What Reality TV Says About Us

Before there were Instagram likes, Twitter hashtags, or TikTok trends, there were bloggers who seemed to have the passion and authenticity that traditional media lacked. The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of ho ...  Show more

Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media (Oxford UP, 2025) offers a fresh account of evangelical power by uncovering how the American Tract Society (ATS) leveraged print media to spread its message across an expanding nation. One of the era's largest media corpo ...  Show more

In this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV. In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera, An American Family, COPS and America’s Most Wanted, before the watershed moment of The Real World in the 1990s. She refer ...  Show more

What if I told you reality TV says a lot about the world around us? I'm sure you're skeptical, but hopefully, this episode will convince you that reality TV is worth paying attention to, especially for social scientists. Joining me are Danielle Lindemann, Associate Professor of S ...  Show more

Social Media rewards snap judgments and blind conviction. Michael Lynch finds this troubling. Michael P. Lynch is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Institute a University of Connecticut. His research concerns truth, public discourse, and the impact of technol ...  Show more

This week, we’re celebrating the small screen with a TV legend: World of Wonder’s Fenton Bailey! Fenton is one of the creative forces behind RuPaul’s Drag Race and other groundbreaking TV shows and films.    Fenton and Jonathan discuss how infomercials, public access stations, ...  Show more