New Books in Popular Culture
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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...
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Cape Fear Retells an Archetypal Revenge Story for a New Generation
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and today we analyze the new TV series Cape Fear. First we give a reaction to episodes 1 & 2 of the series, and then...
Aditya Deshbandhu, "The 21st Century in 100 Games" (Routledge, 2024)
The 21st Century in 100 Games (Routledge India, 2024) is an interactive public history of the contemporary world. It creates a ludological retelling o...
Ginger Dellenbaugh, "Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
More than 40 years after her death, the legend of Maria Callas, "La Divina Assoluta," remains unsurpassed. Much has been written about her sensational...
Adam Phillips, "The Life You Want" (FSG, 2026)
Where do we get ideas about the lives we want? And, what do we do - and fail to do - about actually getting them? In The Life You Want Adam Phillips u...
Mary R. Lanni, "Using Nursery Rhymes with Today’s Kids: Their Legacy and Evolution" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
In this illuminating conversation with librarian-author Mary R. Lanni, we celebrate her brand new book, Using Nursery Rhymes with Today’s Kids: Their...
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)
The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only...
For All Mankind Concludes Its Search For New Life
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we conclude our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind with a discussion of the finale, “This Land Is Our Land.”...
Chloe Chapin, "Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men" (Oxford UP, 2026)
How did black suits become so ubiquitous? Why has men's business clothing been so plain for the last 250 years? How did a style adopted by the Foundin...
Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue...
Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is known for his outfits. Since rising to become India’s head of government in 2014, photographers and journali...
David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)
A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and playWhen outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 19...
What AI Means for Fiction: A Discussion with Literary Critic Mark McGurl
How is the tool of Artificial Intelligence shaping the writing of fiction? Is AI emerging as more than just a potentially handy aid to an author—and,...
Mapping a New Politics in For All Mankind
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind. In this show, we discuss episode 6 “No Sudden Moves”; Ep...
Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)
Political historian Oscar Winberg has a fascinating new book titled Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. Thi...
Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)
For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's
most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this
visi...
Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)
From Ghostbusters to Will & Grace, One Day at a Time to Jurassic Park, the past decade has seen Hollywood reach a new peak in its obsession with reboo...
Tom Meschery, "The Mad Manchurian: From the Internment Camps of Tokyo to the Hardwood Courts of the NBA" (Coffeetown Press, 2025)
I was born in Harbin, Manchuria, (later China), in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War my mother, sister and I, along with other non-combata...
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The local...
Nayantara Srinivasan, "The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores the landscape of anglophone trade bookselling in India, aiming to i...
Mischa Oak, "Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ+ Life Lessons for Everyone" (Page Two Book Inc. 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Mischa Oak about his book, Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ Life Lessons for Everyone (Page Two Book Inc....
Aycee Brown, "Embody Your Magic: Create the Life of Your Dreams Through Astrology, Numerology, Mediumship, Metaphysics, and Human Design" (HarperOne, 2026)
Embody Your Magic: Create the Life of Your Dreams Through Astrology, Numerology, Mediumship, Metaphysics, and Human Design (HarperOne, 2026) from psyc...
Aymar Jèan Escoffery, "Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture" (MIT Press, 2025)
Can producing stories and developing platforms to support people who have been harmed by multiple, intersecting systems heal those systems? In Reparat...
Wake Up Dead Man (Fr Scott Bailey): The Priest who Helped Hollywood Make a Murder Mystery Movie about the Church
When Hollywood director Rian Johnson started making Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out mystery (a movie you can watch on Netflix), he needed some he...
Stephen F. Knott, "Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency" (UP Kansas, 2025)
Political Scientist Steve Knott has a new book that focuses on conspiracy theories within the American presidency and often promulgated by the presid...
Caroline Bicks, "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" (Hogarth, 2026)
My guest is Caroline Bicks, whose new book Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth, 2026) became a bestseller shortly af...
Lim Tse Wei, "Little Perfections: Eating in Singapore" (Kitchen Arts and Letters, 2026)
Despite the implications of its subtitle, this is not a travel guide to Singapore, although readers run the risk of becoming tempted to venture there....
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, "The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us" (Liveright Publishing, 2026)
MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, returns wi...
Maria Lucia, " What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
In What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To (U Minnesota Press, 2025) an iconic rock DJ of the Twin Cities tells her harrowing st...
Nicholas Tochka, "The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Nicholas Tochka analyzes the role of rock music in the life of Charles Manson, the Family, and the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings, which also give...
For All Mankind’s Story of Martian Revolution
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind. In this show, we discuss episode 3 “Home”; Episode 4 “Op...
Andrea Horbinski, "Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989" (U California Press, 2025)
Andrea Horbinski's Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 (U California Press, 2025) centers the fans and creat...
Mary Lisa Gavenas, "Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay" (Penguin, 2026)
As detailed in Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay (Penguin, 2026) by Mary Lisa Gavenas, as the only woman in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories...
Chinatown
“Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.” This piece of advice is as famous as it is useless: Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) will never be able to forget what h...
Brook Flagg, "I Go There with You: The U2 Sites of Southern California, from Significant to Sacred" (Nine Criteria, 2025)
U2 is a band from the north side of Dublin that became a global phenomenon-and while its four members have traveled the world over for almost fifty ye...
Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)
Jes Battis' new book, It's Only Forever. Labyrinth (ECW Press, 2026) is a wild, intimate, and political deep dive into Jim Henson’s 1986 classic starr...
Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)
The unbelievable insider stories of how they “got the shot,” Cinematic Immunity tells the story of New York City's movie industry from the crew member...
Constance Bailey et al. "Get It While It's Hot: Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South" (LSU Press, 2026)
Get It While It’s Hot (LSU Press, 2026) is an innovative collection that examines an increasingly commonplace belief across the U.S. South—that some o...
Roland Betancourt, "Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth" (Princeton UP, 2026)
When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In Disn...
Eileen G'Sell, "Lipstick" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
From Revlon to Glossier, from Marilyn to Gaga, lipstick is as shape-shifting and unwieldy as femininity itself.Who wears lipstick today – as a matter...
The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen
How can an entirely foreign cast perform the American “The Shawshank Redemption” in the Chinese language across China? In this episode of the Nordic A...