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PODCAST

New Books in Popular Culture

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

society & culture

All Episodes

56:31

Megan Volpert, "Why Alanis Morissette Matters"...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/18

The first critical biography of iconic musician Alanis Morissette, creator of Jagged Little Pill.The 1990s hardly saw a bigger hit than Jagged Little Pill. Alanis Morissette's defining album won Grammys, dominated the Billboard charts, and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It left a deep mark on the psyches of countless listeners. Three decades later, Megan Volpert checks in with Morissette, probing her rich and varied post-JLP career and bearing feminist witness to the existential anger

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24:18

James O'Connor, "Untitled Goose Game" (Boss Fight...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/18

It's a beautiful day in the village, and you are a horrible goose, ready to wreak charming havoc on the weary locals. You'll ruin their gardens, invade their pub, and terrorize their children. What kind of scoundrels would make such a devious game? Before the critical acclaim, the tweets from celebrities, the major awards, the memes, the fan art, and the legion of players, Untitled Goose Game was just the goofy dream of House House, four friends in Melbourne, Australia. What began with a photo of a

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34:00

Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion,...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/16

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created by Hormel Foods in 1937 to utilize surplus pork shoulder during the Great Depression, SPAM became an essential resource during the Second World War, and helped shape perceptions of American culture. SPAM: A Global History (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Kelly Spring explores SPAM’s complex history, from its inception to its resurgence during the COVID-19

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49:57

Veronica Litt, "Ugh! As If!: Clueless" (ECW Press, 2025)

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/16

Veronica Litt's Ugh As If!: Clueless (ECW Press, 2025) uncovers the complex layers beneath the glossy surface of the 1995 classic film "Clueless." Litt investigates not just the Austen satire but the film’s deeper ethical questions about femininity, innocence, bias, and inequity. A sweet and sly exploration of the Jane Austen–inspired teen movie and its evergreen imperative to be kind, do better, and find the activist within We are totally butt-crazy in love with "Clueless." Since the movie’s

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45:02

Natalie Lim, "Elegy for Opportunity" (Buckrider...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/10

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Vancouver poet Natalie Lim about her debut poetry collection, Elegy for Opportunity (Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books, 2025).In this collection, Natalie Lim asks: How do we go on living and loving in a time of overlapping crises? Anchored by elegies for NASA's Opportunity rover and a series of love poems, this collection explores the tension and beauty of a world marked by grief through meditations on Dungeons & Dragons, Taylor Swift's cultural

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59:37

Love Saves the Day: On the 1970s New York Club Scene

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/08

The Loft was a dance party series organized by DJ David Mancuso in his Manhattan warehouse apartment at 647 Broadway from Valentine’s Day 1970 to June 1974. The parties offered an alternative to New York’s commercial nightclub scene. The invitation-only events featured an egalitarian space for music and dance with a top-of-the-line sound system, eclectic musical selections, and a racially inclusive and gay-friendly mix of guests. Attendees included the city’s leading disc jockeys such as Larry

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67:51

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, "The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/08

In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about his recently published book The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science (PublicAffairs, 2025). They talk about the process of writing the book, including delving deep into the local paranomal community in New Hampshire.The book contrasts profound institutional distrust effecting higher education policy and scientific literacy, with a desperate grapple for

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36:40

Elana Levine, "Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/07

Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on archival research and her experience as a longtime soap fan to provide an in-depth history of the daytime television soap opera as a uniquely gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social influence of network television. Closely

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74:32

Tom Lutz, "1925: A Literary Encyclopedia" (Rare Bird...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/06

The year 1925 was arguably the peak of literature's centrality. There were more magazines, more journals, more reviews, more book news, and more book gossip than ever before or since. Literature's rivals for cultural attention were on the rise-film was becoming a more significant part of people's media diet, radio was just taking off, television technologies were advancing--but literature was still king. Even mediocre books got dozens of reviews, and the reviews were (most often) thoughtful and

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44:08

Barry W. Enderwick, "Sandwiches of History: The...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/07/05

Barry Enderwick has been making, eating, and sharing historical sandwiches for years on social media @sandwichesofhistory and recently in live shows. In Sandwiches of History: The Cookbook: All the Best (and Most Surprising) Things People Have Put Between Slices of Bread (Harvard Common Press, 2024) he painstakingly recreates dozens of recipes, staying faithful to the original sandwiches while also providing guidance on how to make each more amenable to a contemporary palate. The recipes provide

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55:47

Eric Blanc, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/29

Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, and working-class politics. He is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (Verso 2019) and his writings have appeared in journals such as Politics & Society, New Labor Forum, and Labor Studies Journal as well as publications such as The Nation, The Guardian, and Jacobin.A longtime labor activist, Blanc is an

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62:22

Todd May "Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/29

These days it’s harder than ever to watch TV, scroll social media, or even just sit at home looking out of the window without contemplating the question at the heart of philosopher Todd May’s Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times (Crown, 2024). Facing climate destruction and the revived specter of nuclear annihilation even as humans continue to cause untold suffering to our fellow creatures on planet Earth, we are forced each day to contemplate whether the world

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49:13

Johanna Drucker, "Affluvia: the Toxic Off-Gassing of...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/28

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, Johanna Drucker, an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. In a discussion on Drucker's recent publication, Affluvia: The Toxic Off-Gassing of Affluent Culture (Bridge Books, 2025), they cover topics of invisible labour, globalisation, sustainability and more. Affluvia, a neologism for the “toxic off-gassing of affluent culture, explores the ecological costs of innocuous-seeming

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50:35

Is Sinners a New Classic of Political Utopianism?

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/25

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we analyze the movie Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, just released on streaming. We address the political themes of the movie, focusing on its generic identity as a Southern Gothic, the historical context in which the movie takes place, its engagement with ideas of utopia, community, freedom, and the siren songs that often lead communities down false roads in search of these goals. We appreciate the aesthetic achievement of the movie, which is perhaps Director Ryan

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65:23

Michelle Phillipov, "Digital Food TV: The Cultural...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/24

Michelle Phillipov's Digital Food TV: The Cultural Place of Food in a Digital Era (Routledge, 2023) explores the new theoretical and political questions raised by food TV’s digital transformation.Bringing together analyses of food media texts and platform infrastructures—from streaming and catch-up TV to YouTube and Facebook food videos—it shows how new textual conventions, algorithmic practices, and market logics have redrawn the boundaries of food TV and altered the cultural place of food, and

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24:35

American Gangster

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/23

American Gangster (2007) is Ridley Scott’s homage to The French Connection: it’s got the right cars, clothes, and colors and is based on another true story of an obsessed cop trying to take down a drug kingpin. The feature (or the bug, depending on how you look at it) is Denzel Washington in the title role. Is an actor so charismatic that everyone talks as if they are on a first-name basis with him actually a liability in a movie that wants to tell a story of a large-scale heroin dealer who, in the

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49:56

Amin Ghaziani, "Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/21

In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexpected revolution revitalizing urban nightlife.Drawing on Ghaziani's immersive encounters at underground parties in London and more than one hundred riveting interviews with everyone from bar owners to party producers, revelers to rabble-rousers, Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution (Princeton University Press,

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70:06

Michael Broyles, "Revolutions in American Music:...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/21

Michael Broyles examines a wide variety of musical, technological, and social currents that helped to shape American music in Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades that Changed a Country and Its Sounds (Norton, 2024), but he accomplishes this by focusing on just thirty years. Broyles discusses three pivotal decades in US musical history: the 1840s, the 1920s, and the 1950s. He argues that these decades fundamentally remade the American cultural landscape in enduring ways. Although Revolutions

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30:12

Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Payne, "Ultima and...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/20

Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Amherst College Press, 2024) is the first scholarly book to focus exclusively on the long-running Ultima series of computer role-playing games (RPG) and to assess its lasting impact on the RPG genre and video game industry. Through archival and popular media sources, examinations of fan communities, and the game itself, this book historicizes the games and their authors. By attending to the salient moments and sites of game creation

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33:46

Atinuke O. Adediran, "Disclosureland: How Corporate...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/06/19

The 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests that challenged many institutions, including large for-profit companies, to reflect on how to address racial inequality. Large corporations began making systematic public statements to show alignment with causes that impact people of color. These statements were also used to protect corporate reputations against claims that their businesses may perpetuate racial inequality. Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress (Cambridge

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1,332 results

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