Office Hours

Our guest this episode is Katherine S. Newman, and our topic is her new book, The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition. In the world’s wealthiest countries, an increasing number of adults in their twenties and thirties are moving back in with Mom and Dad. What’s driving this […]

This episode, we talk with Jennifer Lena about her book, Banding Together. Lena explores the developmental patterns that different musical genres take—from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas Polka. Why do some genres become massively popularly while others thrive in small niches? Listen in to find out. Also, our host for the […]

This episode, we talk with Enid Logan about her book, “At This Defining Moment”: Barack Obama’s Presidential Candidacy and the New Politics of Race. Logan reflects back on race and gender in the 2008 campaign and also looks at how things have, and have not, changed for the current 2012 campaign. Download Office Hours #55

This episode we speak with Richard L. Zweigenhaft about his research, with G. William Domhoff, on diversity in the power elite and their new book, The New CEOs: Women, African American, Latino, and Asian American Leaders of Fortune 500 Companies. While Fortune 500 CEOs are still predominantly white males, a growing number of women and […]

This week, we talk with Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp, co-editors of Sociological Images. Gwen and Lisa were in Minneapolis to receive the Public Sociology Award at the University of Minnesota Sociology Department’s annual Sociology Research Institute. Download Office Hours #53

This is a special edition of Office Hours: we’re cross-posting the first interview from the all new Contexts Podcast. In this interview, Jessica Streeter speaks with Henry H. Brownstein and Timothy M. Mulcahy, co-authors of the Winter 2012 Contexts feature, Home Cooking: Marketing Meth. If you like Office Hours, you probably already love Contexts magazine […]

This episode with talk with David Grusky about the social and economic effects of the great recession and what every citizen should know about inequality in the United States. Download Office Hours #51

This episode we talk to Joel Best, author of popular, accessible sociology books such as Damned Lies and Statistics, Everyone’s a Winner, and hot off the presses, a brand new Social Problems textbook from W.W. Norton. Download Office Hours #50.

This week we talk with David Garland about his new book, Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Garland discusses why capital punishment persists in the US while it does not in other Western countries, from the structure of our political system to the role of public opinion. Our Teaching TSP team has […]

This episode we talk with Suzanne Mettler about her new book, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy. Mettler explains how indirect incentives, subsidies, and tax breaks have come to dominate US social policy, but remain unseen and underappreciated by most Americans. Download Office Hours #48.

This episode we talk with Robert Sampson about his new book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. In the face of globalization and the widespread belief that the “world is flat,” Sampson shows how the world is actually very uneven, and that local communities make a great difference in how people live […]

This episode we catch up with Gregory Hooks and Brian McQueen about their article, American Exceptionalism Revisited, winner of the ASA Political Sociology section Best Article award. Our conversation touches upon racial migration, defense spending, and how the post-World War II era was a critical juncture in the American social welfare state. Download Office Hours […]

This week we talk with Eric Klinenberg about his new book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. Also be sure to check out Klinenberg’s New York Times article, One’s a Crowd. Download Office Hours #45

This week we talk with Amy Finnegan about Uganda and Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign. For the past dozen years, Finnegan has been teaching and doing research in Uganda. In particular, Finnegan has studied the relationship between outside groups like Invisible Children and local Ugandan activists. How are campaigns like Kony 2012 received in Uganda? […]

This episode we talk with Douglas Arnold, McKnight Presidential Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. Professor Arnold is active in the movement to boycott Elsevier for charging exorbitantly high prices, supporting measures such as SOPA, PIPA, and until last week, the Research Works Act, as well as for the publisher’s many ethical lapses. […]

This episode is the first Drop In: a new, shorter style of Office Hours episodes that we’ll be mixing into the podcast every so often alongside our longer episodes. Our first Drop In guest, Matt Snodgrass, discusses his recent Criminology article, Does the Time Cause the Crime? Download Office Hours #42

In this epsiode, we talk with Neal Caren and Sarah Gaby about their research on the Occupy Movement’s presence on social networking sites. Topics include the methodological promises and challenges of studying popular sites like Facebook as well as the potential of online social networking for fostering social change. This conversation was part of a […]

In this episode we discuss the social science of political humor with Heather LaMarre. This conversation is part of our latest Roundtable. Download Office Hours #40.

This episode we talk with Robert Agnew about his new article, Dire forecast: A theoretical model of the impact of climate change on crime. Professor Agnew argues that climate change may become one of the biggest drivers behind rising crime rates in the 21st century. Download Office Hours #39.

This week we thought we’d dig back into the Office Hours archives a bit and revisit an interview we did with Theda Skocpol from 2009 on media, the Internet, and civic participation in the 2008 election. A few years later, we’reright in the middle of another election cycle and questions about the impact of traditional […]