# The pleasure we take in others' misfortune and what it says about us

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/god-forbid-567088/the-pleasure-we-take-in-others-misfortune-and-what-it-says-about-us
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/god-forbid-567088/the-pleasure-we-take-in-others-misfortune-and-what-it-says-about-us.md
Podcast: [God Forbid](https://stenobird.com/podcast/god-forbid-567088)
Published: 2026-06-19T04:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/godforbid/schadenfreude-godforbid/106743372
Audio file: https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/audio/02/lm/Z/ir.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/god-forbid-567088/episodes/the-pleasure-we-take-in-others-misfortune-and-what-it-says-about-us
Duration seconds: 3276

## Resource

You heard that someone had come unstuck. A rival. A bully. Someone overconfident, or two-faced, or just a bit too pleased with themselves. And something in you was glad. You won't say it out loud. You might barely admit it to yourself. But the Germans have a word for it. And it turns out, so did the ancient Greeks. Schadenfreude. The pleasure we take in others' misfortune. Is it a moral failing? A sign of deficient character? Or is it a window into what we actually believe about justice, equality — and each other? GUESTS: Tiffany Watt-Smith is a cultural historian and author of Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune . She joins us from London. Nick Haslam is Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne, and the man who's been thinking hard about Australia's national variant — tall poppy syndrome .

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## Transcript

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