First, Arturo jumps off from a recent New Books in Sociology episode to ask whether or not sociology is too set in making repetitive and uncreative arguments.
First, Chris gives a shout out to Sociological Images for their post on Push Up Bikini Tops at Abercrombie Kids, which inspires a discussion about gender and childhood culture.
Second, a discussion about Ebooks, Amazon, DRM, and the fate of public knowledge.
Because Arturo is obsessed with Glenn Beck, conversation begins there, but quickly moves to government shutdowns, the way economists approach social problems, and we return to last episode’s discussion about education.
We start off talking about Charlie Sheen and celebrity (yeah, sorry), and then transition into a discussion about the iPad and music, and technology and qualitative data analysis. We thought we were done then, but we kept on talking about the sad state of rock music today and then NPR versus the right wing. We decided to keep the whole thing.
Remember that big stink over anthropology and science in December? We invited anthropologist Eric Plemons back on the show to talk about science, anthropology, and sociology. We had a fun, lively, & at times heated discussion about the topic. Unfortunately, we were a bit slow with the editing and some time has now passed since this was exactly front page news, but we say science is always in season on the Sociology Improv.
On October 27, Jeremy Freese taped a laptop to his face and Skyped into the Soc Improv for a discussion of the NRC rankings. After Jeremy left, we solved the culture of poverty. Or something like that.
Unfortunately, due to a freak editing accident, this episode is just now being posted. Sorry, Jeremy. (And sorry, Christopher Newport.)
This week, Eric Plemons joins the conversation and Jose Marichal makes a return visit as well. After introducing the Improv Hotline at 612.242.AGIL, we have a discussion about teaching social theory, the value of reading original texts, and the challenges of tuning out distractions for sustained reading and writing. Our final segment is a lengthy discussion of the impact of the 2010 midterm elections.
By the way, be sure to watch the feed because we’ve got another new episode we recorded last week coming your way in just a few days. Editing is hard.
Two topics this week: 
