Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

Amazon UK book description :

This lively crash course in philosophy takes us on a hilarious - and at the same time, profound - tour through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts and thinkers. All with a light touch. As if being led on an intellectual adventure by a brilliant stand-up comic, the reader experiences light-hearted excursions through this weightiest of disciplines - laughing all the way. A ribald refresher course for those in-the-know or hilarious starter class, this makes Big Ideas a hoot to understand. Topics include: Logic (Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything!), analogies, fallacies, circular arguments, paradoxes Kant's antinomies, Social & Political Philosophy (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau were probably nudists!), Philosophy of Religion (a priest and a rabbi are stranded on a desert island...), Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Ethics and Aesthetics (a dog and a cat are sitting in this tree...), Epistemology (how do you know that you know the stuff you know?), Language ("it depends what your definition of is") and more...

I've heard that the authors studied under Timothy Leary. See their website, and their latest essay at Boston.com.

Fei Guangyuan (馮光遠) writes a review (ch), and Tim Madigan, at Philosophy Now (Issue 64).

Update : 16.09.2008

Here is Dan Bloom's interview with Daniel Klein :

When asked how the book came to be, Klein said in an email to a reporter in Taiwan: "Mostly, I collected and wrote the jokes, while Tom worked on the philosophy part of the book, but after eight drafts, it turned out that we both worked on both parts of the book. It was a team effort all the way."

When asked why and how the catchy title was chosen, Klein explained: "The publisher wanted the name of Plato in the title, and also wanted the comic phrase "walk into a bar" in the title, too. During a meeting with the editors, Tom suggested that we add "and a Platypus" to the title and the final title worked so well. We then gave the book a good subtitle because title without a subtitle was not easy to understand."

"When asked how the book climbed so fast into the bestseller lists in the U.S., Klein said that a short magazine article in Harvard Magazine in Boston gave the book it's first national publicity, with a funny radio interview on National Public Radio also helping to boost sales and help spread news of the book nationwide.

And, well, NPR interview is here. Have fun.