In this episode, guest host Amber Joy chats with Courtney Bell, a high school teacher in North Minneapolis who was a candidate for the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year Award. In a recent article by the Star Tribune, Bell talks about her work

Best of 2017: Mimi Schippers on Polyamory and Polyqueer Sexualities

Dec 29th, 2017

In this episode, guest host Allison Nobles talks to Tulane professor Mimi Schippers about her book Beyond Monogamy: Polyamory and the Future of Polyqueer Sexualities. The book interrogates “compulsory monogamy”, or our cultural disposition towa

Best of 2017: Lisa Wade on American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus

Dec 22nd, 2017

In this episode, guest hosts Amber Powell and Allison Nobles talk to Associate Professor of Sociology at Occidental College Lisa Wade about her book American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus. The conversation focuses on interrogating wh

Trevor Hoppe on Punishing Disease

Dec 1st, 2017

In this episode, guest host Caty Taborda-Whitt sits down with Trevor Hoppe to discuss his new book, Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness, which looks at the public health response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The conversation

Michael Schudson on The News Media

Jun 19th, 2017

In this episode, guest host Wahutu talks to Professor of Journalism at Columbia University Michael Schudson about his new book The News Media: What Everyone Needs to Know. The conversation focuses on the history of news as well as how the publi

Marianne Cooper on Families in Insecure Times

May 1st, 2017

Stanford sociologist Marianne Cooper is a leading expert in the field of gender and family dynamics. Her latest book, Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times, details her efforts to understand how families representing an array of social classes

Theda Skocpol on the Koch Network

Apr 14th, 2017

Our guest today is Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, and the director of the Scholar Strategy Network, a network of professors that seeks to improve public policy and strengthen dem

Sergio Chávez on Border Lives and Transnationalism

Feb 27th, 2017

With the election of Donald Trump, much has been made about the construction of barriers to entry along the US border with Mexico. But while Trump has placed particular emphasis on the image of a wall designed to limit illegal movement across t

Natasha Warikoo on The Diversity Bargain

Feb 6th, 2017

In this episode, guest host Neeraj Rajasekar talks to Harvard professor Natasha Warikoo about her book The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities. The book centers on conversations with

Stephen Ellingson on Religious Environmentalism

Jan 17th, 2017

In his new book, To Care for Creation: the Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement, Professor Stephen Ellingson explores new — and often localized — environmental activism among mainstream religious groups in the United States. Throug

Vanesa Ribas on Immigration to the New South

Dec 12th, 2016

Prior to the 1990s, the sociology of immigration focused mainly on just a handful of major cities where most new arrivals had settled throughout the 20th century. But more recently, immigrants have been moving to new destinations in the rural S

Douglas Hartmann on Midnight Basketball

Nov 21st, 2016

In this episode, I talk to University of Minnesota Professor and Editor-In-Chief of TheSocietyPages Douglas Hartmann about his book Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy. This conversation focuses on a 1990s crime init

Joel Best on the Creepy Clown Craze

Oct 31st, 2016

Across the country, sightings of people dressed as “creepy clowns” standing in forests, on roads, in doorways has exploded and captured part of the national imagination. A lot of people were unsure what to make of this odd development. Some cal

Jooyoung Lee on Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central

Oct 10th, 2016

In this episode, I talk to University of Toronto professor Jooyoung Lee, author of Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central. This conversation focuses on the book as well as Professor Lee’s experiences writing the book. For some context, set in

Aldon Morris on The Scholar Denied

Sep 19th, 2016

Northwestern University professor Aldon Morris discusses W.E.B. Du Bois and the status of his work in the sociological canon. In this special hour-long episode, we explore the ongoing tension between social justice activism and the scientific f

Dalton Conley on the Use of Genomic Biology in Sociology

Aug 18th, 2016

Office Hours is back for fall semester! We welcome new producer Matthew Aguilar-Champeau, whose soundscaping includes a musical refresh courtesy of The Custodian of Records. Hosts Sarah Catherine-Billups and Caty Taborda kick things off with Pr

Doug McAdam on American Racial Politics and Social Movements

May 16th, 2016

In this episode, host Jack Delehanty speaks with Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam, whose 2014 co-authored book Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America traces the roots of polarization in today’s politics back to

Jane Ward on Sex Between Straight White Men

Apr 27th, 2016

New host Allison Nobles interviews Jane Ward, a professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of California Riverside. Dr Ward’s most recent book, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, explores the relationship between whitenes

Lois Lee on Recognizing the Non-religious

Mar 2nd, 2016

While religious rhetoric pervades everyday American culture and politics, the population of Americans who identify with no organized religion has actually quadrupled in just the last 25 years. Worldwide, the non-religious now make up the third

Best of 2015: David Pellow on Nonhuman Members of the Community

Dec 26th, 2015

This week, David Naguib Pellow drops in for a chat about his latest book, Total Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement. In it, Dr Pellow explores how environmental and animal rights movements raise imp

Andrew Perrin on American Political Publics

Dec 1st, 2015

Heading into a new presidential election cycle, we reconnect with 2008 guest Dr Andrew Perrin to talk about changes in the American political public. In his new book, American Democracy: From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter, Perrin brings

Sanyu Mojola on Love, Money, and HIV

Nov 19th, 2015

In this episode, University of Colorado sociologist Sanyu Mojola discusses her work on HIV rates among young African women. She discusses social mechanisms – specifically the entanglement of love and money – that lead to higher rates of HIV dea

Sharmila Rudrappa on Global Surrogacy

Oct 30th, 2015

In this episode, we step into the global market for surrogate mothers with University of Texas sociologist Sharmila Rudrappa. She explains why India has become an increasingly popular destination for American couples searching for affordable pr

Joanna Kempner on the Gender Politics of Migraine

Oct 8th, 2015

Because they suffer from an invisible affliction, people with migraines are sometimes suspected of “making up” their disease in order to avoid performing unwanted duties. Even within psychology, women were once suspected of self-inducing their

Peter Hall on Sociological Memoir

Sep 18th, 2015

In this episode, Colorado State professor emeritus Peter M. Hall drops in to talk about his forthcoming memoir, “Growing up Red, White, and Jewish: the Personal and the Political”. We discuss the potential of memoir as a sociological method, an