PLAY PODCASTS
Emily Nussbaum Tells the True Story of Reality TV

Emily Nussbaum Tells the True Story of Reality TV

We talk to Nussbaum about her new book “Cue The Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV,” which she calls her attempt “to describe the reality genre through the voices of the people who built it.”

KQED's Forum

June 26, 202455m 47s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (podtrac.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

When New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum began working on her book about the origins of reality TV, she says that the deeper she looked “the darker things got.” She found reality stars whose lives were wrecked and “methods of production so ugly they’re hard to look at.” But she says reality TV has also elevated the struggles of ordinary people, taken on historically forbidden subjects like queerness and divorce and pioneered new filmmaking techniques. We talk to Nussbaum about her new book “Cue The Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV,” which she calls her attempt “to describe the reality genre through the voices of the people who built it.”


Guests:


Emily Nussbaum, author, "Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV"; staff writer, The New Yorker

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices