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    Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
    Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
    Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
    Audiobook4 hours

    Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

    Written by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

    Narrated by Johnny Heller

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . has been a breakout bestseller ever since authors-and born vaudevillians-Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein did their schtick on NPR's Weekend Edition. Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar..... is a not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical thinkers and traditions, from Existentialism (What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?) to Logic (Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything). Philosophy 101 for those who like to take the heavy stuff lightly, this is a joy to read-and finally, it all makes sense!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 26, 2007
    ISBN9781449803162

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    Reviews for Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...

    3.5/5

    607 ratings67 reviews

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    • 4/5
      "Meh. Good enough." - MediocratesWell, better than that! Definitely not highfalutin, definitely not laugh out loud, but definitely fun.
    • 3/5
      This book was a gift from an anonymous benefactor. You cannot learn any philosophy from it and it might confuse what understanding you already have. Many of the jokes are Jewish jokes (i.e. jokes that Jews tell) that were already in my repertoire and some of these are true classics, but a few of the jokes are not usable in today's world. You can read the whole thing in a short time, and I think you will find several jokes that you will like unless you are humorless.
    • 5/5
      So good!! immediate re wind in order to listen again from the top!
    • 5/5
      Funny and informative! The jokes are supported by the philosophical bases, while being clear, but funny, examples of those bases...
    • 4/5
      Similitude but not always versimilitude.
      Very readable intro to philosophy that is good for some chuckles.
    • 4/5
      While many people are interested in learning about philosophy, actually doing something about it often results in rolling eyes. In Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar : Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein use jokes to explain various philosophical theories.For example, For Inductive Logic, the situation is Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on a camping trip and spending the night in a tent. At one point, Holmes wakes Watson, tells him to look at the sky, and say what he sees. Watson says he sees “millions of stars” and Holmes asks, “What do you conclude from that?” Watson proceeds to respond in astronomical, astrological, horological, meteorological, and theological perspectives. Watson then asks Holmes what it tells him. Holmes replies, “Someone has stolen our tent.”Among the explanations for The Supreme Categorical Imperative and the Olden Golden is the observation “A sadist is masochist who follows the golden rule.”The authors frequently take a well-known statement and give it a slight twist: Jesus was walking through the streets when he noticed a crowd of people throwing stones at an adulteress. Jesus said, “Let whoever is without sin cast the first store.” Suddenly a rock flew through the air. Jesus turned and said, “Mom!” Some the jokes are old. Some are not PC. But Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar does make understanding philosophy easier to understand and fun.
    • 3/5
      It achieved its goal of explaining philosophy to the layman. But I wouldn't go out of my way to reccomend it to friends.
    • 4/5
      Pretty funny, especially if you remember your 101 survey course...If I could remember punch lines, there are great three-liners in here. I think my favorite was the dead guy taking a full suitcase to heaven. Probably because that is a stop I'll be making soon....Don't forget to read the glossary!
    • 3/5
      Many of the jokes were good... That might be as positive as I can get with Cathcart and Klein's book [Plato and a Platypus walk into a Bar]. The touched on many subject in the Philosophy world (a meta-philosophy of sorts, not really according to the authors I just wanted to use that word), but I still didn't understand much of the notions of the some of the many facets of philosophy after reading each section. A better description/definition of each tenant would have led me to a better understanding than a very quick explanation and a corresponding joke. I will give them this, it could not have been easy finding jokes to help explain all the different parts of the philosophy world. It wasn't all bed, some of the jokes actually did what was intended, give a better understanding of philosophy, but in my experience that was not the case most of the time. It was entertaining however and quite a quick and easy read. So there is that.
    • 4/5
      A light, funny way to introduce yourself to the fundamentals of philosophy, or refresh what you were taught in school. I had a really hard time not reading a lot of this out loud to MT, and while he claimed prior knowledge of a few of the jokes, they were all new to me (I think, I don't remember jokes very well). If you're looking for anything resembling an in-depth look at the different schools of philosophy, this isn't the book for you, but otherwise, I'd recommend it as both entertaining and informative.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful, brief, summary and overview of philosophy through the usage of jokes. Written well, both with the jokes for its humor and how it pertains and explains philosophy, from the beginning up until the modern era.
    • 4/5
      Six-word review: Wisdom is a fool in motley.Extended review:Do you think this is funny?Two cows are standing in a field. One says to the other, "What do you think about this mad cow disease?""What do I care?" says the other. "I'm a helicopter."There's humor in much of what I read, but it's usually of the cerebral variety, mild irony or absurdity, witty turns of phrase, that sort of thing; even Harry Dresden's wisecracks aren't usually laugh-out-loud funny. But this silly two-liner on page 120 just struck me as hilarious. If you're giggling too, then you and I have something in common.If you think it's just dumb, well, never mind. People's senses of humor are pretty idiosyncratic, after all. There's a lot of supposed comedy that I just don't care for at all. But I loved this little book.What that cow story has to do with existentialism may not be immediately apparent, but the authors will make it clear. It's their gift to be able to encapsulate the chief ideas of several branches of philosophy--metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, and so on--and convey their essential qualities through jokes. Their approach is unabashedly entertaining, and I wish I'd had this light-hearted treatment on hand when I was a philosophy student; but it also rests on a very sound premise for which I've always had immense respect, namely, the efficacy of humor as a vehicle for truth: something cartoonists and satirists know very well.Watch out, though: there are pop quizzes along the way and a three-point exam at the end. Resisting my native compulsions, I went on past it without completing the assignment. Instead I read the timeline of the history of philosophy, which set me off all over again.I picked up this small orange-covered volume on a whim a few days ago, and it proved a nice break from far heavier stuff. My daytime sofa read is currently a very serious history of postwar Japan, and my bedtime novel is Adam Bede (1859), full of George Eliot's gently but deftly ironic observations on human nature, but nonetheless with a plot revolving around some deep and earnest characters who don't seem to see much humor in things. It was good for a change just to go ahead and laugh. By the time I got to the end and tried to read one of the stories aloud to my husband, I could hardly get the words out between gasps and tears. And it wasn't even that funny.My father taught philosophy for 35 years. I know he would have loved this. He was fond of my all-time favorite quotation about philosophy (attributed to Feigl): "Philosophy is the disease for which it ought to be the cure." This book is a cure.
    • 3/5
      I liked the jokes, but didn't understand a thing about the "philosophy"....

      I got to laugh a bit.
    • 3/5
      The jokes were all very funny, and they did explain the concepts, but honestly, none of it had sticking power.
    • 5/5
      This book delivers exactly what it promises - a brief overview of major philosophical thought as told through hoary old (but actually pretty funny) jokes.

      An excellent and amusing read.
    • 2/5
      The jokes are allright, but the philosophy can be pretty sloppy and the link between the jokes and the philosophy tends to be tenuous.
    • 3/5
      Explaining philosophy through jokes, and mostly terrible jokes at that, though there are a few chucklers mixed in. This would be a good gift for a philosophy major or professor, or that guy in the coffee shop who's always quoting Schopenhauer and should just shut up already. It's clever and informative though not too much of either. A fun, quick read.
    • 5/5
      A very fun and easy read. Good if you already have a basic understanding of philosophy, but this isn't a good book if you don't know about philosophy yet.
    • 3/5

      Nice light read. However, it is way too short and touches on barely enough topics. Not recommended for anyone with a basic working knowledge of philosophy -- but will indeed make a great gift as the cover promises.
    • 4/5
      If you take the view that a subject can be best understood when seen from many sides then you are probably ready to accept that jokes and gags can illuminate the views of history's greatest philosophers. It's interesting to note that another reviewer has criticised the jokes for being well worn, but spared the philosophers from the same criticism. The truth is that humour and philosophy both go back a long way, and both have been telling us things about ourselves for a long time. And for the most part things that are not all that surprising. After all, philosophy and humour both deal with universal truths about human nature and existence, something that everyone knows something about.To my mind good writing about philosophy, like an old joke, should slip on like an old comfortable pair of shoes. And each time take us somewhere just a little bit new, just a little bit surprising, revealing the deeper world one step at a time. Recommended for those that like to read while they eat, but it's definitely not one for those who have given up eating in order to concentrate on reading. Oh, and there's some other books in the same vein by the same author...
    • 3/5
      A series of short essays on different elements of philosophy accompanied by jokes to highlight the concepts. Funny old jokes.
    • 5/5
       -I may have learned more about the core of philosophy in this work than any other popularized book about the subject
    • 4/5
      Listening to this book was a great way to be entertained while learning about philosophy. Very funny!
    • 2/5
      Basically, this is a collection of really old jokes presented as somehow related to some major themes of philosophy--it didn't work for me, the connections between most of the jokes and philosophy were too tenuous for one thing. More importantly, most of the jokes were old when Plato was in his dotage.
    • 5/5
      Having only ever taken one philosophy class (and that in the infamous Spring Semester 1970 at a liberal college in the Northeast, need I say more), what DIDN'T I learn from this book? Cathcart and Klein take the reader through the history of philosophy and its various schools by means of jokes. Seriously, it works. I would recommend this book to anyone who'd like to learn a bit about philosophy and also anyone who likes jokes. Some of the jokes were new to me and even the old ones were enjoyable when explained in the light of the philosophy they represent. It's published by Abrams Image and therefore is also a very aesthetically pleasing volume.
    • 3/5
      All too often the authors seem to be straining to make a joke fit a philosophical concept, or vice versa. Despite all their square-peg-round-hole bashing it's a nice, amusing primer.
    • 4/5
      I'm definitely not a student of philosophy, and not sure I'd have what it takes to be a student of philosophy, but I really enjoyed this book. The text is easy to read, even for the likes of any, like me in the non-intelligentia category, and the jokes, given to explain the principles being talked about, are so clever, and they're funny too!
    • 3/5
      The only problem with a book like this is that you get barraged with several dozen philosophers and their theories, along with fast-punching jokes that can both delight and confuse. On the other hand, it was not nearly as dry as other texts I’ve read on the subject.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book to start reading if you are into philosophy. It covers quite a range of philosophical ideas and arguments. The best thing is ? It has jokes. Readers who are new to philosophy will have no problem understanding everything that is written in the book. Highly entertaining, worth reading and doesn't screw up your mind too much.
    • 2/5
      The subtitle tells it all.. understanding philosophy through jokes. The author plows through a great many philosophies by using simple jokes, many like "Plato and a platypus walk into a bar..." While the author does a good job covering a lot of ground in an entertaining fashion, I felt, as the reader that I got little from the book besides enterainment or bathroom reading.