Podcast Interviews

Mad in America Podcast

Owen Whooley is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. His book On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing deals with the tumultuous history of psychiatry and its equally unstable present. In his book, he documents psychiatry’s ignorance, insecurity, hubris, and hype. Owen Whooley is an expert in the field of the sociology of mental health, sociology of knowledge, and sociology of science.

In this interview, we will cover his histography of psychiatry, engage with his writings on the DSM, and talk about what gives psychiatry its almost supernatural powers to rise from near death over and over and over.

Full episode here

New Books in Sociology Podcast

Psychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invoking the latest medical science in doing so.  But, as Owen Whooley’s sweeping new book tells us, peering deep into the human mind is, well, really hard.

On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing (University Chicago Press, 2019) begins with psychiatry’s formal inception in the United States in the 1840s and moves through two centuries of constant struggle simply to define and redefine mental illness, to say nothing of the best way to treat it.

In this interview, Dr. Whooley discusses the sociology of knowledge and ignorance that guide this book. He then talks about the changing identity of the field of psychiatry, how the DSM affected the legitimacy and perception of the profession, and ways of managing ignorance. 

Full episode here.

BackStory Podcast

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” we say, and Americans have long associated good hygiene with moral and spiritual purity. But we haven’t always thought of what it is to be “clean” in quite the same ways.

So in this episode, we dig into the changing ways Americans have defined what it is to be clean. We’ll meet an 18th-century Pennsylvania woman who didn’t immerse herself in water for 28 years, and ask how Americans like her kept clean without getting wet. We’ll also hear about the campaign to clean up New York City in the mid-19th century, and question the extent to which germ theory really revolutionized sanitary practices. And we’ll consider a dark chapter in the history of cleanliness, when social reformers in the early 20th-century set out to “sanitize” America’s racial profile.

Owen Whooley tells the guys about the bad science that prompted New York City’s first major clean-up campaign — and why the clean-up helped stamp out cholera anyway.

Full episode here