Somatic Podcast

For this episode, we recorded the sounds of U.S. Interstate 77, which runs rights next to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. These are the sounds one hears in the parking lot next to the museum and facility. The ambient soundscape, brooding, repetitive, and industrial, offer an immersive soundscape for critically reflecting on football and its function within broader society. We approached the episode as a form of "sound art," in which the goal is the artistic, creative...

Check out any of the recent media coverage on 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and you're bound to hear sporting metaphors used to describe the election "race". Candidates are "competing" and "running" for office. The candidates, seeking an election "win", declare that they won't "leave anything on the field." Why do we use sporting metaphors to talk about American politics? Why do we say that politicians "run" for office? What are the origins of this sporting discourse in American politics?...

In this second part of our mini-series on the history and politics of yoga, we play our recent interview with Shanice Jones Cameron about her research on Black women and their engagement yoga through social media. Shanice is a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Department of Communication, and her research areas of interest include media studies, critical health communication, and Black feminism. As Shanice explains, today modern postural yoga remains "a...

In this new episode - our first production since January of 2020, which also means our first episode since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread protests against police brutality and the notable impact of the Black Lives Matter movement - we begin a two part mini-series on the history and politics of yoga culture. In this part one, we play an interview with Dr. Andrea Jain, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, and...

In this first episode of 2020, we acknowledge the significant scholarly and theoretical development currently taking shape in the sociology of sport specifically and the humanities and social sciences in general. An increasing number of critical sport scholars are embracing theoretical discourses we can collectively associate with “New Materialism”, scholarship seeking to destabilize Anthropocentric notions of human subjectivity and relate humans with nonhuman and environmental actants in...

It sure seems to me like more and more writers and thinkers these days are praising the value and virtues of idleness. In our current era defined by such problems as the hollowing of social welfare programs and digital technology's seeming uncompromising power over people's everyday activities and work habits, more writers and thinkers are calling for a renewed, nuanced discussion of idleness as a healthy, humanist, virtuous endeavor. Though idleness probably seems like a strange topic...

Today, counties across the U.S. organize county fairs during the summer months. For millions of Americas, fairs have come to signify family-friendly community entertainment, complete with an assortment of fried and comfort foods, carnival rides, tractor pulls, 4-H and agricultural demonstrations, and other symbols (real and mythical) of rural life. Sport and the active body is often a key component of fair entertainment, arriving in the form of rodeos, racing competitions involving farming...

In July of 2012, the Trump Organization opened a course, Trump International Golf Links, just north of Aberdeen on the northeast coast of Scotland. To this day, Trump continues to declare it “perhaps the greatest golf course anywhere in the world.” The development of Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, however, was contested and politicized from the beginning. In this episode of Somatic, we talked with two noted scholars of golf, sport and environmentalism - Dr. Brad Millington from...

In this episode of Somatic, we talked with Dr. Newman about his article, and his view on the state of critical research in the sport management field as a whole. Original music has been recorded to provide an audial “landscape” to Dr. Newman’s thoughts and reflections. The musical pieces have been weaved together to create a seamless soundscape. The result is an episode that can hopefully contribute to current discussions of critical research within sport management, as well as showcase the...

For many people, running is not just a healthy exercise, but an integral activity in the rhythms of their everyday lives. More than this, running has become a ubiquitous, culturally-meaning practice within modern capitalist societies. The omnipresence of running images, symbols and representations within sporting and social media is a testament to its power and ubiquity within at least North American popular culture. Running, however, is a complex, contentious running practice. Class, race,...

Hosting the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi was a part of growing domestic and international Russian political presence that has taken place under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. Alongside military, political, and covert actions, the games served as a public facing form of ‘soft power’ for Russia. Hosting the games was part of asserting to the world and his people the might of a new Russia, Putin's Russia. In this episode we worked with Stanis Elsborg and his research partner Andreas Juul...

At its essence, this episode is about the experience of traveling west on Amtrak passenger trains in the United States. Since about 2008, I've personally traveled west on many an Amtrak train, so many that I have difficulty counting the exact number. Some trips were to visit friends, some were to visit girlfriends at the time (one who, at that time, was living in Northern Montana), some were because I was living out west for graduate school. But, each trip, the traveling experience seemed so...

A new music track for a future Somatic Podcast episode on the physical culture/bodily experiences of train travel. Photo is of the Western Nebraska landscape at night. Photo was taken by me while traveling east by train.

In this episode of Somatic, we talk with Professor Brett Hutchins of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. As an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, Prof. Hutchins has been developing research on The Mobile Media Sport Moment: Markets, Technologies, Power. As an integral part of his research program, Prof. Hutchins developed his MediaSport Podcast Series, in which he interviews leading international researchers and scholars on the prescient sociocultural, political, and...

In this episode we explore the history and spaces of suburbia, focusing on the role of physical activity in the shaping of suburban life. The story and development of American suburbs is a long, complicated, and often overlooked social history, but what many people forget is their persistent role as spaces where people exercise, play sport, and seek leisure. In developing the episode we spoke with several contributors to examine questions not only of what the suburbs have been in the past,...

This episode is a discussion with Helen McBride, a young feminist activist living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her graduate historical research explored the role of Northern Irish women community organizers within the peace process during the Troubles. While in Laramie she became involved in the community’s Take Back the Night and SlutWalk events. When she returned to Belfast following her graduate work, she became heavily involved in the feminist activist community, co-founding the city’s...

This episode deviates slightly from previous Somatic episodes in that it is a more personal journey of contemplation. In this episode, I talk about my PhD research on the history of the international garden city movement, specifically two prominent planned communities that emerged as a result of the movement: Letchworth Garden City in the United Kingdom, and Greenbelt, Maryland in the United States. Playing recorded soundscapes from my visit to these communities, I reflect on my experience...

In this episode we took a break from our usual format and tried out something new. We are going to try to stay as close as possible to a monthly schedule with our main episode releases, but there are times when we want to be able to go outside of that routine and put out a show that may need to be more timely or that does not quite fit a normal format. These episodes will be referred to as 'Somatic in Brief' and will be listed as half numbers (2.5 in this case). There is not a specific time...

Bike share programs, sometimes also referred to as cycle-hire schemes, are becoming an increasingly common place part of transportation infrastructure and programming in cities around the world. In this episode we had a chance to sit down and talk with Transport for London’s (TFL) Duncan Robertson to understand what this specifically looks like with in London. Specifically we were interested in connecting the function of the scheme with the political intent of former mayor Boris Johnson, and...

The Olympics is one of the biggest sporting events in the world that connects to a wide array of global and local political, economic, social, cultural, and technological processes. As such it has received a lot of attention, both in the popular media and through academic analysis. In order to cut through this multiplicity of voices and opinions we turned to Dr. Bryan Clift to explore how he views to games in Rio and what it means for the future of the Olympics.