The Sam Sanders Show from KCRW is your guide to entertainment. Find out what makes your favorite artists tick, dissect the trends that shape our culture, or just make sense of that random meme you can’t stop thinking about. Join us every week to unpack the pop culture we love. Sign up for Sam’s Newsletter to get behind the scenes stuff from every interview each week. Sam Sanders is an award-winning podcast and radio host. He’s been named best podcast host by both The Ambies and the iHeart Podcast Awards. He was one of the founding hosts of The NPR Politics Podcast and the host who launched both It’s Been A Minute from NPR and Into It from Vulture.
Modern celebrity has shifted from a 20th-century monoculture defined by universal recognition to a fractured, niche-driven landscape where fame often relies on ubiquity rather than genuine name recognition. Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, hosts of Who? Weekly and authors of I Want To Be Famous, argue that the industry ...
The search for a biological father drives a complex exploration of identity, memory, and the divergent paths taken by twin brothers. While one brother embraces a stable, professional life in New York, the other pursues a nomadic existence, yet both are tethered by the shared, unspoken void of their father’s absence. Th...
The current literary landscape reflects a "book monoculture" where specific titles drive collective cultural conversations. Despite headlines warning of a post-literate society and declining reading comprehension, reading for pleasure remains a vital, community-building activity. The shift toward simplified, "second-sc...
Dolly Parton’s enduring legacy rests on a unique combination of authentic songwriting, shrewd business acumen, and a carefully crafted persona that bridged the gap between working-class roots and global stardom. NPR music critic Ann Powers highlights how Parton’s ability to inhabit a character—often with a wink and a n...
Summer 2026 marked a rare resurgence of American monoculture, defined by shared, real-time consumption of major cultural events like the World Cup, the film adaptation of The Odyssey, and high-profile celebrity weddings. Unlike the fragmented, algorithmic nature of modern music and television, these moments succeeded b...
The sudden closure of Cats: The Jellicle Ball highlights the precarious financial reality of modern Broadway, where high production costs and razor-thin margins often outweigh critical acclaim and strong attendance. Broadway suffers from "cost disease," where labor-intensive productions face rising expenses that ticket...
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