Chris Matheson, “Bill & Ted” Writer, Talks Cosmic Satire with Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #65

Chris Math­e­son has writ­ten a bunch of com­ic movies includ­ing the new Bill & Ted Face the Music, and he’s con­vert­ed reli­gious texts into fun­nier books on three occa­sions, most recent­ly with The Bud­dha’s Sto­ry. Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt talk with him about what uni­fies these projects: Why the big ideas of sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, reli­gion, and phi­los­o­phy are beg­ging in a sim­i­lar way to be made fun of.

We get into the big ques­tions: How does humor relate to fear? Would a soci­ety based on Bill and Ted (or Keanu Reeves) actu­al­ly be desir­able? How bad is the evi­dent lit­er­al absur­di­ty of many reli­gious texts? Plus, the B & T joke that has not aged well, and much more!

A few arti­cles that we found but did­n’t real­ly draw on includ­ed:

• “Is It Wrong to Mock Reli­gious Beliefs, Insti­tu­tions, and Lead­ers?” by Austin Cline
• “My Top 5 Works of Reli­gious Satire” by Ter­ry Lind­vall
• “Cos­mic Humor And Trans-Ratio­nal­i­ty” from Sev­en Octaves of Enlight­en­ment
• “J.R.H.Lawless – On Rise of Humor & Satire in Sci­fi” by Kri­ti K
• “Firsts: Sci-fi Par­o­dies and How Genre Fic­tion Became Self-Aware” by Dany Roth

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.