Sociology Ruins Everything

What exactly is legend tripping? Is it truly about finding ghosts and cryptids, or is it a ritual designed to create unbreakable social bonds? This month's episode dives into the three-part structure of a legend trip—from the initial tale to the retrospective reflection—and reveals how "expectation produces experience" to create the perfect legend.

Show notes
Debies-Carl, Jeffrey (2023). If You Should Go at Midnight. (2023). University Press of Mississippi https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/I/If-You-Should-Go-at-Midnight
‌McNeill, L. S., & Tucker, E. (2018). Legend Tripping: A Contemporary Legend Casebook. University Press of Colorado. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1vbd1wh
Miles, Tiya (2017). Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War era. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/9781469636146/tales-from-the-haunted-south/
‌"On the job with a ghost walk tour guide." The Canadian Press, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTYZv0JTrP0

Happy New Year, listeners! This month's episode deals with trust. When we think of trust, we tend to place this issue within the realm of psychology. It’s often seen as a complicated construct in our relationships that determines whether we believe those we know will act reliably, honestly, and supportively. But in sociology, we might think of trust in terms of social networks and ties. We might even think about trust in institutions. Can you trust an institution?

Dana Williams, a sociology professor at California State University, Chico and author of Who Do We Trust?, joins me to unpack issues around trust and how we can practice radical trust in 2026.

Show Notes
Williams, Dana. Who Do We Trust? - Pluto Press. (2025, December 23). Pluto Press. https://www.plutobooks.com/product/who-do-we-trust/

Cook, K. S., & Santana, J. J. (2020). Trust: Perspectives in Sociology. Routledge EBooks, 189–204. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315542294-15

Eileen, A., & Rosemary, B. (2020, September 9). Working Paper: Financialization in Health Care: The Transformation of US Hospital Systems. Center for Economic and Policy Research. https://cepr.net/publications/working-paper-financialization-in-health-care-the-transformation-of-us-hospital-systems/

Media clips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX3C2A9bck0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FegvO38Qa44
https://www.tiktok.com/@cbsnews/video/7568308533385596174

The season finale of Sociology Ruins Everything explores the intersection of robotics and reproductive labor, highlighting the potential risks of deploying technology without considering societal implications. This episode, likely the geekiest to date, examines these themes through the lens of popular culture. Colette Searls, author of A Galaxy of Things: The Power of Puppets and Masks in Star Wars and Beyond, joins the discussion.

Show Notes:
Searls, C. (2023). A galaxy of things: The power of puppets and masks in star wars and beyond. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/A-Galaxy-of-Things-The-Power-of-Puppets-and-Masks-in-Star-Wars-and-Beyond/Searls/p/book/9780367684419

Vincent, J., Taipale, S., Sapio, B., Fortunati, L., & Lugano, G. (Eds.). (2015). Social Robots from a Human Perspective (2015th ed.). Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-15672-9

You pay your taxes, you vote, and you follow the laws. Does that make you a good citizen? If you said yes, according to a 2019 Pew Center Research survey, most Americans agree with you. However, do these things make you civically engaged? This episode explores what it means to be a civically engaged social scientist and how we now need engaged researchers more than ever.

Show Notes
Philip Cohen on social media
⁠https://bsky.app/profile/philipncohen.com⁠
⁠https://x.com/familyunequal⁠

Cohen, Philip (2025). Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/citizen-scholar/9780231204194/

Lynd, Robert (2016). Knowledge for what: The Place of Social Science in American Culture.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691648088/knowledge-for-what?srsltid=AfmBOooZ52chxPtWIMMbwPgf9X8f6qHRJd5S_3CajC0cA-svipnDrOEq

Putnam, Robert (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
http://bowlingalone.com/

SocArXiv
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv

What can a sociology podcast say about fire? This episode delves into the social and cultural dimensions of fire and the institutions that have changed our relationship with it. While it touches on climate change, this episode is more about the power dynamics, social inequalities, and cultural values that influence decision-making and resource allocation in fire and forest management. Today's wildfires are a tragedy in the making, going back over 100 years. Patrick Wright, the director of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Taskforce, joins me as we talk about the vital next steps in protecting communities.

Show notes

California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Taskforce
https://wildfiretaskforce.org/
Treatment Dashboard
https://wildfiretaskforce.org/treatment-dashboard/

Sedlar, Matthew. Living with Disaster: Risk, Housing Instability, and Post-Disaster Migration. N.p., 2022. Print.
https://mars.gmu.edu/items/bd414407-1351-4220-8bc2-a9db39dbe89a