NPR Podcasts Episodes Around March 30, 2026
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
34:54Now PlayingThe fanfic-ification of mainstream culture | It's Been A Minute
Mar 30, 2026·2.3K views
March 30, 2026
2,253
64
15
3.51%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
34:54Now PlayingIs fanfiction mainstream now?
If you are anywhere near fan spaces online, you’ve probably seen people talking about fanfiction. And it's also behind some of the biggest books of the last decade – some of the publishing industry's greatest hits are fanfic adaptations. But even as fanfic seeps into the mainstream, there’s a battle inside fanfic communities over whether it should be kept private – and a larger culture war brewing over what gets published and who’s reading it.
Brittany gets into the gendered, economic, and cultural forces pushing fanfiction to the fore with Ashley Reese () , writer, cultural commentator and fanfic veteran, and Eli Cugini () , culture writer, Ph.D. student and author of a Defector article () called “Fanfiction’s Total Cultural Victory.”
Want to hear more about the state of literacy? Check out these episodes:
Have we lost the art of reading? ()
Yes, romance & fantasy novels are political. ()
Books vs. Brain Rotwhy it's so hard to read ()
Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus. ()
Follow Brittany on Instagram@bmluse ()
For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub () .
See pcm.adswizz.com () for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy ()
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
