Ep. 80: Jordan Sjol Interviews José Rivera

Chris and Michael finally get back to business and introduce a conversation between Melanie Kohnen and Amanda Lotz about Lotz’s 2025 book After Mass Media, which explores how industrial shifts and technological changes have reshaped the entertainment landscape, as well as academic approaches to the media industries. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes when you heard someone describe a TV series as like an “[x]-hour movie,” this is a must-listen!

Lift yourself out of the dregs of summer and everything else with this chat Mike Miley, author of the new book David Lynch's American Dreamscape. Miley shares his first encounter with Lynch’s Dune – as a 5-year-old! -- and his insights into the intertextuality of Lynch’s work, particularly Inland Empire. He also talks about being a high school teacher publishing academic books. Chris and Michael wrap up with brief reflections on the impact of AI on academia and an upcoming symposium on critical media literacy that we’ll feature in the next episode.

We have a special treat for listeners in this episode as DePauw University’s Jordan Sjol sits down with acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer José Rivera for a conversation about his journey from playwriting to Hollywood, writing across different media, adapting literary classics, and balancing artistic integrity with commercial demands. 

Chris chats with Swapnil Rai about her book on how Bollywood stars transformed Hindi cinema into a global phenomenon, as well as how she uses podcasting activities in her classroom. And if you’ve got ideas for how students can study media by making media, you’re invited to submit a proposal for a symposium at Notre Dame on that very topic.

Aca-Media producer David Lipson was in Paris for the 2024 Olympics/Paralympics, so we sent him out into the field. He captured some sounds of the city and the people flocking to arenas and also turned modern journalism’s most essential tool – a smartphone – toward journalists themselves, uncovering the challenges, and a few joys, that unite media professionals across the globe today.

Stephanie Brown delves into the dangerous world of women laughing in this conversation with Maggie Hennefeld about her new book Death By Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema. Covering everything from 19th-century obituaries blaming giggle fits (rather than girdle fits) for women’s deaths to the modern-day political power of a vice presidential cackle, we’re certain this episode will entertain you … just short of killing you.

We’ve reached that late post-spring time of year, as Michael judiciously puts it, and if you’re lucky and industrious enough to have finished writing something over summer and you’d like to get published, we’ve got just the roundtable for you! One side of the table features experienced editors and the other side has young scholars with questions, so the end result is an engaging and enlightening discussion about how academic publishing works these days.

O.J. Simpson died on April 10, 2024.  Along—and intertwined—with the impact that he had on formations of "law and order," celebrity and scandal, race and gender, class and nation, Simpson had an enormous impact on U.S. television.  This episode of "Talking Television" considers that impact, as TV scholars Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, Brandy Monk-Payton, and Samantha Sheppard talk about the televisual construct of "O.J. Simpson" and about media and culture in the wake of "OJ TV."

In this episode of Aca-Media, David Lipson talks with Shawn Glinis and Arlin Golden, the creators of Wiseman Podcast, which is devoted entirely to discussing the films of--you guessed it—Frederick Wiseman. Shawn and Arlin explain how the podcast is produced and why they feel Wiseman should be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick, Coppola, and Scorsese. Also, Chris and Michael banter about an exciting result of a past episode.

Bust out your fancy headphones for this episode, folks. In one our best episodes ever from an audiophilic perspective, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick talks with Jacob Smith about his recent experimental audiobooks, ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene and Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves, both of which are available as open access files on the University of Michigan Press website. Then Chris and Michael chat about the gratification of SCMS volunteering, wish you a happy eclipse, and tout the glories of NCAA women’s basketball tournament.