Popular Culture

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. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied.

The Nigerian prince eager to fork over his inheritance, the family friend stranded unexpectedly in Norway, the lonely Russian beauty looking for love...they spam our inboxes with their hapless pleas for help, money, and your social security number. In Dot Con, Veitch finally answers the question: What would happen if you replied?

A sociologist and former fashion model takes listeners inside the elite global party circuit of "models and bottles" to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men.   

Four more series of Brian Cox and Robin Ince’s multi award-winning science/comedy show - including the 100th episode and 'The Infinite Moonkey Cage', a special hour-long episode celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo moon landings. One of BBC Radio 4’s most popular programmes, The Infinite Monkey Cage sees Physicists Robin Ince and Brian Cox taking a witty, irreverent look at the world through Scientists’ eyes.

In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us - with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that's all his own - how we really (no, really) live now.

Through the stories of kids and parents in the middle school trenches, a New York Times best-selling author reveals why these years are so painful, how parents unwittingly make them worse, and what we all need to do to grow up.

Batman is one of the most compelling and enduring characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased through countless incarnations since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante.

This explosively entertaining memoir abounds in gossip, satire, historical apercus, and trenchant observations. Vidal’s compelling narrative weaves back and forth in time, providing a whole view of the author’s celebrated life, from his birth in 1925 to today, and features a cast of memorable characters - including the Kennedy family, Marlon Brando, Anais Nin, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Dave Rubin launched his political talk show The Rubin Report in 2015 as a meeting ground for free thinkers who realize that partisan politics is a dead end. He hosts people he both agrees and disagrees with - including those who have been dismissed, deplatformed, and despised - taking on the most controversial issues of our day. As a result, he's become a voice of reason in a time of madness.

Superstition: A Very Short Introduction explores the nature and history of superstition from antiquity to the present. For two millennia, superstition was a label derisively applied to foreign religions and unacceptable religious practices, and its primary purpose was used to separate groups and assert religious and social authority. After the Enlightenment, the superstition label was still used to define groups, but the new dividing line was between reason and unreason. Today, superstitious belief and behavior remain widespread, and highly educated people are not immune.

Arm yourself with garlic, stake and crucifix, for the vampires are back in force - at the top of the best seller lists, on your TV, on the web and lurking in darkened cinemas. But where did they come from? Why have they come back now? And how can you tell if you are one? Beginning with the first sightings of bats and blood-sucking in the Romantic period, Bite follows the undead's progress through the ages, right up to the present. 

A soulful exploration of the 12 astrological signs embodied by our living “stars” - from divas to philosophers, poets to punks - and the ways they can help us better understand ourselves and each other, from the wildly popular astrology columnist for New York Magazine’s The Cut.

Based on freshly uncovered primary sources and new firsthand interviews, The Most Dangerous Man in America is an American thriller that takes listeners along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime. Spanning 28 months, President Nixon's global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and secret agents on four continents, culminating in one of the trippiest journeys through the American counterculture.

A hilarious, smart and incredibly singular debut from Raven Smith, whose exploration of the minutiae of everyday modern life and culture is totally unique and painfully relatable. Is being tall a social currency? Am I the contents of my fridge? Does yoga matter if you’re not filthy rich? Is a bagel four slices of bread? Are three cigarettes a meal? 

Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making. In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. 

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

In his devastating new book The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray examines the 21st century’s most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race....  

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....

"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....

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay....

A sociologist and former fashion model takes listeners inside the elite global party circuit of "models and bottles" to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men....

In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society....

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....

A no-nonsense and helpful guide on how to cope with a slew of mental-health issues that are hell-bent on ruining the lives of millions of people worldwide....

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

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....

The stuff of conspiracy theories makes for great, entertaining stories in movies, books, and television. And there is no shortage of subjects: from who really killed JFK to the truth behind 9/11...

Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet....

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: This is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt....

One of the most admired nonfiction writers of our time retells the story of one truly fabulous year in the life of his native country....

Nearly a half century into being a feminist and legal pioneer, something funny happened to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The octogenarian won the Internet....

Called "America's wisest and most respected authority on psychedelics and their use", James Fadiman has been involved with psychedelic research since the 1960s....

In The Queen V, the beloved OB-GYN, celebrity doctor, and star of Bravo's Married to Medicine reveals the 12 principles behind a happy and healthy vagina…and other lady parts....

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness....

A transformative audiobook urging 21st-century women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change....

Packed with tested strategies and practical tips, this book is the essential, life-changing guide for everyone who owns a smartphone....

This audiobook is about why black hair matters and how it can be viewed as a blueprint for decolonisation. Emma Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, Black Power and on to today's Natural Hair Movement, the cultural appropriation wars and beyond....

Ken Ivy pulls a square's coat on the unwritten rules that took him from the ghetto streets to the executive suites. Ken's lessons will serve any person in any interaction....

Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! In this well-researched and captivating narrative, veteran food writer Nina Teicholz proves how everything we've been told about fat is wrong....

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....

A former US naval intelligence worker, Milton William Cooper published his manifesto Behold a Pale Horse in 1991. Since then it has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, becoming the number-one best seller in the American prison system....

Beach Money shows you how to compress a 30 year career into three to five years, design your life around your free time instead of around your work schedule....

Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences....

This no-holds-barred autobiography chronicles the remarkable life of Phil Robertson, the original Duck Commander and Duck Dynasty star, from early childhood through the founding of a family business....

In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy....