Episode 18: Diane Winston on religion and the entertainment media

This week Henry Jenkins talks to Diane Winston, professor of Communication and Journalism at USC, about religion and reality television. Are young people getting how to live their lives from reality TV? Contrary of reality TV as being a guilty pleasure, Winston’s latest book talks about reality TV as the “the lived religion of late capitalism”. Reality television tells stories that people feel identified with, or see as cautionary tales. We talk about Survivor’s latest season, (survival of the fittest, and its very “hyper individualism that is so embedded in capitalism”). The episode will make the unlikely link between religion studies and communication.