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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
Hilary Davidson, "A Guide to Regency Dress: from Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins" (Yale UP, 2025)
In A Guide to Regency Dress: from Corsets and Breeches to Bonnets and Muslins (Yale UP 2025), celebrated dress historian Dr. Hilary Davidson brings together…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jane Eisner, "Carole King: She Made the Earth Move" (Yale UP, 2025)
Jane Eisner is a widely published journalist who held leadership positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Forward. She is the author of Taking Back the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jeffrey Kroessler, "Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens" (Rutgers UP, 2025) This
The borough of Queens is the largest of New York City’s five boroughs. It holds more people than Chicago or Los Angeles. And thanks to immigration, it is…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Max Brzezinski, "Under Pressure: A Song by David Bowie and Queen" (Duke UP, 2025)
In 1981, David Bowie and Queen both happened to be in Switzerland: They met and made "Under Pressure." Recorded on a lark, the song broke the path for…
New Books in Popular CultureLucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi, "Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production" (CEU Press, 2025)
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi to talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism: Trauma and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Amber Day, "Caught in the Crosshairs: Feminist Comedians and the Culture Wars" (Indiana UP, 2025)
The landscape of comedy has undergone a seismic shift in recent years with an increasing number of female comedians breaking through to mainstream audiences…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Amber Day, "Caught in the Crosshairs: Feminist Comedians and the Culture Wars" (Indiana UP, 2025)
The landscape of comedy has undergone a seismic shift in recent years with an increasing number of female comedians breaking through to mainstream audiences…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Curtis Marez, "Producing Precarity: The Costs of Making TV in Poor Places" (NYU Press, 2025)
In Producing Precarity (NYU Press, 2025) Curtis Marez examines the television industry’s practice of “offshoring” production to impoverished sites within the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jerry Moore, "Cat Tales: A History" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
For as long as cats have coexisted with humans, they have been feared, revered and respected. They appear as dynamic hunters in Palaeolithic carvings and cave…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michelle Anya Anjirbag, "Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
In Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode (Wayne State UP, 2025), scholar Michelle Anya Anjirbag examines Disney's method of fairy-tale…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Camesia O. Matthews, "The Dental Fitness Advantage: How a Healthy Mouth Enhances Total Body Health and Elevates Performance" (Playbook Scholars, 2025)
Ready to move beyond routine dental checkups and unlock your body’s full potential? In The Dental Fitness Advantage: How a Healthy Mouth Enhances Total Body…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Living Night: On the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark
When the sun sets, things start to get interesting among wild animals. Wherever we live, whether in the city or suburbs or country, darkness conjures a hidden…
- New Books in Popular Culture
YIVO Archives and Library, "100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research" (YIVO, 2025)
Delve into Jewish history through 100 unique objects from the YIVO Archives and Library with 100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Timothy Gitzen, "Unscripting the Present" (SUNY Press, 2025)
Timothy Gitzen's Unscripting the Present (SUNY Press, 2025) interrogates contemporary sex panics in the United States, looking especially at popular culture…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Grace Kessler Overbeke, "First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll" (NYU Press, 2024)
Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all. First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll (NYU Press…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Pluribus Episodes 4&5 Analysis: We Need a Little Space
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the fourth and fifth episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. Support our show by becoming a premium…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Bradley J. Borougerdi, "Cannabis: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)
Bradley Borougerdi joins Jana Byars to talk about Cannabis: A Global History (Reaktion, 2025). An international cultural history of the multifunctional plant…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Elliott Kalan, "Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
In Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, Elliott Kalan (U Chicago Press, 2025) explains that it’s easier to write jokes when you have a…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jon Willis, "The Pale Blue Data Point: An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A thrilling tour of Earth that shows the search for extraterrestrial life starts in our own backyard. Is there life off Earth? Bound by the limitations of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)
Sabrina Mittermeier's edited volume Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect Books, 2023) analyzes the fandom of Disney brands across a variety of media including…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Stefania Marghitu, "Teen TV" (Routledge, 2021)
Stefania Marghitu's Teen TV (Routledge, 2021)explores the history of television's relationship to teens as a desired, but elusive audience, and the ways in…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Josh Levine, "Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good: Larry David and the Making of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fully Revised and Updated" (ECW Press, 2025)
Josh Levine's Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good: Larry David and the Making of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fully Revised and Updated (ECW Press, 2025) is…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Meg Bernhard, "Wine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Today I talked to Meg Bernhard about her new book Wine (Bloomsbury, 2023). Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of addiction…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Natalie Porter, "Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides: A History of Badass Women Skateboarders" (ECW Press, 2025)
A vibrant, meticulously researched celebration of the women and non-binary skateboarders who defied a hostile industry and redefined skateboarding around the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Marion Turner, "The Wife of Bath: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Treena Orchard, "Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps" (Aevo, U Toronto Press, 2024)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Treena Orchard about her memoir, Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps…
New Books in Popular CultureSharon White Rewires Disco
At the center of 1970s New York's most iconic clubs—from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 to the premiere lesbian discotheque Sahara—stood a queer Black woman…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Adrienne Domasin ed., "The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Last of Us" (Playstory Press, 2025)
The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Last of Us (Playstory Press, 2025) explores the psychological themes at the heart of The Last of Us franchise. Authors from…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jim Cullen, "1980: America's Pivotal Year" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish economy…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michael Brown, "Eyeliner’s Buy Now" (Bloomsbury 2025)
Michael Brown undertakes a thorough study of Eyeliner's Eyeliner's Buy Now (Bloomsbury 2025) a vaporwave homage to the kitsch electronic sounds of the 1980s…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Doug MacCash, "Mardi Gras Beads" (Louisiana UP, 2022)
The first in a new LSU Press series exploring facets of Louisiana’s iconic culture, Mardi Gras Beads (2022) delves into the history of this celebrated New…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Lester D. Friedman, "Citizen Spielberg" (U of Illinois Press, 2022)
Steven Spielberg's extraordinary career redefined Hollywood, but his achievement goes far beyond shattered box office records. Rejecting the view of Spielberg…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michelle McSweeney, "OK" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
"OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees). OK as an…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Pluribus Episode 3 Analysis: The Amazonification of Everything
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the third episode of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. We talk through this episode as a literalization of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Páraic Kerrigan, "LGBTQ Visibility, Media and Sexuality in Ireland" (Routledge, 2020)
“We know what we want, and one day, our prince will come,” says Toby, the bicycle-shorts-wearing, double ententre-making, unacknowledgely-gay neighbor in RTE’s…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Caroline Jack, "Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals how American capitalism has been…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Sophie Bishop, "Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture" (U California Press, 2025)
How are influencers changing the arts? In Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture (U California Press…
New Books in Popular CultureJames Brown's War on Disco
In the penultimate episode of season 2 of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with acclaimed historian Alice Echols, author of Hot…
- New Books in Popular Culture
James Trefil and Shobita Satyapal, "Supermassive: Black Holes at the Beginning and End of the Universe" (Smithsonian Books, 2025)
Black holes, demystified: follow along the quest to understand the history and influence of one of space science's most fascinating and confounding phenomena…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Julie Fette, "Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature" (Routledge, 2025)
Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature (Routledge, 2025) investigates the gender representations that French children's literature…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Marcus Chown, "A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage" (Apollo, 2025)
What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind's most enduring questions may lie in science's greatest enigma: black…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Springsteen’s "Nebraska" as a Political, Sonic, and Personal Document
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we consider Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska as personal and political document. With the release of the Nebraska…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Springsteen’s "Nebraska" as a Political, Sonic, and Personal Document
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we consider Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska as personal and political document. With the release of the Nebraska…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an inevitable…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michael Maniates, "The Living-Green Myth" (Polity Press, 2025)
Dr. Michael F. Maniates is a leading scholar in environmental politics and sustainability studies whose work has fundamentally reshaped how researchers and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Tamar Mitts, "Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Content moderation on social media has become one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Nowhere is the need for action more urgent than in the fight…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Brian Baker, "The Road" (Akashic Books, 2025)
The Road (Akashic Books, 2025) is an illuminating selection of photographs spanning iconic punk rock guitarist Brian Baker’s many years of global touring with…
New Books in Popular CultureDisco's Revenge
In the wake of Disco Demolition Night in 1979—a cultural bonfire that seemed to signal the end of disco—something unexpected began to rise from Chicago’s…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Kubrick’s Worlds: Power, Paranoia, and the Politics of the Human Condition
In this episode of International Horizons, Interim Director Eli Karetny speaks with film scholar Nathan Abrams about the enduring relevance of Stanley Kubrick…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Gilles Deleuze, "On Painting" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Hector Vera, "Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)
Why is there no metric system in the United States? Why is it that a country known for its openness to the future, its scientific innovations, and its…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Harry Cliff, "Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe" (Doubleday, 2024)
Nothing captivates the human imagination like the vast unknowns of space. Ancient petroglyphs present renderings of the heavens, proof that we have been gazing…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Scott D. Anthony, "Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025) arrives at the perfect moment as artificial intelligence…
- New Books in Popular Culture
What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters
What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money, work for justice, run marathons, sing in a choir, have children, travel the world? The things we care…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Greg Soden, "Unscripted Moments: Conversations with Propagandhi (2020-2025)" (Earth Island Books, 2025)
Propagandhi formed in 1986 in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada and are now based in Winnipeg. Their outspoken influence and consistency in anti-fascist…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Carl Rollyson, "The Making of Sylvia Plath (UP Mississippi, 2024)
Since her death, Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Megan Walsh, "The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters" (Columbia Global Reports, 2022)
What does contemporary China’s diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot: What China…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Peter C. Zimmerman, "The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
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…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global…