & Brain where they talk about suicide and issues related to mental health via the gateway of the brilliant Maria Bamford.

This week, a very strange joke in a very standard subgenre: the Penis Joke Genre.

What an episode! Fresh off a #BLM demonstration, Josh and Eric talk bro comedy, including D'Elia and Cook, and how one's canceled and one won't be, and the inexorable bro-ness of white-ness, or is it the other way around?

Comedians as prophets rises to the surface in the time of worldwide protests against police brutality, particularly against Black people in America and elsewhere. Josh and Eric, white guys, hear and listen to two of the geniuses of any comedic age, Dave Chapplle and Richard Pryor, discuss the ingrained system of law enforcement intended to debase and humiliate Black Americans.

Josh and Eric reflect on and discuss the great Jackie Kashian's terrified and inspiring take on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Ms. Kashian's long and anxious tapestry of political-moral collapse in America serves as a powerful example of how comedians are not to be discounted in their delivery of the unvarnished truth and, often, harbingers of worry if not doom. But not before the Jokes! crew makes a butt joke or two.

Founder Robby brings Norm Macdonald's long, meandering "Moth Joke" from late night to the Jokes! pod, but not before quarantine insanity and hygiene are discussed.

Josh brings the joke from the quietly prolific Paul F. Tompkins, one involving canned peanut brittle, cobras, and the finest in hilarity. The hosts digress to talk quarantine, cowboy hats, bathrooms, and observational humor.

Eric brings the "joke," actually an appearance by Rodney Dangerfield on The Tonight Show in 1979. Josh and Eric discuss Rodney's machine-gun fire joke-telling style, Johnny Carson's wild ride, and James Mason's important absence in his presence to the culmination of the sequence.

Josh and Eric break apart the what has been called the greatest joke about religion. (Link: https://youtu.be/ZBKIyCbppfs.) And the podcast gets its name.