My conversation with Jayashree Kamble, a writer and English professor at LaGuardia Community College, was an opportunity to talk about popular culture, an intense and rich subject of study that, at least in my experience, is often met with some resistance in graduate history departments. Jayashree discusses her early education in India, how she decided to move to Minnesota for graduate school, and all about the main focus of her work studying popular romance fiction. What do those books and other pieces of media have to tell us about race, politics, identity, and ideology? Jayashree's answers to these questions gave me a mind-blowing glimpse into the profound ways that popular culture can function in our lives.