This American Life 215: Ask An Expert
Act One of this program reports on the "Recovered Memory" movement. In the early 1990s people across America turned to experts in psychology for help and many people were told that the source of their problems could be traced to traumatic events they could not even remember, to memories that had to be recovered through special techniques. In the last ten years, this whole approach to psychology has fallen out of favor. So what happened that so many experts came to believe in a treatment that turned out to make many of their patients worse, not better and what happened when the patients and therapists figured all this out?

Questions to Consider:

1. Can you explain the recovered memory situation as a social dilemma?
2. What bureaucratic elements are making this situation possible?
3. Use this episode to explain how organizational reality is created?

This American Life 350: Human Resources
This episode features a true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they've been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up. They call it the Rubber Room. Average length of stay? Months, sometimes years. This program also examines other stories of the uneasy interaction between humans and their institutions.

Questions to Consider:

1. How do individual interests interfere with structural needs in any of these stories?
2. Can evidence be found that the tragedy of commons phenomenon is playing out in any of the acts presented?
3. What do you believe Max Weber would say about these stories?

Walking Away From The House She Can Afford
When Heather Baker took out a mortgage to purchase a home valued at $465k house, she figured it would be a good investment. With the collapse of the real estate market, she estimates that it is worth $225k. Though Baker can afford to make the payments, she has decided to stop paying the note and allow the bank to foreclose on the property because she does not want to lose even more money.

Questions to Consider:

1. What is a “strategic default”?
2. Foreclosures bring down the values of surrounding properties and Baker is aware that by allowing her house to go back to the bank that she is harming her neighbors. Yet, she says that if she stays in the house and continues making payments, that she will be losing money. What do sociologists call this conflict?
3. Baker says that something (aside from the economic incentive) made it easier for her to decide to let the house go into foreclosure. What was this?
4. According to the report, about 17% of foreclosures in the previous year were strategic foreclosures. What implications does this have for society as a whole?