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PODCAST

New Books in Popular Culture

Interviews with Scholars of Popular Culture about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

society & culture

All Episodes

56:05

Peter C. Zimmerman, "The Jazz Masters: Setting the...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/20

The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it. In the twenty-one conversations contained in this engaging and highly accessible book, we hear from the musicians themselves, in their own words, direct and unfiltered. Peter Zimmerman’s interviewing technique is straightforward. He turns on a recording device, poses questions, and allows his subjects to improvise, similar to the way the musicians do

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34:46

Bradley Morgan, "U2: Until the End of the World"...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/19

Bradley Morgan’s U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025) celebrates fifty years of U2 with a career-spanning retrospective featuring more than 150 images that trace the band’s journey from Dublin pubs to sold-out arena tours.Morgan delves into the history of U2, offering an intimate look at their formation and the evolution of their unique sound. From Boy and The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby and beyond, the book captures how each album marked a creative turning point and cemented U2’s

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43:19

Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen, "Icelandic Pop: Then, Today,...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/18

Iceland punches well above its weight in the world of music, producing global icons like Björk, Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men, and Laufey, while at the same time nurturing a vibrant local scene. Icelandic Pop: Then, Today, Tomorrow, Next Week (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen explores how Iceland’s unique social habits, institutions and everyday practices contribute to its thriving music culture. Tracing the development of Icelandic popular music since the rock ’n’ roll era, it

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63:03

Maggie Gram, "The Invention of Design: A...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/16

Maggie Gram is a writer, cultural historian, and designer. She leads an experience-design team at Google. She has taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Harvard University, and she has written for N+1 and the New York Times. She lives in New York. The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History (Basic Books, 2025) Recommended Books: Henry Dreyfuss, Designing for People Dolly Alderton, Ghosts Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope Chris

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50:27

The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/16

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree—and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In The Light Between Apple Trees:

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33:46

Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren eds.,...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/15

Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), edited by Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren, answers the urgent need to re-evaluate not only the significance of women's documentary practices and their contributions to feminist world-building, but also the state of documentary studies as it engages with political, aesthetic, and industrial developments arising as a result of an increasing numbers of women's documentaries. Bringing

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50:33

Signal Award Re-Release: Lost Women of Disco

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/14

We're thrilled to announce that our episode “S2.E2. Lost Women of Disco” has been named a finalist in the Best Indie Podcast category at the 2025 Signal Awards! This powerful episode dives deep into the untold stories of the trailblazing women who shaped the culture we now call “disco”, but were overshadowed by history. We are re-releasing this episode, which originally aired on July 22, 2025, to highlight this recognition and to celebrate the forgotten legacy of these groundbreaking artists. Thank

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57:05

Jason Schneider, "That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/12

This is the story of a song. Yet, it is a song that binds nearly every strand of 20th-century American popular music. “Hey Joe” was written sometime in the early 1960s by a man named Billy Roberts, an obscure singer and guitarist from South Carolina who moved to New York City, drawn by the burgeoning folk music scene in Greenwich Village. It was a time when new, original material was scarce, leading other singers to quickly adapt songs of quality in the spirit of folk music’s oral traditions. Thus

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69:42

Chris Dalla Riva, "Uncharted Territory: What Numbers...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/11

Popular music history collides with data analytics, charts, and numbers in this insightful and surprising look at the greatest hits and musicians, fads, forgotten artists, and much more. Data analyst and musician Chris Dalla Riva reframes everything you thought you knew about music. Did you know that hit songs in the late 1950s were regularly about gruesome death? That a US vice president wrote a number one hit? That while TikTok has spawned countless hits, it's made artists more anonymous than

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50:16

Lorraine Besser, "The Art of the Interesting: What We...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/11

What is a good life? Traditionally, philosophers have seen it as an equation: The Good Life = Happiness + Meaning. But, if it's really that simple, why don't more of us achieve that truly "good" life? In The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It (Balance, 2024), Lorraine Besser, Professor of Philosophy at Middlebury College, offers insights drawn from both psychological research and philosophical analysis that provides new insights into a

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42:59

Matthias Egeler, "Elves and Fairies: A Short History...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/11

Originating in Norse and Celtic mythologies, elves and fairies are a firmly established part of Western popular culture. Since the days of the Vikings and Arthurian legend, these sprites have undergone huge transformations. From J. R. R. Tolkien’s warlike elves, based on medieval legend, to little flower fairies whose charms even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle succumbed to, they permeate European art and culture.In Elves and Fairies: A Short History of the Otherworld (Yale University Press, 2025), Dr

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56:00

John R. Davis, "Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/10

John R. Davis's Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Georgetown University Press, 2025) is the first history of the fanzines that emerged from Washington, DC's highly influential punk community DIY culture has always been at the heart of DC's thriving punk community. As Washington, DC's punk scene emerged in the mid-1970s, so did the periodicals--"fanzines"--that celebrated it. Before the rise of the internet, fanzines were a potent way for fans to communicate and to revel in the joy of fandom. These zines

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45:25

Meghan Crnic, "The Beach Cure: A History of Healing...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/10

For centuries, the ocean was seen as a place of danger and work, but by the late nineteenth century, northeastern shores of the United States became therapeutic destinations for the sick and weary. Doctors in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities began prescribing time at the beach as a remedy for ailments such as tuberculosis, rickets, and exhaustion. In the decades that followed, seaside towns became health havens complete with hospitals that served urban families and children.Dr

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30:55

In The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift Addresses...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/07

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we review Taylor Swift’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl.” We consider the album’s themes: love, nostalgia, how hard it is to be famous, and how the internet is bad. We set the songs in the context of Taylor’s wider career and public persona. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

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43:17

Audrey Golden, "Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/04

In Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats (Da Capo Press, 2025) Audrey Golden traces the history of the iconic band The Raincoats staring of the founding by Art students Gina Birch and Ana da Silva in 1977. Since the release of their seminal early records, the band has been revered by punk, queer, feminist, and indie pop artists alike.The Raincoats reimagined the nature of experimental music and DIY design, and went on to inspire Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and an entire generation of Riot Grrrl and

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52:31

Kathleen B. Casey, "The Things She Carried: A...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/02

Kathleen Casey joins Jana Byars to talk about The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America (Oxford UP, 2025). Purses and bags have always been much more than a fashion accessory. For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political objectives. In the early 1800s, when the slim fit of neoclassical dresses made interior pockets impractical, upper-class women began to carry small purses

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51:51

Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/02

Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. In Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean (Yale UP, 2025) Dr. Eric T. Jennings explains how the world’s only edible orchid, originally endemic to Central America, became embedded in the international

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51:13

Roddy Bottum, "The Royal We" (Akashic Books, 2025)

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/10/01

The Royal We (Akashic Books, 2025) is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Roddy Bottum, a musician and artist, that documents through prose his coming of age and out of the closet in 1980s San Francisco, a charged era of bicycle messengers, punk rock, street witches, wheatgrass, and rebellion. The book follows his travels from Los Angeles, growing up gay with no role models, to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went

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61:40

Disco Sucks

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/30

On July 12, 1979, Chicago’s Comiskey Park erupted into chaos during what was supposed to be a quirky baseball promotion. Shock radio jock Steve Dahl’s “Disco Demolition Night” incentivized listeners to bring disco records to a White Socks doubleheader, where, between games Dahl promised to blow them up in center field. Instead, the event descended into a riot, forcing the team to forfeit. On the surface, the incendiary event looked like a wild publicity stunt gone wrong — but in hindsight, it was

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47:10

Nick Katsiadas and Carl Sell eds., "Tolkien's...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/30

The structural and symbolic purposes of ruins in literary texts have a long history, yet few scholars explore their importance within J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. From the ruins of Erebor and the relics of Gondolin appearing in The Hobbit to the various images of Amon Sûl, Moria, and Osgiliath in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien constructs a distinct mood-one that captures characters' awareness of the glories of the past and a desire to emulate them. The scholars who do engage Tolkien's relics and

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1,316 results

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