The Social Breakdown

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 search terms to use, what job sites t...

With all this talk about Tik Tok, we wanted to bring you an oldie-but-goodie from 2018 about Context Collapse, an interesting phenomenon that occurs often on social media when various segments of your social network (friends, family, acquaintances, employers, and complete strangers) are muddled together into one big audience. How does a social media user as yourself negotiate the multiple imagined audiences of the social network? F...

We're honoring the queen of sociology, Dr. Patricia Hill Collins, on this last week of Women's History Month by going deep into higher level theory via Black Feminist Thought (BFT as we like to call it). We discuss the history of the Frankfurt school of thought and the genesis of Dr. Collins' own 'critical social theory.' Her theory is steeped in American culture, history, and law, as she works to understand the experiences of Blac...

We’re getting theoretical this week and tackling Orientalism, a concept and book by the fantastic Dr. Edward Said. If you’re taking a higher-level sociology, anthropology, history, or poli sci class, chances are you’re gonna hear “orientalism” thrown around! What is heck is it? (Hint: It ain’t a rug, a fast-food take out place, or the way to describe how someone looks!) What is its connection to imperialism and colonialism? And how...

Is health a privilege or a right? As a society, how do we come to understand health and its social origins and outcomes? Though medicine has been understood as a social science that dates back to Hippocrates–the Hippocratic Oath–medical sociology is not even 70 years old yet! The climb to intellectual legitimacy and sound research is recent. When it comes to matters of stress, food, doctor-patient interactions, racism and sexism, m...

Since it's V-day, we wanted to rerelease one of our first episodes from 2018 about LOVE. In this episode we 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 important concept of the Dyad. Do you agree with sociology’s view o...

Triggered by "China Balloon Incident" of Feb 2023, we wanted rerelease this episode to consider the questions... with the internet, social media, and all of our new technology, do we have privacy anymore? We start the episode off talking about the classic sociological concept of Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’. We also discuss the various ways (and reasons why) our government surveils us, how we tie morality in with privacy, and the ...

If you're like us, you're probably snacking on something right now trying to get through your day. It goes without saying how important food is to our survival, but beyond the biological needs, there is a whole system surrounding food. This episode is an introduction to food studies from a sociological perspective. We look at the intermingling of culture and food, the stories and legends we pass down...

What is “humor” and what is “comedy”? Do these terms mean the same thing? Today we answer these questions with the help of Dr. Raul Perez, author of ‘The Souls of White Jokes’ and scholar of what exactly “funny” is and “funny” does. Tune in to learn about the purposes that humor serves in society, stretching back to feudal times to the current Cancel Culture era. And don’t forget to grab a copy of hi...

Itʻs strange to say that workplace violence has any place in society. It doesnʻt. But workplace violence does exist, and so today we are going to take a functionalist approach to talk about the functions of workplace violence, particularly in academia. Workplace violence can serve as a tool for those in power to reinforce hierarchies in the workplace, advance their own careers, increase work producti...

More and more today’s educators are encouraged to set up service learning and community-based projects for their students. These are projects that take students out of the traditional classroom, and into the community to ideally be helpful. But, are these efforts as positive as we imagine they are? We are joined this week by our friend and wonderful guest, Dr. Colleen Rost-Banik, to discuss the pros and pitfalls of service-learning...

Do you want to be a better Public Scientist? Do you want to enhance your skills in sociological analysis within and outside the academy? Do you want a place to discuss, vent, study, and analyze “graduate school stress” and what to do about it? Do you want high level research engagement and turning your wonderful ideas into digestible content for the public? Do you need professional development skills...

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, the time when everything turns pink! We here at The Social Breakdown wanted to remind everyone with breasts (pssst– we ALL have ‘em!) to do all the needed check ups: self-exams, ultrasounds, and mammograms! So, here is a re-released episode from last year (2021), where we discussed how our team was especially hit hard by breast cancer. (Ellen is still in remission! Yay!) So, for us and for ...

What makes you, “you”? Well, sociologists love to answer this question by saying that you are a social object– a combination of the environments, people, cultures, social experiences, and structures around you. And no one is more prolific than theorist Charles Cooley in establishing this! So, this week, we’re exploring the work of Cooley and his concept of The Looking Glass Self. Tune in to learn mor...

We’re baaaaacck! Welcome to the start of our 5th school year together. (Yep, you read that right: *fifth* year!) We’re getting things going with a quick talk story session between Omar and Ellen about the symbolic meanings of life in 2022. Vaccines, Manti Te’o, masks, Liz Cheney, Britney Spears, Joe Biden– each of these things and people hold a plethora of meanings to each of us, and shape how we int...

This week, we’re exploring how sociology makes sense of our material culture. What is the relationship people hold with the tangible objects we collect? What meaning do we attach to these items? And why is it that Penn cares so much about her Washi Tape collection and Omar licks his shoes?!  Tune in here to learn more about stuffs and where the state of stuffs is going as the world becomes digitalized and we begin to interact with ...