New Books in Popular Culture

Osad

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  Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026) 25.09.2026 1t 12min

  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 cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters—Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings—an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names. Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026) traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age—and perhaps the last gasp of the century-old studio system.
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  Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan: Media, Empathy, and Digital Testimony with Xinling Li (Anthem Press, 2026) 25.09.2026 32min

  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 Digital Testimony (Anthem Press, 2026), asks how a fictional series became a cultural catalyst. Li argues that the drama gave form to experiences that had remained unspoken, while social media allowed personal testimony to circulate without institutional permission. The book is part of the new short-book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. In this podcast, Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley talks with Dr Li about television, empathy, digital testimony, and the opportunities and inequalities within Taiwan's #MeToo movement. Themes include: Why Taiwan’s #MeToo movement came late - the gap between progressive laws and the cultural conditions that still discourage survivors from speaking. The ‘perfect victim’ - how Wave Makers challenges the assumption that only women who conform to conventional ideas of femininity deserve belief and justice. The feminist snap - why the line ‘Let’s not just let it go this time’ gave viewers a language for recognising accumulated injustice. Empathy and narrative identity - how fictional characters help audiences interpret their own experiences and respond to others. Digital testimony and affective publics - how social media weakens traditional gatekeeping while introducing new risks and struggles for attention. Women’s solidarity - how the drama examines agency, family relationships and the historical expectation that women define themselves through men. The limits of visibility - why migrant domestic workers remain especially vulnerable and often unable to speak without risking their livelihoods or immigration status. One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that art can give structure to what Raymond Williams called ‘emergent feelings’: experiences without an accepted public language. Through recognisable characters and an accessible story, Wave Makers transformed a familiar instruction to remain silent – ‘just let it go’ – into a shared refusal. The podcast also considers how the hashtag changes testimony. Survivors can now address audiences directly, rather than relying entirely on journalists and other institutional gatekeepers. Yet visibility remains uneven. Stories involving celebrities and senior politicians attract attention more readily than those of migrant domestic workers, who may face dismissal, loss of visa status or deportation if they speak publicly. Li is cautious about treating Wave Makers as a formula for political change. No television programme can produce a movement on demand. Popular culture can nevertheless offer language and recognition when audiences are ready to respond. The story of Wave Makers is ultimately about the unpredictable movement between fiction and public life: a drama helped people recognise experiences they had been encouraged to dismiss, while digital platforms allowed the words ‘me too’ to become testimony, solidarity and action. Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary Rawnsley) of the short-book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. Dr Xinling Li is an independent scholar based in New York. He studied at Cambridge University.
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  Ru Marshall, "American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda" (OR Books, 2026) 23.09.2026 1t 6min

  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 investigation of the techniques employed by charismatic narcissists and a study of the cult dynamics that still shape American life, “American Trickster” defies conventional biography. It emerges as a chilling allegory for the Trump era, a trenchant critique of academia's complicity in distorting and erasing Indigenous culture, and a deep dive into the mechanics of New Age spiritual abuse. Author Ru Marshall joins host Emily Dufton to discuss Castaneda's larger-than-life story and lingering effects. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, was released in 2026.
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  Sarah Trad, "A House in the Lebanese Mountains: Recipes & Stories from Beit Trad" (Thames & Hudson, 2026) 18.09.2026 37min

  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 Trad (Thames & Hudson, 2026), Trad tells the story of Beit Trad and the family who shaped it, alongside recipes for the generous Lebanese food served around its tables. Part memoir, part cookbook, and part portrait of a remarkable house, the book captures interiors that mix Eastern and Western influences and reflect the layered identity of the Levant. The recipes range from Beit Trad’s elaborate breakfasts to vegetable dishes, stews, meats, fish, and sweets. Throughout, Trad explores hosting as both an art and a practice: making guests feel completely at home while recognizing the work and dedicated team required to make that sense of ease seem effortless. Sarah Trad joins New Books Network to discuss Levantine hospitality, her family’s house and its transformation into a guesthouse, and her mother’s influence on her understanding of hosting. She also talks about what it takes to run Beit Trad, the relationship between beauty and appetite, and recipes including Pasta B Laban – a decidedly non-Italian spaghetti dish with garlic and yogurt that is pure Lebanese comfort food – and a strawberry and orange salad that showcases the magic of orange blossom water. Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at VittlesVamp.com.
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  Revisiting The Leftovers 18.09.2026 25min

  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?
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  Jennifer Hoewe, "Enjoyment Is Breaking News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It)" (MIT Press, 2026) 13.09.2026 58min

  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 News: How We Became Less Informed and More Divided (and How to Fix It) (MIT Press, 2026), Jennifer Hoewe (Purdue University) explains how and why this shift toward news enjoyment occurred and what we can do to address the information crisis we now face. Evidence shows that enjoyment-driven decisions are leaving us less informed—despite what we might expect—because they lead us to ignore other news that matters. This book explains why we don’t always select the best sources of news, how we respond to the news sources we do select, and how that information impacts our political knowledge and decisions. Hoewe also offers solutions for how to improve news creation and news use moving forward. Specifically, she shows how news consumers can escape their “self-righteous” consumption cycles; how news and social media companies can play a role in curbing our automatic amplification of enjoyable news; and how we can all do better when it comes to the information we seek and share. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026) 08.09.2026 1t 7min

  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 assassinate Tsar Alexander II in 1866. Verhoerven unpacks the various frames through which the participants, the trial lawyers, and the public at large interpreted the seemingly senseless violence. Manson was a charismatic ex-con whose lived on a ranch near LA with several dozen devoted followers, mostly teenage girls. After a drug deal gone wrong Manson arranged a series of grisly murders. The prosecution argued this was part of a crazy scheme, inspired by the Bible and the Beatles’ White Album, to start an apocalyptic race war. Skeptics argue Manson was just trying to cover up the drug murders. Verhoeven, an associate professor of history at Cornell, taught a class where she used the Manson case to train her students how to conduct historical research and how to think about history. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026) 08.09.2026 44min

  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. With vivid personal anecdotes, emotional tributes, and probing reflections, Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World (Broadleaf Books, 2026)shows how Haley’s vision gave birth to a genealogy movement, inspired generations to reclaim their identities, and challenged America to confront its past. From a sixth-grader who became the first lawyer in her family, to a blind musician empowered by his father’s retelling of Roots’ most iconic scene, Johnson traces the ripple effects of Haley’s griot storytelling across time and culture. As debates rage over which histories get told, Remembering Roots boldly asserts the necessity to remember and retell our stories. A call to action, this book reaffirms that storytelling is not just an art — it’s a path to healing. A companion reading and viewing guide to the book and film is available here. Lucas L. Johnson II is a former reporter for the Associated Press, where he worked for more than twenty years mainly covering politics, education, and religion. He is the author of Finding the Good and coauthor of Youth Change Agent. Lucas works in higher education and has taught high school and college students. A freelance writer and communications strategist, Lucas lives in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find him at his website. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026) 05.09.2026 53min

  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 him by a friend, it reminded Simon of the sound and the joy of the early days of rock and roll. He began to invent his own lyrics to the groove, and became drawn to the idea of recording with the musicians on that tape. But South Africa was in the thrall of a racist apartheid system, and with economic and cultural boycotts in place, such an undertaking was risky. He grew determined to find the right conditions to allow for a collaboration.Simon took a fateful trip to Johannesburg in 1985. It would turn out to be the first step on a musical journey that would lead him to New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and London, and eventually to the release of Graceland, a critical and commercial triumph, winning multiple Grammys, selling 16 million records, and spawning a five-year, worldwide tour.Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland (Atria Books, 2026) is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland, offering windows into Simon’s creative process, the technical innovations that brought his songs to life, the people and places that made the album possible, the forces that helped the album achieve mainstream reach, and the controversies that the music raised—and which remain today. It sheds light on a period when America opened its doors to the sounds and styles of Africa and other faraway lands.This is an informed, heartfelt celebration of Simon’s magnum opus, a recording forged in a tense cultural moment, but suffused with hope, change, and a sense of global connection. Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award–winning music historian, author, and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music. Ashley Kahn’s website and Instagram. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 03.09.2026 47min

  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. It positions Point Break as both a quintessential action spectacle and a film layered with thematic tensions: masculinity, spirituality, individual risk, personal freedom, environmental awareness, and the search for one's identity. Each minute of the film is treated as a self-contained unit. The cinematography, editing, sound design, performances, and narrative beats are discussed in relation to broader social contexts including surfing subculture, mid-to-late-20th-century American politics, post-Vietnam War attitudes, and the evolving media images of Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Drawing on a wide array of sources, such as film theory, cultural criticism, and surf memoirs, the book reframes "Point Break" as not merely an adrenaline-driven thriller, but as a work rich in symbolism, mythology, homoerotic desires, and philosophical inquiry. This approach reveals how Bigelow crafts a kinetic, expressive cinema where bodies, landscapes, and motion collide, and how the film's characters operate within intersecting personal, cultural, and ideological currents. The result is a hybrid of scholarship and creative writing that reanimates the film by slowing it down, revealing layers of meaning often obscured by its velocity. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Emily Charlotte, "Catching Feelings" (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2026) 01.09.2026 34min

  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 to its best year ever, while Tyler is eager to leave behind the mess from his old school with a second chance playing football as a transfer. Neither is looking for romance. But as the team’s newest (and most eligible) varsity athlete, Tyler is suddenly the center of attention. And Sabrina is busy dodging Ryan, her longtime flirtationship who is determined to take her to the homecoming dance. Ryan is exactly the kind of chaos Sabrina doesn’t need, so she asks Tyler to go as friends instead. Eager to fend off other unwanted advances, Tyler is happy to accept. Of course, this was before Sabrina realized Tyler is Ryan’s cousin. But as long as they’re just friends, everything should be fine. Tyler is less willing to ignore the connection he feels toward Sabrina, but he’s also desperate to keep his past buried. When the chemistry between them becomes impossible to deny, can their carefully laid plans survive the fallout, or will secrets and social pressure threaten everything they’ve built? Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Erin Osmon, "Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America" (W. W. Norton, 2026) 01.09.2026 46min

  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 Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2026) tells the story of the origins, chart-topping development, and tangled legacy of heartland rock, the music that ruled the airwaves of the 1980s and remains instantly recognizable to millions. Spinning an entertaining and eye-opening account, Osmon delves into the complicated afterlife of heartland rock's classic albums and songs, including Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," Bob Seger's "Against the Wind," John Mellencamp's "Small Town," and Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." She demonstrates the centrality of often-overlooked women like Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, and Lucinda Williams--explaining how some of the most popular music of the time was made beyond its white-male stereotypes. She traces the genre's connections to country and Americana, and reveals how legendary figures like Prince were inspired by and expanded heartland rock. And she shows how its success revitalized the careers of figures like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Through it all, she explores the '80s cultural developments that fostered the genre--such as the rise of MTV and the switch to CDs--and argues that the music played a vital role in opposition to '80s conservatism and in support of LGBTQ rights, labor issues, and the environmental movement. A fair-minded critic with an ear for a great behind-the-scenes story, Osmon makes clear that at its best, heartland rock connected with millions of overlooked people longing to be heard. Erin Osmon is a music journalist, critic, and author of books on John Prine and Jason Molina. Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Rolling Stone, and others. She won the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award for album notes in 2023 and several LA Press Club Southern California Journalism awards. She lives in Nashville. Erin Osmon’s website and Instagram. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Dog Day Afternoon 31.08.2026 23min

  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. Sonny is the kind of person who accidentally appears in a viral video, comes to enjoy the renown, but then learns that his hour upon the stage is signifying nothing. Bumper music: Bumper music by John Deley. Interested in the real events that inspired the film and how the film was made? Read Rachel Walther’s Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026) 30.08.2026 33min

  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 Screen Culture (Anthem Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese horror has reached a new stage of maturity: it is now an established industrial category, has diversified across genres and media, and has developed a sophisticated capacity to address Taiwan’s social, historical and technological anxieties. The book also launches the new short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. In this podcast conversation, Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley talks with Professor Neri about what Taiwanese horror can tell us about Taiwan itself. Their discussion moves from ghosts and folklore to democracy, historical memory, digital culture and changing understandings of identity. Themes include: Why horror? – how a once-marginal genre became an important part of Taiwanese cinema. Taiwan as a ‘Ghost Nation’ – why ghosts offer powerful ways of thinking about Taiwan’s contested history and identity. Horror, democracy and historical memory – how liberalisation opened new possibilities for confronting difficult histories, notably the White Terror in Detention. Religion, folklore and the supernatural – how beliefs, rituals and local legends provide filmmakers with distinctive cultural resources. Digital ghosts – how smartphones, social media, gaming and screen culture have transformed haunting. Gender, sexuality and queer horror – how films such as Marry My Dead Body use supernatural conventions to explore changing social identities. Taiwan within Asian horror cinema – how Taiwanese filmmakers engage with regional traditions while developing recognisably local forms. One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the supernatural provides a productive language for exploring Taiwan’s relationship with its past and present. Detention transforms the political violence of the White Terror into a spectral landscape of memory, guilt and historical reckoning. The Tag-Along, The Rope Curse and Incantation bring folklore and ritual into contact with cameras, smartphones and social media. Taiwanese horror is also transmedial. Detention moved from video game to feature film, television series and novel; The Bridge Curse and Incantation have extended into gaming, while The Tag-Along has expanded into webtoon and virtual reality. Horror thus forms part of a wider creative ecosystem in which cinema intersects with digital media, popular culture and Taiwan’s cultural-content industries. Taiwanese horror therefore deserves attention beyond horror enthusiasts or film specialists. These films frighten, surprise and sometimes make audiences laugh, but their ghosts also carry history. They negotiate memories of authoritarianism and democratisation, questions of gender and sexuality, and move between temples, cinemas, video games and smartphone screens. The ghosts haunting contemporary Taiwanese cinema are rarely just ghosts. They offer another way of asking questions about Taiwan: how the past survives in the present, how identities are continually remade, and how a rapidly changing society chooses to remember—and imagine—itself. Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary Rawnsley) of the short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026) 30.08.2026 33min

  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 Screen Culture (Anthem Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese horror has reached a new stage of maturity: it is now an established industrial category, has diversified across genres and media, and has developed a sophisticated capacity to address Taiwan’s social, historical and technological anxieties. The book also launches the new short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. In this podcast conversation, Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley talks with Professor Neri about what Taiwanese horror can tell us about Taiwan itself. Their discussion moves from ghosts and folklore to democracy, historical memory, digital culture and changing understandings of identity. Themes include: Why horror? – how a once-marginal genre became an important part of Taiwanese cinema. Taiwan as a ‘Ghost Nation’ – why ghosts offer powerful ways of thinking about Taiwan’s contested history and identity. Horror, democracy and historical memory – how liberalisation opened new possibilities for confronting difficult histories, notably the White Terror in Detention. Religion, folklore and the supernatural – how beliefs, rituals and local legends provide filmmakers with distinctive cultural resources. Digital ghosts – how smartphones, social media, gaming and screen culture have transformed haunting. Gender, sexuality and queer horror – how films such as Marry My Dead Body use supernatural conventions to explore changing social identities. Taiwan within Asian horror cinema – how Taiwanese filmmakers engage with regional traditions while developing recognisably local forms. One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the supernatural provides a productive language for exploring Taiwan’s relationship with its past and present. Detention transforms the political violence of the White Terror into a spectral landscape of memory, guilt and historical reckoning. The Tag-Along, The Rope Curse and Incantation bring folklore and ritual into contact with cameras, smartphones and social media. Taiwanese horror is also transmedial. Detention moved from video game to feature film, television series and novel; The Bridge Curse and Incantation have extended into gaming, while The Tag-Along has expanded into webtoon and virtual reality. Horror thus forms part of a wider creative ecosystem in which cinema intersects with digital media, popular culture and Taiwan’s cultural-content industries. Taiwanese horror therefore deserves attention beyond horror enthusiasts or film specialists. These films frighten, surprise and sometimes make audiences laugh, but their ghosts also carry history. They negotiate memories of authoritarianism and democratisation, questions of gender and sexuality, and move between temples, cinemas, video games and smartphone screens. The ghosts haunting contemporary Taiwanese cinema are rarely just ghosts. They offer another way of asking questions about Taiwan: how the past survives in the present, how identities are continually remade, and how a rapidly changing society chooses to remember—and imagine—itself. Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary Rawnsley) of the short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016) 26.08.2026 1t 14min

  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 and ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. It is now one of the most adored–and successful–movie franchises of all time. Now, the author of the bestselling biography Jim Henson delivers a revelatory look into the life and times of the man who created Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Indiana Jones in George Lucas: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2016) If Star Wars wasn't game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with Indiana Jones, and he completely transformed the world of special effects and the way movies sound. His innovation and ambition forged Pixar and Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX sound. Lucas's colleagues and competitors offer tantalizing glimpses into his life. His entire career has been stimulated by innovators including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, actors such as Harrison Ford, and the very technologies that enabled the creation of his films-and allowed him to keep tinkering with them long after their original releases. Like his unforgettable characters and stories, his influence is unmatched. Brian Jay Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller Jim Henson: The Biography, as well as Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of An American Imagination and Washington Irving: An American Original. His most recent book is The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building. He continues to believe that Han shot first. Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, available here on the New Books Network and wherever podcasts are found. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026) 26.08.2026 41min

  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 (though it doesn't name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock's teenage girlfriend (she isn't named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met. On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There's a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock's beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Brian Callaci, "Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy" (U Chicago Press, 2026) 25.08.2026 36min

  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 owned and operated by an "independent" franchisee. While McDonald's presents an image of centralized uniformity to the consumer, it shows a different face to the small business owners operating its stores under its control and the workers preparing its product to its standards. How then does McDonald's—and its big business peers—manage to be two things at once? In this revelatory work, economist Brian Callaci shows how franchisors have altered the legal treatment of corporations in their favor through a decades-long crusade of lobbying and litigation. Their efforts subsequently unleashed a slew of legal and economic sins upon the US economy and labor force, allowing multinational corporations to control continent-spanning empires while outsourcing employment and scapegoating legal responsibilities onto small businesses. The result: the unfettered growth of some of America's most recognizable businesses, at the aggregate expense of America's workers. Remarkable in both its scale and synthesis, Callaci's story is the first chronicle of this business movement—initially resisted by US courts before experiencing a dramatic reversal of fortune after decades of campaigning by some of America's most established entrepreneurs. An urgent and erudite history, Chains of Command reveals how the US labor market was tamed one small business at a time. Brian Callaci is Campaigns Director at the Strategic Organizing Center, and previously served as Chief Economist at the Open Markets Institute. He researches and writes about market structure, antitrust law, and their relationship to worker and employer power. Anna Olteanu is a senior in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University, where she focuses on intellectual history. Her interests include political ecology, the history of economic thought, and literary criticism. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Ed Park, "Three Tenses" (Random House, 2026) 21.08.2026 1t 19min

  Three Tenses (Random House, 2026) by Ed Park is not quite a memoir, not quite fiction, not quite poetry and not quite prose—and yet it transcends the sum of all its not-quite parts as a resonant portrait of its young artist. Written when he was 28, Park’s “transmission from the nineties” displays his more earnest, more vulnerable version: a writer toiling away in upstart obscurity, working thankless New York jobs, who has yet to reach the triumph of publishing his first book. Three Tenses would not be that book. Instead, Park stashed it away in a manilla folder. Fast forward to the dog days of the pandemic, 2020, when Park rediscovered his old manuscript, tinkering with it while he worked on other projects, including his novel Same Bed, Different Dreams, which went on to be a Pulitzer Prize finalist after its 2023 publication. Fascinated and charmed by its lack of convention, I knew that I wanted to speak to Park about Three Tenses, and he was kind enough to join me for a chat about the process of confronting—and publishing—his younger self. Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed, Different Dreams, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, as well as the story collection An Oral History of Atlantis. He is a founding editor of The Believer, and his writing appears in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Harper's, The Atlantic, and other publications. In 2025, he received the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Deborah Pease Prize from A Public Space Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
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  Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly 21.08.2026 19min

  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 website. If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation. To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit UC Press’s Support Us page. Articles mentioned: Eileen G’Sell; Uncanny Intimacies, Abject Desires. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 26-29. Link Laura Westengard; The Radical Intimacy of Rot: Mulholland Drive's Queer Proliferations. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 30-35. Link Lori Jo Marso; Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This): David Lynch, Simone de Beauvoir, and “Feeling Like a Feminist”. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 36-41. Link Temperance Aghamohammadi; “That’s Not My Voice”: Telephonic Logics and Paranoid Listening in Mulholland Drive. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 42-47. Link Eileen G’Sell; “This Is the Girl”: Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts, and the Double Abjection of the Hollywood Starlet(s). Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 48-56. Link A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals. J. M. Tyree is the editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly and an associate professor in the Cinema Program at VCUarts. A Rabkin winner for arts journalism, Eileen G'Sell is a film critic and teaching professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture