Detail from a front page of The Onion, as featured in "Our Front Pages" (simonandschuster.com).

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For two decades and counting now, the satirical news source The Onion has been churning out the headlines that make you laugh or cry or both.

“Amish Give Up.” “Inner Cities to Receive Soothing Heroin.” “Cheney Vows to Attack U.S. If Kerry Elected.” “God Outdoes Terrorists.”

And, the day after last year’s presidential election: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Oh, my.

It all started as a college humor paper in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, it’s everywhere.

This hour, On Point: Hot headlines and the truth in bleak humor. We’ll peel back The Onion.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Joe Garden, features editor for The Onion. He joined the staff in 1993, after dropping out of the University of Wisconsin, when the paper was still produced out of Madison. The Onion’s new book is “Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude From America’s Finest News Source.”

Also from New York we’re joined by Seth Reiss, a staff writer for The Onion. He’s been on staff for three years, at the New York base The Onion has had since 2001.

From Pasadena, Calif., we’re joined by Robert Niles, editor at the Online Journalism Review, published by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

And with us in our studio is star On Point intern Suzanne Merkelson, late, great editor-in-chief of The Colby Echo in Waterville, Maine.

Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi in the new film "Paper Heart."

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Comedian and actress Charlyne Yi — 23 years old — wanted to understand why love blooms for others, and not for her.

Or at least that’s the question she asks in her new faux documentary, “Paper Heart,” in which the real Charlyne Yi plays a fictionalized Charlyne Yi.

She travels across the country, talking to couples, professors, even a romance novelist, to see what she can learn about love. And the more she learns, the more she wonders if she has what it takes — even as she falls for actor Michael Cera, who plays himself.

This hour, On Point: Charlyne Yi and the quest to understand love.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Charlyne Yi joins us from New York. A 23-year-old writer, stand-up comedian, actress, and musician, she’s co-executive producer, co-writer, and star of the new faux documentary “Paper Heart.” In the film she plays a fictionalized version of herself, alongside actor Michael Cera, who plays a fictionalized version of himself. “Paper Heart” won top honors for screenwriting at Sundance.

Also joining us from New York is Jake Johnson. In “Paper Heart” he plays director Nick Jasenovec, the real–life director of the film.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

Michael Palin

British actor Michael Palin on how Monty Python came to be.

Click here to listen to the show.

Sunshine State humorist and novelist Carl Hiaasen knows a lot about Florida and human nature. What he didn’t know was just how ugly his own nature could get when he put it back on the golf course.

Decades after Hiaasen laid down his golf clubs as a young father, he picked them up again at fifty-something. It wasn’t pretty, but the wickedly funny author of “Strip Tease,” “Nature Girl,” “Skinny Dip” and “Sick Puppy” has made it a good laugh.

This hour, On Point: Florida humorist Carl Hiaasen on sand traps, long drives, getting older, and going back to golf.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Carl Hiaasen, columnist and novelist. His new book is “The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport.”

Man walks into a restaurant and asks: “How do you prepare your chickens?” And the cook responds: “Nothing special really. We just tell them they’re gonna die.” Bada boom. The human condition in a two-line joke about chickens.

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein see philosophy today all over the world of humor. A world where Woody Allen and Wittgenstein, Seinfeld and Socrates could have a great time cracking wise. Their new book of high philosophy and low humor is a surprise bestseller.

This hour On Point: the authors of “Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Thomas Cathcart, co-author of the new book “Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes.”

Daniel Klein, co-author of the new book “Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes.”

Only four days after the first votes, in Iowa, of Election ‘08, and one day before the New Hampshire primaries, Americans are in the thick of one of the most amazing political seasons in years.

But one thing’s been missing: the late-night laughs. Leno and Letterman sneaked back on last week. Tonight, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert return but without their striking writers.

Not to worry. We’ve got ‘em.

This hour, On Point: striking late night humor writers from The Daily Show and Colbert Report, on their battle, the New Hampshire race, and the zingers we’re missing without their wit.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Richard Wolffe, senior White House correspondent for Newsweek, on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

Laura Krafft, writer for The Colbert Report.

Glenn Eichler, writer for The Colbert Report.

Tim Carvell, writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for the Birmingham News, he has a syndicated series called “Prickly City.”

Southern-raised humorist Roy Blount Jr. took the midnight train out of Georgia a long time ago, to make a life well north of the Mason-Dixon line.

But you cannot take the South out of the Southern boy, and definitely not out of Blount’s lifetime of humorous essays and exasperation over America’s North-South incomprehension.

In a new collection, he’s hunting snakes, meeting Ray Charles, confronting his whiteness, considering the Rapture, and looking always for the nation’s overlap between North and South.

This hour On Point: Roy Blount Jr. on the North, South, and in-between.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Roy Blount, Jr., author of the new book “Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South.”

In the long-ago fall of 1969, something completely different in television began happening in the UK. It was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus — a free-form, satirical, anarchic circus of humor that had Britons staring dumbfounded, then laughing ’til they cried.

Monty Python made the leap to America, and then onto the big screen, with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” and more. John Cleese was there, and Eric Idle — and Michael Palin, who’s now out with a new diary of those years.

This hour Point: Monty Python’s Michael Palin, and the Monty Python years.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Michael Palin, actor and writer. His diaries from 1969 to 1979, chronicling the years of Monty Python, have just been published.