Steve Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy and the former Edwin T. and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Chair for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities at Gettysburg College, holding a Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. He is author of ten books including Isn't that Clever: A Philosophy of Humor and Comedy (Routledge), Einstein: His Space and Times (Yale), Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion (Johns Hopkins), Exploring the Scientific Method (Chicago), and Defending Einstein: Hans Reichenbach's Early Writings on Space, Time, and Motion (Cambridge). He has four lecture series in the Teaching Company's Great Courses: Redefining Reality: Intellectual Implications of Modern Science, Formal Logic, Take My Course...Please: The Philosophy of Humor, and The Great Questions of Philosophy and Physics. He is a frequent contributor with Gwydion Suilebhan to Salon where they write on comedy. Gwydion Suilebhan is the Executive Director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and the Project Director of the New Play Exchange. With Steven Gimbel, he writes about comedy and culture for Salon, with recent profiles of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Ivan Reitman, Bob Saget, Ed Asner, and Jackie Mason, among others. A founding member of The Welders, a Helen Hayes Award-winning playwrights collective in DC, Suilebhan is the author of several plays, including The Butcher, Reals, Abstract Nude, Let X, The Faithkiller, and the Helen Hayes Award-nominated Transmission. His work has been produced by Centerstage, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Gulfshore Playhouse, and Theater J. He is also the author of Anthem, a short film directed by Hal Hartley. Email addresses: [email protected] and [email protected]
by Steve Gimbel and Tom Wilk Comedian Druski’s impersonation of Erika Kirk has generated a predictable mixture of clicks, outrage, and threats of legal action. Kirk argued that the bit was immoral because it involved whiteface, and for many people that seems to settle the matter: race-crossing performance is race-crossing performance. If blackface is wrong,…
by Steve Gimbel Every neighborhood seems to have at least one. You know him, the walking guy. No matter the time of day, you seem to see him out strolling through the neighborhood. You might not know his name or where exactly he lives, but all your neighbors know exactly who you mean when you…
by Steven Gimbel In my Philosophy 102 section this semester, midterms were particularly easy to grade because twenty seven of the thirty students handed in slight variants of the same exact answers which were, as I easily verified, descendants of ur-essays generated by ChatGPT. I had gone to great pains in class to distinguish an…
by Steven Gimbel The list of Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, and medicine includes men and women, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists, gay men, lesbians, and cis-scientists, people from Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. So, is the ultimate example of meritocracy also the epitome of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?…
by Steve Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan Jokes about JD Vance’s romantic entanglements with living room furniture have been ubiquitous for about two weeks now. Professional comedians like Chelsea Handler and John Oliver have leaned into them. Friends on social media have traded quips about Vance’s “one nightstand” and his illegitimate “love seat.” Kamala Harris’ own…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan A new study has revealed a troubling development in the state of Maryland: while murder rates fluctuated between 2005 and 2017—first trending downward, then increasing for a few years—the homicides recorded during that period have grown steadily more violent the entire time. According to “Increasing Injury Intensity among 6,500…
by Thomas Wilk and Steven Gimbel Last month’s open mic night at New College of Florida revealed more than just the comedic ineptitude of its administrators; it exposed the underbelly of a culture clash at the heart of the academic institution. Amidst the cultural war that has engulfed New College, following a takeover by figures…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan Andrew Torba, Christian Nationalist founder of the rightwing social media site Gab, recently argued on his podcast that the fact that many of the most beloved Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers was part of a conspiracy to take Christ out of Christmas: to secularize one of the…
by Steve Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte argued that there ought to be an atheist’s religion, the Religion of Man, with holidays, rituals, symbols, saints, and social gatherings for those who maintain a scientific worldview without belief in an all-being. If such a religion existed, 2023 would be a celebratory…
by Steve Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan Harry Frankfurt, who died of congestive heart failure this July, was a rare academic philosopher whose work managed to shape popular discourse. During the Trump years, his explication of bullshit became a much used lens through which to view Trump’s post-truth political rhetoric, eventually becoming deeply associated with liberal…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan From the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, America was beset by a haunting array of serial killers: the Zodiac Killer, the Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who just recently died in prison. For two dark decades, serial killers stalked the…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan Whether you love, hate, or tolerate Tesla may say something about the era you grew up in. Every generation, when it reaches a certain age, makes two proclamations: Saturday Night Live used to be funnier, and “kids these days” are lazy and stupid. Neither claim is true, of course,…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan Philosopher Harry Frankfurt is best known for his article-turned-manuscript On Bullshit, in which he distinguishes between lying and bullshitting. Most of us are raised to condemn liars more than bullshit artists, but Frankfurt makes the claim that we’ve all got it backwards. His argument is philosophical, rather than scientific,…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan For the last several years, elected Republicans, full of anti-trans zeal, have challenged their opponents to define the word “woman.” They aren’t really curious. They’re setting a rhetorical trap. They’re taking a word that seems to have a simple meaning, because the majority of people who identify as women…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan This year marks the 42nd anniversary of the American release of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams’ “five-book trilogy,” of which Hitchhiker’s was the first installment, led readers through a melancholy universe in which bureaucracy is the ultimate source of evil and shallow, self-serving incompetents are the…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan At a recent tournament sponsored by the St. Louis Chess Club, 19-year old Hans Niemann rocked the chess world by defeating grandmaster Magnus Carlson, the world’s top player. Their match was not an anticipated showdown between a senior titan and a recognized rising phenom. The upset came out of…
by Steven Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan As the January 6th hearings continue and Americans watch new, seemingly undeniable video evidence of insurrection and quibble about whether one could reach the steering wheel of the Presidential SUV from the back seat, the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher and historian of science who coined the phrase…
by Steve Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan Kurt Gödel, one of the most important logicians of the 20th century, is best known for his incompleteness theorem, which proves that any attempt to formulate a logical basis for arithmetic will either be unsound or incomplete. He was also famous for being a strange egg: walking around in…