Pop Literacy
93 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 11 ratingsYour biweekly pop culture book club.
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The Scoop on Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions with Author and Professor Francesca T. Royster
January 11, 2023 13:42 - 1 hour - 82.6 MBFrancesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions is a vital read that helps us to understand how country music got whitewashed, stripping it of its distinctly African American origins in slavery and its aftermath, and shows us how embracing that history will only enrich the form. Royster weaves Black, queer, and feminist scholarship into her analysis, but even more compellingly, she brings her own experiences as a Black, queer country fan to bear on her exploration of Bl...
Michael Ausiello and the Making of Spoiler Alert
December 21, 2022 13:28 - 1 hour - 90.1 MBTV journalist Michael Ausiello wrote a 2017 memoir called Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies that detailed his 13-year relationship with his husband Kit Cowan, who, in a devastating turn, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and, as the title tells us, died. Not to sound jaded, but there are a lot of memoirs about cancer and death. This book, however, is special because it’s so specific and true and willing to get into the gory details—the goriest being the details of their living, breathing, changi...
Life’s Work: A Memoir, from One of TV’s All-Time Greatest Writers
November 30, 2022 05:00 - 43 minutes - 60 MBConsider this a Pop Literacy year-end gift: the recommendation of a deeply engrossing read for the average book fan, an extra fantastic read for writers of all mediums and genres, and a round-up of some of the finest dramas to ever unfold on the small screen. All those things come courtesy of Life’s Work: A Memoir, the personal and professional autobiography – and unofficial writing how-to – from Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Deadwood creator and writer David Milch. Milch, also a former Y...
And It All Started with The Big Bang (Theory)
November 17, 2022 15:13 - 51 minutes - 70.8 MBThe Big Bang Theory ran for 12 seasons, 279 episodes, on CBS, and continues to be a pop culture presence with its frequent re-airings on cable, permanent home on HBO Max, and its spin-off life with the CBS hit Young Sheldon. With its spot in television history firmly secured, the series was due for a comprehensive chronicle of its success, and journalist and author Jessica Radloff’s New York Times bestseller The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series is just wha...
Black Hollywood with Carell Augustus
November 02, 2022 04:00 - 59 minutes - 81.6 MBCarell Augustus’s brilliant and beautiful photography book Black Hollywood reimagines, and restages, iconic Hollywood moments from the likes of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Singin’ in the Rain, and Mission Impossible with Black entertainers at their center. The work allows Black people to see themselves as part of the fabric of Hollywood history and also inherently questions American entertainment’s shameful history of erasing and sidelining people of color. The photos include Vanessa L. Williams...
The Tragedy and Triumph of George Michael, with James Gavin
October 18, 2022 21:22 - 1 hour - 110 MBJames Gavin’s stunning biography of pop star George Michael—simply entitled George Michael: A Life—dives deep into an enigmatic, charismatic figure who dominated pop music in the 1980s and ‘90s, but never seemed to find peace and happiness. James’s thorough and riveting account of Michael’s life traces how his battles with his own sexuality, his larger-than-life image, tabloid taunting, and his massive insecurities kept him from fully embracing his extraordinary talent and accomplishments....
Summer Rerun | The ‘Jenny from the Block’ Video: A Historical Analysis
August 02, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 133 MBThe episode originally aired July 23, 2019. Jennifer Lopez turns 50 this month and is at the top of her game: dancing her way through an international tour, engaged to baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez, and managing to be one of the few massive pop stars with lots of loyal fans and relatively few haters. But it wasn’t always thus. Her career hit a precarious point in 2002—when, yes, she was churning out hits, but the tabloids were constantly on her tail and media coverage spewed vitriolic ...
Summer Rerun | Will 1990s Nostalgia Always Be the Best Nostalgia?
July 19, 2022 04:00 - 50 minutes - 48 MBThis episode originally aired March 4, 2019. It was the decade of “The Macarena,” the O.J. Simpson trial, the teen pop boom, VHS tapes, and Nintendo. It was also before 9/11 and Columbine, a time when the nation hung on every lurid detail of the president’s sex life and the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan feud. Though 2000s nostalgia is on the way—as we discussed previously—it’s hard to let go of our nostalgia for what looks like our last relatively innocent decade from here. Is there somethi...
Summer Rerun | The State of the Boy Band
July 05, 2022 04:00 - 54 minutes - 74.4 MBThis episode originally aired April 8, 2019 Boy bands as we know them have been around since New Edition got together in 1978—and now, they’re bigger than ever, thanks to online fandom. New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, O-Town, 98 Degrees, and Boyz II Men are among the groups who have recently been on tour or recorded new music. And the boy band legacy is evident in two recent developments: An excellent new YouTube Originals documentary, “The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story,” te...
Summer Rerun | 2000s Nostalgia: Yes, It’s Happening
June 21, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 125 MBThis episode originally aired February 19, 2019. AOL Instant Messenger, the first iPods, Paris Hilton, emo, Mean Girls, The O.C., low-rise jeans… Now that it’s 2019, it’s time to prepare for a wave of 2000s nostalgia. Pop Literacy host Jennifer Keishin Armstrong is joined by guest co-host Andrea Bartz, author of the forthcoming 2009 nostalgia novel The Lost Night, to discuss what we miss most about the 2000s, from MySpace to the very first memes, The Osbournes to the rise of the Brooklyn h...
Summer Rerun | BTS for Beginners
June 07, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour - 82.6 MBThis episode originally aired April 16, 2019. After years of massive popularity around the world, Korean boy band BTS is breaking through to the top of mainstream American culture. They just dropped a new album (Map of the Soul: Persona), which includes the single “Boy with Luv,” featuring Halsey; and they played Saturday Night Live, a first for a Korean act. They also recently surpassed 5 billion streams on Spotify. All of this has many Americans wondering what, exactly, is going on with...
The Mystery of the Man Who Invented Movies, Then Disappeared, with Paul Fischer
May 03, 2022 15:03 - 1 hour - 104 MBThomas Edison and the French Lumiere brothers have widely been credited with inventing motion pictures, but there’s another strong contender for the distinction: Louis LePrince, a driven inventor who dedicated every moment of his life and most of his money to making moving pictures not only possible but accessible enough to be widely available—and, in the process, to change the world. But he’s never been given proper credit for the feat because, like a character in a movie, he disappeared wi...
The History of Netflix and Bingewatching
April 19, 2022 15:20 - 1 hour - 82.4 MBAsking yourself how you ended up paying for half a dozen streaming entertainment subscriptions every month? There’s a book for that: Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix, entertainment journalists Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski’s insider history on how Netflix started the game with those little red envelopes of DVDs, and just a few short years had us all Netflixing and chilling – and bingeing entire TV series on the regular. As Hayes details, th...
Rethinking the Epic Romance Between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, with Stephen Galloway
April 05, 2022 15:48 - 1 hour - 86.7 MBIn Truly, Madly, author Stephen Galloway explores the tumultuous relationship between two giants of Hollywood’s Golden Age, movie stars Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier, which he calls “the romance of the century.” The dual biography explores the lives of both of these huge personalities, which collided in 1934 when a Leigh’s friend brought her to see Theatre Royal, featuring Olivier—that night, Leigh swore she would marry him. But she was married at the time to someone else, and so was he....
Watching – and Reading – The Andy Warhol Diaries
March 23, 2022 12:03 - 1 hour - 82.8 MBMany of the pop culture devoted among us sadly missed the chance to experience the New York City populated by pop artist and pop culture genius Andy Warhol, filled with brilliant work (solo and collaborations), and exploring the city surrounded by the world’s most famous and infamous and everyone in between. A read of Warhol’s classic posthumously-published book The Andy Warhol Diaries has been an oft-revisited taste of the Warholian experience, and now fans of the artist and his world have ...
The Women of Jenji Kohan with Dani Bethea and Sydney Urbanek
March 08, 2022 15:41 - 1 hour - 82.5 MBThe writer-producer Jenji Kohan has given us some of the best depictions of women on television. Nancy Botwin of Weeds followed a Breaking Bad-like path from suburban widow to druglord. The diverse cast of Orange Is the New Black revolutionized TV with not one, but dozens, of empathetic, flawed, fascinating characters. And GLOW, which followed a scrappy women’s wrestling operation, gave us a women’s sports show unlike any other. The essay collection The Women of Jenji Kohan, edited by Scar...
Hollywood’s Cultural Battle with China
February 15, 2022 14:00 - 1 hour - 109 MBSo, yeah, whatever did happen to Richard Gere’s career? The Golden Globe-winning actor was once everywhere on the big screen, but has been largely MIA for the last few years. Could it have something to do with his ongoing vocal support of Tibetan independence, a stance that has gotten him banned from China? Given China’s importance in Hollywood’s big picture, Wall Street Journal journalist Erich Schwartzel writes in his fascinating new book Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Batt...
Jami Attenberg on the Rise of Brooklyn, the Creative Life, and Boundaries on the Internet
February 01, 2022 05:00 - 1 hour - 91.5 MBNovelist Jami Attenberg’s new memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You takes readers behind the scenes of her creative life, from scraping by in Brooklyn before it became a cultural phenomenon and going on book tour in a station wagon to becoming a bestselling author and finding peace in New Orleans. In this episode, we talk to Jami about the rise of Brooklyn, the freedom of the early internet, the changing book business, and the best dysfunctional families in pop culture. Read more: I Ca...
Remembering Betty White
January 04, 2022 05:00 - 1 hour - 88.4 MBWhen Betty White died on New Year’s Eve, it was a shocker—even though she was 99 years, 11 months, and two weeks old. It seemed impossible to conceive of living in this world without White, who brought us so much joy via a television career that has spanned the entire length of the medium’s history. We talk about the heartrending outpouring of celebrity grief that accompanied the news—including an amazing story involving Steve Martin and Linda Ronstadt—and walk through the highlights of he...
Celebrity Death Culture with Kirthana Ramisetti
December 21, 2021 18:00 - 56 minutes - 77.1 MBThe new novel Dava Shastri’s Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti tells the story of an aging music mogul who plans her own assisted death after a devastating cancer diagnosis—but decides to let news of her passing leak a little early so she can read what she assumes will be her glowing obituaries. Instead, she witnesses the public revelation of some of her darkest secrets. In this episode, we talk to Kirthana about the celebrity death news cycle as well as the deep love of music that informs her ...
Talkin’ the History of Rock Concerts with Marc Myers, the Rock Star of Music Journalists
December 07, 2021 05:00 - 58 minutes - 80.2 MBFrom radios to records and teens with allowances to teens with part-time jobs, the history of the American concert began in earnest with technological and cultural changes after World War II. That history may be shorter than a lot of music fans think. Rock journalist and author Marc Myers recalls that timeline in his unputdownable new book Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There packed with nearly 100 interviews with the musicians, fa...
Marc Myers
December 04, 2021 19:15 - 58 minutes - 80.2 MBLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
What Makes Samuel L. Jackson One Bad Motherfucker, with Gavin Edwards
November 09, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 95.5 MBIt’s hard to imagine a time when Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t the unassailable pinnacle of Hollywood cool, but cool is made, not born. And that’s where Gavin Edwards’ new biography of the actor, Bad Motherfucker, comes in. Edwards charts Jackson’s rise from his southern upbringing to his radicalization at Morehouse College, through his struggles with addiction and, finally, his triumph as the highest-grossing actor of all time. In this episode, we talk to Gavin about the definition of cool, Jack...
The History of 20th Century Fox … Before Disney
October 26, 2021 04:00 - 52 minutes - 72.3 MBDecades before it came under Disney control, 20th Century Fox was one of the most respected, innovative movie studios in Hollywood, under the leadership of legendary, complicated, producer Darryl F. Zanuck. The bad: he was a notorious and habitual user of the casting couch, and he was certainly never mistaken as one of Hollywood’s nice guys on any front. Zanuck did truly love movies, and finding the best ways to tell fantastic stories, and that led to early movie musicals featuring future ...
Lynette Rice on the Backstage Drama at ‘Grey’s Anatomy’—and Why We Keep Watching
October 12, 2021 15:51 - 1 hour - 94.7 MBLynette Rice has covered Grey’s Anatomy from the beginning: as it became a culture-defining phenomenon in the 2000s, as it faced cast meltdowns and blowups, as it cycled through stars, as it killed off McDreamy, and as it aged into an old reliable in an otherwise uncertain network television landscape (18 seasons and counting!). She delves into it all in her oral history How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy. In this episode we talk to Lynette about the show’s heady early da...
Nichole Perkins on the Healing Power of ‘Frasier,’ the Exclusive Whiteness of Brat Pack Movies, and the Complications of Miss Piggy
September 28, 2021 14:12 - 55 minutes - 76.5 MBNichole Perkins knows the power of pop culture: She has seen how Frasier’s Niles Crane inspired her to overcome her own professional hang-ups, how Prince taught her critical lessons about sex, and how Miss Piggy served as both a role model and a cautionary tale about modern femininity. She writes poetically about all of that and more in her essay collection Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be. Writer and poet Saeed Jones said of the collection: “Hear the dark liquor of her laughter r...
Chatting With Daniel Paisner, the Author Who the Stars Share All Their Secrets With
September 14, 2021 17:36 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MBDenzel Washington, Serena Williams, Shark Tank star Daymond John, Mets World Series champ Ron Darling…those are but a few famous names who have entrusted author Daniel Paisner to help tell their personal and professional stories via ghostwritten memoirs. There are few ghostwriters more prolific, and with a more eclectic lineup of subjects, than Paisner, in fact, and that’s one of the many topics we’re thrilled to discuss with him in this episode. We’re also proud to help introduce our Pop ...
Kathleen Collins on Growing Up a TV Junkie in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s and Her Book ‘From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole’
August 17, 2021 14:41 - 1 hour - 84.9 MBTV scholar Kathleen Collins grew up loving television before it was cool—while others fancied themselves sophisticated for digging film and music, she was unapologetically obsessing over Square Pegs. In her book From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole, she shares her nostalgic journey as a kid growing up with a four-channel, cathode-ray set, to her choice to study television as an academic pursuit, and through our national obsession with streaming today. In this conversation, we travel back in...
James Tate Hill on ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ and How Tom Cruise Got Him Through the Hardest Times in His Life
August 03, 2021 13:59 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBJames Tate Hill gradually began losing his sight while still in high school—and worked hard to hide this fact from the world well into adulthood. While he employed more practical tactics like filling his bookshelves with the selections he’d first read on tape or arriving to dates early so whoever he was meeting would have to find him, he also discovered the great conversational—and distracting—possibilities of pop culture. Throw a Tom Cruise, Prince, Golden Girls, or Breakfast Club reference...
‘Clueless’ Star Elisa Donovan on Grief, Loss, and Life in Hollywood
July 20, 2021 13:00 - 51 minutes - 70.5 MBYou know her from roles on Sabrina the Teenage Witch and particularly in Clueless as Cher’s nemesis Amber. Elisa Donovan thought she had her life and career all figured out until her father was diagnosed with cancer at the same time that Sabrina was canceled. In her book Wake Me When You Leave: Love and Encouragement from the Other Side, she tells the story of how, after her father’s death, she began a relationship redemption with him that she never thought possible, via dreams, visitations,...
Getting the Real Scoop on the Real Housewives with Bestselling Author Brian Moylan
July 06, 2021 13:28 - 1 hour - 85.4 MBFrom his clever Vulture.com Real Housewives recaps to his newly launched “The Housewives Institute Bulletin” newsletter, Brian Moylan has certainly earned the nickname bestowed upon him by Kirkus: “The Bard of Real Housewives Drama.” Moylan is with Pop Literacy this episode for a super fun chat about the project that cinched his reality TV literary moniker: The Housewives: The Real Story Behind The Real Housewives, his New York Times bestseller that unfolds Housewives history, and answers al...
Robert McKee Talking Character With the Master of Storytelling
June 24, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 95.4 MBHis books and lectures on storytelling are so iconic that he was portrayed by Brian Cox in the Oscar-winning film Adaptation, and guest starred as himself in an episode of The Simpsons. This week we’re thrilled to chat with Robert McKee about his newest book, Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen. Joining his classics the bestselling Story and Dialogue, this third entry in his trilogy on writing fiction finds McKee sharing his thoughts on how to create comp...
Because He’s Jeff Goldblum with Travis M. Andrews
June 08, 2021 13:26 - 44 minutes - 61.5 MBJeff Goldblum’s career is a unique reflection of our times: He’s a character actor who eschews attention outside of his films, yet he’s more popular than ever, thanks to a quality that can only be described as memeability. He’s also ageless, timeless, and stylish, and prefers magic and jazz to acting, all of which just makes him seem … perpetually cool, whether you spot in him a nearly wordless role in a 1970s film or in blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Independence Day. On this episod...
A Trip to Lilyville with the Great Tovah Feldshuh
May 25, 2021 13:50 - 57 minutes - 79.1 MBPrepare to be entertained, enlightened, and entranced in this week’s episode of Pop Literacy, as we welcome Tony and Emmy-nominated actress and singer Tovah Feldshuh, who talks to us about her engrossing new book Lilyville: Mother, Daughter, and Other Roles I’ve Played. Lilyvilleis part memoir, part ode to Feldshuh’s late mother, Lily, who lived to be 103 years old, and whose complicated relationship with her daughter helped shape Feldshuh into the fierce, thoughtful, loving, and supremely t...
Dawnie Walton’s ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’
May 11, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 84 MBDawnie Walton’s debut novel The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is getting terrific reviews: “Feels truer and more mesmerizing than some true stories. It’s a packed time capsule that doubles as a stick of dynamite,” said The New York Times. “One of the most immersive novels I’ve ever read….This is a thrilling work of polyphony—a first novel, that reads like the work of an old hand,” said Ta-Nehisi Coates. And for good reason. This faux oral history of a ‘70s rock duo undone by a starring role ...
Caroline Kepnes’ You Love Me
April 27, 2021 11:51 - 52 minutes - 72.4 MBShe’s a Pop Literacy returning guest. And though fans of her delicious, Netflix drama-inspiring thriller series of books about handsome stalker Joe Goldberg might not think it possible, we’re telling you: You Love Me, the latest and third book in her Joe series is the best one yet. We’re not spoiling anything major, but in our chat with Caroline, she tells you just enough of the whats and whys to tease this latest adventure – misadventure – with the perpetually lovesick Joe to have us sure t...
Rock Me on the Water: How 1974 Changed Hollywood’s Politics Forever, with Ronald Brownstein
April 13, 2021 04:00 - 46 minutes - 63.4 MBIn 1974, Los Angeles crackled with astonishing creative output: movies such as Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, Shampoo, and Nashville; seminal albums from Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and the Eagles; and the TV series All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and M*A*S*H. Not only were these great works of art, but they also signaled a major shift in Hollywood, from ignoring the political upheaval of the previous decade to reflecting the progressive values a huge, new...
When Women Invented Television
March 30, 2021 14:07 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBWe all know Betty White from her years on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. But decades before she was making us laugh in primetime, White was hosting a daytime TV talk show that saw her improvising more than five hours of programming every day. Yep, she’s not only one of our most beloved funny ladies, she’s also a TV pioneer. She is one of the superstars from the era When Women Invented Television, as Pop Literacy co-host Jennifer Keishin Armstrong chronicles in her fantastic ...
From Immigrant to the Graduate to Hollywood Legend: Mike Nichols, With Mark Harris
March 16, 2021 13:57 - 1 hour - 95.3 MBDirector Mike Nichols lived an extraordinary life: He immigrated from Berlin to America as a young boy in 1939, lost his father at age 12, and was bullied throughout childhood because of a condition that had rendered him permanently hairless. But his difficulties only fueled his rise to comedy, Broadway, and Hollywood success. He became a comedy sensation in his twenties as a duo with Elaine May, then switched to directing theater and won back-to-back Tonys for a run of Neil Simon plays that...
What Happens When People Stop Being Polite: The Real World
March 02, 2021 05:00 - 49 minutes - 68.5 MB“Video Killed the Radio Star,” as the song and video that launched MTV in 1981 told us, and Millennials, among other pop culture deaths they have been accused of, killed the music video star at the end of the TRL era. It was replaced by reality series on MTV … though many current viewers may not know that before reality TV was the thing on MTV, it was most definitely athing – thanks to The Real World. The granddaddy of all MTV reality shows, and a seminal series in all of American reality TV...
The History and Future of Pro Women’s Wrestling with Scarlett Harris
February 16, 2021 16:03 - 56 minutes - 78 MB“To be a women’s wrestling fan, particularly one who patronizes WWE … is to be constantly disappointed,” Scarlett Harris writes in her book-length critical essay A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. In this episode, Harris walks us through some of that harrowingly sexist history—God help us, “bra and panty matches”!—which is also full of women whose determination, ambition, and athletic prowess have inspired generations of gir...
Hoopin’ It Up with Pete Croatto and the History of the Modern NBA
February 02, 2021 05:00 - 57 minutes - 53.7 MB“The narrative of the NBA’s rise to become arguably the world’s second-most popular sport is frequently summed up as a rapid-fire afterthought: BirdMagicMichaelStern,” author Pete Croatto writes in his stellar new book From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA. He’s talking about superstar players Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan, and the late David Stern, the NBA’s attorney-turned commissioner, who, as a foursome, are often cre...
Celebs Spilling Tea on Themselves: The Must-Read Celebrity Memoirs of 2020
December 09, 2020 21:39 - 1 hour - 125 MBBingewatching every TV show ever produced isn’t the only way we’ve survived 2020. We’ve also read a whole mess of books, and among our favorites have been a stack of truly delicious celebrity autobiographies. Yep, famous folk did not disappoint with their literary endeavors this year, dishing up deep, headline-making revelations from their personal lives and sharing behind-the-headlines truths about their most noted career moments. From Jessica Simpson’s bestselling Open Book and Mariah Ca...
Michael J. Fox: The Making of an Icon
November 17, 2020 15:17 - 1 hour - 121 MBThe Back to the Future films were among the most popular choices on Netflix this year, and for good reason: We can all use a few extra doses of Michael J. Fox right now. As he publishes his fourth memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, we look back on his truly iconic career, from Reaganite teen Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties and rebellious time traveler Marty McFly to crusader for Parkinson’s Disease research. Through it all, he’s remained bitingly funny and refr...
Stream to the Extreme: The State of Streaming TV and Why Binge-Watching Is One of the Only Good Things We’ve Had in 2020
October 06, 2020 13:10 - 1 hour - 120 MBWould any of us being surviving the pandemic without binge-watching comforting old TV and finding some new favorites along the way, too? We certainly wouldn’t, which made us want to catch up on all things streaming TV, with our friend and the go-to guy for the scoop on the streaming business, Vulture.com West Coast Editor and Buffering and streaming TV columnist, Joe Adalian. Joe gives us the rundown on all the streaming services, including some you may not have heard of that offer free vi...
Pop Literacy Is All About That Pop Life with Pop Star Goddesses
April 07, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 148 MBIn a very special return episode, we talk about the fantastic, and oh-so-perfectly timed new book Pop Star Goddesses, by Pop Literacy co-host Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. A beautifully illustrated collection of biographies of pop divas from Adele to Shakira and Beyonce to Solange, Pop Star Goddesses arrives to share how an incredibly deep bench of talented, inspiring women in pop music are shaping the larger culture with their skills, performances, and passion. We talk about how, just like ...
How Did The Brady Bunch Become A Pop Culture Icon?
December 10, 2019 03:00 - 1 hour - 117 MBThe Brady Bunch never got higher than No. 31 on the ratings charts, and it was far from a critical favorite or a television masterpiece. But it's celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with loving tributes to its theme song, its opening credits, its iconic house, and that perfectly symmetrical, blended family of three boys and three girls who had only the tiniest problems to solve within a half-hour every week. Pop Literacy co-host Kimberly Potts has written a new book, The Way We All...
Carrie Fisher, Feminist Princess and Hollywood Queen
November 02, 2019 20:00 - 51 minutes - 94.5 MBShe was the child of a Hollywood couple notorious for their public breakup, an iconic sci-fi princess, the wife of a great singer-songwriter, a brilliant author and screenwriter, a caustic comedian, a great sidekick, a monologist, and a fierce advocate for mental health awareness. Carrie Fisher packed many lives into her time on earth, even though it was all too short. This week, we pay tribute to her many identities and massive pop culture impact with Sheila Weller, the author of Carrie Fis...
Let’s Make the Most of This Beautiful Day … and Talk to Author Gavin Edwards About His New Book on Mister Rogers
October 16, 2019 02:30 - 46 minutes - 84.7 MBThe cardigan, the sneakers, the voice so soothing it should be its own brand of stress therapy. We speak, of course, about Mister Rogers, and we speak about him this week with New York Times bestselling author Gavin Edwards, whose new book is a prescriptive biography of all things Fred Rogers. Prescriptive because, in Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever, Gavin not only builds on the legend of Mister Rogers, he shares the many ways the beloved children’s televi...
Generation X Is Having Its (Nostalgia) Moment
October 10, 2019 01:09 - 1 hour - 142 MBIt’s the smallest of the three generations currently ruling the world—sandwiched between Boomers and Millennials—but Gen X is not skimping on its nostalgia moment, probably because its defining trait is an (ironic, post-modern, skeptical) embrace of pop culture. This week, we run through the many current and upcoming revisitings of Gen X culture, including a book by Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill in Broadway musical form, the 25th anniversary of Reality Bites...