Welcome to the Waves, Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and why you certainly are

not here to make friends.

Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off our

minds.

And today you've got me, a former waiver, Marsha Telen, I'm a historian of African-American

life and culture and author of the book, Franchise, The Golden Arches in Black America.

And I'm here today with fellow writer and academic Danielle Lindeman, author of the

new book, True Story, What Reality TV Says About Us.

Thanks so much for having me.

Professor Lindeman, if I may, throughout the book you introduce readers to the heavy

hitters of sociology, you've got Dirk Heim, you've got Foucault, you've got Mills, and

the heavy hitters of reality TV.

We've got Kim, we've got Snooki, we've got Honey Boo Boo, what sparked your interest in

connecting what I imagine are your two great intellectual loves.

Well, you imagine correctly.

So I've been teaching a course at Lehigh University called Sociology of Reality TV for a few

years now in which we pair episodes of reality TV with these heavy hitters in sociology.

It's a pretty popular course obviously because it's reality TV, a lot of students want

to take it.

And I always thought that I could turn it into a pretty interesting book.

So that was sort of the seed of the idea for the book.

So as a sociologist, you have written about a number of topics including commuter marriages,

...