Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchKatherine Fusco, "Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Episode 1457
We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a n…
1 year, 2 months ago
Cary Baker, "Down On The Corner: Adventures in Busking & Street Music" (Jawbone Press, 2025)
Episode 1454
This is the story of music performed on the streets, in subways, in parks, in schoolyards, on the back of flatbed trucks, and beyond, from the 1920s …
1 year, 2 months ago
Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, "Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
Episode 1455
Claire McCardell forever changed fashion—and most importantly, the lives of women. She shattered cultural norms around women’s clothes, and today muc…
1 year, 2 months ago
Daniel Horowitz, "Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America" (Duke UP, 2025)
Episode 1456
From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictiona…
1 year, 2 months ago
Alien: Earth Episode Analysis: Metamorphosis and Observation
Episode 1453
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of the FX series Alien: Earth with episode 3, “Metamorphosis” and episode 4, “Observati…
1 year, 2 months ago
Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U California Press, 2025)
Episode 1452
In Tales of Militant Chemistry (U of California Press, 2025), Alice Lovejoy tells the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and nuc…
1 year, 2 months ago
Cordelia Fine, "Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Episode 1451
Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the w…
1 year, 2 months ago
Pauwke Berkers and Yosha Wijngaarden, "A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
Episode 1450
How does sociology help to explain modern life? In A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong (Routledge, 2025)Pauwke Berkers, a …
1 year, 2 months ago
Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024)
Episode 1449
Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of maki…
1 year, 2 months ago
Kathleen B. Casey, "The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Episode 1448
For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political …
1 year, 2 months ago