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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

43:30

Katherine Fusco, "Hollywood's Others: Love and...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/06

We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver screen, representing groups from which the American mainstream typically sought to avert its eyes. What did it mean for a white entertainment columnist to empathize with an ambiguously gendered Black child star? Or for boys to idolize Lon Chaney, famous for portraying characters with

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48:37

Daniel Horowitz, "Bear With Me: A Cultural History of...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/05

From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional bears for more than two centuries. Bears are ubiquitous, appearing in advertisements, as logos for sports teams, and as central characters in children’s books, cartoons, movies, and video games. In Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America (Duke UP, 2025), Dr. Daniel Horowitz presents a vibrant history of the pedestrian and

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59:40

Cary Baker, "Down On The Corner: Adventures in...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/05

This is the story of music performed on the streets, in subways, in parks, in schoolyards, on the back of flatbed trucks, and beyond, from the 1920s to the present day. Drawing on years of interviews and eyewitness accounts, Down On The Corner (Jawbone Press, 2025) introduces readers to a wide range of locations and a myriad of musical genres, from folk to rock'n'roll, the blues to bluegrass, doo-wop to indie rock. Some of the performers he features--Lucinda Williams, Billy Bragg, The Violent

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37:26

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, "Claire McCardell: The...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/05

Claire McCardell forever changed fashion—and most importantly, the lives of women. She shattered cultural norms around women’s clothes, and today much of what we wear traces back to her ingenious, rebellious mind. McCardell invented ballet flats and mix-and-match separates, and she introduced wrap dresses, hoodies, leggings, denim, and more into womenswear. She tossed out corsets in favor of a comfortably elegant look and insisted on pockets, even as male designers didn’t see a need for them. She

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54:55

Alien: Earth Episode Analysis: Metamorphosis and...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/04

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of the FX series Alien: Earth with episode 3, “Metamorphosis” and episode 4, “Observation.” We continue to investigate the series’ dominant problematic of crossing boundaries, and hypothesize as to the reason for its divisiveness: it’s generic placement somewhere between science fiction and fairy tale.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member

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36:42

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/02

In Tales of Militant Chemistry (U of California Press, 2025), Alice Lovejoy tells the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and nuclear weapons, shaped by centuries of violent extraction. The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century's history of war, destruction, and cruelty. This story comes into focus during

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69:31

Cordelia Fine, "Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/09/01

Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the world's richest countries' long-avowed commitments to gender equality, there is still so much to fix - and so much we don't see.With perceptive and razor-sharp insight, in Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work (W.W. Norton, 2025) award-winning author Cordelia Fine reveals how the status quo - Patriarchy

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84:21

Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films:...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/30

Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of making documentaries and strengthening democracy to award-winning reality—with help from nuns, gang members, skateboarders, artists, disability activists, and more.The evolution of Kartemquin Films—Peabody, Emmy, and Sundance-awarded and Oscar-nominated makers of such hits as Hoop Dreams and Minding the Gap—is also the story of U.S. independent

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33:43

Pauwke Berkers and Yosha Wijngaarden, "A Sociology of...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/30

How does sociology help to explain modern life? In A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong (Routledge, 2025)Pauwke Berkers, a full professor Sociology of Popular Music at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Yosha Wijngaarden, an assistant professor of Media and Creative Industries at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, examine how people interact in settings as diverse as work, everyday life, self-help and even contemporary dating. Alongside this rich empirical research, the

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74:56

John Lisle, "Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb,...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/29

The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous—even deadly—experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was

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36:23

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

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/29

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 called reticules, which provided them with a private place in a world where they did not have equal access to public space. Although many items of apparel have long expressed their wearer's

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50:01

Vanessa Diaz, "Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/26

While Hollywood’s images present a veneer of fantasy for some, the work to create such images is far from escapism. In Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke University Press, 2020), anthropologist Vanessa Díaz examines the raced and gendered hierarchies and inequalities that are imbricated within the work of producing celebrity in Los Angeles, CA. Díaz’s ethnography follows reporters and paparazzi to examine their everyday practices of work and labor that

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43:52

Peter K. Andersson, "The Dandy: A People's History of...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/25

A history of the dandy from below, from Beau Brummell and Baudelaire to Bowie and Bolan... and beyond. The historical figure of the dandy has commonly been described as an upper-class gentleman, often exemplified by well-known men such as Beau Brummell, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and Max Beerbohm. But there is a broader history to be told about the dandy - one that incorporates unknown men from the lower strata of society. The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour (Oxford UP,

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55:44

Mario Livio and Jack Szostak, "Is Earth Exceptional?:...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/21

For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now.It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is

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31:01

Stacia Kalinoski, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/21

The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the story of an Emmy Award-winning TV news Journalist, Stacia Kalinoski. The author's aim is beyond giving an account of her experience of epilepsy, her goal is to sensitize readers and inspire epileptic patients and other people battling with ailments that carry social stigma, emphasizing the importance of taking control of one's health. In the book, Stacia

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65:23

Gary Rivlin, "AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/20

A veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist shadows the top thinkers in the field of Artificial Intelligence, introducing the breakthroughs and developments that will change the way we live and work. Artificial Intelligence has been “just around the corner” for decades, continually disappointing those who long believed in its potential. But now, with the emergence and growing use of ChatGPT, Gemini, and a rapidly multiplying number of other AI tools, many are wondering: Has AI’s moment finally

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62:25

Noah Giansiracusa, "Robin Hood Math: Take Control of...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/20

Everything we do today is recorded as data that’s sold to the highest bidder. Plugging our personal data into impersonal algorithms has made government agencies more efficient and tech companies more profitable. But all this comes at a price. It’s easy to feel like an insignificant number in a world of number crunchers who care more about their bottom line than your humanity. It’s time to flip the equation, turning math into an empowering tool for the rest of us.In Robin Hood Math: Take Control

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39:23

Christopher M. Reali, "Music and Mystique in Muscle...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/17

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music—and at times expressed shock at the mostly

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50:28

Matthew Goodman, "The City Game: Triumph, Scandal,...

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/17

The 1949-50 CCNY Beavers basketball team were one of the unlikeliest of champions in sports history. CCNY was a tuition-free in Harlem, New York, intended to give working class students the best education possible. The school was comprised of minorities, many of whom were the immigrants or children of immigrants. In 1949-50, the CCNY squad, led by legendary coach Nat Holman, shocked the basketball world by becoming the first and only school to win the N.I.T. and N.C.A.A. tournaments in the same

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42:56

Transhuman Horror in Alien: Earth

New Books in Popular Culture ·

2025/08/16

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we react to the first two episodes of Alien: Earth. We break down the themes and ideas in the series, focusing on its central questions of transhumanism, the Peter Pan mythology, and the dream / nightmare imagery. We consider how this series is consistent with and differs from the Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) movies, particularly on the central political and ideological problematics invoked. We further consider the nature and motivations of Wendy and the

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1,316 results

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