What is it about strange and unusual things that attracts us?

Adam Rinn grew up on Coney Island and now he teaches a sideshow class for people who want to learn to eat fire, walk on broken glass, or survive an electric shock. He talks about how someone can learn these oddities and the history of freak shows.
 
Rebecca June teaches medieval studies at Fordham University and provides insight into the role monsters play in literature and society.
 
Dean McKay, psychology professor at Fordham, does a lot of research disgust, how it affects us and its relationship to fear. 


This episode of Fordham Conversations originally aired April 26, 2014. 

Freaks, Monsters, and Disgust

How do historians preserve memory?

With the rise of social media, we have fewer and fewer hard copies of letters, photos, and other documents. So what happens in the future? Will all of this be preserved? Will there be too much of it to sort through? Elizabeth Keohane-Burbridge, graduate researcher at Fordham University and producer of the Footnoting History podcast, talks about how historians preserve memories and how this is changing. 

Preserving Memories, Old and New

A look inside a virtual reality "meet-up" where developers and enthusiasts test out the Oculus Rift. 

A Whole New Digital World

There isn’t a way to diagnose someone as a “psychopath,” there’s only a test to determine how many psychopathic traits a person has. Forensic clinical psychologist and Fordham professor Barry Rosenfeld helps clear up the idea of how psychopathy is defined and the potential to treat it. Then, Dr. James Fallon talks about his own experience as a borderline psychopath. 

ChrisHasGlasses