Pop Culture Happy Hour

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Arts TV & Film Music

What's Pop Culture Happy Hour about?

Get obsessed with us. Five days a week, Pop Culture Happy Hour serves you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, books, videogames and more. Join arts journalists Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, and Aisha Harris - plus a rotating cast of guest pop culture aficionados. The Happy Hour team leaves room at the table for exploring a range of reactions and opinions on every bit of the pop universe. From lowbrow to highbrow to the stuff in between, they take it all with a shot of cheer.Make your happy hour even happier with Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus! Your subscription supports the podcast and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/happyhour

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Shotgun Wedding And What's ...

01.27.2023

The Amazon Prime action comedy Shotgun Wedding delivers on its title in the sense that it's got a wedding, and it's got lots of guns. The film stars Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel as a couple whose wedding day at ...

Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

01.27.2023 Shotgun Wedding And What's Making Us Happy The Amazon Prime action comedy Shotgun Wedding delivers on its title in the sense that it's got a wedding, and it's got lots of guns. The film stars Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel as a couple whose wedding day at ...
01.26.2023 Everything Everywhere All At Once Everything Everywhere All At Once is a zany and profound sci-fi action comedy set in multiple dimensions. It stars Michelle Yeoh as a businesswoman whose world is turned upside down the day her family attempts to file their taxes. The ...
01.24.2023 2023 Oscar Nominations Nominations for this year's Oscars dropped today, and it's a big year for Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Banshees Of Inisherin, and All Quiet On The Western Front. We run down the nominees in the major categories, plus talk ...
01.24.2023 Cheers Cheers is one of the most celebrated TV sitcoms of all time. Set in a Boston bar, the show won major awards and turned stars like Ted Danson, Shelley Long, and Rhea Perlman into household names. Cheers ended its run ...
01.23.2023 Velma The adult animated series Velma chronicles the origin story of the bespectacled brains of the original Scooby Gang. We meet Velma, Fred, Daphne and Shaggy in high school, as Velma struggles with mean girls, a neglectful father, a missing mother, ...
01.20.2023 Missing And What's Making Us Happy The new movie Missing is about our connected world. The social media, the surveillance cameras, the news footage, the video chats — the many, many things we can see from our screens. In this sequel to the 2018 thriller Searching, ...
01.19.2023 The Traitors In Peacock's new reality competition series The Traitors, contestants and reality TV veterans undergo missions at a Scottish castle to earn cash for the money pot. But there are three "traitors" among them, secretly working to "murder" the other players ...
01.18.2023 People We're Pulling For There are pop culture figures we love, and those we could maybe do without. And then there are the ones we're rooting for: The underdogs, the comeback kids, the stars-on-the-rise, and everything in between. Today we're talking about the pop ...
01.17.2023 Saint Omer The moving new drama Saint Omer tells the story of a young mother (Guslagie Malanda) brought to trial for the killing of her infant daughter. Meanwhile, another woman (Kayije Kagame) who has come to observe and write about the trial ...
01.16.2023 Dungeons & Dragons The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you an episode from our pals at Code Switch all about Dungeons & Dragons. It's one of the most popular tabletop roleplaying games of all time. But it ...
01.13.2023 Plane And What's Making Us Happy What do you need to know about the movie Plane? Well, there's a plane. Specifically, there's a plane that goes down when it's struck by lightning and ends up on the worst possible island. It's then up to a captain, ...
01.12.2023 Smiley If you're looking for a charming romantic comedy, consider checking out the Netflix series Smiley. Set in Barcelona, it follows Alex and Bruno, two very different men who meet and experience an overwhelming attraction that they then, as they must, ...
01.11.2023 M3GAN In the new movie M3GAN, an orphaned 8-year-old girl is given a lifelike interactive doll. The doll in question was designed by roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) and is programmed with artificial intelligence that allows her to learn, evolve and possibly ...
01.10.2023 Ginny And Georgia The Netflix series Ginny & Georgia follows a young single mom, her teenage daughter, and their efforts to create a life for themselves in the suburbs of Massachusetts. It's got high school standbys like new friendships and first sexual experiences, ...
01.09.2023 Books We Love: Realistic Fiction NPR's Books We Love is full of stories. The feature rounds up fiction and nonfiction of many different kinds, and it gives you lots of ways to find what you might love, too. Today, we're diving into the category of ...
01.06.2023 Women Talking And What's Making Us Happy In the excellent new film Women Talking, a group of Mennonite women gather to discuss the abuse they've suffered at the hands of their men. They settle upon two possible solutions: stay and fight – or leave the only world ...
01.05.2023 Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical Roald Dahl's novel Matilda has been adapted many times over the years, including as a 1996 movie directed by Danny DeVito. The newest iteration is now streaming on Netflix. Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical, a feature film based on the ...
01.04.2023 Great 2022 Movies You May Have Missed We talk about a lot of movies on Pop Culture Happy Hour, but we definitely don't talk about all of them. All kinds of films fall through the cracks for all kinds of reasons, but we're here to give them ...
01.03.2023 South Side On the HBO Max sitcom South Side, the everyday absurdities of living in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood make for hilarious fodder. The show follows an eclectic bunch that includes employees at a rent-to-own shop and a pair of bickering cops as ...
01.02.2023 Comedian Josh Gondelman The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you an excerpt of the podcast Bullseye with Jesse Thorn. Normally, when you tune into an episode of Bullseye, you'll hear interviews with pop culture creators like David ...
12.30.2022 2023 Pop Culture Resolutions And What's Making Us Happy A lot of people make resolutions in January, and we are no different. Today, we put our stakes in the ground and make our 2023 pop culture resolutions. We also check in on what we resolved to do in 2022, ...
12.29.2022 2023 Pop Culture Predictions It's that time of year again, time for hopes and fears and accountability. What's to come in the new year? We can only guess, and guess we will! Plus, we'll look back at what we thought was coming on the ...
12.28.2022 Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody The new film Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody stars Naomi Ackie, and traces the pop superstar's rise in the 1980s and 90s as she breaks records and becomes an icon. The film also follows the singer's tragic downfall ...
12.27.2022 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Spoiler Episode There are many secrets at the heart of the comedy mystery Glass Onion, just as there were in its predecessor Knives Out. Who lives, who dies, whodunit, and what's the truth behind the glamorous glass onion itself? Rian Johnson's latest ...
12.26.2022 The Kardashians, Plus Celebrity Skincare The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you an episode of NPR's It's Been A Minute. In this episode about the Kardashians, host Brittany Luse unpacks how the Kardashian family went from Hollywood D-listers to ...
12.23.2022 Babylon And What's Making Us Happy The new film Babylon is all about silent-era Old Hollywood, new technology, the intoxication of being famous, and whether love can really conquer all. Babylon is the latest from writer-director Damien Chazelle, the sometimes divisive creator of La La Land. ...
12.22.2022 The Best Man: The Final Chapters When The Best Man franchise kicked off in 1999, it tapped into a specific kind of Black Gen Xer sensibility. The two films explored the dynamics of a tight-knit group of young urban professionals, played by Taye Diggs, Nia Long, ...
12.21.2022 Kindred The new FX on Hulu series Kindred is the first on-screen adaptation of any work by the great science fiction writer Octavia Butler. It's the story of Dana, a young Black woman who suddenly finds herself transported onto a Maryland ...
12.20.2022 Nanny The Sundance favorite Nanny is a moody thriller starring Anna Diop as Aisha, a Senegalese immigrant who cares for the young child of a rich Manhattan couple. As her tenure with the family progresses, the workplace dynamic becomes fraught and ...
12.19.2022 Hanukkah In Pop Culture Right now, families across the world are celebrating Hanukkah, so we thought it would be a good time to revisit our conversation all about the Jewish holiday. In this encore episode, we get into why Hanukkah is not Jewish Christmas, ...
12.16.2022 Avatar: The Way of Water And What's Making Us Happy James Cameron's science-fiction epic Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time. But it took 13 years to get a sequel into theaters. Avatar: The Way of Water continues Jake Sully and Neytiri's journey: complete with their children, a new ...
12.15.2022 SZA's SOS It's been five years since the artist SZA released her debut album Ctrl. Her new album SOS is home to 23 tracks that seamlessly blends pop, R&B;, hip-hop, and dips into rock and pop-punk along the way. It features appearances ...
12.14.2022 2022 Pop Culture Favorites It's tradition here at Pop Culture Happy Hour to look back on some of our favorite things from the last 12 months of television, movies and music. Today, we're revisiting the pop culture we saw, heard and loved all year.
12.13.2022 The Whale In the new Darren Aronofsky film The Whale, Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a housebound 600-pound gay writing teacher whose health is failing. His hopes to spend his last days reconnecting with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink) are complicated by her ...
12.12.2022 Welcome to Chippendales The Hulu miniseries Welcome to Chippendales takes us back to the 80s and the rise of the famed male revue Chippendales. Kumail Nanjiani stars as the club's founder, whose obsession with money and fame ultimately lead to murder. The supporting ...
12.09.2022 Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio And What's Making Us Happy Director Guillermo Del Toro has brought a new take on the classic tale of Pinocchio – the little wooden boy who goes on adventures and learns valuable life-lessons about the dangers of lying, laziness and disobedience. Unlike it's Disney predecessor, ...
12.08.2022 Violent Night Violent Night dares to ask the question: What if Santa Claus was a jaded drunk who steals booze while leaving presents under the tree on Christmas Eve? David Harbour plays Santa as he finds himself caught in the middle of ...
12.07.2022 Fleishman Is In Trouble The smartly written Hulu series Fleishman Is In Trouble stars Jesse Eisenberg as an Upper East Side doctor who finds himself divorced at 41. When his ex-wife, played by Claire Danes, leaves him with their two kids and disappears, he ...
12.06.2022 2022 Books We Love: Staff Picks Books We Love is a yearly labor of love here at NPR. Every year, the Books We Love team solicits recommendations from NPR staff and book critics and culls through them, creating an interactive reading guide you can use to ...
12.05.2022 Sort Of The HBO Max series Sort Of follows Sabi, played by Bilal Baig, a gender-fluid millennial in Toronto trying to figure their life out. They're the child of Pakistani parents, they've got a loser boyfriend, they work at a queer bookstore/bar ...
12.02.2022 The Fabelmans and What's Making Us Happy The Fabelmans is Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical and deeply personal film about a Jewish American boy who dreams of making movies. Growing up he learns to tell stories through his 8mm camera while life-altering events within his family's household significantly affect ...
12.01.2022 Strange World In Disney's new animated adventure Strange World, a family gets lost in a mysterious land underground. It's a story about discovery and intergenerational conflict — with a cast that includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Gabrielle Union, Jaboukie Young-White, and Dennis Quaid.
11.30.2022 Disenchanted The Disney Plus movie Disenchanted brings back Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and James Marsden in the continuing story of a cartoon princess making a life in the real world. A follow-up to 2007's Enchanted, it has more songs, gags and ...
11.29.2022 Bones and All Luca Guadagnino's weirdly beautiful romance Bones and All is a familiar road trip tale of young, angsty lovers drifting from state to state against the backdrop of breathtaking wide-open vistas. But the kicker is that the couple, played by Timothée ...
11.28.2022 Wednesday The Netflix series Wednesday breaks the beloved Addams Family character Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) out of her home environment and into the gloomy, gothy Nevermore Academy. It's the alma mater of parents Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones). ...
11.25.2022 Ricki Lake The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you an excerpt of the podcast Raised By Ricki. If you were a fan of Ricki Lake's talk show back in the '90s, this is the podcast for ...
11.24.2022 Latinos in Hollywood The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you a story from Mandalit del Barco's radio series about Latinos in Hollywood. Latinos have been a part of Hollywood since the days of silent movies, but they ...
11.23.2022 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery And What's Making Us Happy What has a murder mystery, a big cast of stars, some amazing fashion, and the deep blue waters of Greece? The eagerly awaited Glass Onion, the follow-up to the 2019 Oscar-nominated comedy Knives Out. Daniel Craig returns as brilliant detective ...
11.22.2022 2022 Christmas Movie Guide It's that time of year again, when many cable outlets and streaming services put on their holiday best. That's right, it's holiday movie season, and we're diving in. From the splashy musical Spirited featuring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds to ...
11.21.2022 Songs For Cleaning The Bathroom Maybe you've got guests coming over for the holidays. Maybe an onslaught of news has kept you glued to the couch or hiding under your covers. Either way, you need to clean the bathroom, and you need a playlist. In ...

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