Popular Culture

A humorous, unapologetically feminist, insightful and personal deep dive into our most outward-facing, least-appreciated trait—our voice....

A timely investigation into the new "safety culture" on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy.... 

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader....

In The 50th Law, hip hop and pop culture icon 50 Cent offers a "bible" for success in life and work....

Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing....

From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film....

"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat....

The Psychology of Zelda applies the latest psychological findings, plus insights from classic psychology theory, to Link, Zelda, Hyrule, and the players who choose to wield the Master Sword....

Leaders can motivate and inspire through communications. The following is a collection of the best motivational speeches, inspirational words, sure to motivate you when you need it most by the greatest leaders of our time....

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch’s life-long fascination with classical music has taken her through Juilliard and into the shiny world of symphony halls and international concert tours. She’s loved classical music her whole life. But she’s also hated classical music her whole life....

Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time, presents a deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity....

For over 40 years, Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan has inspired audiences to expand their world view beyond traditional Western forms....

First published in 1966, Hell’s Angels is Thompson’s up-close and personal look at the infamous motorcycle gang during the time when its moniker was most feared....

A woman's handbook to demystifying the world of weed, whether it's being used for pain relief, a moment of calm, or a fit of giggles....

By the end of on average day in the early 21st century, human beings searching the Internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data....

Nothing "goes viral". If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's media environment, you're missing the real story....

Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Listen to find out more....

The most accomplished and beloved champions from the cult classic reality TV show MTV’s The Challenge reveal the secrets and skills to succeed on the show and in life....

Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman....

Tom Wolfe's classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an unflinching portrait of Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, LSD, and the 1960s, ushered in an era of New Journalism and defined a generation....

Of Dice and Men sheds light on America’s most popular (and widely misunderstood) form of collaborative entertainment....

James Patterson tells the most heartbreaking story of our time, as only he can—Diana’s life as a princess and a mother—timed to the 25th anniversary of her death....

A lively, highly visual history, filled with broad themes and backstories, pioneering personalities and eureka-moments, How the Internet Changed Sex... is a short, serious, and highly entertaining look at the intertwining convergence of sex and the Internet....

After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes....

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks....

Part deep dive reportage, part personal journey, part cabinet of curiosities, Butts is an entertaining, illuminating, and thoughtful examination of why certain silhouettes come in and out of fashion—and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others. 

If you’re a never-Trumper, maybe you’d like to understand better your Trump-supporting relative at Thanksgiving dinner. Over 74 million of your fellow Americans voted for Trump in 2020. Despite all the things about him that make you crazy, they decided, "that’s my guy", and filled in the dot or pulled the lever. Why did they? How could they? Is there any way to bridge the gap between you and them?

It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.

From the moment there was an “online,” there was sex online. The famous test image used by software engineers to develop formats like the jpeg was taken from Playboy. Early bulletin boards quickly came to serve their members' sexual musings. Facebook started as a way to rate “hot or not” Harvard co-eds. Virtually every major development that defines the Internet we know and love (and hate) today—privacy issues, online payments and online banking, dating, social media, streaming technology, mass data collection—came out of the meeting of sexuality and technology.

In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called "the American Century." Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For "one brief, shining moment" in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon give way, however, to a new reality involving assassinations, the Vietnam War, Cold War crises, the civil rights movement, a new feminist movement, and various culture wars.

In Under Pressure, Carl Honoré shows how the pressure to give our children the best of everything and make them the best at everything is backfiring on kids, parents and society as a whole. He maps out how we can rescue childhood from the excesses of the 21st century.

Whether through a movie, television show, novel, or even myth, horror as a genre has always spoken to our deepest human fears and anxieties: fear of death, of the unknown, of knowing too much. Whether you're looking at classic narratives like Frankenstein, or contemporary films like Get Out, which explores racism and white guilt, horror provides a window into our culture and what makes us human. The same can be said of religion.

Raise your hand if you cringe at the sound of your own voice, worry that you actually do sound like your mother, or have spent a sleepless night wondering if your inner and outer voices are in sync. Now, hands down, headphones on. Lake Bell is going to tell you why you’re not alone and why your voice matters in the most deeply personal ways. Inside Voice unpacks the writer-director-producer-actor’s obsession with voice and all its permutations. 

A collection of essays about father figures in popular culture, Dad Bod unpack the ideas that inform our collective image of fatherhood as it is found in movies, television shows, and video games. Follow a newly minted parent as he journeys to the heart of dadness to redefine what it means to be a father.

For all of human history, we have made permanent marks on our skin—for multifarious, fascinating, reasons. The oldest preserved tattooed skin that survives is European: Ötzi, the famous ‘Iceman’ mummy, whose body is covered in small tattoo marks, allows us a brief glimpse into the pre-history of the practice. Since then, people in every corner of the world have decided to tattoo themselves, and countless cultures have performed this ancient artistic practice. But for the most part, these fascinating histories remain stubbornly untold.

The music that would come to be known as hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. Now, fifty years later, it’s the most popular music genre in America. Just as jazz did in the first half of the twentieth century, hip-hop and its groundbreaking DJs and artists—nearly all of them people of color from some of America’s most overlooked communities—pushed the boundaries of music to new frontiers, while transfixing the country’s youth and reshaping fashion, art, and even language. 

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch’s life-long fascination with classical music has taken her through Juilliard and into the shiny world of symphony halls and international concert tours. She’s loved classical music her whole life. But she’s also hated classical music her whole life. After all, if you can like Beyoncé without liking Bieber, you can certainly like Brahms without liking Bach—especially since they were born 148 years apart and the thing we call “classical music” is really just centuries of compositions shoved into one hodge-podge of a genre.

In 1970, Erin Keane’s mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six. Through a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother’s teenage years, questioning almost everything she’s been told about her parents and their relationship.

In the vein of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) and Black Nerd Problems, this witty, incisive essay collection from New York Times critic at large Maya Phillips explores race, religion, sexuality, and more through the lens of her favorite pop culture fandoms.  

Despite being unable to play an instrument, Susan Rogers became an extraordinarily successful record producer—and certainly one of the most successful women record producers in history—because of her ability to listen. (She was an engineer on Prince's "When Doves Cry", which inspired the title of the book.) This Is What It Sounds Like distils a lifetime's expertise as a producer and an award-winning professor with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, to present a new theory of listening for everyday music fans.