Episode 55: High Fidelity and the history of college radio with Kate Jewell

This week guest Kate Jewell stops by to talk about one of the more interesting John Cusack performances in the film High Fidelity. This movie features some phenomenal performances by Cusack, Jack Black, Todd Louiso, and one very weird Tim Robbins. We also talk about Kate's new book Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio. This might be in your Top 5 favorite episodes ever.

About our guest:
Katherine Rye Jewell is Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, where she teaches modern U.S. history. She is a historian of the business and politics of culture in the twentieth-century United States. Her book, Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge Studies on the American South) (Cambridge University Press, 2017), explored the intersection of southern culture and politics through industrialists’ responses to the New Deal

She turns attention to another kind of business in her new book, Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio,  from the University of North Carolina Press. Taking aim at the informal spaces that shaped the music industry since the 1970s, Jewell uncovers how college DJs confronted the politics of culture, higher education, and identity.