What’s important to you? What do you value? What makes you happy? 

No matter how you answered I want to know: would your answers change if you were telling your significant other? A work acquaintance? Your boss? If I were there right now with a microphone and camera asking you on the record, would any of those answers change? 

The answer is…probably…yes. Right? Yes, of course, we don’t tell our bosses everything about our off-hours lives. We don’t tell our coworkers all the smutty shows we watch or tell our relatives about the things we enjoy that we don’t really want grandma asking us about around a holiday table. 

I’m speaking, of course, about guilty pleasures. The bits of pop culture that are considered silly, juvenile, and are often spoken of with derision. Reality television. Pop music. Fashion trends. It is rare that these bits of culture are seen as areas of legitimate interest, and rarer still when they are given serious study and consideration. 

My guest today hopes to change the discourse around so-called guilty pleasures. Her name is Dr. Eva Burke. She’s a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, and she both studies and teaches pop culture. We open our discussion on the topic of guilty pleasures, and Dr. Burke had quite a lot to say on the matter.

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