The social world is a world we create, that we all have in common. In this illuminating podcast series, leading social scientists share their perspectives on how our social world is created, and how social science can help us understand people and how they behave.
Tune in each month and explore our extensive back catalog for interviews on topics ranging from crowd psychology and behavioral economics to inequality and the fear of death. Past guests include President Biden’s former deputy director for science and society, Alondra Nelson, world renowned cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, Nobel laureates Angus Deaton and Al Roth, pioneering geographer Doreen Massey, and Hetan Shah, chief executive of the British Academy.
Guiding us through conversations with these experts on the mechanics of our social world is interviewer David Edmonds, a distinguished research fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University and the author of 14 books. He has written for outlets including The Guardian, The Times, The New Statesman, Prospect, Aeon, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.
Social Science Bites is produced in association with SAGE Publishing, the world’s leading independent academic and professional publisher and the parent of Social Science Space.
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What can social science tell us about the most pressing issues of our time?
In these Social Science Bites episode collections, leading social scientists share their perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic, bias, conflict, and more.
LATEST PODCASTS
Shinobu Kitayama on Cultural Differences in Psychology
Psychologist Shinobu Kitayama explores the cultural differences between Asia and America, the possible origins of those differences, and how the brain and body may reflect those differences.
Petter Johansson on Choice Blindness
We are “less aware of the reasons for our choices than we think we are,” Petter Johansson and his partner Lars Hall have determined, and reasoning, as we call it, is often conducted post hoc.
Ayelet Fishbach on Goals and Motivation
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” the poet Robert Browning once opined, “or what’s a heaven for?” […]
Kathryn Paige Harden on Genetics and Educational Attainment
Kathryn Paige Harden, director of the Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab and co-director of the Texas Twin Project at the University of Texas, discusses how much influence our DNA has on our PhD.
David Dunning on the Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Dunning-Kruger Effect, explains David Dunning, comes when “people who are incompetent or unskilled or not expert in a field lack expertise to recognize that they lack expertise. So they come to conclusions, decisions, opinions that they think are just fine when they’re, well, wrong.”
2022
Claudia Goldin on the Gender Pay Gap
Harvard University economic historian Claudia Goldin studies the origins, causes and persistence of the gender pay gap in the United States, which she discusses in this Social Science Bites podcast.
Will Hutton on the State of Social Science
Political economist and journalist Will Hutton, author of the influential 1995 book The State We’re In, offers a state-of-the-field report on the social sciences in this Social Science Bites podcast.
Batja Mesquita on Culture and Emotion
Batja Mesquita, a social psychologist at Belgium’s University of Leuven where she is director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, theorizes that what many would consider universal emotions – say anger or maternal love – are actually products of culture.
Bobby Duffy on Generation Myths
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Bobby Duffy offers some key takeaways from the book and his research into the myths and stereotypes that have anchored themselves on generational trends.
Gerd Gigerenzer on Decision Making
Quite often the ideas of ‘risk’ and of ‘uncertainty’ get bandied about interchangeably, but there’s a world of difference between them. That’s a key message from psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer.
Ellen Peters on Numeracy
A lack of ability of numbers is a serious issue in the world, in particular in the developed world, says Ellen Peters. And she’s trying to do something about that.
Jonathan Haskel on Intangibles
The knowledge economy. Intellectual property. Software. Maybe even bitcoin. All pretty much intangible, and yet all clearly real and genuinely valuable. This is the realm where economist Jonathan Haskel of Imperial College London mints his own non-physical scholarship.
Sheila Jasanoff on Science and Technology Studies
Sheila Jasanoff is a pioneer in the field of STS. That acronym can be unpacked as either ‘science and technology studies’ or ‘science, technology and society.’ Jasanoff — who describes herself as a sociologist of knowledge and a constructivist, trained in law, working in the tradition of the interpretive social sciences – is content with either use.
John List on Economic Field Experiments
Behavioral economist John List talks about his work on field experiments and how research done in the natural world can lead to insights that otherwise might be hard to tease out in a lab.
Kathelijne Koops on Chimps and Tools
Kathelijne Koops, a biological anthropologist at the University of Zurich, works to determine what makes us human. And she approaches this quest by intensely studying the use of tools by other species across sub-Saharan Africa.
George Loewenstein on Hot and Cold Affect
The idea of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is often trotted out as a metaphor for understanding empathy. […]
Joel Mokyr on Economic Lessons from the Past
In this podcast, Northwestern University’s Joel , Mokyr tells interviewer Dave Edmonds, “I use economics to understand history, and I use history to understand economics.”
2021
Karin Barber on Verbal Arts
In this Social Science Bites podcast, social anthropologist Karin Barber offers a specific case study of the application of the verbal arts by examining in depth some of the genres common in the Yoruba-speaking areas of Western Africa.
Melanie Simms on Work
COVID-19 has changed everything, including how we work (and to be more precise, are employed). But in order to best […]
Jeffrey Ian Ross on Convict Criminology
Jeffrey Ian Ross, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Baltimore, is one of the originators of the concept of ‘convict criminology.’
Molefi Kete Asante on Afrocentrism
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Molefi Kete Asante offers an insiders view of the growth of the Afrocentric paradigm, from the founding of the Journal of Black Studies a half century ago to the debates over critical race theory today.
Jennifer Richeson on Perceptions of Racial Inequality
There is inequality in the United States, a fact most people accept and which data certainly bears out. But how bad do you think that inequality is, say, based on comparing the wealth held by the average Black person in America and the average white person?
Jennifer Lee on Asian Americans
The twin prods of a U.S. president trying to rebrand the coronavirus as the ‘China virus’ and a bloody attack in Atlanta that left six Asian women dead have brought to the fore a spate of questions about Asian Americans in the United States.
Sociologist Jennifer Lee is answering those questions.
Olivier Sibony on Decision-Making
In the context of human action, management professor at HEC Paris and former McKinsey senior partner Olivier Sibony defines “noise” as the unwanted variability in human judgment.
Whose Work Most Influenced You? Part 4: A Social Science Bites Retrospective
In this montage drawn from the last two years of Social Science Bites podcasts, interviewer David Edmonds poses the same question to 25 notable social scientists: Whose work most influenced your own?
Jim Scott on Resistance
When Jim Scott mentions ‘resistance,’ this recovering political scientist isn’t usually talking about grand symbolic statements or large-scale synchronized actions by thousands or more battling an oppressive state. He’s often referring to daily actions by average people, often not acting in concert and perhaps not even seeing themselves as ‘resisting’ at all.
Michèle Lamont on Stigma
The study of stigma, is, says Michèle Lamont, a “booming field.” That assessment can be both sad and hopeful, and in this Social Science Bites podcast the Harvard sociologist explains stigma’s manifestations and ways to combat it, as well as what it takes a for a researcher to actually study stigma.
Diego Gambetta on Signaling Theory
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Diego Gambetta, a professor of social theory at the European University Institute in Florence, discussing his research around signaling theory and the applications of his work, whether addressing courtship, organized crime of hailing a cab.
Mike Tomasello on Becoming Human
Psychologist Mike Tomasello details how, while higher primates may be quite like humans in many respects, the ability to work together on projects is not one of them.
Scientific illustrator Alex Cagan has brought 17 of our podcasts to life via his pen. The full suite of his illustrations, with subjects ranging from implicit bias and nonviolent resistance to space and the supernatural, is viewable HERE.
2020
Belinda Winder on Pedophilia
Forensic psychologist Belinda Winder wants society to understand one key aspect things about pedophilia. “Many people understand pedophilia to be both a sexual attraction to children but also the act of committing abuse against children,” she explains. “And that’s wrong.”
Salma Mousa on Contact Theory (and Football)
If differing groups could be brought together cooperatively – not competitively – in a manner endorsed by both groups and where each side met on an equal footing, perhaps we could, as Salma Mousa puts it in this Social Science Bites podcast, “unlock tolerance on both sides and reduce prejudice.”
Alondra Nelson on Genetic Testing
In this Social Science Bites podcast, sociologist Alondra Nelson describes her particular interest in those root seekers whose antecedents were “stolen from African” in the slave trade who make up so much of the African diaspora.
Heidi Larson on Vaccine Skepticism
As the toll from the COVID-19 pandemic increased, polling suggests counter-intuitively that resistance to a future vaccine has also risen. Anthropologist Heidi J. Larson identified several likely drivers of this, including scientists themselves.
Sherman James on John Henryism
Epidemiologist Sherman James outlines the hypothesis behind John Henryism – the idea that high-effort coping with expectations of achievement amid poverty or segregation can result in serious damage to the striver’s health.
Gurminder K. Bhambra on Postcolonial Social Science
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Gurminder K. Bhambra discusses with interviewer David Edmonds why we should speak about the Haitian revolution in the same breath as the contemporaneous American and French revolutions, how former empires conveniently forget the contributions of their colonies now that those empires have downgraded to mere ‘nations,’ and what lessons we should draw from the current iconoclastic impulse toward imperial statuary.
Ashley Mears on the Global Party Circuit
Ashley Mears describes modern jet-setting club life at the VIP level and the Veblen-esque conspicuous consumption, its “ritualized squandering” in Mears words, that is its hallmark.
Anne Case on Deaths of Despair
Economist Anne Case didn’t believe her eyes when she first identified the trend of what came to be called ‘deaths of despair’: looking at figures from the 1990s to the most recent data available from 2018, mortality among middle-aged, non-college-educated white Americans rose, stalled, then rose again.
Hetan Shah on Social Science and the Pandemic
“You don’t have to go back many months,” says Hetan Shah, the chief executive of the British Academy, in this Social Science Bites podcast, “for a period when politicians were relatively dismissive of experts – and then suddenly we’ve seen a shift now to where they’ve moved very close to scientists. And generally that’s a very good thing.”
Ruth Wodak on How to Become a Far-Right Populist
Depending on your views, far-right populism can represent a welcome return to the past , or a worrying one. The former, argues sociolinguist Ruth Wodak in this Social Science Bites podcast, is one of the hallmarks of far-right populism – a yearning for an often mythical past where the “true people” were ascendant and comfortable.
Richard Layard on Happiness Economics
Richard Layard remembers being a history student sitting in Oxford’s Bodleian Library on a misty morning, reading philosopher Jeremy Bentham (he of the famed “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”). As he recounts to interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, he thought, “Oh yes, this is what it’s all about.”
Susan Michie on Behavioral Change
While you might think that the essentials of human behavior are pretty similar, one of the things Michie quickly tells interviewer Dave Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast is that it can be unwise to jump to conclusions when studying behavior (or trying to change it).
2019
Rupert Brown on Henri Tajfel
Rupert Brown, the biographer of Henri Tajfel, talks about the pioneering explorer of prejudice in this Social Science Bites podcast. Brown reviews the roots of Tajfel’s research arising from the Holocaust, and the current repercussions of Tajfel’s personal misdeeds.
Michele Gelfand on Social Norms
“Social norms are the glue,” cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, “that keep people together.” How much glue do we need? Gelfand describes the “simple tradeoff” between tight and loose cultures: tight opts for more order while loose aims for openness,
Shona Minson on Children of Imprisoned Mothers
When a mother with minor children is imprisoned, she is far from the only one facing consequences. Their children can […]
Harvey Whitehouse on Rituals
One of the most salient aspects of what generally makes a ritual a ritual is that the action itself is divorced from real life or its real life roots – and that fascinates anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse. By his own admission, what intrigues the latest guest in the Social Science Bites podcast series is that ritual is “behavior that is ‘causally opaque.’
Kayleigh Garthwaite on Foodbanks
“I think the debate about why people use the foodbanks has become really politicized to the point where apparently individual faults and failings are the reason why people are using them,” Kayleigh Garthwaite tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. To find out, she volunteered to work at a Trussell Trust foodbank in northern England’s city of Stockton, deploying ethnographic methods to learn from the workers and the food recipients.
Jonathan Portes on the Economics of Immigration
Britain’s former chief economist knows a thing or two about the impact of immigration on native Britons. In this Social Science Bites podcast, he reviews what data can tell us about the UK’s current heavy inflow — such as that new arrivals create both supply AND demand.
Sam Friedman on Class
“Education,” says sociologist Sam Friedman, “doesn’t wash away the effects of class background in terms of allocating opportunities. That’s quite profound – I believe there are a lot of people who believe quite strongly that these sorts of educational institutions can and do act as sort of meritocratic sorting houses.”
Monika Krause on Humanitarian Aid
Humanitarian aid organizations often find themselves torn by reasonable expectations – to address a pressing crisis and to show that what they are doing is actually helping. While these might not seem at odds, in practice, says sociologist Monika Krause, they often do. Krause, is the author of The Good Project, an award-winning book from 2014, and guest of this Social Science Bites podcast.
Erica Chenoweth on Nonviolent Resistance
You and a body of like-minded people want to reform a wretched regime, or perhaps just break away from it and create an independent state. Are you more likely to achieve your goals by a campaign of bombings, assassinations and riots, or by mass protests which are avowedly peaceful? Your first step should be to schedule a sit-down with Erica Chenoweth, who has been studying that question since 2006.
Gina Neff on Smart Devices
Gina Neff doesn’t approach smart devices as a Luddite or even that much of an alarmist; she bought first-generation Fitbit when they were brand new and virtually unknown (all of five years ago!). She approaches them as a sociologist, “looking at the practices of people who use digital devices to monitor, map and measure different aspects of their life.”
Les Back on Migrants
Reflecting on his new book Migrant City, Goldsmiths sociologist Les Back tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, co-author and co-researcher Shamser Sinha and Back learned their work was “not really just a migrants’ story; it’s the story of London but told through and eyes, ears and attentiveness of 30 adult migrants from all corners of the world.”
David Halpern on Nudging
In this Social Science Bites podcast, experimental psychologist David Halpern, the British Nudge Unit’s chief executive, offers interviewer David Edmonds a quick primer on nudging, examples of nudges that worked (and one that didn’t), how nudging differs between the UK and the United States, and the interface of applied nudging and academic behavioral science.
2018
James Robinson on Why Nations Fail
Metrics on the average living standards from the best-off countries in the world (say, Norway) to the worst-off (such as the Central African Republic) vary by a factor of 40 to 50. So notes James Robinson
Nick Adams on Textual Analysis
Fake news, whether truly phony or merely unpalatable, has become an inescapable trope for modern media consumers. But apart from its propagandist provenance, misinformation and disinformation in our media diets is a genuine threat. Sociologist Nick Adams, in this Social Science Bites podcast, offers hope that a tool he’s developed can improve the media literacy of the populace.
Andrew Leigh on Randomistas
When Angus Deaton crafted the term ‘randomista’ to denigrate the rampant use of randomized controlled trials in development economics, Angus Leigh saw an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons. In this Social Science Bites podcasts he explains how he turned randomista into a compliment and promotes the use of trials to improve social programs worldwide.
Diane Reay on Education and Class
One thing has become clear to sociologist Diane Reay across her research – “It’s primarily working-class children who turn out to be losers in the educational system.” Whether it’s through the worst-funded schools, least-qualified teachers, most-temporary teaching arrangements or narrowest curricula, students from working class backgrounds in the United Kingdom (and the United States) draw the shortest educational straws.
Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias
“The brain is an association-seeking machine,” Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin R. Banaji tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “It puts things together that repeatedly get paired in our experience. Implicit bias is just another word for capturing what those are when they concern social groups.
Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad
In this Social Science Bites podcast, social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson lays out the case that inequality should be fought specifically because it fosters a litany of ill effects.
Celia Heyes on Cognitive Gadgets
How did humans diverge so markedly from animals? Apart from physical things like our “physical peculiarities,” as experimental psychologist Celia Heyes puts it, or our fine motor control, there’s something even more fundamentally – and cognitively — different. hear more in our newest Social Science Bites podcast.
Alison Liebling on Successful Prisons
In determining what makes a successful prison, where would you place ‘trust’? Alison Liebling, director of the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre, would place it at the top spot. As she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, she believes what makes a prison good is the existence and the practice of trust.
David Spiegelhalter on Communicating Statistics
While they aren’t as unpopular as politicians or journalists, people who work with statistics come in for their share of abuse. “Figures lie and liars figure,” goes one maxim. And don’t forget, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” But some people are the good guys, doing their best to combat the flawed or dishonest use of numbers. One of those good guys is the guest of this Social Science Bites podcast, David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge and current president of the Royal Statistical Society.
Sander van der Linden on Viral Altruism
When online charitable appeals take off, social psychologist Sander van der Linden perks up. He studies ‘viral altruism,’ and in this Social Science Bites podcast he details to host David Edmonds how he studies this phenomenon.
Melinda Mills on Sociogenomics
Combining sociology and genetics, Melinda Mills and her collaborators abandon the nature v. nurture controversy for empirical research on family formation, inequality, child-rearing and other real-life concerns. In this Social Science Bites podcast, she discusses this new field of ‘sociogenomics.’
Jo Boaler on Fear of Mathematics
There’s a lot of myths that get in the way of learning maths, says Stanford University’s Jo Boaler, and her research not only topples conventional wisdom but gives solid ways of allowing everyone to harness their inherent ability to excel at mathematics.
2017
Bev Skeggs on Social Media Siloing
“Most people,” explains Goldsmiths sociologist Bev Skeggs in this Social Science Space podcast, “think they’re using Facebook to communicate with friends. Basically they’re using it to reveal how much they can be sold for, now and in the future, and how much their friends can be sold for.”
Sabina Alkire on Measuring Poverty
Economist Sabina Alkire has spent her career looking at all the things beyond just a lack of money that make us poor. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative explains the need for a consistent and reputable means of measuring poverty over time.
Tom Chatfield on Critical Thinking and Bias
Philosopher Tom Chatfield’s media presence – which is substantial – is often directly linked to his writings on technology. But his new book is on critical thinking, and while that involves humanity’s oldest computer, the brain, Chatfield explains in this Social Science Bites podcast that new digital realities interact with old human biases.
Ioanna Palaiologou on Play
In the Social Science Bites podcast, Ioanna Palaiologou and Dave Edmonds also talk about cultural differences in play and how it is a vital part of children’s emotional development. All work and no play, it seems, does more than make Jack a dull boy.
Al Roth on Matching Markets
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Nobel laureate economist Al Roth explains to interview David Edmonds some of the ins and outs of market matching, giving a wealth of real-world examples.
Theresa Marteau on Healthy Environments
In this Social Science Bites podcast, the director of Studies for Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Cambridge’s Christ’s College discusses how environment – and that includes the cultural, built and financial environments –buttresses short term pleasures over long term benefits to the detriment of public health.
Mary Bosworth on Border Criminology
Border criminology, Mary Bosworth details in this Social Science Bites podcast, is trying to understand both things that are happening at the border but also things that are happening in our criminal justice system.
Whose Work Most Influenced You? A Social Science Bites Retrospective, Part 3
Ask a number of influential social scientists who in turn influenced them, and you’d likely get a blue-ribbon primer on the classics in social science. And so it as we present the third and final series of answers to that question drawn from the first 50 guests on the Social Science Bites podcast series.
Chris Grey on Organizations
What is an “organization?” According to Chris Grey, the guest in this Social Science Bites podcast, in many ways it’s a moment in time. “An organization,” he tells interviewer David Edmonds, “is also a momentary crystallization of an ongoing process of organizing.”
Scott Atran on Sacred Values
In this Social Science Bites podcast, anthropologist Scott Atran describes how ‘sacred values’ prove remarkably immune to negotiation and can empower vicious terrorism or victorious revolution.
Whose Work Most Influenced You? A Social Science Bites Retrospective, Part 2
During the recording of every Social Science Bites podcast, the guest has been asked the following: Which piece of social science research has most inspired or most influenced you? And now, in honor of the 50th Bites podcast to air, journalist and interviewer David Edmonds has compiled those responses into three separate montages. The second appears here, with answers – presented alphabetically – from Bites’ guests ranging from Sarah Franklin to Angela MacRobbie.
Gary King on Big Data Analysis
When looking at big data, says computational social scientist Gary King, “The data itself isn’t likely to be particularly useful; the question is whether you can make it useful.” In this Social Science Bites podcast, he explains more about the importance of data analysis.
Whose Work Most Influenced You? A Social Science Bites Retrospective
In this first of three of montages from past Social Science Bites podcasts, 15 renowned social scientists reveal their pick for “Which piece of social science research has most inspired or most influenced you?”
Michelle Baddeley on the Herd
People tend to herd together, whether it’s following the crowd or determining what news to accept. UCL economist Michelle Baddeley has studied this behavior and discusses what she’s learned in this latest Social Science Bites podcast.
Sandy Pentland on Social Physics
In this Social Science Bites podcast, MIT’s Sandy Pentland tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about the origins of social physics in the barren days before the advent of widespread good data and solid statistical methods and how it blossomed as both a field and for Pentland’s own research.
2016
Jennifer Hochschild on Race in America
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Harvard’s Jennifer Hochschild explains to interviewer David Edmonds some of the pertinent data points from her years of using quantitative and qualitative analysis to map the racial, ethnic and class cleavages in America’s demography.
Anna Machin on Romance
Anna Machin’s research combine the study of neurochemistry, dating sites and waist-to-hip ratios to gives us the best understanding of the evolution of love and romance. In this Social science Bites podcast she details her research interests and findings.
Karenza Moore on Dance Culture
Sociologist has studied the dance club scene — think of the lamented Fabric nightclub as a cultural touchstone — for years as a ‘participant observer.’ In this Social Science Bites podcast she talks about the scene’s obvious drug use and the mechanics of doing ethnography at a rave.
Michael Billig on the Royal Family and Nationalism
In his conversation with interviewer David Edmonds, Michael Billig — the author of landmark book ‘Banal Nationalism,’ dives deeply into one particular example of nationalism, the British royal family, and what the British themselves think about the royal family and the place of the royals in British ideology
Mirca Madianou on Technology and Everyday Life
It’s often remarked that technology has made the world a smaller place. While this has been especially true for those with the wherewithal to buy the latest gadget and to travel at will, but it’s also true for economic migrants. Those technological ties are one of the key research interests of Mirca Madianou who discusses her work on transnational families and social media in the latest Social Science Bites podcast.
Iris Bohnet on Discrimination and Design
“As a behavioral scientist,” Iris Bohnet tells David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast looking at implicit bias, “I strongly believe that we now do have the insights and the tools to help us promote behavior change, not by changing mindsets but changing organizations.”
Michael Burawoy on Sociology and the Workplace
Michael Burawoy is a practitioner of what we might call ‘extreme ethnography.’ In this Social Science Bites podcast, Burawoy tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about his various experiences on factory floors, and some of the specific lessons he learned and the broader points — often unexpected — that emerged from the synthesis of his experiences.
Stephen Reicher on Crowd Psychology
“In a sense, you could summarize the literature: ‘Groups are bad for you, groups take moral individuals and they turn them into immoral idiots.’ I have been trying to contest that notion,” social psychologist Stephen Reicher says in this Social Science Bites podcast, “[and] also to explain how that notion comes about.”
Janet Carsten on the Kinship of Anthropology
One of the leading exponents of what might be called the second coming of kinship studies, Janet Carsten, a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, has (literally) brought new blood into the field, exploring kinship’s nexus with politics, work and gender.
2015
Ted Cantle on Segregation
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Ted Cantle (of the post-2001 riot report that bears his name) explains how the concept of ‘parallel lives’ continues to exert a malign influence wherever communities find themselves segregated — even when they may live cheek-and-jowl.
William Davies on the Happiness Industry
‘I think that happiness is better than a lot of what the ‘happiness industry’ represents it as,’ Goldsmiths sociologist Will Davies tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast.
Sheldon Solomon on Fear of Death
Social psychologist Sheldon Solomon routinely thinks about the unthinkable, studying how humans behave differently when the unthinkable forces its way into their thoughts. In this Social Science Bites podcast, he explains how the fear of death actually propels humankind forward.
Steven Lukes on Durkheim
In this Social Science Bites podcast, social theorist Steven Lukes tells interviewer Nigel Warburton how Émile Durkheim’s exploration of issues like labor, suicide and religion proved intriguing to a young academic and enduring for an established one.
John Brewer on C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills was one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century. He believed that sociology could change people’s lives, and that sociologists, far from being neutral, should help bring about such change, and his ideas would fuel ‘60s counter-culture. In this Social Science Bites podcast, John Brewer reveals the full man behind the icon.
Peter Lunt on Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman has been called the most influential American sociologist of the 20th century thanks to his study of the social interactions of everyday life. In this Social Science Bites podcast, social psychologist Peter Lunt discusses his own inquiries into Goffman and how he approached his subjects with “an ethnographer’s eye.”
Trevor Marchand on Craft
It’s an unusual approach for an academic: a hands-on approach. Literally a hands-on approach. Trevor Marchand is an anthropologist interested in how information about crafts is transferred from expert to novice. This has led him to Nigeria, Yemen, Mali, and East London …
2014
Peter Ghosh on Max Weber and ‘The Protestant Ethic’
Max Weber is recognized as a father of modern social science, but his work, developed in pre-World War I Germany, sometimes suffers in translation to today. In the latest Social Science Bites podcast, his pre-eminent interpreter explains how Weber remains relevant.
Linda Woodhead on the New Sociology of Religion
Religiosity has changed for the majority of populations in Britain and the West, and so a new kind of way to study it must arise. In this Social Science Bites podcast, Linda Woodhead discusses the new sociology required to study this nuanced spiritual landscape, and what some of the implications are on the secular world.
Ivor Crewe on Psephology
In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast series, political scientist Ivor Crewe, the current president of Britain’s Academy of Social sciences and the master of Oxford’s University College, discusses the modern art, and sometime science, of election polling.
Sarah Harper on the Population Challenge for the 21st Century
Around the world, populations are growing older. But is that because people are living longer? Or could it be that there are fewer younger people to dilute the demographic pool? And what about aging itself — when exactly is ‘old’ these days?
David Goldblatt on the Sociology of Football
As the World Cup kicks off, sportswriter and sociologist David Goldblatt discusses his unique academic vantage point of the beautiful game in the latest Social Science Bites podcast.
Bruce Hood on the Supernatural
Listen as Nigel Warburton talks with developmental psychologist Bruce Hood about the very natural tendency to look to the supernatural to explain events.
Saskia Sassen on Before Method
Here’s an idea: social scientists should reflect critically on the prevailing concepts and categories before launching into empirical work with an existing framework. In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast, urban sociologist Saskia Sassen discusses that concept, called “before method,” with Nigel Warburton.
Gregory Clark on Names
What’s in a name? According to economist Gregory Clark, a lot of divine-able information about your family’s past and perhaps a fair bit about your children’s future. In the latest edition of Social Science Bites, David Edmonds talks with Clark about his at-times controversial examination of surnames and their nexus with social mobility.
Craig Calhoun on Protest Movements
In the latest edition of Social Science Bites, American sociologist Craig Calhoun discussed the formation of protest movement and the role of social science in addressing and understanding these outputs of social change.
Roberto Unger on What is Wrong with the Social Sciences Today?
In the latest edition of Social Science Bites, Brazilian philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger discusses what is wrong with the social sciences today, arguing that they have degenerated into a pseudo-‐science.
2013
Angus Deaton on Health and Inequality
Angus Deaton is a social scientist and the author of The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality. His Princeton colleague, the philosopher Peter Singer, argues that aid is vital to combat the terrible mortality rates in some countries. Angus Deaton disagrees..
Robin Dunbar on Dunbar Numbers
Listen to the latest podcast in the Social Science Bites series.
Valerie Curtis on the Sources of Disgust
At the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Val Curtis has become a taxonomist of different – she says there are seven – types of disgust, and she explains them in this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast.
David Stuckler on Austerity and Death
You might assume that deaths increase in a recession, but that doesn’t necessarily happen.
Kate Pickett on the Case for Equality
Social epidemiologist Kate Pickett, co-author (with Richard Wilkinson) of The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, argues that inequality […]
Angela McRobbie on the Illusion of Equality for Women
Has equality for women been achieved? Feminism has apparently achieved many of its aims. But have they? Angela McRobbie from the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, discusses her research on this topic.
Lawrence Sherman on Criminology
The latest episode of Social Science Bites is an interview with Lawrence Sherman, professor of criminology at Cambridge University and a keen advocate of experimental criminology.
Ann Oakley on Women’s Experience of Childbirth
In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast sociologist Ann Oakley discusses her research into a range of questions about women’s experience of childbirth.
Sarah Franklin on the Sociology of Reproductive Technology
New technologies have dramatically changed choices around reproduction. Sarah Franklin, Professor of Sociology at Cambridge University, discusses her research
Doreen Massey on Space
In honor of the late Doreen Massey, an eminent geographer who died Friday at age 72, we repost her Social Science Bites podcast, which has long been one of our most popular. In this interview, Massey asked us to rethink our assumptions about space — and explained why.
Daniel Kahneman on Bias
Thinking is hard, and most of the time we rely on simple psychological mechanisms that can lead us astray. In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast, the Nobel-prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, talks to Nigel Warburton about biases in our reasoning.
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Toby Miller on Cultural Studies
Toby Miller, author and editor of over 30 books on interdisciplinary topics within the Social Sciences, discusses Cultural Studies in relation to his work on the Hollywood film industry and addresses wider questions about objectivity and bias.
Steven Pinker on Violence and Human Nature
Is the world getting less violent? It seems unlikely. But Steven Pinker has amassed empirical evidence to show that it is. In this interview with Nigel Warburton for the Social Science Bites podcast he explains some of the possible causes of this transformation.
Jonathan Haidt on Moral Psychology
What can psychology tell us about morality? Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, discusses the place of rationality in our moral judgements in this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast.
Paul Seabright on the Relationship Between the Sexes
There is still a great deal of inequality between the sexes in the workplace. In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast Paul Seabright combines insights from economics and evolutionary theory to shed light on why this might be so.
Robert Shiller on Behavioral Economics
In the past twenty years there has been a revolution in economics with the study not of how people would behave if they were perfectly rational, but of how they actually behave. At the vanguard of this movement is Robert Shiller of Yale University. He sits down with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast
Sonia Livingstone on Children and the Internet
How are children using the Internet? How is it affecting them? Sonia Livingstone, who has overseen a major study of children’s behaviour online discusses these issues with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast.
Avner de-Shalit on the Spirit of Cities
Some people have strong and visceral reactions to cities. They might love or loathe New York, or Jerusalem, or Berlin. This may have something to do with the architecture and the infrastructure of a place; it may also be a response, at some level, to the people, the culture, the politics, the way of life. Avner de-Shalit claims that some cities – not all cities but some – have a spirit.
Richard Sennett on Co-operation
We all need to co-operate to some degree. According to the eminent sociologist Richard Sennett, author of a recent book on the topic, complex co-operation is a craft.
Rom Harré on What is Social Science?
“Everybody lives in a society…They want to know what it is they’re living in” An exploration of the nature of the social sciences. How do they differ from the physical sciences? What challenges do they face? What is their value?
Danny Dorling on Inequality
We live in an age of economic inequality. The rich are growing richer relative to the poor. Does this matter? In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast Danny Dorling, a human geographer, discusses this question with Nigel Warburton.
In January 2016, SAGE Publishing released Big Ideas in Social Science, a collection of 18 Social Science Bites podcasts presented in written form.
The question-and-answer chapters feature sessions with experts from many disciplines — sociology, politics, economics, criminology and geography — which are divided into four general areas: “Fields of Enquiry,” “Births, Deaths & Human Population,” “Social Science Through Different Lenses,” and “Politics and Social Science.” Each chapter also includes a further reading section for those excited to journey deeper into any particular topic. For more on the book, click here.
And for more entertaining and enlightening interviews from David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, sign up for their Philosophy Bites podcasts series. The pair have also tackled free expression issues for Social Science Space partner Index on Censorship with their Free Speech Bites series. They have produced three anthologies of Philosophy Bites interviews: Philosophy Bites Again, Philosophy Bites, and Philosophy Bites Back (all published by Oxford University Press).
