Episode 34: Does Reading Harry Potter Make You Moral? (with Will Wilkinson)
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2013
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Special guest Will Wilkinson joins the podcast to talk about whether fiction makes us better people, and to discuss his recent Daily Beast article that trashed Dave's profession and livelihood. Also, Dave and Tamler try to make sense of Ancient Greek justice in a myth about incest, adultery, daughter-killing, husband-killing, matricide, cannibalism, and trash talking to disembodied heads.
Links
- Agamemnon [wikipedia.org]
- Will Wilkinson [wikipedia.org]
- The Will Wilkinson article that hurt David's feelings [thedailybeast.com]
- Hurt Feelings by Flight of the Concords [youtube.com]
- Does great literature make us better? by Gregory Currie [nytimes.com]
- Reading literature makes us smarter and nicer by Annie Murphy Paul [time.com]
- Want to learn how to think? Read fiction by Tom Jacobs [psmag.com]
- In Pursuit of Happiness Research [pdf] by Will Wilkinson
Special Guest: Will Wilkinson.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro, |
| 0:05.9 | having an informal discussion about issues and signs and ethics. |
| 0:09.3 | Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, |
| 0:13.6 | and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes. |
| 0:18.4 | But he thinks I'm salvageable. |
| 0:20.0 | You know, people all through my life have thought that way. |
| 0:23.2 | I mean, as people ought to see the light that I would be different, but they were just dumb. |
| 0:30.5 | The fan on head falls in. |
| 0:34.9 | Radio attention, because I can't find a person. |
| 0:43.5 | Who are you? |
| 0:45.6 | Who are you? |
| 0:47.1 | I'm a very bad man. |
| 0:48.6 | I'm a very good man. |
| 0:50.4 | Good, good man. |
| 0:54.7 | Placing people's, and with no more brains than you have. |
| 0:58.6 | Radio attention, and I'm bad. |
| 1:04.7 | Anybody can have a brainer. |
| 1:08.7 | You're a very bad man. |
| 1:11.2 | I'm a very good man. |
| 1:12.9 | Just a very bad wizard. |
| 1:15.4 | Welcome to very bad wizards. |
| 1:16.8 | I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.