He whips into action, starting with the early '50s and Lucy and Desi. Before you can say "Hill Street Blues" he's up to the '80s — the second "Golden Age" of television — by way of "Quincy" and "Barnaby Jones." At the turn of the century, Thompson argues, television is at its all-time best, with HBO the crown jewel. "The Larry Sanders Show." "Oz." "Sex and the City." "The Sopranos." "Rome." And so on.

He turns to reality TV, which, in a typically sweeping yet concise Thompson-ism, he calls "the most interesting new way to tell a story since the invention of the novel." It began in Britain, he explains, and then "the virus jumped over the Atlantic and spread."

"Survivor" is dissected. So is "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" and "Temptation Island." Have you ever noticed how conservative "The Bachelor" is, he muses, with all these girls waiting for a kiss?

Now he broaches the "single biggest event in all of TV history" — coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks. He plays a good hour of CNN from that awful morning, reminding the students, most of whom were about 14 then, how it felt to watch the twin towers collapse on live TV. When he later plays segments of an MTV documentary on pop culture post-9/11, no one flinches when one of its featured commentators turns out to be Thompson. The students are used to it.

 · · · · · 

Back in his office later that evening, Thompson explains the genesis of his interest in pop culture. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Chicago, where he initially planned to be an art history professor. But on Sunday nights, when the dorms didn't serve food, he would eat takeout in front of the TV. He found that he chose "CHiPs," with Erik Estrada, over PBS, and became fascinated with the question: "Why do smart people watch dumb TV?"

He did his thesis on Dante's "Divine Comedy" but came to believe that "art could be something that came out of a TV set." That led to a broader interest in popular culture.

Thompson, who's written or edited six books of his own, gets up each day at five to read; he consumes three new books a week, not to mention uncounted hours of TV. (He also has a family that he spends time with.) He's constantly becoming enamored with new areas of pop culture.

Right now, Thompson's focusing his pop-culture lens on ancient times. "I'm interested in the celebrity culture of ancient Rome," he says. "Back then, as now, it was who you knew that got you into parties."

It dovetails with a broader Thompson thesis: So many things that we think are new, really aren't. "American Idol," you say? Nothing new, he replies. Remember Ted Mack's "Original Amateur Hour?"