Pop Culture Happy Hour

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Pop Culture Happy Hour is a fun and freewheeling chat about the latest movies, television, books, comics and music.

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The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop

11.27.2020

A special bonus feed drop from the new NPR podcast Louder Than A Riot. Hosts Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden have been working on a deep-diving exploration of the relationship between hip-hop and mass incarceration. Episodes cover the likes of ...

Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

11.27.2020 The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop A special bonus feed drop from the new NPR podcast Louder Than A Riot. Hosts Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden have been working on a deep-diving exploration of the relationship between hip-hop and mass incarceration. Episodes cover the likes of ...
11.25.2020 The Emperor's New Groove and What's Making Us Happy The Emperor's New Groove came out 20 years ago, during a time when Disney's animation department was going through an identity crisis. The plot is simple: David Spade is a bratty emperor. Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton turn him into ...
11.24.2020 Hillbilly Elegy The book Hillbilly Elegy was a phenomenon in 2016. Writer J.D. Vance wrote about growing up in Ohio and Kentucky, and about his family's struggles with addiction, abuse and poverty. He tried to both explain and critique the white Appalachian ...
11.23.2020 Megan Thee Stallion Rapper Megan Thee Stallion has had a massive year. Her song with Cardi B, "WAP," topped the Billboard Hot 100 — as did, of course, her remix of "Savage" with Beyoncé. On Friday, Megan Thee Stallion dropped her first official ...
11.20.2020 Animaniacs And What's Making Us Happy Because everything in Hollywood must be revived these days, the Animaniacs are back after being locked in that Warner studio water tower for more than 20 years. Led by the fictional siblings Yakko, Wakko and Dot, the super-meta cartoon featured ...
11.19.2020 The West Wing The West Wing chronicles the inner workings of a fictional presidential administration. The president is Democrat Jed Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, and his staff includes heavy hitters played by folks like Allison Janney, Rob Lowe, Bradley Whitford, John Spencer, ...
11.18.2020 The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special brings back computer animated, extruded-plastic versions of Rey, Finn, Poe, Chewie, Rose, Lando and the droids. The only actors voicing their original characters are Billy Dee Williams, Kelly Marie Tran, and Anthony Daniels. It's ...
11.17.2020 Supermarket Sweep The game show Supermarket Sweep has run in the '60s, the '90s and the aughts. This fall, it's been revived for a fourth iteration — this time in primetime on ABC. While the previous two versions of the show were ...
11.16.2020 Fargo The fourth season of Fargo stars Chris Rock as Loy Cannon, a ruthless Kansas City crime boss battling an Italian-American gang for power in the 1950s. In order to keep the peace while doing business, Loy and his rival swap ...
11.13.2020 Ted Lasso And What's Making Us Happy Ted Lasso knows football, but not, you know, football. He is an American football coach who finds himself in the U.K. coaching soccer in the Premier League. Jason Sudeikis originated the character in a promotional campaign for NBC's soccer coverage ...
11.12.2020 SNL When the country went on lockdown earlier this year, Saturday Night Live was forced to end their 45th season earlier than expected. After producing three shows remotely, SNL returned to Studio 8H in October with COVID-related precautions. So far, SNL ...
11.11.2020 HGTV And Home Makeover Shows Whether you live in a big house or a tiny apartment, on a beach or in a bustling city, television is full of opportunities for you to ruminate on your living space. And nowhere is that impulse more prevalent than ...
11.10.2020 Next On the vaguely unsettling, but satisfyingly pulpy FOX techno-thriller series Next, John Slattery plays a genius billionaire who blows the whistle on an artificial intelligence he created called "neXt." When people who know too much about the AI start dying ...
11.08.2020 Remembering Jeopardy! Host Alex Trebek The game show host Alex Trebek died Sunday following a battle with pancreatic cancer. Trebek hosted Jeopardy! for 36 years — his last episode airs on Christmas Day. Trebek hosted a number of game shows dating back to the early ...
11.06.2020 2020 Comedy Special Recommendations And What's Making Us Happy Comedy specials come in many forms. Stand-up, sketch, improv — and there are times when they really come in handy. But there are also so many of them circulating right now that it can be tough to find the ones ...
11.05.2020 The Vow And Seduced: Two NXIVM Docuseries NXIVM gained mainstream attention when several high-ranking members were charged with crimes, including racketeering, forced labor conspiracy and sex trafficking. The group called itself a self-help organization while a lot of other people called it a cult. HBO and Starz ...
11.04.2020 The Queen's Gambit The new Netflix series The Queen's Gambit finds its story in the equally intense if less obviously bruising world of competitive chess. Based on a 1983 novel, it stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a young woman whose brilliance at chess is ...
11.03.2020 2020 Election Day Distractions Election Day is stressful. It's full of news that might or might not mean anything. The stakes are high, and the consequences are serious. And whatever you do from that point forward, first, you have to get through today. So ...
11.02.2020 Remembering Sean Connery Sir Sean Connery has died. He was 90 years old. Though he became a star by creating the role of James Bond onscreen, over the course of his career he played many characters — all with his distinctive, much-imitated, Scottish ...
11.02.2020 Ariana Grande's Album Positions Ariana Grande is one of the world's biggest pop stars, and on Friday, she released her sixth album, Positions. The singer's follow-up to Thank U, Next finds her celebrating hard-won happiness in a string of poppy, sexually frank R&B; songs.
10.30.2020 Great British Baking Show And What's Making Us Happy Whether you like an éclair or a bagel, a biscuit or a Bakewell tart, The Great British Baking Show will bring all your feelings about baked goods to the surface. The hosts have changed, and the challenges have evolved, but ...
10.29.2020 Borat 2 In 2006, Sacha Baron Cohen's movie Borat was an unlikely blockbuster. It starred Cohen as a fictional reporter from Kazakhstan who journeys across the U.S. and interacts with Americans who don't know they're part of a comedy. Borat made hundreds ...
10.28.2020 The Witches The Witches, starring Octavia Spencer and Anne Hathaway, is streaming on HBO Max. It's an adaptation of the 1983 Roald Dahl book about a kid and his grandmother who get caught up in the dastardly plans of a group of ...
10.27.2020 Three Great Horror Movies For Scaredy Cats We are deep into the Halloween season, and many of us are cooped up at home with our streaming services, scrolling through movie after movie full of monsters, murderers, jump scares, and rivers of blood. But what about those of ...
10.26.2020 Bad Hair In the horror satire Bad Hair, a meek young woman named Anna becomes emboldened after getting her very first weave. At first, the new 'do brings her professional and personal success, but soon enough, it begins to take on a ...
10.23.2020 Rebecca And What's Making Us Happy You may know Rebecca as a 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier. You might know it as a 1940 adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock that won Best Picture. But if you've always wanted a version with Armie Hammer playing the ...
10.21.2020 David Byrne's American Utopia David Byrne and Spike Lee. Two artists with very defined, very distinct, and yet very different, sensibilities — but when you put them together, it works. The theatrical concert film David Byrne's American Utopia, now streaming on HBO Max, is ...
10.19.2020 Pop Culture Happy Hour Goes Daily Like many of you, the Pop Culture Happy Hour team is socially distancing at home. And we are watching more TV shows and movies than ever before. So that's one of the reasons we are going to start coming to ...
10.16.2020 The Trial Of The Chicago 7 And What's Making Us Happy Writer-director Aaron Sorkin knows his way around a courtroom drama: He wrote the screenplay for A Few Good Men nearly 30 years ago. Now, he's written and directed The Trial of the Chicago 7. The new movie dramatizes the trial ...
10.14.2020 Is 'The Good Lord Bird' A White Savior Story, or Something Different? Ethan Hawke plays the abolitionist John Brown in the new series The Good Lord Bird, which traces the events leading up to the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. Told from the point of view of a fictional Black teenager nicknamed ...
10.09.2020 The Forty-Year-Old Version And What's Making Us Happy In the wonderful new film The Forty-Year-Old Version, playwright Radha Blank plays a variation on herself. In it, the fictional Radha, frustrated by a stall in her theater career, finds a new passion: she becomes a rapper. The Forty-Year-Old Version ...
10.07.2020 Latinx Songs That Helped Shape The Decade Latinx music has experienced a huge boom in the last 10 years. We've seen the rise of global superstars like Bad Bunny and J Balvin. We've seen Shakira and Jennifer Lopez take over this year's Super Bowl halftime show. And, ...
10.02.2020 The Boys In The Band And What's Making Us Happy Fifty two years ago, Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band debuted off-Broadway. The structure was simple, and not unfamiliar to anyone who'd seen a play before: Over the course of an evening, characters gather, get drunk and turn on ...
09.30.2020 The Legend Of Korra The Legend of Korra is a sequel to the hugely popular animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. It takes place 70 years later, in a darker, more industrialized world where bending the elements is commonplace. Korra is now the Avatar, ...
09.25.2020 Enola Holmes And What's Making Us Happy The new, bright and breezy Netflix movie Enola Holmes stars Millie Bobby Brown as the 16-year-old sister of Sherlock Holmes. She sets out on an adventure when her eccentric mother (Helena Bonham Carter) goes missing. It also features Sam Claflin ...
09.21.2020 2020 Emmys Recap It was not your usual Emmy Awards ceremony. Because of the pandemic, there was no crowd, and host Jimmy Kimmel worked mostly alone. People accepted their awards from home. But surprisingly enough, it turned out pretty well. Schitt's Creek, Watchmen, ...
09.18.2020 Antebellum And What's Making Us Happy In the new horror film Antebellum, Janelle Monáe plays an enslaved woman on a plantation run by Confederate soldiers. She's desperate to escape. But Monáe also plays a successful contemporary author and speaker with a beautiful family, living a life ...
09.16.2020 Predictions Of How COVID-19 Will Impact Pop Culture It's hard to predict how the current pandemic will affect the work of artists in television and film and theater, but that doesn't mean we can't try. What will change? What won't change? How might creators react? Today, we're stepping ...
09.14.2020 Billy Porter On Pose, Kinky Boots And More A special bonus feed drop from the NPR podcast It's Been A Minute With Sam Sanders. Billy Porter is a force to be reckoned with. A Tony Award-winning Broadway performer. A fashion icon with unforgettable red carpet looks. An Emmy ...
09.11.2020 I'm Thinking Of Ending Things And What's Making Us Happy In the Netflix film, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, the plot is easy to follow. A young couple played by Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons drives through a snowstorm to the farmhouse where Plemons' character grew up. They have dinner ...
09.09.2020 Avatar: The Last Airbender The fantasy adventure Avatar: The Last Airbender aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008. But this year, as the pandemic struck, the animated series became one of the biggest streaming hits on Netflix. In the world of Avatar, some people ...
09.04.2020 Mulan And What's Making Us Happy The biggest movie so far to be bumped from theaters to home viewing during the pandemic is Disney's Mulan. The live-action reimagining of the 1998 animated musical doesn't have songs or a cartoon dragon. But the story still finds young ...
08.31.2020 2020 MTV VMAs The 2020 MTV Video Music Awards took place Sunday night. The telecast was in the shadow of a pandemic, in the midst of major civil unrest, and in the aftermath of actor Chadwick Boseman's death. The VMAs couldn't have live ...
08.28.2020 Bill And Ted Face The Music And What's Making Us Happy Back in 1989, we met Bill S. Preston and Ted "Theodore" Logan in the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. They returned in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey in 1991. And now, almost 30 years later, they're back. In Bill ...
08.27.2020 Some Exciting News In October, Pop Culture Happy Hour will publish episodes five days a week. Also, Aisha Harris will join us as a fourth permanent host.
08.26.2020 Lovecraft Country The best horror is the horror that feels true. That's one of the reasons the new HBO series Lovecraft Country works. Set in the 1950s, it follows a young Black man who sets off with his childhood friend and his ...
08.21.2020 Boys State And What's Making Us Happy The world of politics is not pretty, even in high school. That's one of the takeaways from the new documentary Boys State, about a week-long program sponsored by the American Legion. In it, a thousand Texas high-school boys form political ...
08.19.2020 Star Trek: Lower Decks The mega-franchise Star Trek has produced a slew of movies and ten different TV series — the latest of which is a brand-new animated comedy called Star Trek: Lower Decks. The show was created by Mike McMahan, who worked on ...
08.14.2020 10th Birthday Quiz With Kumail Nanjiani And What's Making Us Happy Ten years ago, we started Pop Culture Happy Hour. And ten years later, it's time to celebrate. Recently, we invited one of our great pals, actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, to join us for a quiz looking back at 2010. ...
08.12.2020 Why You Should Stream Watchmen The HBO miniseries Watchmen recently earned 26 well-deserved Emmy nominations. And if you haven't seen the series, now is a good time to catch up. It stars Regina King as an ex-cop in Tulsa Oklahoma who's not-so-secretly the masked vigilante ...

Older episodes

Pop Culture Happy Hour

What's Pop Culture Happy Hour about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

The Conspiracy Against Hip-Hop

The Emperor's New Groove and What's Making Us Happy

Hillbilly Elegy

Megan Thee Stallion

Animaniacs And What's Making Us Happy

The West Wing

The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special

Supermarket Sweep

Fargo

Ted Lasso And What's Making Us Happy

SNL

HGTV And Home Makeover Shows

Next

Remembering Jeopardy! Host Alex Trebek

2020 Comedy Special Recommendations And What's Making Us Happy

The Vow And Seduced: Two NXIVM Docuseries

The Queen's Gambit

2020 Election Day Distractions

Remembering Sean Connery

Ariana Grande's Album Positions

Great British Baking Show And What's Making Us Happy

Borat 2

The Witches

Three Great Horror Movies For Scaredy Cats

Bad Hair

Rebecca And What's Making Us Happy

David Byrne's American Utopia

Pop Culture Happy Hour Goes Daily

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 And What's Making Us Happy

Is 'The Good Lord Bird' A White Savior Story, or Something Different?

The Forty-Year-Old Version And What's Making Us Happy

Latinx Songs That Helped Shape The Decade

The Boys In The Band And What's Making Us Happy

The Legend Of Korra

Enola Holmes And What's Making Us Happy

2020 Emmys Recap

Antebellum And What's Making Us Happy

Predictions Of How COVID-19 Will Impact Pop Culture

Billy Porter On Pose, Kinky Boots And More

I'm Thinking Of Ending Things And What's Making Us Happy

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Mulan And What's Making Us Happy

2020 MTV VMAs

Bill And Ted Face The Music And What's Making Us Happy

Some Exciting News

Lovecraft Country

Boys State And What's Making Us Happy

Star Trek: Lower Decks

10th Birthday Quiz With Kumail Nanjiani And What's Making Us Happy

Why You Should Stream Watchmen

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