Joel Best on the Creepy Clown Craze

What this episode covers

Across the country, sightings of people dressed as “creepy clowns [1]” standing in forests, on roads, in doorways has exploded and captured part of the national imagination. A lot of people were unsure what to make of this odd development. Some call it a clown “invasion”, some call it a clown “uprising”, and some call it the “Great Clown Scare”— yet most agree that it is indeed creepy [2]. In this episode, guest host Ryan Larson talks to University of Delaware professor Joel Best [3], author of Damned Lies and Statistics [4] and Social Problems [5]. This conversations focuses on the context of the recent clown sightings around the nation, and how they connect to other popular mythologies. Download Office Hours #125 [6] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_clown_sightings [2] https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/12/26/what-is-creepiness/ [3] https://www.soc.udel.edu/people/faculty/joelbest [4] http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520274709 [5] http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4294969244 [6] http://files.thesocietypages.org/downloads/OH125_Best.mp3

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