New Books in Popular Culture

Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-expanding lineup of niche music channels and exclusive celebrity-hosted programming. Brian Fauteux's Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age (University of California Press, 2025) is the first book to explore how satellite radio bridges legacy broadcast music radio and streaming platforms, serving as both precursor and integral player in today's streaming media environment. Arguing for the ongoing significance of radio in the digital age and the pernicious effects of monopoly power on the vibrancy of contemporary music industries, Music in Orbit offers essential context for the serious problems now facing working musicians, music consumers, and music communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In the tenth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell expands upon previous episodes to consider the various musical styles that emerged in New York City during the Seventies alongside punk rock. In dialogue with music critic Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011), and Lou Reed: King of New York (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2023) we contextualize cultural creators in the city during the decade who spurred a tide of experimental music including hip-hop, salsa, techno, and new styles of jazz within the context of New York City’s fiscal crisis.Will Hermes is a senior critic for Rolling Stone and a longtime contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His work turns up periodically in The New York Times; he has also written for Spin, Slate, Salon, The Believer, the Village Voice, City Pages, The Windy City Times, and other publications. He co-edited SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music (Crown/Three Rivers, 2006) with Sia Michel, and his work has appeared in the Da Capo Best Music Writing series.Contact Soundscapes NYC Here Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron Kunzelman (Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, USA) argues that the video game medium is centered on the evaluation and production of possible futures by following video game studies, media philosophy, and science fiction studies to their furthest reaches. Claiming that the best way to understand games is through rigorous formal analysis of their aesthetic strategies and the cultural context those strategies emerge from, Kunzelman investigates a diverse array of games like The Last of Us, VA-11 Hall-A, and Civilization VI in order to explore what science fiction video games can tell us about their genres, their ways of speculating, and how the medium of the video game does (or does not) direct us down experiential pathways that are both oppressive and liberatory. Taking a multidisciplinary look at these games, The World is Born From Zero offers a unique theorization of science fiction games that provides both science fiction studies and video game studies with new tools for thinking how this medium and mode inform each other. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores (Random House, 2025) explores these spaces, chronicling these Black bookstore’s past and present lives. Combining narrative prose, eye-catching photography, one-on-one interviews, original essays, and specially curated poetry, Prose to the People is a reader’s road trip companion to the world of Black books. Thoughtfully curated by writer and Black bookstore owner Katie Mitchell, Prose to the People is a must-have addition to the shelves of anyone who loves book culture and Black history. Though not a definitive guide, this dynamic book centers profiles of over fifty Black bookstores from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West Coast, complete with stunning original and archival photography. Interspersed throughout are essays, poems, and interviews by New York Times bestsellers Kiese Laymon, Rio Cortez, Pearl Cleage, and many more journalists, activists, authors, academics, and poets that offer deeper perspectives on these bookstores’ role throughout the diaspora. Complete with a foreword by world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, Prose to the People is a beautiful tribute to these vital pillars of the Black community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Women have been central to the evolution of dance music culture since its earliest days, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. From Régine Zylberberg's pioneering work in creating the modern discotheque in 1950s Paris to Sharon White's trailblazing presence at New York's legendary venues in the 1970s, female DJs have shaped dance floors worldwide. Sharon White broke barriers as a Black queer radio DJ, finding her way into the booth at the Paradise Garage in 1975. She became the first female DJ to play at the revered Saint club and spun records at Studio 54. Her influence can be seen in later pioneers like London's Smokin' Jo, who emerged from the British acid house scene to become one of England's most celebrated DJs and the only woman to be awarded DJ of the Year in DJ Magazine's Top 100. In the second episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares welcome DJ, academic, and journalist Lulu Le Vay to explore the often-untold stories of women in dance music culture. Le Vay, who holds a PhD in Sociology from Goldsmiths and performs as DJ Lulu Levan, represents a new generation of "PhDJs" combining academic inquiry with dance floor experience. From writing for publications like The Face, i-D, and The Guardian to spinning at festivals like Lovebox and Bestival, she documents club culture from multiple perspectives. Currently working on a documentary about women DJs with director Sonja Phillips, Le Vay is also part of Love Underground, a new collaboration with producer Tommy D whose new single "The Journey Part 1" is out on Chillifunk records. Through her podcast Where Love Lives and her work preserving dance music history, Le Vay continues celebrating the women who built the foundations of club culture. Contact Soundscapes NYC Here Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19 pandemic and life in lockdown. His sense of dread, and anxiety about his state of health, were experiences shared with millions of others across the world. For author Richard Scheib, already committed to writing a book about plagues and pandemics in popular culture, Covid-19 felt like a perverse twist of fate. Media depictions of deadly contagions had, to this point, been speculative and often off the mark; his book takes an in-depth look at what filmmakers imagined would happen and contrasts it with the reality. International in scope, A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic examines films in a wide variety of genres, from the silent era to the present day. Black Death, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu -- it explores fictionalized accounts of plague and pestilence such as box-office hit Outbreak (1995), as well as documentary treatments of real-life incidents. Whether the threats depicted have a basis in reality -- the biowarfare of the Cold War era, for instance -- or are, like zombies and vampires, more fantastical, Scheib demonstrates how the fear of contagion has provided a wealth of inspiration for the big and small screen. In addition to his work on the pandemic, Scheib runs Moria Reviews where he posts reviews for horror, science fiction, and fantasy films.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a pop music critic at the New York Times from 2000-2008, and has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since then. His first book, just released on Penguin, is called Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. The book refracts the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years through the big genres that have defined and dominated it—rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which.Franz Nicolay is a musician and writer living in New York's Hudson Valley. His first book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar, was named a "Season's Best Travel Book" by The New York Times. Buzzfeed called his second book, Someone Should Pay for Your Pain, "a knockout fiction debut." He teaches at Bard College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

In the ninth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell traces the trans-Atlantic movement of artists associated with punk culture in New York and London. In conversation with British cultural historian Matt Worley, we follow New York-based artists like Jayne (née Wayne) County, Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, and others to the U.K. where they embedded themselves in a growing music-based subculture. As the punk aesthetic expanded internationally it diversified in form incorporating elements of fashion, literature, and cinema like Derek Jarman’s apocalyptic masterpiece JUBILEE (1978). Matt Worley is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Reading and author of numerous books that cover modern British history with a special focus on music and the British Labor movement. His book No Future: Punk, Politics and British Your Culture, 1976-1984 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explores the evolution of punk as a fashion, a musical form, an attitude, and an overall aesthetic. Setting punk culture against a backdrop of social fragmentation, violence, high unemployment, and socio-economic change, Worley recaptures punk's anarchic force as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could reject, revolt, and re-invent.Contact Soundscapes NYC Here Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Triauna Carey, author of 'The Revolution Will Be Spotified', dives into how popular music serves as a powerful rhetorical tool for social resistance. She discusses the impact of songs like Childish Gambino's "This Is America" on cultural issues and activism. Carey shares insights from her decade-long research on music's evolution and its role in shaping artist-fan dynamics. Topics include body positivity in music, the unique resistance found in rap and hip-hop, and the interplay between music and visuals in conveying complex societal messages.

The first critical biography of iconic musician Alanis Morissette, creator of Jagged Little Pill. The 1990s hardly saw a bigger hit than Jagged Little Pill. Alanis Morissette's defining album won Grammys, dominated the Billboard charts, and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It left a deep mark on the psyches of countless listeners. Three decades later, Megan Volpert checks in with Morissette, probing her rich and varied post-JLP career and bearing feminist witness to the existential anger that ties her recent work to enduring classics like "You Oughta Know," "One Hand in My Pocket," and "Ironic." Why Alanis Morissette Matters (UT Press, 2025) builds a bridge from Jagged Little Pill to the fascinating life and subtle intellect of its creator, exploring how the artist's philosophical interests and personal journey are reflected in each track. Morissette's struggles with censorship, mental health challenges, and Catholicism; her queer allyship, spiritual skepticism, zealous fandom, and philanthropic passions--all are carefully observed by a critic whose own life was touched by Jagged Little Pill. In the album's wake, Morissette has evolved as an artist and global citizen. With sensitivity and a profound love for the music, Volpert guides readers through the case for Morissette's enduring cultural relevance and creative impact. Megan Volpert is the author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists and an American Library Association honoree. She is the author of Straight Into Darkness: Tom Petty as Rock Mystic and she won Georgia Author of the Year for Boss Broad. She teaches at Kennesaw State and Reinhardt Universities. Megan Volpert on Facebook. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming book is U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, October 2025). Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture