Uncommon Sense
Our world, through the eyes of sociologists. Brought to you by The Sociological Review Foundation.
The podcast that casts a sociological lens on our lives, our world, our crises. Each month, we sit down with an expert guest and grab hold of a commonplace notion – Anxiety! Privilege! Burnout! Fat! – and flip it around to see it differently, more critically, more sociologically. A jargon-free space, led by hosts Rosie Hancock and Alexis Hieu Truong, to question tropes and assumptions – and to imagine better ways of living together. Because sociology is for everybody – and you certainly don’t have to be a sociologist to think like one!
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Episodes
50 episodes
Endings, with Patricia Kingori
Who gets to decide when something is over? How is declaring so an act of power? Professor of Global Health Ethics, Patricia Kingori, joins to discuss these questions and many more raised by the interdisciplinary ‘After the End’ project on which...
Being Seen, with Shahram Khosravi
**Note: this episode was recorded in late 2025, prior to the extremely violent suppression of protests in Iran, and prior to the strikes by the US and Israel that began in late Fe...
Gifts, with Sophie Woodward
Why do we keep gifts that we don’t want, or can’t currently use? What role do these play in our relationships with others, with time, and perhaps even our future selves? Sophie Woodward discusses the richly creative research project that took h...
Inheritance, with Delwar Hussain
“What is the effect of receiving something from someone who is not your biological kin?” Anthropologist Delwar Hussain introduces his new project on Queer Inheritance, born when a friend welcomed Delwar and his partner to enjoy items belonging ...
Maternal, with Babalwa Magoqwana
How have maternal - and grandmaternal - ways of knowing been sidelined and undervalued? What role has sociology’s focus on its ‘founding fathers’ played? And what’s the cost, in South Africa and beyond? Babalwa Magoqwana, Director of the Centre...
Desire, with Angelique Nixon
What’s behind the reductive pursuit of “paradise” in travel to the Caribbean? How does tourism continue the legacy of colonialism? And how is this being resisted? We’re joined by Angelique Nixon, a scholar and activist at The University of the ...
BONUS: Len Garrison, Archives and Self-Esteem – from ‘Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism’
A bonus offering for Uncommon Sense listeners! We’re sharing our mini-series, Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism, in which three experts introduce us to three key figures in the story of UK anti-racism, illuminating how they show us what that t...
BONUS: Gerlin Bean and Black British Feminist Socialism – from ‘Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism’
A bonus offering for Uncommon Sense listeners! We’re sharing our mini-series, Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism, in which three experts introduce us to three key figures in the story of UK anti-racism, illuminating how they show us what that t...
BONUS: Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Tech and Anti-Racism – from ‘Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism’
A bonus offering for Uncommon Sense listeners! We’re sharing our mini-series, Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism, in which three experts introduce us to three key figures in the story of UK anti-racism, illuminating how they show us what that t...
Love & Reproduction, with Alva Gotby
Made tea for your partner today? Helped a vulnerable neighbour? You may have been performing what Alva Gotby calls “emotional reproduction” – the caring and emotional work we do to create good feeling amid life under capitalism, but that also p...
Childhood, with Brenda Herbert
How do stereotypes of “the child” contribute to injustice? Why must we decolonise childhood? What can it mean to work with love, rather than just study it? And how can we think about children’s agency? Sociologist and counsellor Brenda Herbert,...
Free Speech, with Aaron Winter
How is the notion of “free speech” abused and misunderstood? What’s wrong with “debate me” culture – and with the value placed on appearing to be “controversial”? And what happens when people who are actually pretty powerful claim they “can’t s...
Revolution, with Volodymyr Ishchenko
The word “revolution” conjures powerful imagery. But what does it mean today? Do revolutions neatly promote the will of the people, forging radical transformation? Or is it more complicated? Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko joins us from Freie U...
Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism – Trailer
Hi everyone!The next episode of Uncommon Sense is landing here soon, but for now, we want to tell you about our brand new podcast, Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism, a mini-series of audio essays on the work and lasting so...
Fat, with Fady Shanouda
How do we typically see fat, and how can thinking differently about it have emancipatory outcomes? Fady Shanouda of Carleton University’s Feminist Institute of Social Transformation introduces Fat Studies and their inextricable link to activism...
Scars, with Ellen T. Meiser
From TV’s “The Bear” to the simmering restaurant thriller “Boiling Point” we seem drawn to angry-but-vulnerable chefs in pop culture. But how do such stereotypes shape who works in kitchens and how they treat their colleagues? Is “kitchen cultu...
Joy, with Akwugo Emejulu
What comes to mind when you think about joy? And can there be joy in protest and refusal? Someone who’s been asking and trying to answer questions about this is Akwugo Emejulu. She’s been investigating the relationship between Black fe...
Voice, with Claire Alexander, Dan McCulloch and Belinda Scarlett
With so many platforms available to share information, there are more means than ever to make a noise. But in the spirit of free speech and academic freedom, those speaking and actually being heard remain grossly unequal. What are the links bet...
Life Admin, with Oriana Bernasconi
Life admin often refers to the overwhelming and mundane paperwork that surrounds contemporary living. However, Oriana Bernasconi, a sociology professor at the Alberto Hurtado University in Chile, joins Uncommon Sense to talk about a mo...
Toxic, with Alice Mah
What comes to mind when we think about toxicity in everyday life? It could be toxic relationships or masculinity – through to consumption, waste, governance and environmental harm. Alice Mah joins Uncommon Sense to discuss toxic expert...
Margins, with Rhoda Reddock
What gets centred and what gets framed as marginal? Who decides? And what are the consequences? UN expert, feminist scholar and social historian Rhoda Reddock – Professor Emerita at The University of the West Indies – joins us from Trinidad and...
Community, with Kirsteen Paton
What’s meant – and who’s excluded – when community is invoked? Does membership take more than presence alone? How can seeing local crises through a global lens enrich our understanding? Kirsteen Paton joins Uncommon Sense to discuss co...
Coffee Culture, with Grazia Ting Deng
Think you know “coffee culture”? Anthropologist Grazia Ting Deng discusses her research into the “paradox of Chinese Espresso” – or why and how coffee bars in Italy, seen as such distinctively “Italian” spaces, became increasingly managed by Ch...
Making, with Kat Jungnickel
What does it mean to make things? Why are some people valorised as “makers”, while others are rendered invisible? And what duty do sociologists have as makers of knowledge and narratives? The “sewing cycling sociologist” Kat Jungnickel...
Burnout, with Hannah Proctor
Burnout has become a byword for workplace exhaustion, but does it have a deeper history? Hannah Proctor joins us to explain how the notion emerged in the USA’s 1960s countercultural free clinics movement, at first relating to the emotional defe...
