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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
Matthew Facciani, "Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Why are people inclined to believe misinformation? Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It (Columbia UP, 2025) is a…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Richard Mainwaring, "What the Ear Hears (And Doesn't): Inside the Extraordinary Everyday World of Frequency" (Sourcebooks, 2022)
What do the world's loneliest whale, a black hole, and twenty-three people doing Tae Bo all have in common? In 2011, a skyscraper in South Korea began to shake…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Alisha Mughal, "It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow" (ECW Press, 2025)
Alisha Mughal's It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow (ECW Press, 2025) weaves memoir with film criticism in an effort to pin down The Crow’s cultural…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Philip Carr-Gomm, "A Brief History of Nakedness" (Reaktion, 2010)
Philip Carr-Gomm joins Jana Byars to talk about A Brief History of Nakedness (Reaktion, 2010) on the occasion of its newest paperback edition. From the naked…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Matthew R. Sparks and Olivia Sizemore, "Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers" (UP of Kentucky, 2024)
Matthew Sparks and Oliva Sizemore join Jana Byars for a fun, chilling, and thoughtful discussion about about Haint Country: Dark Tales from the Hills and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018)
If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example of how…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025)
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
Behind the braided wigs, buckskins, and excess bronzer that typified the mid-century "filmic Indian" lies a far richer, deeper history of Indigenous labor…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Heather Browning and Walter Veit, "What Are Zoos For?" (Policy Press, 2024)
Are zoos an anachronism in the 21st century when we can watch animals in their natural habitat, close-up from our couches without worrying about cruelty?…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Robert Fitzgerald, "Hardcore Punk in the Age of Reagan: The Lyrical Lashing of an American Presidency" (UNC Press, 2025)
Few politicians produced the musical reaction that Ronald Reagan did. His California-branded conservatism inspired countless young people to pick up guitars…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Dom Ford, "Mytholudics: Games and Myth" (de Gruyter, 2025)
Dom Ford joins Jana Byars to talk about Mytholudics: Game and Myth (DeGruyter Brill, 2025). Games create worlds made of many different elements, but also of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Tricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018)
How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Julia Sneeringer, "A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Bradley Morgan, "Frank Zappa's America" (LSU Press, 2025)
From his early albums with the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa established a reputation as a musical genius who pushed the limits of culture throughout the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-expanding…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Cameron Kunzelman, "The World is Born from Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games" (de Gruyter, 2022)
The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron…
New Books in Popular CultureTurning the Page, Tuning the Dial
In the tenth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell expands upon previous episodes to consider the various musical styles that emerged in New York City…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Katie Mitchell, "Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores" (Random House, 2025)
Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores (Random House, 2025) explores these spaces, chronicling…
New Books in Popular CultureLost Women of Disco
Women have been central to the evolution of dance music culture since its earliest days, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. From Régine…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021)
Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a pop music…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025)
Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19…
New Books in Popular CultureJubilee (1978)
In the ninth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell traces the trans-Atlantic movement of artists associated with punk culture in New York and London…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Triauna Carey, "The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance" (Lexington Books, 2024)
The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance (Lexington Books, 2024) investigates the rhetorical strategies present in mainstream…
- New Books in Popular Culture
James O'Connor, "Untitled Goose Game" (Boss Fight Books, 2025)
It's a beautiful day in the village, and you are a horrible goose, ready to wreak charming havoc on the weary locals. You'll ruin their gardens, invade their…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Megan Volpert, "Why Alanis Morissette Matters" (University of Texas Press, 2025)
The first critical biography of iconic musician Alanis Morissette, creator of Jagged Little Pill. The 1990s hardly saw a bigger hit than Jagged Little Pill…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)
The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created by Hormel…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Veronica Litt, "Ugh! As If!: Clueless" (ECW Press, 2025)
Veronica Litt's Ugh As If!: Clueless (ECW Press, 2025) uncovers the complex layers beneath the glossy surface of the 1995 classic film "Clueless." Litt…
New Books in Popular CultureRock 'N' Roll Resurrection
In the eighth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell talks with music history professor Steve Waksman about the social and stylistic transformation of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Natalie Lim, "Elegy for Opportunity" (Buckrider Books, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Vancouver poet Natalie Lim about her debut poetry collection, Elegy for Opportunity (Wolsak &…
New Books in Popular CultureLove Saves the Day: On the 1970s New York Club Scene
The Loft was a dance party series organized by DJ David Mancuso in his Manhattan warehouse apartment at 647 Broadway from Valentine’s Day 1970 to June 1974…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, "The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about his recently published book The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Elana Levine, "Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History" (Duke UP, 2020)
Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic…
New Books in Popular CultureGreetings from Asbury Park, NJ
Bruce Springsteen was keenly aware and excited by the sounds of the CBGBs scene during the Seventies. With his own bands, the Boss performed in the same venues…
New Books in Popular CultureIllustrating Punk
In the sixth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell talks with John Holmstrom a comic illustrator and founder of Punk magazine. In the early 1970s…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Tom Lutz, "1925: A Literary Encyclopedia" (Rare Bird Books, 2025)
The year 1925 was arguably the peak of literature's centrality. There were more magazines, more journals, more reviews, more book news, and more book gossip…
New Books in Popular CultureA Queer Etymology of Punk
In the fifth episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with British music critic Jon Savage about how LGBTQ resistance shaped American popular…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Barry W. Enderwick, "Sandwiches of History: The Cookbook: All the Best (and Most Surprising) Things People Have Put Between Slices of Bread" (Harvard Common Press, 2024)
Barry Enderwick has been making, eating, and sharing historical sandwiches for years on social media @sandwichesofhistory and recently in live shows. In…
New Books in Popular CultureSounds of the City Collapsing
In the fourth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell and music historian Jesse Rifkin tour a constellation of seedy bars and venues in the 1970s that…
New Books in Popular CultureHow Punk Broke the Binary
When singer Debbie Harry helped form Blondie in 1974 she developed a unique stage persona to front the band. Though she may have appeared to fans as a…
New Books in Popular CultureS1.E2. Wayne County at the Trucks (1974)
In the second episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with Tony Zanetta. In the late 1960s, Zanetta worked in Off-Off-Broadway theater and…
New Books in Popular CultureGender Crisis N.Y.C.
In the premiere episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with celebrated writer Lucy Sante about the landscape of gender logics within the New…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Eric Blanc, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Todd May "Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times" (Crown, 2024)
These days it’s harder than ever to watch TV, scroll social media, or even just sit at home looking out of the window without contemplating the question at the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Is Sinners a New Classic of Political Utopianism?
It’s the UConn Popcast, and we analyze the movie Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, just released on streaming. We address the political themes of the movie…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michelle Phillipov, "Digital Food TV: The Cultural Place of Food in a Digital Era (Routledge, 2023)
Michelle Phillipov's Digital Food TV: The Cultural Place of Food in a Digital Era (Routledge, 2023) explores the new theoretical and political questions raised…
- New Books in Popular Culture
American Gangster
American Gangster (2007) is Ridley Scott’s homage to The French Connection: it’s got the right cars, clothes, and colors and is based on another true story of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Amin Ghaziani, "Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2024)
In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexpected…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michael Broyles, "Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades That Changed a Country and Its Sounds" (Norton, 2024)
Michael Broyles examines a wide variety of musical, technological, and social currents that helped to shape American music in Revolutions in American Music…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Payne, "Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game" (Amherst College Press, 2024)
Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Amherst College Press, 2024) is the first scholarly book to focus exclusively on the long-running…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Atinuke O. Adediran, "Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests that challenged many institutions, including large for-profit companies, to reflect on how to address…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Robell Awake, "A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2025)
Ten beautifully illustrated essays tell the stories of handcrafted objects and their makers, providing inspiration and insight into Black history and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Owen Flanagan, "What Is It Like to Be an Addict?: Understanding Substance Abuse" (Oxford UP, 2025)
A powerful and important exploration of how addiction functions on social, psychological and biological levels, integrated with the experience of being an…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Pavitra Sundar eds., "Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice" (UC Press, 2023)
Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023) introduces accent as…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ashlee Piper, "No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity" (Celadon Books, 2025)
No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity by Ashlee Piper, was published by Celadon Books in April 2025. In…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Joshua K. Wright, "The NBA's Global Empire: How the League Became an International Powerhouse" (McFarland, 2025)
Joshua K. Wright, The NBA's Global Empire: How the League Became an International Powerhouse (McFarland, 2025) During the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Dave Cook, "Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat-'Em-Ups" (Bitmap Books, 2022)
Get ready for the fight of your life in Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat-'Em-Ups (Bitmap Books, 2022). Written by award-winning author…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Laura Lee Flanagan, "Hardcore Vegetarian: Welcome to the Vegedome!" (Process Media, 2025)
Laura Lee Flanagan's Hardcore Vegetarian (Feral House, 2025) is a celebration of food and love for everyone! Hardcore Vegetarian is a journey into…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Nao Tomabechi, "Supervillains: The Significance of Evil in Superhero Comics" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Alongside superheroes, supervillains, too, have become one of today’s most popular and globally recognizable figures. However, it is not merely their…