DP David Pizarro Professor of psychology at Cornell University who studies how people make moral judgments and the role emotions, especially disgust, play in moral and political...

“What is the right thing to do in a world where doing the right thing is so fucking unrewarding?”

Very Bad Wizards · Art & Philosophy · November 2026

Context

Discussing the first episode of The Wire, the hosts reach the final scene, where a witness who testified against a defendant is found murdered. David Pizarro uses it to sum up the show's moral question.

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Transcript

Very Bad Wizards Around 58:23 into the episode

David Pizarro

Yeah. And there's something about that guy who plays Gant's performance in the very beginning where he's just really soft-spoken that actually gets like it makes me a little emotional to know like what's going to happen to him. He's like willing to do the right thing. Yeah. Totally.

Tamler Sommers

I agree. There is something emotional. It's like a working guy, working man that's probably taking this job to help his family and knows that this is a risk, but it's the right thing to do. It's

David Pizarro

the right thing to do. God, and that's the whole thing. Like, what is the right thing to do in a world where doing the right thing is so fucking unrewarding? Yeah, that's

Tamler Sommers

the show in some ways. Doing the right thing is unrewarding. One thing you left out, maybe blocked it out. I wouldn't blame you is Kima and Cheryl.

David Pizarro

I skipped it. The less said about it, the better. Kima's another one. I don't want to get any more arguments about performances, but I'm finding me a little

Tamler Sommers

friendlier on that front. Although I think it's a fine performance, but it's actually the scene is the

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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