New Books in Popular Culture

Philip Roth, celebrated novelist, reads closing passages from Nemesis. Steven Zipperstein, historian of Jewish culture, probes community and solitude. Igor Webb, literature scholar, examines narrative voice and plague-literature links. Bernard Avishai, moral philosopher and commentator, compares Nemesis to classic plague narratives and philosophical dilemmas. They discuss fate, duty, and the novel’s place in Roth’s later work.

Carlin Wing, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Scripps College and author of Bounce, traces bouncing balls through sports, animation, and computing. She explores why bounce reframes game histories. Short, lively conversations hit tennis, Ulama, FIFA/EA Sports FC, ball visibility in broadcasts, and the textures of bounce that shape bodies and spectacle.

Austin McCoy, Assistant Professor of History at West Virginia University and author of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age, traces De La Soul’s cultural revolution. He explains the DAISY concept and the group’s aesthetic risks. He shares new archival findings, mixes memoir with scholarship, and debates algorithms versus mixtape curation.

Dr. Dana A. Williams, Howard professor and dean who studies African American literature, presents Toni Morrison as a transformative editor. She traces Morrison’s tenure at Random House, her work shaping writers like Toni Cade Bambara and Lucille Clifton, and the archival detective work behind the book. Short anecdotes and publishing-world stories bring this lesser-known side of a cultural icon to life.

Glen Oglaza, award-winning TV news reporter and poet, reflects on decades at ITN and Sky News. He revisits major moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dunblane and the miners' strike. Short, vivid stories explore life on call, newsroom logistics, traumatic reporting and the turn to poetry in later years.

Henry Sapoznik, award-winning musicologist and founder of the YIVO Sound Archives, guides listeners through a century of Yiddish New York. He explores theaters, music, eateries, architecture, crime, and Black-Jewish cultural interactions. Short, lively stories reveal theatrical restaurateurs, knish culture, lost skyscrapers, radio pioneers, and unexpected archival finds.

Given the sometimes extraordinary politicization of culture, it is surprising that Sesame Street has gained acceptance and legitimacy in more than fifty countries. Sesame Street's global success raises two questions. First, how does a US icon like Sesame Street spread around the world, gaining acceptance as a local cultural product? Second, how does the nonprofit that created it, Sesame Workshop, and its partners around the world navigate cultural differences, manage conflicts, and construct shared collective representations to create Sesame Street programs that resonate with local audiences? In Sesame Street Around the World: Culture, Politics, and Transnational Organizational Partnerships (Oxford UP, 2025), Dr. Tamara Kay answers these questions using data from seven years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork and 200 in-depth interviews with Sesame Workshop staff and international partners-including their real-time interactions-from seventeen countries within four regions around the world. Dr. Kay argues that Sesame Workshop's secret is its engagement in coproduction, meaning it works with partners as a transnational team to create local Sesame Street programs together. Through coproduction, Sesame Workshop and its partners create new collective identities by constructing value to align their interests and exchanging complex cultural knowledge to both customize and build alliances. She traces the successive processes of coproduction, beginning with the imagination of the cultural product, to its disassembly, reconstitution, and dissemination. Coproduction privileges the creation of new knowledge that emerges from transnational interaction, and uses that new knowledge to create a hybrid cultural product. The Sesame Street case grapples with and illuminates culture in transnational interaction, providing insight into a range of other transnational organizational partnerships and different kinds of hybrid cultural products. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Michael James Roberts, sociology professor and editor; Kristin Lawler, surfing studies scholar and editor; Jarrett Rose, community health researcher exploring psychedelics in surf culture. They discuss how skateboarding joined surf politics after 2020 protests. They trace surfing’s anti-work rhythms, skateboarding as urban resistance, and psychedelics’ role in shaping surf consciousness.

Dr. Jonathan Hollins, a British veterinary surgeon with four decades of experience based on St. Helena, tells wild tales from the South Atlantic islands. He recounts nursing a 200-year-old tortoise back to life, relocating reindeer with clever baiting, and battling invasive species and dangerous wildlife across remote, rugged landscapes.

Rachel Walther, film historian and author of Born to Lose, mines archives to trace Dog Day Afternoon’s true-crime origins and cultural afterlife. She recounts the 1972 Brooklyn robbery, Hollywood’s path to adaptation, casting choices like Pacino and Cazale, and Sidney Lumet’s rehearsal style. She also explores portrayals of Leon/Liz, the film’s 1970s context, and why the story still matters today.