330: What Reality TV Teaches Us About Ourselves with Danielle Lindemann

Raise your hand if you love Reality TV! Now admit to that in public. Now choose that as your academic discipline—to study and teach sociology through the voyeuristically fabulous (and often fabulously fringe) lens of reality TV—and you’ve got today’s wonderful guest, associate professor Danielle Lindemann.

If you, too, let these shows wash over you at the end of a hard day, binge-watching dating shows with increasingly quirky premises or even hate-watching famous families bicker and then make-up, you’re not alone.

“We want to peek into the lives of these interesting people,” Danielle writes. “But it’s their similarity to us that keeps us riveted. We’re voyeurs, but part of what tantalizes us about these freak shows is that the freaks are ourselves.”

More About Danielle: Danielle Lindemann is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University who studies gender, sexuality, the family, and culture – particularly as they relate to occupations. Her third book, True Story: What Reality TV Says about Us, is the topic of today’s conversation. She’s also the author of Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism, and Control in the Dungeon, and Commuter Spouses: New Families in a Changing World. Her work has also been published in scholarly journals such as Social Science & Medicine and featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, CNN, Jezebel, USA Today, and Rolling Stone.