Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune Audiobook (Free)

An entertaining and insightful exploration of schadenfreude: the deliciously dark and complex pleasure we’ve all felt, from time to time, at news of others’ misfortunes.

You might feel schadenfreude when…

the boss calls himself ‘Head of Pubic Providers’ on a significant letter.an awesome guy swings back on his chair, and it tips over.a Superstar Vegan is caught in the cheese aisle. an aggressive driver slashes you off – and then gets stopped.your co-worker gets hotter seafood in the microwave, then gets about Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune food poisoning.an metropolitan unicyclist almost collides with a parked car.someone cuts the collection for the ATM – and then it all swallows their credit card.your effortlessly attractive friend gets dumped.

Everybody knows the pleasure felt at somebody else’s misfortune. The Germans named this furtive delight in another’s failure schadenfreude (from schaden damage, and freude, joy), and it has perplexed philosophers and psychologists for centuries. Why could it be so satisfying to witness another’s distress? And what, if anything, should we do about it?

Schadenfreude illuminates this hidden emotion, inviting readers to reflect on its pleasures, and how we use other’s miseries to feel better about ourselves. Written within an exploratory, evocative form, it weaves illustrations from literature, beliefs, film, and music as well as personal observation and traditional and cultural analysis. And nowadays of polarized politics, twitter trolls and ‘sidebars of pity,’ it couldn’t end up being timelier.

Engaging, insightful, and interesting, Schadenfreude makes the case for thinking afresh about the function this much-maligned feelings plays inside our lives — maybe even embracing it.