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...
Recent Episodes
1654 episodes
Ryan Angulo and Doug Crowell, "Kindness & Salt: Recipes for the Care & Feeding of Your Friends & Neighbors" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018)
When Brooklyn restaurateurs Doug Crowell and Ryan Angulo opened Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens in 2008, they created more than a restaurant—the...
Ijeoma Uchegbu, "Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World" (HarperCollins, 2026)
By one of the world's leading chemists, an entertaining and revealing tour of the chemical bonds that shape our everyday lives and provide the infrast...
Andrew Wilson, "I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)
Publishing one hundred years after her birth, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe, I Wanna Be Loved By You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Take...
Larry Atkins, "Foul or Fair? Ethical and Social Issues in Sports" (McFarland, 2024)
There's more to sports than what occurs during games. Check your social media, listen to sports talk radio, or watch ESPN--there are daily stories of...
John Kapusta, "Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America" (U California Press, 2026)
John Kapusta's Self-Realization Nation: How Artists of the Creative Counterculture Made a New America (U California Press, 2026) is the story of an un...
Philip Norman, "Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles" (Da Capo Press, 2026)
Philip Norman's latest biography, Mr. Moonlight (DaCapo Press, 2026) is the definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein--the man who built th...
Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast with Journals Director David Famiano
1. A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals
2. Clare E. B. Cannon; Advancing sustaina...
Valerie Tiberius, "What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)
What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money―or work for justice? To have children―or travel the world? The things we care about in life―famil...
Rachael Renae, "Prioritize Play: Express Your Creativity, Boost Your Confidence, and Foster Deeper Connection" (Balance, 2026)
In Prioritize Play: Express Your Creativity, Boost Your Confidence, and Foster Deeper Connection (Balance, 2026), host of the Chaotic Creatives podcas...
Street Level: HUD at 60
In 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) marked its 60th anniversary. Created amid the optimism and urgency of the civil ri...
Rebecca Kosick, "Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press" (Wayne State UP, 2026)
Can publishing change the world? In Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press Rebecca Kosick (Wayne State UP, 2026), an Associate Profe...
Olivia Rodrigo Blends Past and Present in Her New Album
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we react to Olivia Rodrigo's new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. We analyze the lyrics an...
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, "Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade" (Yale UP, 2025)
Mark Twain’s Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self‑aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the fir...
Alexander Vandewalle, "Characters and Characterization in Mythological Video Games" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
The first book-length study on mythology reception in video games, Characters and Characterization in Mythological Video Games (Bloomsbury, 2026) exam...
Michael D. Nichols, "Batman and the Classics: Echoes of Mythology, Literature and Philosophy in the Comics and Films" (McFarland, 2026)
Fans of Batman are used to seeing the Caped Crusader associate with the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman, but what if one were to put the Dark Knigh...
Anna Harwell Celenza, "On the Record: Music that Changed America (Norton, 2026)
There is no shortage of books on music and politics, but Anna Harwell Celenza explores an interesting premise in her book On the Record: Music that Ch...
Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen has called A Streetcar Named Desire the most well-directed film ever made and its influence on Blue Jasmine (2013) is unmistakable. Both c...
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...