Francesca 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 schola…

TV 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 s…

Consider 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 aut…

The 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 jour…

Carell 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 als…

James 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 la…

The 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 …

This 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 …

This 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 b…

This 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…

This 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 …

Thomas 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,…

Asking 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 env…

In 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…

Many 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-…

The 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 sc…

So, 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 b…

Novelist 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…

When 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 cele…

The 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 …

It’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 a…

Decades 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 …

Lynette 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 …

Nichole 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 c…

Denzel 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 Pai…

TV 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 cho…

James 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 disco…

You 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 …

From 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…

His 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 classi…

Jeff 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 …

Prepare 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…

Dawnie 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…

She’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, s…

In 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…

We 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 …

Director 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 se…

“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 …

“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 he…

“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 Mag…

Bingewatching 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…

The 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 T…

Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider's Guide to Jeopardy! For $1000, Alex, what is a fantastic new book from author Claire McNear? Culture and sports journalist McNear has written a delightful history not only of the game show itself, but she also chronicles the fascinating history of the impressive efforts of would-be…

That parenthetical quote above comes directly from the fantastic new book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan, and we are very excited to have that book’s authors, Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson, on #Authoring this week. The sports journalists have written a deeply insightful and thoughtful examination of…

The concept of “building an author platform” provokes fear in many writers: Why do we need to be media stars in addition to writing great books? The simple answers: so you can get paid more for your work, get your books into more readers’ hands, and go on to write and sell more books. But building a platform might not be as hard as you think—and it…

You’re writing your book, dreaming of the Hollywood stars who will play the leads in the TV or movie version. But what are the chances you’ll really see your book on the small screen? How might that happen? And what are the chances of that happening right now, given the pandemic? We get all the answers from Chris Ceccotti, head of development and c…

Would 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 streamin…

You want to write a nonfiction book. Maybe you’ve already written a book proposal. Maybe you’ve already sold the book. Now you have to actually write it, which has you wondering: HOW DO I ACTUALLY WRITE A BOOK?! They don’t give you a handbook with the book contract (no matter how much you may wish for one), and no bookstore shelf has yet contained …

Just because you started your career in one genre doesn’t mean you have to stick with it for the rest of your life—just ask Judy Blume and J.K. Rowling! But it’s not as easy as it might seem (especially when you’re not Judy Blume or J.K. Rowling). It may involve starting all over with a new agent, a new publisher, and new readers. We talk this week…