New Books in Popular Culture

Marshall Poe

Pluribus

New York City

Hollywood

Baseball

Michael Mann

Stanley Kubrick

The Night Manager

Disney

B-Sides

Regency Fashion

90s Music

Attention

For All Mankind

Women In Comedy

Sustainability

The Shining

Dress History

Human Fracking

Bigas Luna

Los Angeles

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 ... more

16 ratings

Publishes	Daily	Episodes	1749	Founded	15 years ago
Number of Listeners		Categories	Society & CultureHistory

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Latest Episodes

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 cities to the list including, recently, Lisbon and Tehran.

In this episode, I interview... more

6 Aug 2026 • 1 hr

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 his powers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The War of the Worlds (2005) are... more

3 Aug 2026 • 30 min

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 shows winning Oscars and Emmys, and K-Pop groups becoming wildly popular. In Manhattan, Kor... more

31 Jul 2026 • 34 min

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 the globe, and from the beginning it symbolized more than music. First popularized as a ma... more

30 Jul 2026 • Most popular

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Recent Guests

Jinwon Kim

Assistant Professor of Sociology at Smith College

Smith College

Episode: Jinwon Kim, "Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand" (NYU Press, 2026)

Elijah Wald

Grammy-winning writer, musician, and historian; author of Rock n Roll, A Very Short Introduction

Oxford University Press (author)

Episode: Elijah Wald, "Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman

Author of The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Bloomsbury

Episode: Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

David Denby

Author of Eminent Jews, Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer

Henry Holt (publisher)

Episode: David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)

David Waddington

Author, The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games

Episode: David I. Waddington, "The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

Daniel Gardner

Author of Thresholds of Digital Gameplay

Robert Gordon University, Scotland

Episode: Daniel L. Gardner, "Thresholds of Digital Gameplay" (MIT Press, 2025)

Stefan Höltgen

Co-editor of C64 or C64, Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer

Project Verlag / Computer Archaeology

Episode: Stefan Höltgen et al., "Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer" (Projekt Verlag, 2026)

Mike F. Alvarez

Assistant Professor, Communication; co-editor of Suicide in Popular Media and Culture

University of New Hampshire

Episode: Mike F. Alvarez, Warren J. Bareiss, and Jolane Flanigan eds., "Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe" (Bristol University Press, 2026)

Warren Bareiss

Editor and anthropologist; focuses on narratives and health

University of South Carolina Upstate

Episode: Mike F. Alvarez, Warren J. Bareiss, and Jolane Flanigan eds., "Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe" (Bristol University Press, 2026)

Host

Paul

Host of the episode, engaging the guest in a biographical and thematic discussion

Reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars from 16 ratings

Poor journalism
The reason journalists are so maligned
Apple Podcasts
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SpongeBobbyHil589
United Statesa year ago
New books in Pop culture
Excellent interviews and subjects; sadly the echo is frustrating and distracts from the top notch content.
Apple Podcasts
4
Amethyst-eye
United States8 years ago

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Some listeners crave more critical analysis and less echo around publishing norms.

Guest selections are diverse across humanities topics.

Concise, well-researched scholarly discussions.

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Talking Points

Recent interactions between the hosts and their guests.

Jinwon Kim, "Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand" (NYU Press, 2026)

Q: How did fieldwork with international students versus long-term immigrants shape your understanding of Koreatown?

She notes clear tensions and different perspectives between groups, with international students often maintaining strong ties to Korea while navigating life in New York, which highlighted class and experiential differences that reframe how Koreatown is experienced and understood.

Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

Q: Can you talk a little bit about how you set up the research for this book across film, television, and literature?

I started from the 1932 Betty Boop cartoon and built a comprehensive, color-coded spreadsheet of sources, making conscious choices to include material where the character is actually the president of the United States and to exclude symbolically or non-U.S. presidencies, while digging through archives and online records to assemble a broad, but manageable, dataset.

Elijah Wald, "Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Q: What is the core period your book covers and why does it matter?

The book concentrates on the early era of rock and roll, roughly 1950 to 1965, because that window shows how the music was formed from blues, gospel, jazz, and country and how media, technology, and race relations shaped its early popularity and meaning.

Daniel L. Gardner, "Thresholds of Digital Gameplay" (MIT Press, 2025)

Q: How do these interfaces direct or mediate our experience of gameplay and what relationships do they establish between players and games?

Gardner details how access controls, configuration, controllers, and storefronts not only govern access but redefine ownership and the publisher-player relationship, influencing how players engage with games across multiple sessions.

David I. Waddington, "The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

Q: Could you explain techno-libertarianism, what it means, and how games train players to adopt this perspective?

Techno-libertarianism comprises limited government, belief in the transformative power of the individual, and faith in technology to solve social problems; games train these ideas through structures that emphasize personal power, non-rigorous government involvement, and the glorification of technology as a solution, such as the tech tree and ever-improving gear in many titles.

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Frequently Asked Questions About New Books in Popular Culture

What is New Books in Popular Culture about and what kind of topics does it cover?

A channel focused on scholarly conversations about recently published work in popular culture, history, and media. Episodes typically feature researchers discussing books, archival studies, and cultural phenomena with another expert, blending rigorous analysis with accessible storytelling. Listeners likely include academics, librarians, educators, writers, and general enthusiasts for culture, media, and contemporary society. Noteworthy traits include a heavy emphasis on book-centered discussions, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and guest experts spanning literature, film, music, and social history. The show often surfaces nuanced takes on publishing, archives, and cultural critique, making it suitable for academics seeking peer insights as... more

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1. The Book Review
2. In Our Time
3. HistoryExtra podcast
4. Gone Medieval
5. How To Academy Podcast

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New Books in Popular Culture launched 15 years ago and published 1749 episodes to date. You can find more information about this podcast including rankings, audience demographics and engagement in our podcast database.

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What guests have appeared on New Books in Popular Culture?

Recent guests on New Books in Popular Culture include:

1. Jinwon Kim
2. Elijah Wald
3. Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman
4. David Denby
5. David Waddington
6. Daniel Gardner
7. Stefan Höltgen
8. Mike F. Alvarez

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