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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+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Popular Culture
Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media with Niall Docherty (U California Press, 2025)
We are often told that social media well-being is simply the result of individual users making healthy digital choices. All it takes is a little…
- New Books in Popular Culture
BAM!: John Madden, the NFL Explosion, and the Video Game that Changed Sports with Scott Howard-Cooper (Diversion Books, 2026)
John Madden retired abruptly from coaching in 1979, five months after receiver Darryl Stingley suffered a paralyzing injury against his Raiders. The tragedy…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Once Upon a Time in South Central LA: John Singleton's Hood Trilogy with Mark D. Cunningham (UP of Mississippi, 2026)
After the groundbreaking success of his debut film, Boyz N the Hood in 1991, filmmaker John Singleton (1968–2019) gained worldwide acclaim, earned the respect…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public with Keegan Cook Finberg (Columbia UP, 2025)
What is the place of poetry in the modern world? In Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public (Columbia UP, 2025), Keegan Cook Finberg, an Associate…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan's Cinema of Revolution with William Andrews (Awai Books, 2026)
Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan’s Cinema of Revolution (Awai Books, 2026) is the first-ever English-language book on Adachi Masao. Based on…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Traveling the Yellow Brick Road with Steven Keslowitz (McFarland, 2026)
In Traveling the Yellow Brick Road: What We Learn from The Wizard of Oz and Wicked (McFarland, 2026) Steven Keslowitz explores how The Wizard of Oz and Wicked…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Neil Selkirk on Why Photographs?
When Neil Selkirk first saw one of Arbus’s photographs as a young man at someone’s house in London, it almost sent him screaming into the street. Unsettled and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Christmas Carols: An English Enchantment with John Potter (Yale UP, 2026)
The English Christmas carol has been sung in court and cloister, tavern and field since medieval times. But with the first Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema with Drew Ayers (U Texas Press, 2026)
Exploring how digital visual effects have changed the representations of the body and identity in action films. When Harrison Ford appeared digitally de-aged…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women with Eleanor Johnson (Princeton UP, 2026)
For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by women. In this book, Eleanor Johnson provides an engaging…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Night Hawk: A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture with Matthew Warner Osborn (U Chicago Press, 2026)
On July 5, 1828, more than a century before Superman arrived on Earth, a superhero took flight in Philadelphia’s night sky. Buried on page three of a small…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early Twentieth-Century Britain with Lise Shapiro Sanders (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Lise Shapiro Sanders is the author of Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early 20c Britain, published in October 2026 by Bloomsbury…
- New Books in Popular Culture
How Dungeons and Dragons Changed the Way We Play with Aaron Trammell (Duke UP, 2026)
First released in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons revolutionized game design and interactive media by allowing players to create and perform their own fictional…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo with Timothy Thurston (U Washington Press, 2025)
The podcast covers the book Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo (U Washington Press, 2025), which is about satirical speech traditons…
- New Books in Popular Culture
American Bread: A History with Andrew Coe (U California Press, 2026)
There is no humbler food than bread, none easier to take for granted. So ancient that it shows up in prehistoric sites, bread is still full of surprises…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Samantha: The Next Chapter with Fiona Davis (American Girl Publishing, 2026)
Samantha: The Next Chapter (American Girl Publishing, 2026). From American Girl and New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis comes the next chapter of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Troubled Times: The Boston Courthouse Bombing Of 1976 with Kevin Galvin (Brandeis UP, 2026)
Kevin Galvin's Troubled Times: The Boston Courthouse Bombing Of 1976 (Brandeis UP, 2026), interweaves the stories of a revolutionary and a bombing victim to…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)
Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Women in Comics: Iconic Characters and Influential Creators 1923-Today with Susan E. Kirtley and Nhora Lucía Serrano (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)
Susan E. Kirtley and Nhora Lucía Serrano's Women in Comics (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) is a richly illustrated, essential guide to the importance of women in…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Soviet Blocks: The Bizarre Puzzle of How Tetris Embraced Western Values with Julien Mailland (MIT Press, 2026)
A geopolitical and legal history of the bestselling videogame Tetris—the stunningly successful game that began in a Soviet research lab monitored by the KGB…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Weapons
A true dark comedy, Zach Cregger’s Weapons (2025) combines a satire of suburbia, a study of addiction, and the satisfaction of a fairy tale. The film works so…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Our Common Life: Folksong from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall with Stephen Wade
Our Common Life: Folk Song from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall (U Illinois Press, 2026) by Stephen Wade is part memoir, part meditation on American…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend with Jeremy Harte (Reaktion, 2026)
Jeremy Harte, President of the Folklore Society, joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend…
- New Books in Popular Culture
The Best 100 TV Shows of the 21st Century
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and the New York Times has published its list of the best 100 television shows of the 21st Century. We react to this list…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Cool Heat: Anita O'Day and Her Dangerous Jazz Life with James Gavin (Equinox, 2026)
How did Anita O'Day-the legendary jazz singer who, along with Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, and Stan Getz, led the so-called "cool school" of modern…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026)
Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan: Media, Empathy, and Digital Testimony with Xinling Li (Anthem Press, 2026)
When the Taiwanese political drama Wave Makers appeared in April 2023, few anticipated its impact beyond the screen. Within weeks, survivors in politics, the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ru Marshall, "American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda" (OR Books, 2026)
A gripping exposé of deception, cult power, and the long shadow of Carlos Castaneda, the man behind the biggest literary hoax of the twentieth century. Twenty…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Revisiting The Leftovers
The Pop Culture Professors revisit the pilot of The Leftovers, which ran on HBO from 2014-2017. How does this grief-drenched story about a world in…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Sarah Trad, "A House in the Lebanese Mountains: Recipes & Stories from Beit Trad" (Thames & Hudson, 2026)
High in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut sits Beit Trad, an eighteenth-century family home that Sarah Trad transformed into a guesthouse devoted to…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jennifer Hoewe, "Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)" (MIT Press, 2026)
Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026)
Love and Terror, The Helter Skelter History of the Manson Murders (Verso, 2026) is the most recent addition to the hundreds of books and films devoted to the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)
As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots (1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)
In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Stephen Lee Naish's Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute (Bloomsbury, 2026), in Bloomsbury's Timecodes Series, is a detailed, minute-by-minute critical…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Emily Charlotte, "Catching Feelings" (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2026)
Emily Charlotte's second Varsity Novel book Catching Feelings (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2026) follows Sabrina and her first rule for a drama-free senior…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Erin Osmon, "Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America" (W. W. Norton, 2026)
Hear "American Girl" or "Born in the U.S.A." and, like it or not, chances are you begin to hum along. The soundtrack of grocery stores, pool halls, bowling…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Dog Day Afternoon
A comedy of frustration and a look at how the media takes and then takes back one’s fifteen minutes of fame, Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is on of Sidney Lumet’s…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)
Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)
Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)
The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas. On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026)
Robyn Hitchcock's second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books, 2026), explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Brian Callaci, "Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy (University of Chicago Press, 2026) is a surprising look at the big business of owning…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ed Park, "Three Tenses" (Random House, 2026)
Three Tenses (Random House, 2026) by Ed Park is not quite a memoir, not quite fiction, not quite poetry and not quite prose—and yet it transcends the sum of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly
In this episode, J. M. Tyree, the editor of Film Quarterly discusses a dossier of articles about David’s Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive on its 25th anniversary…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser
As a big sister, Girl Scout, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleaser. She…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with writer and researcher, Jehnie I. Burns about her book, Mixtape Nostalgia: Culture, Memory, and Representation…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Vincent Haddad, "Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Since its debut in 1984, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular, influential, and lucrative media franchises in the world. In Next Time on Dragon Ball…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Scott Peeples, "How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan" (Reaktion, 2026)
Scott Peeple's How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan (Reaktion, 2026) chronicles Bob Dylan’s rise from apprenticeships in Minneapolis cafés and Greenwich Village…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Tár
Tod Field’s Tár (2022) is one of the best ghost stories we’ve discussed on the show. The story of a troiubled genius, the film is also a wonderfully ambiguous…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Christopher R. Rogers, "My City Need Something" (Common Notions, 2026)
Moving between word and image, the call-and-response collaboration between writer Christopher R. Rogers and photographer karim brown improvises a contemporary…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Naomi Kanakia, "What's So Great About the Great Books?: Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It Might Destroy You) (Princeton UP, 2026)
Writer Naomi Kanakia has spent her adult life reading the so-called “great books,” those classic works of literature which are–depending who you ask–either…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Caryl Flinn and Dana B. Polan, "The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In The Patty Duke Show and the American Sixties: Hot Dogs and Crêpes Suzette (Oxford UP, 2026), the first ever published on The Patty Duke Show (1963-66)…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Cycling Cities: Lisbon and Tehran with M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi
Cycling Cities is a series of books that investigates 150 years of cycling policy and practice across fifty cities in twenty-five countries, and keeps adding…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds
In light of the dismal Disclosure Day (2026), we return to two films that show Spielberg tackling alien visitation (or invasion) stories while at the height of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jinwon Kim, "Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand" (NYU Press, 2026)
How Manhattan's Koreatown functions as a new ethnic enclave In the past decade, Korean entertainment has gained global recognition, with Korean movies and TV…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Elijah Wald, "Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Rock 'n' roll appeared in the 1950s as the high-energy, electrically amplified music of young dancers and listeners, first in the United States and then around…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman has a new book out that focuses on the reality of women running for president in the United States, and the fictional…
- New Books in Popular Culture
David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)
What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cultural…
- New Books in Popular Culture
David I. Waddington, "The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)
Despite decades of inflammatory rhetoric, the real risk of video games lies not in their violent imagery but in the ethical and political sensibilities they…