The Social Breakdown

We're returning to our first Christmas with you all with this re-release! Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's hard to avoid it. Not only is it a day of celebration for Christian religions, but it has become commercialized and commodified for the sake of consumption and capitalism. Christmas also has a strong culture associated with it, full of rituals and traditions--from decorating the tr...

Me Before You ? The Fault in Our Stars ? Chicken Soup for the Soul ? Popular culture representations of disability and the disabled community have shown us the dramatic sides of the disability status. How can we better understand disability? Guest star future-Dr. Hillary Steinberg joins us today to talk about the sociology of disability as well as her working in a children's hospital. We outline t...

The music industry is a fascinating setting to understand the power of pop culture AND political economy. (Yup, like that Karl Marx kinda of political economy!) So Dr. David Arditi joins us to explore how power and institutions influence the music we listen to, and the art that musicians create. We discuss self-censorship, Soundcloud, commercialization, Bhad Bhabie, and more! Tune in here, and go...

Are you a newly minted or almost PhD graduate? Have academic job prospects been stressing you out? Look no further - we may have the solution for you! The academic job market isn't looking too hot right now, so here we are with a PhD's Guide to getting a non-academic job! We draw from our personal experiences of navigating the non-academic job market and give you all the practical deets on what se...

The way neighborhoods are transformed as investors, capital, and newcomers arrive cannot be understood without talking about cafes, lattes, food security, avocado toast, and race. Dr. Alison Alkon and Dr. Joshua Sbicca join us this week to discuss how food is both a gentrifying force and has been gentrified itself. The conversation was initiated by a new edited volume by our guests (and Dr. Yuki K...

The Social Breakdown Team has been busy the last several weeks and we were able to get a guest interview with Hawai'i Deputy Public Defender Jacquie Esser. Esser recently ran for State Prosecutor and continues to be a key player in the struggle to bring fundamental change to the criminal legal system in Hawai'i and throughout the nation. As we head into the final moments of one of the most importa...

Over the past three years, those of us in higher education have become more and more aware of the role politics play in academia. And on July 6th 2020, things came to a head when the Department of Homeland Security announced that international students who take only online courses in Fall 2020 were required to transfer schools, find in-person classes to take, or leave the country. Roughly a week l...

We're continuing our trek into the world of politics and spectacles a la Murray Edelman this week in preparation for the upcoming election. We review what Edelman means when he says, "politics is a spectacle," and how spectacles can lead us to vote against our own interests. Why is it that people targeted by Trump's policies voted for him in 2016, and may still vote for him in 2020? How do politic...

It's election season! So, we've got a rerelease for you all of an episode from May 2020 about politics, politics, politics! This week we're going to explore politics using a Symbolic Interactionist lens and the fantastic work of Dr. Murray Edelman to make sense of what's going on in our state and federal governments every day. Is politics an earnest attempt at changing our society for the good? Is...

We've talked about femininity, feminism, and feminist criminology, but we have yet to tackle masculinity! So, we have a fabulous guest, Dr. Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, with us this episode to explain what hegemonic masculinity is, how there are masculinities (plural!), and how they manifest themselves in our society. Join us for a timely discussion about what it mea...

Many people have heard the phrase, "take a walk in my shoes," but what does this really mean? Is it possible to understand what someone is going through without sharing the same experiences? The answers to these questions may seem obvious, but it's more complicated than you think! So this week, we're getting into the nitty-gritty of distinguishing empathy from sympathy, and defining the two. As th...

This week we sat down with Dr. Mary Kate Blake, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology from Valparaiso University, for a rundown of sociology of education. What is the sociology of education? How is education a structural component of society? Why is it so important to the economy and the labor market? We discuss the impacts of high school counselors, the journey of going to college, and...

Welcome to senior year! It's Fall 2020 and we are off to a great start with part 3 of our "You're all sociologists!" series. For this premiere episode, we catch up on what the gang has been up to after summer vacation and we discuss how to take sociology to the next level. What does being a sociologist mean during this time of social unrest and political turmoil? How can we use the sociological im...

We have another throwback episode for you, and this time it's about crime! Sociologists are good at mythbusting-- social mythbusting that is! Our first topic to bust: Crime. Citizens of any society have preconceived notions of crime, and these ideas can tell us something about the dominant social order, morality, and normative behavior. So, let's discuss! Are we living in the most violent time? Tr...

We have another rerelease for you this week! Love-- something we need more of nowadays-- is the topic of this week's episode! So let's explore what happens in our brains when we are struck with love, how sociologists like Charles Cooley and Theodore Kemper see love, and how love can be used as a tool of social control. To better understand this intense emotion, we also discuss Georg Simmel's impor...

Since we're on summer vacay, we're releasing some of our favorite episodes. So, here's one of Ellen's faves: Looking back at its historical origins, the social breakdown crew talks about liberalism and its manifestations in our contemporary world. What is "new" about neoliberalism? John Locke--a British philosopher enshrined in American legal and political doctrine--talks a lot about freedom and l...

Penn and Ellen are avid fans of Bon Appetit's YouTube channel. 'Gourmet Makes,' 'Back to Back Chef,' that one where Chris recreates dishes blind-folded-- WE LOVE THEM ALL. But at the start of June, shocking inequality at Bon Appetit was revealed: white chefs appearing in videos were being paid for their time, while chefs of color were not, and leadership was engaging in other racist practices. So,...

We're continuing our #BlackLivesMatter miniseries and exploring what it means when people demand that we defund the police. Annually the U.S. spends around $115 billion on police departments-- an amount that has tripled over the past 40 years. So supporters of #BLM are calling for divestment from police as one way to combat police violence and aggression. What does defunding look like? How would i...

For our miniseries on #BlackLivesMatter we were planning on doing an episode on tools of resistance-- the ways organizers act to create social change. But then we were like, "Wait a minute! We already have an episode on that!" So, we are re-releasing our episode on resistance, where we ask, what exactly is resistance? What does it mean to resist and to struggle? How can we resist? What are some st...

The #BlackLivesMatter social movement has been gaining momentum after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25, and protests have been seen around the world and in every state in the U.S. We here at the Social Breakdown have been trying to figure out how we can do our part in the movement, and this miniseries is one of the results. So, the first episode of our #BlackLivesMatter miniserie...

There's a lotta roles grad students play in the university, and one of them is being a teacher. So, we have a PhD's Guide to Teaching today to help all of you newbies prepare for teaching in higher education. How do you format an in-person class vs. an online class? How long does a new course take to plan (HINT: A lot longer that you think!)? And why should you NOT friend your students on Pokemon...

Politics, politics, politics-- what a fascinating part of our society that feels all-consuming sometimes. This week we're going to explore politics using a Symbolic Interactionist lens and the fantastic work of Dr. Murray Edelman to make sense of what's going on in our state and federal governments every day. Is politics an earnest attempt at changing our society for the good? Is it just a spectac...

Sociology is obviously concerned about connecting private troubles to public issues, as C. Wright Mills once said. Sociologists are also deeply interested in the relationships between people, and the intimate relationships we have with family members. This week, we have a fantastic guest, Dr. Sarah Patterson, who is helping us make sense of these connections. Sarah will be talking with us about fa...

Medical error-- defined as unintended or failed plan of actions related to treatments-- is an understudied in medical sociology. Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual and systemic level however, and it might shock you to learn that it happens more often than not-- it's technically the third leading cause of death in the United States! Listen to our discussion on what societal...

We're starting a new mini-series on our podcast called "(Don't) Ask a Sociologist"! We'll be answering questions from our listeners in ways probably more complicated than necessary, because we're sociologists, after all. This week's question - what the heck is society? What do people mean when they say 'society'? While it's a word we like to throw around, we might actually be talking about somethi...