New Books in Popular Culture

 A true dark comedy, Zach Cregger’s  Weapons  (2025) combines a satire of suburbia, a study of addiction, and the satisfaction of a fairy tale. The film works so well because it takes its time to develop interesting characters to the point where the viewer occasionally forgets the horror-movie label and is drawn into the human story of regular people trying to cope with terrible eve...

A geopolitical and legal history of the bestselling videogame Tetris—the stunningly successful game that began in a Soviet research lab monitored by the KGB. Tetris—the game that would take the world by storm—was formally introduced to the West in 1987, at a time when Soviet technology exports were minimal and the Berlin Wall was still standing strong. Far from being a capitalist cultural product,...

Our Common Life: Folk Song from the Front Porch to the Concert Hall   (U Illinois Press, 2026) by Stephen Wade is part memoir, part meditation on American culture, and part historical narrative of folk music. Wade centers this book around individual musicians and songs that provide a specificity to his discussion that is different from a typical historical survey. These individuals and their...

Jeremy Harte, President of the Folklore Society, joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in Landscape and Legend (Reaktion, 2026). The book uncovers the deep folklore of Britain's buried riches, fears, and desires. From haunted barrows to ruined castles, Britain's landscape is rich with tales of hidden treasure--stories not just of gold, but of ghosts, curses,...

It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and the New York Times has published its list of the best 100 television shows of the 21st Century. We react to this list, ponder what is underrated, overrated, and completely snubbed, and question the value of grand lists in an age of micro-cultures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of perso...

How did Anita O'Day-the legendary jazz singer who, along with Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, and Stan Getz, led the so-called "cool school" of modern jazz-define cool? "That means doing everything that you like to do and getting away with it, you dig?" Her traits included a frosted tone with a dash of vinegar; a blithe, airy rhythmic sense that could make almost any band swing; an ultra-...

When the Taiwanese political drama Wave Makers appeared in April 2023, few anticipated its impact beyond the screen. Within weeks, survivors in politics, the media, academia and the arts began sharing experiences of sexual harassment and assault, giving momentum to Taiwan’s long-delayed #MeToo movement.  XinLing Li’s new book, Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan: Media, Empathy, and...

Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge. Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of...

A gripping exposé of deception, cult power, and the long shadow of Carlos Castaneda, the man behind the biggest literary hoax of the twentieth century.  Twenty years in the making, American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda (OR Books, 2026) unravels the story of the secretive faux-anthropologist who pulled off one of the greatest literary hoaxes in modern history. Both an invest...

The Pop Culture Professors revisit the pilot of The Leftovers, which ran on HBO from 2014-2017. How does this grief-drenched story about a world in ontological crisis play today, in 2026?  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

High in the Lebanese mountains above Beirut sits Beit Trad, an eighteenth-century family home that Sarah Trad transformed into a guesthouse devoted to Levantine hospitality. The house brings together family history, Lebanese design, food, and the belief that welcoming someone into your home is an essential part of life.  In A House in the Lebanese Mountains: Recipes & Stories from Beit T...

Why we crave enjoyment from news, how our news use divides us, and what we can do to create better news and more informed citizens. TikTok. Short-form reels. Late-night TV monologues. Podcasts. The way news is delivered has changed dramatically and so has the way we consume it. Now, we no longer look to the news just to learn and be informed; we expect enjoyment as well. In Enjoyment Is Breaking N...

As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots (1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and storyteller Lucas L. Johnson II reflects on the enduring legacy of Haley’s work through the voices of those it continues to move, including scholars, artists, genealogists, students, and original cast members like LeVar Burton and Ben Vereen....

Love and Terror, The Helter Skelter History of the Manson Murders (Verso, 2026) is the most recent addition to the hundreds of books and films devoted to the killings committed by Charlie Manson’s followers in Los Angeles in August 1969. What is different about this work is that the author Claudia Verhoeven is an intellectual historian whose previous book was on a Russian terrorist who tried to as...

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines. Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive”—the street music of South Africa—kept him company. Lent to...

Stephen Lee Naish's Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute (Bloomsbury, 2026), in Bloomsbury's Timecodes Series, is a detailed, minute-by-minute critical exploration of Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 action film "Point Break". Moving sequentially through the film's two-hour runtime, the book blends formal analysis, cultural history and theory, action genre study, and personal reflection and interpretation....

Hear "American Girl" or "Born in the U.S.A." and, like it or not, chances are you begin to hum along. The soundtrack of grocery stores, pool halls, bowling alleys, flea markets, chain restaurants, drug stores, and political rallies--heartland rock, while beloved by some and derided by others, is inescapable even today. As rollicking as the music it describes, acclaimed music critic Erin Osmon's Wo...

Emily Charlotte's second Varsity Novel book Catching Feelings (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2026) follows Sabrina and her first rule for a drama-free senior year? Don’t fall for the mysterious new football transfer. When Sabrina and Tyler meet by accident outside (okay, inside) the football locker rooms, it’s not a big deal. After a rocky summer, Sabrina is focused on leading the Spirit Committee...

A comedy of frustration and a look at how the media takes and then takes back one’s fifteen minutes of fame, Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is on of Sidney Lumet’s best films with one of Al Pacino’s best performances. Sonny wants to be Lee Marvin but acts more like Don Knotts; he wants to be a folk hero, but becomes more like a meme; he has a romance with the media and finds that his mistress is fickle....

Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand of Taiwan’s popular cinema. Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Scre...

Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand of Taiwan’s popular cinema. Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Scre...

Robyn Hitchcock' s second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books, 2026), explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative output. Stranded in the Future is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It's about obsession, and obsessive behavior. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett...

The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas. On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theaters. Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, the movie originally called The Star Wars quickly drew blocks-long lines, bursting box-office records...

Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy (University of Chicago Press, 2026) is a surprising look at the big business of owning small businesses and what America's franchise economy means for its workers. Walk into a McDonald's anywhere in the United States, and it will be identical to every other McDonald's in the country. Yet, that particular store is almost certainly...

In this episode, J. M. Tyree, the editor of Film Quarterly discusses a dossier of articles about David’s Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive on its 25th anniversary with dossier editor Eileen G’Sell. Film Quarterly ( FQ ) is published four times a year by the University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information, please visit FQ ’s webs...