In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss celebrate their podcast reaching a quarter million downloads by spotlighting a work that has significantly developed the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS): Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman’s influential introductory chapter in their anthology on The Social Shaping of Technology, first published in 1985, and later updated in 1999. This text develops an oft cited critique of technological determinism, which posits that technology is an au...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss take the elevator to the severed floor of where they work so that their innies can talk about the sociological aspects of a television show they both really like, Apple TV+'s Severance. Partly drawing from a chapter written by Palmer and Schueths in the edited volume, Reintegrating Severance, Eric and Louis explore how ideas found in classical sociology can be used to ‘illumonate’ aspects of what we see unfolding in the show's first two seasons. Eri...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss spotlight the sociological concept of medicalization and Peter Conrad’s influential understanding of this idea, as captured in Conrad’s chapter in Medical Sociology on the Move. Eric and Louis’s coverage of Conrad’s account of medicalization perhaps unsurprisingly leads them to talk about some pretty weird topics. These include Tucker Carlson’s interest in testicle tanning, how Louis asks his GP friend to take his blood pressure until he gets the re...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss launch the fourth season of their podcast by examining a concept that sociologists continue to engage with to produce insightful understandings of how social life is gendered. They use Connell and Messerschmidt's article in Gender & Society and an earlier piece by Connell in Teachers College Record to explore how the concept of hegemonic masculinity has been theorised, applied, critiqued, and refined in various sociological discussions. Louis do...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss have a discussion about the idea of the Anthropocene, a concept that was originally developed within the field of Geology. Despite it not being formally recognised as a defined geological period in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the Anthropocene continues to feature in various discussions across different fields and sectors of society. But how might sociologists contribute to some of these conversations? Eva Lövbrand et al.'s ...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss shamelessly self-promote Louis’s monograph, Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders: How Digital Technologies Transform Migration and Sovereign Borders (2024), published by DeGruyter. They want listeners to know that there is a special 20% off discount code they can use, ‘DGBMOBILITIES’, if they want to purchase this work through the following link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110714050/html. (Aren’t Eric and Louis some of the mo...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss mark their 10,000th follower on Spotify by giving the people what they want, which apparently means exploring a prominent sociological account of the (perplexing) appeal of Donald Trump. By focusing on an essay by the noted American sociologist, Arlie Hochschild, published in 2016 in Contemporary Sociology, they discuss how sociological analysis of emotions can shed new light on various aspects of Donald Trump as a cultural phenomenon. Eric and Loui...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss what it means to be 'authentic' in the context of tourism. By examining the work of Ning Wang, they consider how authenticity in tourism research can be conceptualised in a number of different ways. One of these ways leads Louis to recount a time Eric ruined a sightseeing excursion they once went on. Louis also explains in this episode why he enjoys watching Antiques Roadshow. Not to be outdone, Eric wonders aloud where people defecate when ...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss do their best to have a reflexive discussion about a highly influential sociological account of the contemporary modern world: Anthony Giddens's idea of reflexive modernization, as captured in his work, The Consequences of Modernity. Eric somehow manages to use his bad Trump impression to promote the field of sociology, while Louis tries to keep the conversation more on track by ruminating on Giddens's point that modernity leaves us with more questi...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss launch the third season of their podcast by unpacking one of Karl Marx's most resonant and influential ideas in the field of sociology, his theory of estranged/alienated labour. Eric somehow manages to call Marx an 'emo' in this episode, while Louis admits that his ideal work situation is to play video games and travel a lot. Music and sound effects for this episode come from various sources and is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License, the...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss look to unpack a chapter in the Disability Studies Reader by the noted disability researcher, Tom Shakespeare. This work considers considers the strengths and limitations of the social model of disability, which powerfully conceptualises disability as a socially constructed phenomenon. In the second half of the episode, Eric and Louis welcome onto the show Caroline Ellison, who is a noted developmental educator and an Associate Pro...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss have a discussion about Zygmunt Bauman's noted work, Wasted Lives (2003), which explores how the process of modernisation inevitably produces waste. In discussing what it means to live in a disposable society, Eric and Louis imagine what it must have been like to have once worked in a fax machine factory. Listeners wanting to send Eric and Louis a fax are advised to send them a telegram instead. Music and sound effects for this episode come ...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss take time out of their somewhat busy schedules to talk about Hartmut Rosa's noted theory of 'social acceleration'. Rosa's (2003) article in the journal, Constellations, helps us make better sense of what it means to live in a high-speed society. Eric at one point in this episode recounts the time he gave a (hurried) presentation to Bob Hawke, the late former Labour party Prime Minister of Australia, and Louis admits that the new ordering system at h...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss explore Immanuel Wallerstein's influential and innovative approach to theorizing inequalities at a global level, which regards capitalism as a 'world-system' that is directly linked with colonialism. They also welcome onto the program a guest who you can either thank or blame for Eric having an academic career in sociology, Emeritus Professor Charles Lemert. Having previously co-authored a work with Wallerstein, Charles tells Eric and Louis what the...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss entertain the possibility that one of the previous episodes they did wasted everyone's time. They have a chat about Justin Rosenberg's polemical argument that scholars are paying too much attention to the concept of globalization. Not only is it being used in theoretically problematic ways, perhaps it actually does not say all that much. Eric and Louis consider responses to this argument, and as always they end up talking about a lot of strange topi...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss examine a sociological theory that some scholars believe is vital to understanding the social implications of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the hazards posed by anthropogenic global climate change: Ulrich Beck's noted theory of 'risk society'. Eric asks Louis in this episode if 'danger' is his middle name and Louis thinks the intro segments Eric is devising for this podcast are getting weirder and weirder. Music and sound effects for this epis...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss how biometric technologies and cultures are transforming how borders are constituted and being experienced in the contemporary era. The text their discussion revolves around is Louise Amoore's (2006) article in Political Geography, titled, 'Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror'. Eric and Louis talk at varying points in this episode about how Louis sometimes gets mistakenly called 'Louise Veruss' in personal communicat...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss pay yet another visit to their dear friend, Emile Durkheim. They have a chat about his noted work, the Division of Labour in Society, which advances thought-provoking ideas of how social order is maintained in the modern world. Eric laments something about this episode. He wishes he could have slipped in the line, 'if you can't beet them, join them', when he and Louis repeatedly talk about beets to illustrate one of Durkheim's points. Music ...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss how some sociologists have come to theorize the phenomenon of globalization. They do so by examining what’s come to be known as the ‘Great Globalization Debate’, as described by David Held et al.’s highly influential work, Global Transformations. Eric and Louis believe fans of the cult television show, the Sopranos, will especially enjoy this episode, as they probably spend too much of it doing a bad impersonation of the deplorable Sopranos ...
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss look to unpack David Beer's article in New Media & Society, titled, 'Power through the Algorithm'. Beer's work theorizes how algorithmically driven media technologies affect our experience of social life and how power might be expressed in distinctive ways in the contemporary era. At one point in this episode, Louis demonstrates that he sees eye-to-eye with the TikTok generation by complaining that concert-goers spend too much time on their smar...