One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are-private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers' speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authorit ... Show More
Yesterday
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine
Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future, formerly incarcerated activi ... Show More
44m 18s
Yesterday
Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)
Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for understanding global security culture from the Reagan administration to the present. Drawing on black feminist, critical race, and queer o ... Show More
1h 45m
Jan 28
Brahim El Guabli, "Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences" (U California Press, 2025)
Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (U California Press, 2025) traces the cultural and intellectual histories that have informed the prevalent ideas of deserts across the globe. The book argues that Saharanism—a globalizing imaginary that per ... Show More
50m 1s
Aug 2018
Robert N. Gross, “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America” (Oxford UP, 2018)
There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions about public funding and oversight of private schools. Though many of these questions feel new, they, in fact, have a long histor ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2023
James A. Chamberlain, "Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work" (ILR Press, 2018)
This revolutionary book presents a new conception of community and the struggle against capitalism. In Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work (ILR Press, 2018), James A. Chamberlain argues that paid work and the civic duty to perform it subs ... Show More
45m 46s
Nov 2021
Sociology Ruins Private Equity
<p>You've probably heard the term private equity, but you might not know what it does. This episode looks at how private equity is embedded in our everyday lives, funded by the institutions that surround us, and what kind of impact that has on us. It also explores how sociologist ... Show More
31m 24s
Mar 2023
A "Do or Die" Moment for the Academic Labor Movement (w/ Matt Thomas, Kristina Mensik, Bryan Sacks, & Todd Wolfson)
<p>At colleges and universities across the country, a heated battle is playing out right now over workers' right to organize and have a say over how the institutions they keep afloat with their labor are run. From graduate student-worker unionization efforts and strikes at Temple ... Show More
1h 36m