最佳Popular Culture播客 (2025)

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A.I. is Spielberg & Kubrick’s Dark Twisted Fantasy 1:24:22

5h ago1:24:22

1:24:22

It’s the UConn Popcast, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg’s 2001 movie, is a strange and profound text on human-AI relations. Centering on David, an artificial child who is embraced and then abandoned by his adoptive human mother, the movie has the structure of a fairy tale and the sensibility of a horror film. We found the text to…

1
Catherine Butler, "British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 1:13:05

8d ago1:13:05

1:13:05

Whether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurants in Tokyo, the Japanese have a close and multifaceted relationship with British children's literature. In British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses…

1
Marco Arnaudo, "The Tabletop Revolution: Gaming Reimagined in the 21st Century" (McFarland, 2023) 27:19

9d ago27:19

27:19

The Tabletop Revolution: Gaming Reimagined in the 21st Century (McFarland, 2023) is an overview of the ongoing revolution in tabletop gaming design and culture, which exploded to unprecedented levels of vitality in the 21st century, leading to new ways of creating, marketing, and experiencing a game. Designers have become superstars, publishers hav…

1
Lily E. Hirsch, "Taking Funny Music Seriously" (Indiana UP, 2024) 1:00:45

11d ago1:00:45

1:00:45

Take funny music seriously! Though often dismissed as silly or derivative, funny music, Lily E. Hirsch argues, is incredibly creative and dynamic, serving multiple aims from the celebratory to the rebellious, the entertaining to the mentally uplifting. Music can be a rich site for humor, with so many opportunities that are ripe for a comedic left t…

1
Javaria Farooqui, "Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 53:59

12d ago53:59

53:59

Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency (Bloomsbury, 2024) offers the first major study of English-speaking romance fandom in South Asia, providing a new reader-centric model that engages with romance readers as genre experts. Here, she investigates the popular Anglophone romance reading community in Pakistan and develops a mod…

1
Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, "Finding God in All the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2024) 51:33

13d ago51:33

51:33

In Finding God in All the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture (Rutgers UP, 2024), Beretta E. Smith-Shomade contends that Black spirituality and Black church religiosity are the critical crux of Black popular culture. She argues that cultural, community, and social support live within the Black church and that spirit, art, and p…

1
Jesper Juul, "Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer" (MIT Press, 2024) 36:40

14d ago36:40

36:40

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most…

1
Patrick Dixon, "Nuggets of Gold: Further Processed Chicken and the Making of the American Diet" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 1:06:31

15d ago1:06:31

1:06:31

For McDonald’s, the Chicken McNugget, the flagship product of further processed chicken, represented a once-in-a-generation innovation, a snack item that quickly evolved into a meal, spawned a legion of imitators, and gained a large share of the global poultry market. Yet, almost as soon as the McNugget made its North American debut, it quickly bec…

1
Dayne C. Riley, "Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751" (Bucknell UP, 2024) 47:29

19d ago47:29

47:29

Writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—a period of vast economic change—recognized that the global trade in alcohol and tobacco promised a brighter financial future for England, even as overindulgence at home posed serious moral pitfalls. Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751 (Bucknell…

1
Andrew S. Latham, "Hey! Listen!: Hypertext Rhetoric and The Legend of Zelda" (McFarland, 2024) 39:25

23d ago39:25

39:25

How does analyzing video games as hypertexts expand the landscape of research for video game rhetoricians and games studies scholars? This is the first book to focus on how hypertext rhetoric impacts the five canons of rhetoric, and to apply that hypertext rhetoric to the study of video games. It also explores how ludonarrative agency is seized by …

1
Sujatha Fernandes, "Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life" (Duke, UP 2020) 45:04

24d ago45:04

45:04

Cuban resourcefulness is on full display in Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life (Duke 2020), as sociologist Sujatha Fernandes presents an array of strategies not just for survival but for the invention of expressive practices and community-building spaces. Enduring years of Special Period economics and a transition away from Fidel Castro…

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Nick Yablon, "Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule" (U Chicago Press, 2019) 1:03:08

28d ago1:03:08

1:03:08

In Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Nick Yablon traces the birth of the time capsule in the United States. Starting with the Gilded Age, Yablon explores the way Americans from diverse backgrounds constructed memories of their present through the creation of time capsules. Examinin…

1
James Welker, "Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans" (U Hawaii Press, 2024) 56:07

1M ago56:07

56:07

Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s. These spheres encompassed activists in the ūman ribu (women’s lib…

1
Lisa Sheryl Jacobson. "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey After Prohibition" (U California Press, 2024) 1:33:04

1M ago1:33:04

1:33:04

In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Dr. Lisa Jacobson reveals in Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition (University of California Press, 2024), alcohol’s respectability and mass market success were neither sudde…

1
Johny Brown, "Corpse Flower" (Skill, 2024) 40:49

1M ago40:49

40:49

From the frontman of Band of Holy Joy, Johny Brown, Corpse Flower (Skill, 2024), is a long-form prose poem that shares Brown's journey through one of the most challenging times in his life. Released as a multimedia project, Corpse Flower includes not only Brown's book but the music and reading that goes along with it. Moving from dark to light and …

1
Christine M. Larson, "Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success" (Princeton UP, 2024) 50:10

1M ago50:10

50:10

As writers, musicians, online content creators, and other independent workers fight for better labor terms, romance authors offer a powerful example—and a cautionary tale—about self-organization and mutual aid in the digital economy. In Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success (Princeton Univ…

1
Vincent Haddad, "The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023" (Lever Press, 2024) 1:09:57

1M ago1:09:57

1:09:57

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detr…

1
Randy Fertel, "Winging It: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of AI & Trump" (Spring, 2024) 44:00

1M ago44:00

44:00

Winging It: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of AI & Trump (Spring, 2024) is Randy Fertel’s third book, his second on improvisation. Creating something impromptu and without effort challenges our assumption that everything of value depends upon long study, tradition, and hard work. Improvisation comes to disrupt all that. The gesture all improvis…

1
Scott Huver, "Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210" (Post Hill Press, 2024) 52:30

1M ago52:30

52:30

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that made headlines, scandals that engulfed Hollywood legends, and more strange-but-true tales that could only happen in the 90210. Beverly Hills Noir chronicles an assortment of jaw-dropping true crime storie…

1
Jeremy Dauber, "American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond" (Algonquin Books, 2024) 1:11:22

1M ago1:11:22

1:11:22

From the acclaimed author of American Comics comes a sweeping and entertaining narrative that details the rise and enduring grip of horror in American literature, and, ultimately, culture—from the taut, terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the grisly, lingering films of Jordan Peele America is held captive by horror stories. They flicker on the…

1
Julien Mailland, "The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry" (MIT Press, 2024) 40:39

1M ago40:39

40:39

A guide to the fascinating legal history of the videogame industry, written for nonlawyers. Why did a judge recall FIFA 15, a nonviolent soccer game, from French shelves in 2014? Why was Vodka Drunkenski, a character in Nintendo-Japan’s Punch-Out!, renamed Soda Popinski in the US and then in Western Europe, where the pun made no sense? Why was a Du…

1
Matthew S. Smith, "EverQuest" (Boss Fight Books, 2024) 38:29

1M ago38:29

38:29

“You’re in our world now.” This bold tagline led Sony’s 1999 ad blitz for EverQuest (Boss Fight Books, 2024), the year’s most anticipated massively multiplayer game. Though just five words long, it challenged players to live in a virtual world beyond anything they’d experienced before—and delivered. The game that proved the MMORPG’s potential, Ever…

1
Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman, "Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie®" (MIT Press, 2024) 35:27

2M ago35:27

35:27

The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry. Astrosmash, Snafu, Star Strike, Utopia—do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogam…

1
A. L. McClanan, "Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art" (Reaktion, 2024) 46:28

2M ago46:28

46:28

A. L. McClanan's Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art (Reaktion, 2024) is a fascinating exploration of the mythical creature's many depictions in human culture. Drawing on a wealth of historical and literary sources, this book shows how the griffin has captured the imagination of people for over 5,000 years, representing power…

1
Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024) 48:39

2M ago48:39

48:39

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State (Penn State University Pr…

1
Leah Kardos, "Kate Bush's Hounds of Love" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 1:02:10

2M ago1:02:10

1:02:10

Hounds Of Love invites you to not only listen, but to cross the boundaries of sensory experience into realms of imagination and possibility. Side A spawned four Top 40 hit singles in the UK, 'Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)', 'Cloudbusting', 'Hounds of Love' and 'The Big Sky', some of the best-loved and most enduring compositions in Bush's c…

1
Victoria Sturtevant, "It's All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy" (U Texas Press, 2024) 54:15

2M ago54:15

54:15

Victoria Sturtevant's It’s All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy (University of Texas Press, 2024) is about how changing depictions of pregnancy in comedy from the start of the twentieth century to the present show an evolution in attitudes toward women’s reproductive roles and rights. Some of the most groundbreaking…

1
Toby Bennett, "Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 49:23

2M ago49:23

49:23

How does the music industry actually work? In Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out Toby Bennett, a Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture & Organisation in the School of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster offers a deep ethnography of everyday life in a contemporary recor…

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Joy White, "Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid" (Repeater, 2024) 35:07

2M ago35:07

35:07

What happened to culture in 2020? In Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid (Repeater, 2024), Joy White, a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire, explores the impact of Covid, along with social, community and artistic responses. The book ranges widely, including comparative analysis of the UK and…

1
Sam Langsdale, "Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics" (U Texas Press, 2024) 56:46

2M ago56:46

56:46

It’s no secret that superhero comics and their related media perpetuate a model of a straight, white, male hero at the expense of representing women and other minorities, but other narratives exist. Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sam Langsdale recognizes that…

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Seth Rogovoy, "Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:12:59

2M ago1:12:59

1:12:59

Seth Rogovoy's latest book for Oxford University Press is called Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2024). Often, biographies of musicians put the story of the subject’s life front and center, letting the music recede into the background. For a musician like George Harrison, this would be a mistake. Georg…

1
Nick Butler, "The Trouble with Jokes: Humour and Offensiveness in Contemporary Culture and Politics" (Policy Press, 2023) 33:45

2M ago33:45

33:45

In this podcast, Nick Butler explores humour's complex and often controversial role in shaping modern political discourse, examining how jokes can challenge and reinforce power structures. Whether you're interested in the intersection of humour and politics or curious about the cultural implications of what’s considered "offensive," this conversati…

1
Veronica Keller and Sabrina Mittermeier, "From Broadway to the Bronx: New York City’s History through Song" (Intellect, 2024) 56:40

2M ago56:40

56:40

From Broadway to the Bronx: New York City’s History through Song (Intellect, 2024) tells the history of New York City in song across a variety of different genres that the city has been home to and instrumental in developing, covering everything from early twentieth-century sheet music to Broadway’s musical theater, hip-hop, disco, punk, dancehall,…

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David Suisman, "Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:05:03

2M ago1:05:03

1:05:03

In his new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of the America's Soldiers (University of Chicago Press, 2024), David Suisman shows that the US military has deep and multilayered investment in music. It employs thousands of musicians, whose music creates communal norms and identities. Music also helps soldiers to grapple with the realities …

1
Travis A. Weisse, "Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness" (UNC Press, 2024) 53:09

2M ago53:09

53:09

In Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) Dr. Travis A. Weisse tells a new history of modern diets in America that goes beyond the familiar narrative of the nation's collective failure to lose weight. By exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients' frus…

1
Mimi Okabe, "Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan’s Lost Generation" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 25:22

2M ago25:22

25:22

Little is known about the boy detective in Japanese detective fiction despite his popularity. Who is he, and what mysteries does he unveil about cultural understandings of youth in Japanese society? Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan’s Lost Generation (Bloomsbury, 2023) answers these questions by exploring the figure of the shon…

1
Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024) 47:13

2M ago47:13

47:13

A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commercially produced birds. In this brief book, bestselling author Peter Singer tells their story—and, unfortunately, it’s not a happy one. Along the way, he also offers a brief history of the turkey and its…

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Shalini Kakar, "Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) 46:55

2M ago46:55

46:55

Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) examines how fans worship film stars as deities. Focusing on temples dedicated to Bollywood (Hindi cinema) stars and the artifacts produced by Hindi and Tamil cinema fans, Shalini Kakar illustrates how the fan constru…

1
Vivian Asimos, "Cosplay and the Dressing of Identity" (Reaktion, 2024) 51:14

2M ago51:14

51:14

Cosplay, born from the fusion of ‘costume’ and ‘play’, transcends mere dress-up by transforming enthusiasts of TV shows, movies, books or video games into living embodiments of their cherished characters. Cosplay and the Dressing of Identity (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Vivian Asimos is a close exploration of the vibrant world of cosplay, showing what m…

1
Benjamin Barson, "Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons" (Wesleyan UP, 2024) 1:07:44

2M ago1:07:44

1:07:44

Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons (Wesleyan UP, 2024) recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from b…

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Connie DeNave, "The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass" (2023) 54:15

2M ago54:15

54:15

In The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass Ceiling (2023), Connie DeNave shares her experiences in the public relations world during the British Invasion and the beginning of rock-n-roll marketing. Born in Brooklyn, New York, DeNave graduated from Hunter College and found herself with no job skills. Throughout the mid-1950s to the 1980s, …

1
Anthony Kwame Harrison on Cassette Tapes and Hip Hop Culture 1:59:32

2M ago1:59:32

1:59:32

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Kwame Harrison, Alumni Distinguished Professor and Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. Harrison records and performs under the moniker “Mad Squirrel” and has co-founded two groups—the San-Francisco-based Forest Fires Collective and Washington DC’s The Acorns—as well as releasing various solo projec…

1
Karen M. Dunak, "Our Jackie: Public Claims on a Private Life" (NYU Press, 2024) 37:59

2M ago37:59

37:59

When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today. Drawing on a range of so…

1
Erin Lee Mock, "Changed Men: Veterans in American Popular Culture after World War II" (U Virginia Press, 2024) 1:08:02

2M ago1:08:02

1:08:02

Millions of GIs returned from overseas in 1945. A generation of men who had left their families and had learned to kill and to quickly dispatch sexual urges were rapidly reintegrated into civilian life, told to put the war behind them with cheer and confidence. Many veterans struggled, openly or privately, with this transition. Others in society wo…

1
Elsie Walker, "Life 24x a Second: Cinema, Selfhood, and Society" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:05:43

3M ago1:05:43

1:05:43

Life 24x a Second: Cinema, Selfhood, and Society (Oxford UP, 2023) highlights the life-sustaining and life-affirming power of cinema. Author Elsie Walker pays particular attention to pedagogical practice and students' reflections on what the study of cinema has given to their lives. This book provides multiple perspectives on cinema that matters fo…

1
David Shoemaker, "Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 53:57

3M ago53:57

53:57

What good is a good sense of humour especially when the humour may be ethically questionable? Although humour seems a valuable part of a good conversation and indeed a good life, jokes have never seemed more morally problematic than they do now. How can we then evaluate quips, gibes, pranks, teasing, light mockery, sarcasm when they can all too oft…

1
Hunter Hargraves, "Uncomfortable Television" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:23:47

3M ago1:23:47

1:23:47

From The Wire to Intervention to Girls, postmillennial American television has dazzled audiences with novelistic seriality and cinematic aesthetics. Yet this television is also more perverse: it bombards audiences with misogynistic and racialized violence, graphic sex, substance abuse, unlikeable protagonists, and the extraordinary exploitation of …

1
Sarah Cleary, "The Myth of Harm: Horror, Censorship and the Child" (Bloomsbury, 2022) 58:43

3M ago58:43

58:43

The horror genre has endured a long and controversial success within popular culture. Fraught with accusations pertaining to its alleged ability to harm and corrupt young people and indeed society as a whole, the genre is constantly under pressure to suppress that which has made it so popular to begin with - its ability to frighten and generate dis…

1
Gabe Durham, "Bible Adventures" (Boss Fight Books, 2015) 29:15

3M ago29:15

29:15

In the beginning, a small unlicensed game development company was hit with divine inspiration: They could make a lot of money (and escape the wrath of Nintendo) by creating games for Christians. With the release of the 1990 NES platformer Bible Adventures, the developers saw what they had made, and it was good. Or, at least, good enough. Based on e…

1
Seth E. Jenny et al., "Routledge Handbook of Esports" (Routledge, 2024) 35:37

3M ago35:37

35:37

The Routledge Handbook of Esports (Routledge, 2024) offers the first fully comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of esports, one of the fastest growing sectors of the contemporary sports and entertainment industries. Global in coverage, the book emphasizes the multifaceted nature of esports and explores the most pressing issues defining the compet…

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