Sex, Drugs, and Boredom

Why we should take entertainment more seriously than we do.

Peter Stromberg is an Anthropologist and author of Caught in Play: How entertainment works on you. See full bio

November 22, 2009

The Great Feast

Benjamin Franklin asserted that the turkey , not the eagle, should be our national symbol, calling the former a "much more respectable bird." I'll give you another reason to favor the turkey for this job: We eat it in our national feast. In order to explain this, I must relate some facts from long ago. Read More

November 15, 2009

Party On, Dude

Unless you have alienated everyone around you, in the next two months you are likely to be invited to at least one party. If you take the perspective of a visitor from outer space, parties are actually sort of weird: "The humans gather in groups and consume food and other substances that make them dizzy. Read More

November 8, 2009

Entertainment and Imitation

Usually we regard entertainment such as TV, movies, and novels as leisure time activities, enjoyable but not terribly important. I think this is incorrect; my view is that entertainment experiences are both powerful and consequential. Read More

October 28, 2009

Halloween and Classification

You remember Rumpelstiltskin, right? Ugly little dude with some serious spinning wheel skills. He rescues a fair maiden from doom by spinning straw into gold. But in return he extracts a terrible price: when she has a child, she must hand it over to him. Read More

October 25, 2009

Entertainment's Disciples

I have done a few media interviews in connection with my book on entertainment, and at times I have been pressed to offer a judgment on whether the entertainment that is prominent in our culture is a good or a bad thing. I resist making such judgments, in part because that's not my job. Read More

October 18, 2009

Talk Radio as Entertainment

Entertainment comes in many forms in contemporary society. Elsewhere I have opined that some self-help books should be considered entertainment, as should much published "advice." Here I'd like to talk about entertainment and talk radio. Read More

October 4, 2009

Millenarianism Lite

Again and again, throughout human history, the following events have played out: Read More

September 27, 2009

Romance and Romantic Stories

Sociologists studying love and marriage report a finding that you probably won't find surprising: people don't describe their marriages as the "happily ever after" bliss suggested in our romantic stories and movies. Most people say that no matter how romantic the relationship felt when they were dating, marriage isn't the achievement of perfection. Read More

September 19, 2009

Evidence comes in many forms

One of the first posts I read on this site (a while back) was written by a young man who argued strenuously that psychologists should endorse only "testable ideas and theories," and cast out the rest. I applaud the notion that we should support our ideas and theories with evidence. Read More

September 13, 2009

What is Psychological Anthropology?

My discipline, Psychological Anthropology (call it PA to save space), may be unfamiliar to many readers, so it's worth spending a few paragraphs introducing this field. This might help you to assess what you are reading on this blog. Read More

Books by Peter G. Stromberg, Ph.D.

Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You

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Books by Peter G. Stromberg, Ph.D.

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