Topics include the sociology of weather in an M Word state, the Super Bowl, stadiums, and guilt over the state of professional sports. Chris tries to get into a screaming match about Occupy Oakland, but Jesse just politely disagrees. Jesse also reveals how many tracks of hardcore punk you can get through in 24 hours.
Recommendations:
This episode we talk about a recent paper about happiness (via Graphic Sociology) and whether or not happiness studies actually tell us anything about happiness. After that, we follow-up on an argument Chris made last episode about “being cool” as a cause of human social behavior.
The sound is a little rough this week as three out of the four of us were actually in the same room for a change, which is actually harder to record than four people in four different cities using Skype.
Two topics this week:
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.
Second, Chris takes us on a tour through the Billboard Hot 100 and the Top 200, with a stop at the Grammy Album of the Year, partially in response to this article on Hysteria and pop music.
Note: Jon accidentally posted the link to last episode when initially creating this post. If you got the wrong file, please redownload now. Sorry!
This episode, we talk about Black Friday mania, Girl Talk, John Stewart, and Wikileaks.
Follow along at home:
What deep sociological insights about race, nationalism, and culture can be gleaned from the world of competitive hot dog eating? We try really hard — possibly too hard — to provide an answer to that question. Then we turn our attention to Nerdcore hip hop and a discussion about music, race, identity, and authenticity.
So put this on a bun and eat it: episode #8!
Jesse’s back and ready to tell Arturo and Jon what they got wrong last week about Arizona and right-wing media in the U.S.
The episode concludes with a tribute to the late great Ronnie James Dio and a live bootleg recording of the Dio classic Holy Diver performed by The Talcott Parsons Project in 2009. (That’s Jesse on vocals and Jon on guitar, by the way.)
\m/ DIO \m/
