Shows / New Books in Popular Culture
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
Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio
Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and their DJs on…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Michelle H. S. Ho, "Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies (Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Kevin Smokler, "Break the Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In the twenty-first century alone, women filmmakers have succeeded at directing every size, genre, and style of motion picture. Their movies have won Oscars…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Matthew Shindell, "Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
The first book to combine exquisite cartographical charts of the Moon with a thorough exploration of the Moon’s role in popular culture, science, and myth…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)
Embodying Normalcy: Women’s Work in Neoliberal Times (Lexington Books, 2024) calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid work to…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Matthew Restall, "On Elton John: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Elton John is not only "still standing," he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Annie Zaleski, "I Got You Babe: A Celebration of Cher" (Running Press Adult, 2025)
Covering her life and sixty-year career from Sonny & Cher to show-stopping solo performer, award-winning actress, fashion icon, and beyond, this is a glorious…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Vincent L Stephens, "Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
This timely and telling analysis identifies the formal and thematic innovations pioneered by millennial feminists between 2012 and 2020 that have shaped the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power,"…
- New Books in Popular Culture
The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 7-9): Truth and Discipline
It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 7-9. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Brian M. Ingrassia, "Speed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing and the Making of Modern America" (
The 1909 opening of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway marked a foundational moment in the history of automotive racing. Events at the famed track and others like…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber, "The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully" (MIT Press, 2025)
How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response. In The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (MIT Press, 2025)…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, "Watching TV: American Television Season by Season, Fourth Edition" (Syracuse UP, 2024)
In their fourth edition of Watching TV: American Television Season by Season (Syracuse University Press, 2025), Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik present a…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison, "Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katie Milestone & Dr. Simon A. Morrison explores the emergence and evolution of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 4-6): Too Much Information
It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 4-6. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2025)
With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has shifted…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Lynn Downey, "American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
In American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West (U Oklahoma Press, 2022), historian Lynn Downey offers a cultural history of the dude…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Television, Translation, and Algorithms on Netflix
How do media producers appeal to international audiences in the streaming era? In this episode of the Global Media & Communication podcast, our host Juan…
- New Books in Popular Culture
The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 1-3): The Personal is Political
It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we react to Andor Season 2, episodes 1-3. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the motives and aims of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ben Arogundade, "Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Recognition in a White Hollywood" (Cassell, 2025)
On February 29, 1940, African American actor Hattie McDaniel became the first person of color, and the first Black woman, to win an Academy Award. The moment…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Emma Casey, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up" (Manchester UP, 2025)
How has the rise of digital platforms changed domestic labour? In The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up (Manchester UP, 2025), Emma…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Randy Laist and Brian Dixon, "Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis" (Fourth Horseman, 2024)
Figures of Freedom: Representations of Agency in a Time of Crisis takes on the idea and terminology of freedom, examining our understanding of this concept and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
James Cartlidge, "The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon" (CRC Press, 2025)
The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon (CRC Press, 2025) analyzes the wave of roguelite games that have appeared over the past decade, putting…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Eike Exner, "Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ross Benes, "1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times" (UP of Kansas, 2025)
In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examines low culture…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025)
CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of Seoul’s…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Anne Korfmacher, "Fan Podcasts: Rewatch, Recap, Review" (Routledge, 2024)
Starting from the observation of the ubiquity of fan podcasts engaging in media commentary, Fan Podcasts: Rewatch, Recap, Review (Routledge, 2024) explores…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Gabe Henry, "Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell" (Dey Street, 2025)
In Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell (Dey Street Books, 2025), Gabe Henry presents a brief and humorous 500-year history of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Henry Jenkins, "Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America" (NYU Press, 2025)
The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Keith J. Hayward, "Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood" (Constable & Robinson, 2025)
Have you ever noticed that in areas of everyday life, rather than being addressed like a mature adult, you're increasingly treated like an irresponsible child…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Mark Doyle, "John Cale's Paris 1919" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the Watergate…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Julie Malnig, "Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a new look at the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Megan Hunt, "Southern by the Grace of God: Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Hollywood's American South" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Megan Hunt joins us to talk about her recent book, Southern By the Grace of God, which was published in 2024 by…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Bridget Kies, "Murder, She Wrote" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
As part of the TV Milestones Series, Bridget Kies explores Murder, She Wrote (Wayne State University Press, 2025). Embark on a journey through the mysteries of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Making Radio History
Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the American Public…
- New Books in Popular Culture
D. D. Miller, "Eight-wheeled Freedom: The Derby Nerd's Short History of Flat Track Roller Derby" (Wolsak and Wynn, 2016)
NBN host Hollay Ghadery chats with author D. D. Miller about the fascinating sport of roller derby. As the Derby Nerd, Miller covered roller derby since 2009…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Liz William, "Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain" (Reaktion, 2025)
Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain (Reaktion, 2025) by Liz Williams explores transgression and shame in British folklore and…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Paul R. Laird and Elizabeth A. Wells, "The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Adam Kotsko, "Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Adam Kotsko explores the beloved science fiction…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Clive Bloom, "London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
From Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Matt Lodder, "Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art" (Yale UP, 2024)
There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the West as a…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Mia Consalvo et al., "Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch" (MIT Press, 2025)
The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Fiona Handyside, "Girls' Hairstories: Sparkle and Resilience in Contemporary Screen Cultures" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Why have dynamic and shifting hairstyles, from Katniss Everdeen’s Power Plait to JoJo Siwa’s outsize bows, become such a significant part of how girlhood is…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Martha Bayless, "Entertainment, Pleasure, and Meaning in Early England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
The people of early England (c. 450–1100 CE) enjoyed numerous kinds of entertainment, recreation and pleasure, but the scattered records of such things have…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Ariane Sherine, "The Real Sinéad O'Connor" (White Owl, 2024)
Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for social…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Richard Heppner, "Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars" (SUNY Press, 2024)
Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York—although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away! Long before the…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Sarah Stang, et al., "Monstrosity in Games and Play" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
Sarah Stang, editor, joins Jana Byars to talk about Monstrosity in Games and Play (Amsterdam UP, 2024). Monsters fascinate us. From ancient folklore to…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Chris Alexander, "Art! Trash! Terror! Adventures in Strange Cinema" (Headpress, 2025)
ART! TRASH! TERROR! Adventures in Strange Cinema (Headpress 2025) by Chris Alexander is a treasure trove of in-depth essays and edifying interviews that…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)
Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Blair Farrell, "The Avengers in Video Games" (McFarland, 2021)
For decades, Marvel Comics' superhero group the Avengers have captured the imagination of millions, whether in comics, multi-billion dollar grossing films or…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Kyle Orland, "Minesweeper" (Boss Fight Books, 2023)
If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle game with…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Robert Houghton, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)
Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that is not…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Waiyee Loh, "Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy" (SUNY Press, 2024)
Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy (SUNY Press, 2024) by Dr. Waiyee Loh brings together contemporary representations of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Hallie Franks, "Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Hallie Franks examines the reception of Graeco-Roman…
- New Books in Popular Culture
Mike Sielski, "Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk. The…
- New Books in Popular Culture
William Burns, "Ghost of an Idea: Hauntology, Folk Horror, and the Spectre of Nostalgia" (Headpress, 2025)
The future ain't what it used to be. Is nostalgia revitalizing or killing 21st-century culture? The concept of nostalgia has seeped into almost all aspects of…
- New Books in Popular Culture
In “The Beast,” AI Puts Limits on Human Emotion
It’s the UConn Popcast, and “The Beast” is a 2023 sci fi / romance movie by French director Bertrand Bonello, in which artificial intelligence has determined…