Popular culture

New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard says Saudi Arabia's leader is full of contradictions: He ended a ban on women driving, but his agents also carried out the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Author Peggy Orenstein says that when it comes to adolescent sexuality, the subject of girls' pleasure is often left unspoken. Originally broadcast March 29, 2016.

The host of The Soup co-stars in the thriller Deliver Us From Evil. "I felt like a 12-year-old getting to be in an action film," McHale tells Terry Gross. Originally broadcast June 30, 2014.

The Essential Ellen Willis focuses on the writer's explicitly feminist culture criticism. It was edited by Willis' daughter, who published an earlier collection of her mother's essays in 2011.

Morris Dickstein's dazzling new cultural history of the Great Depression, called Dancing in the Dark, is one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of books — that really works.

James Bobin is the co-creator and director of HBO's series Flight Of The Conchords. He has been nominated for eight Emmys since 2003 for his work on Conchords and Da Ali G Show.

John Powers, Fresh Air critic at large, weighs in on the trends of '07: political campaigns, Iraq movies failing at the box office, HBO's The Sopranos, stories about hitting the road, the TMZing of America, jocks gone wild, hip sentimentality, the nightly ideological news, atheist chic and the writers strike.

British writer Jon Savage wrote England's Dreaming, a landmark book on the punk era. Now, in Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, he's chronicled what he calls the "prehistory of the teenager."

In his new book A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization, Jonathan Kirsch explores the ways the Book of Revelation has been interpreted since its inception and how the final book of the New Testament has influenced literature, history and popular culture.