In the second part of their series on Gaza, Genocide, and Social Theory, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss welcome Ernesto Verdeja onto their podcast to talk around an article Ernesto has written in the Journal of Genocide Research , titled ‘ The Gaza Genocide in Five Crises ’. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ernesto makes some very powerful points about why it is meaningful and apt to categorise the recent major loss of life in Gaza as a genocide, while also unpacking what the broader ramifications o...
Sep 30, 2025•52 min•Season 4Ep. 6
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss look to social theory to try to make better sense of the tremendous loss of life in Gaza since October 2023. They appeal to an article written by Bradley Campbell, titled ‘Genocide and Social Control’, which was published in 2009 in Sociological Theory. If indeed developments in Gaza constitute a genocide, as bodies like the International Association of Genocide Scholars have asserted, then Campbell’s account of genocide is useful because it spells out...
Sep 16, 2025•49 min•Season 4Ep. 5
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 aut...
Sep 01, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 4
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. Eric ...
Jun 24, 2025•45 min•Season 4Ep. 3
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 read...
Jun 03, 2025•44 min•Season 4Ep. 2
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 does ...
May 12, 2025•42 min•Season 4Ep. 1
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 art...
Jan 13, 2025•24 min•Season 3Ep. 6
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 most...
Dec 19, 2024•44 min•Season 3Ep. 5
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 Louis ...
Oct 16, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 4
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 th...
Sep 18, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 3
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 question...
Sep 04, 2024•22 min•Season 3Ep. 2
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 Cr...
Mar 12, 2024•23 min•Season 3Ep. 1
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 Professor of Ageing an...
Sep 20, 2023•41 min•Season 2Ep. 9
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 from variou...
Aug 24, 2023•31 min•Season 2Ep. 8
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 his...
Jun 28, 2023•29 min•Season 2Ep. 7
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 they...
Jun 07, 2023•40 min•Season 2Ep. 6
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 topics,...
May 17, 2023•21 min•Season 2Ep. 5
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 episode ...
May 03, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 4
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...
Apr 17, 2023•26 min•Season 2Ep. 3
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 and sound ...
Feb 19, 2023•25 min•Season 2Ep. 2
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 ch...
Jan 31, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 1
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...
Oct 12, 2022•24 min•Season 1Ep. 18
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss explore sociological understandings of race by examining Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer's article on 'What is Racial Domination? ' in the Du Bois Review . Desmond and Emirbayer articulate how race structures and affects people’s experience and they theorize how race informs power relations. To explain a particular way sociologists have come to understand racism, Eric discusses what it would be like to tear Louis's arm off. Music and sound effect...
Oct 10, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 17
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss have an in-depth chat about Shoshana's Zuboff's theory of 'surveillance capitalism', which postulates the existence of a new variant of capitalism that significantly involves the digital monitoring of people's behaviours. Eric and Louis mainly base their discussion on Zuboff's 2015 article in the Journal of Information Technology , which explains how capitalism in the contemporary era may be based in some respects on a new logic of accumulation. Becaus...
Oct 03, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss consider George Ritzer and Nathan Jurgenson's theory of prosumer capitalism as articulated in their article in the Journal of Consumer Culture . Ritzer and Jurgenson investigate how there might be something novel and unique about prosumption in the digital world, which signals a shift in the way capitalism operates. Louis lets everyone know in this episode that he is rubbish at making cold rolls, so no one should ever ask him to make any. Music and sou...
Oct 02, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 15
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss examine the concept of 'philanthrocapitalism' by considering a sociological critique of it by Linsey McGoey in Poetics . Philanthrocapitalism is a portmanteau of philanthropy and capitalism and it describes how the these two phenomena are thought to be increasingly linked to good effect in the contemporary era. McGoey provides us with an interesting way to understand what is or is not novel about philanthrocapitalism and what about philanthrocapitalism...
Sep 02, 2022•22 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss the ambiguous legacy of Thomas Kuhn's work in the field of sociology by unpacking an article by Zaheer Baber in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society . Some sociologists have used Kuhn's concepts to advance a social constructionist view of science. But Baber cautions us from wholly embracing this interpretation of Kuhn's work. Louis claims in this episode, without a hint of sarcasm, that everyone has universally accepted and praised...
Aug 16, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss discuss Thomas Kuhn's noted work, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn puts forward a provocative theory of how scientific knowledge develops. While Eric and Louis ditch their old cheaply assembled recording setup for new microphones and an upgraded soundmixer, they try to preserve the essence of their sociology podcast by laughing too hard at their own jokes and and by continuing to do bad celebrity impersonations. Music and sound effects for...
Aug 15, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss have an introductory conversation about Patricia Hill Collins's work, Black Feminist Thought , which makes a notable contribution to standpoint theory. Through concepts like the' matrix of domination' and the 'interlocking nature of oppression', Collins sensitizes readers to the importance of considering other social variables, in addition to gender. Collins develops a theoretical framework to understand how various forms of oppression intersect and re...
Aug 04, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode, Eric Hsu and Louis Everuss examine Dorothy Smith's account of feminist standpoint theory. Smith's work problematizes the view that sociological forms of knowledge are uncritically objective, preferring instead to highlight the ways in which knowledge is situated and unevenly produced. At one point of the episode, Eric and Louis confuse 'entomology', the study of insects, with 'etymology, the study of the history of linguistic forms. The mistake should bug them more, but un-bee-l...
Aug 03, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 10
