Pop Culture Happy Hour

By NPR

Arts TV & Film Music

What's Pop Culture Happy Hour about?

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

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Downton Abbey And What's Ma...

09.20.2019

If you thought the end of the series Downton Abbey would be the end of the Crawley family's adventures, a new film has arrived to prove you wrong. The movie continues the story of this very wealthy group and their ...

Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

09.20.2019 Downton Abbey And What's Making Us Happy If you thought the end of the series Downton Abbey would be the end of the Crawley family's adventures, a new film has arrived to prove you wrong. The movie continues the story of this very wealthy group and their ...
09.18.2019 Hustlers Anyone who's surprised at the big weekend the new film Hustlers had at the box office probably shouldn't be. Not only does it star popular women like Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, with drop-ins from Cardi B and Lizzo, but ...
09.13.2019 The Goldfinch And What's Making Us Happy Donna Tartt's 2013 book The Goldfinch won a Pulitzer Prize for its story of a boy whose mother dies in a bombing. It's an epic tale of grief, abandonment, friendship, drugs, and a stolen painting of a goldfinch. Now, The ...
09.11.2019 Steven Universe: The Movie The animated show Steven Universe has told the story of a human-alien hybrid boy and the race of alien women called Gems who've helped raise him on Earth. The show has told lighthearted stories of life in the fictional Beach ...
09.06.2019 It: Chapter Two And What's Making Us Happy The 2017 movie It was a massive blockbuster, and became the highest-grossing R-rated horror film of all time. Adapting the Stephen King novel of the same name, it tells the story of seven misfit kids in the late 1980s, and ...
09.04.2019 The Movies Of 1999 Just about every week, we talk about what we're watching or reading or listening to right now. Today, we're doing something different. We're going back 20 years to talk about some of the movies of 1999, including Drop Dead Gorgeous, ...
08.30.2019 Fall TV Preview It's autumn again. And that means we're getting a wave of new television. So it's time for the annual fall TV preview. Whether you like superheros or detectives, broadcast or cable or streaming, we're here to share what we're excited ...
08.27.2019 The 2019 MTV VMAs We just spent three hours watching the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, which are never really about awards so much as moments: big performances and the memes and soundbites we may or may not remember for years to come. This ...
08.23.2019 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and What's Making Us Happy The gang takes a look at Amy Sherman-Palladino's award-winning comedy, starring Rachel Brosnahan as a '50s housewife-turned-comedian. And, as always, What's Making Us Happy this week. Guests: Writer Katie Presley and Weekend Edition Books Editor Barrie Hardymon. (This episode originally ...
08.21.2019 Glow The panel discusses Netflix's new wrestling comedy GLOW with NPR's Code Switch Kat Chow. (This episode originally aired on June 23, 2017.)
08.16.2019 Where'd You Go, Bernadette And What's Making Us Happy In Maria Semple's novel Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Bernadette Fox is a wife and mother who mysteriously vanishes from her ordinary life in the middle of a personal crisis. Her daughter is left to piece together what happened. The new ...
08.14.2019 Succession Of all the TV shows about monstrous rich people, the HBO series Succession might be one of the most cutting. It follows heartless media mega-mogul Logan Roy and his ruthless children as they try to outmaneuver each other. And while ...
08.09.2019 Veronica Mars And What's Making Us Happy Back in 2004, Veronica Mars was a high school student working for her private-eye father on the side. After three seasons on the air and a crowdfunded movie in 2014, Veronica is back. Now an adult and still a detective, ...
08.07.2019 Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw The new film Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jason Statham. The two play their characters from the Fast & Furious franchise, spun off into a fresh adventure. They race a mechanically enhanced ...
08.02.2019 The Farewell And What's Making Us Happy In The Farewell, Akwafina plays Billi, a young woman whose beloved grandmother back in China is diagnosed with lung cancer. The family decides not to tell the grandmother that she's got only months to live — a decision that Billi ...
07.31.2019 Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood is writer-director Quentin Tarantino's ninth film. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading western actor named Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt as his loyal stuntman Cliff Booth. It's set in the changing Hollywood of ...
07.26.2019 Queer Eye Queer Eye is back for a fourth season, so we figured it'd be interesting to review our first impressions of the series, back when it premiered last year. We talk about the show's broader mission statement, the new Fab Five, ...
07.24.2019 Jeopardy! Jeopardy! has been in the news a lot this year, both for James Holzhauer's historic championship run and for Alex Trebek's recent cancer diagnosis. But when we talked about the long-running game show last year, it was just an eternal ...
07.19.2019 The Lion King And What's Making Us Happy For the last few years, Disney has been turning its beloved animated films into live-action revamps . But this revamp isn't live-action — even though it looks like it is. The digital animation is ridiculously advanced, bringing Simba, Mufasa, Scar, ...
07.17.2019 We Go To The Opera What has music, neon signs, classic cars, and Vegas gangsters in a dramatic story of love and death? Believe it or not, it's the Metropolitan Opera's production of Rigoletto, which we recently checked out in New York. Not only did ...
07.12.2019 Los Espookys And What's Making Us Happy Los Espookys is a very odd HBO comedy series about a group of horror-loving friends who start up a business that provides scary experiences for their clients.The six-episode series, which is now four episodes into its run, is co-written by ...
07.10.2019 Midsommar In the film Midsommar, writer-director Ari Aster follows up his cult horror hit Hereditary with a film about a literal cult. Florence Pugh plays a young woman who tags along with her awful boyfriend and his pals to a remote ...
07.05.2019 Spider-Man: Far From Home In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Tom Holland's Peter Parker deals with the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame by not dealing with it — he takes a class trip to Europe, attempting to leave his great power, and his great responsibility, behind.
07.02.2019 Songs Of Summer, 2019 Edition It's our second annual songs of summer spectacular! Every year at NPR Music we debate which hits might be remembered as "the song of the summer" — sometimes it's a frothy pop song, or a star-packed hip-hop banger, or simply ...
06.28.2019 'Yesterday' Imagines A World Without The Beatles In Yesterday, Himesh Patel plays Jack Malik, an English singer whose career is going nowhere. His parents don't understand him, but he's got the support of his friends — especially Ellie, his manager, played by Lily James. One night, Jack ...
06.26.2019 We Spoil Avengers: Endgame When Avengers: Endgame came out in late April, it got good reviews and it did huge business. As with everything we talk about, we didn't want to spoil it for you, so some of its biggest developments went un-analyzed. But ...
06.21.2019 Toy Story 4 And What's Making Us Happy The Toy Story movies have been skittering around the closets of our hearts for almost 25 years. Anchored by Woody the sheriff, voiced by Tom Hanks, they're central to the story of Pixar. Now we're up to Toy Story 4. ...
06.19.2019 Big Little Lies Returns For Season 2 When Big Little Lies came to HBO, it boasted a cast full of stars: Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Zoë Kravitz and Laura Dern. For season two, they upped their game by adding Meryl Streep. The end of season ...
06.14.2019 Late Night And What's Making Us Happy In the movie Late Night, Mindy Kaling plays Molly Patel, a woman who gets her big break in the writers' room of late night host Katherine Newbury. Newbury, played by Emma Thompson, is on thin ice with the network and ...
06.12.2019 Olivia Wilde Is Quizzed On Buffalo Wild Wings A few weeks ago we talked about the wonderful new teen comedy Booksmart. the film is directed by Olivia Wilde, who is also an actress known for her roles on House, The O.C., and Tron: Legacy. In this bonus episode, ...
06.10.2019 The 2019 Tony Awards We are recapping this year's Tony Awards. James Corden was back as the host, and it was a big night for the musical Hadestown and the Irish play The Ferryman. The musicals Tootsie and Oklahoma! also picked up multiple awards.
06.07.2019 You Should Watch Fleabag. Here's Why. In 2016, Phoebe Waller-Bridge presented the world with Fleabag. She not only writes the show, but she stars in it too. She plays a young woman only referred to as Fleabag who is bruised by external and internal struggles. And ...
06.05.2019 Rocketman Rocketman is a new biopic about queer rock icon Elton John. It is in many ways a typical rise-and-fall, dangers of fame kind of rock star biopic. But there is a difference: this is a full-on jukebox musical on film. ...
05.31.2019 Booksmart and What's Making Us Happy In the new movie Booksmart, two young women about to graduate from high school spend one last night trying to catch up on everything they missed. Starring Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, it's the directing debut of actress Olivia Wilde. ...
05.29.2019 Our Great Big Theater Roundup We recently packed up and road-tripped to New York to check out some selections from the current Broadway theater season. We went to musicals and plays, revivals and new works, and we have a lot of thoughts.
05.24.2019 Aladdin and What's Making Us Happy Aladdin is the latest Disney live-action remake of an animated classic. The 1992 original starred Robin Williams as the genie, and this time it's Will Smith.
05.20.2019 Game Of Thrones After eight seasons, 73 episodes, and way too many characters busting out the phrase "bend the knee" all the time, HBO's Game of Thrones has come to an end. And there's a lot to unpack.
05.17.2019 John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum and What's Making Us Happy Once upon a time, a man named John Wick retired from his successful career as an assassin. But then he returned to it. And across what's now a three-film series, he's been having a heck of a week ever since.
05.15.2019 Pokémon Detective Pikachu The Pokémon universe has brought the world television cartoons, trading cards, video games, plush toys, the mobile-game sensation Pokemon GO, and a string of animated movies. Now, the franchise makes the leap into live action with a big-budget summer blockbuster ...
05.10.2019 People We're Pulling For and What's Making Us Happy Everyone needs inspiration. And we need it too. So from time to time, we pause just to single out some of the people whose work we're appreciating. People from whom we want more. We call this segment People We're Pulling ...
05.08.2019 Long Shot: Charlize Theron And Seth Rogen Mix Romance And Politics While summer is a time of spectacles and sequels, there is always time for love. The new romantic comedy Long Shot stars Charlize Theron as a beautiful and sophisticated presidential candidate and Seth Rogen as the grubby speechwriter with her ...
05.03.2019 Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Comedies About Music We revisit our 2016 discussion of the film Popstar. We The also look at back at other films that find humor in the foibles of musicians.
05.01.2019 Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos in Pop Culture Nothing fascinates the world like a meteoric rise. Except, of course, for a spectacular fall. The story of the Silicon Valley startup Theranos and its young founder Elizabeth Holmes has both. And the coverage it's received has been huge. There's ...
04.26.2019 'Avengers: Endgame' and What's Making Us Happy The Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought us Iron Man movies, Thor movies, Captain America movies, Avengers movies, and many other superhero franchises over the last decade, and they all feed into one epic that ties up many of the loose ...
04.22.2019 Beyoncé's Homecoming On Wednesday, Beyoncé released two major projects. On Netflix, a new documentary captures the process of putting on headlining appearances at last year's Coachella Music Festival. She also surprise-released a double-length live album that contains just some of the highlights ...
04.19.2019 Our Summer Movie Preview It's time again for our summer movie preview. We'll take a shot at guessing hits and misses, and we'll tell you what we can't wait to see.
04.17.2019 We Offer Some Pop Culture Advice Today we open up the vault to finally bring you a segment we recorded back in 2016 with our pal Audie Cornish. You'll hear us live in Seattle offering advice on some classic pop culture problems.
04.12.2019 The Twilight Zone and What's Making Us Happy It's been 60 years since The Twilight Zone first aired, with the voice and eventually the face of its creator, Rod Serling. Now, CBS All Access has brought the anthology series back in a new incarnation. This time, the host ...
04.10.2019 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend For the last four seasons, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has followed Rebecca Bunch as she pursued love, dreaded her mother, and tried to address her mental health. The show stars Rachel Bloom as Bunch, who created the show with Aline Brosh Mckenna. ...
04.05.2019 Shazam! And What's Making Us Happy "Shazam!" is what young Billy Batson says to morph into a big red superhero. It's also the name of the new movie about him. Starring Zachary Levi as the big lug in the suit, Shazam! makes for a lighter DC ...

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Pop Culture Happy Hour

What's Pop Culture Happy Hour about?

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Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

Downton Abbey And What's Making Us Happy

Hustlers

The Goldfinch And What's Making Us Happy

Steven Universe: The Movie

It: Chapter Two And What's Making Us Happy

The Movies Of 1999

Fall TV Preview

The 2019 MTV VMAs

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and What's Making Us Happy

Glow

Where'd You Go, Bernadette And What's Making Us Happy

Succession

Veronica Mars And What's Making Us Happy

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

The Farewell And What's Making Us Happy

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Queer Eye

Jeopardy!

The Lion King And What's Making Us Happy

We Go To The Opera

Los Espookys And What's Making Us Happy

Midsommar

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Songs Of Summer, 2019 Edition

'Yesterday' Imagines A World Without The Beatles

We Spoil Avengers: Endgame

Toy Story 4 And What's Making Us Happy

Big Little Lies Returns For Season 2

Late Night And What's Making Us Happy

Olivia Wilde Is Quizzed On Buffalo Wild Wings

The 2019 Tony Awards

You Should Watch Fleabag. Here's Why.

Rocketman

Booksmart and What's Making Us Happy

Our Great Big Theater Roundup

Aladdin and What's Making Us Happy

Game Of Thrones

John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum and What's Making Us Happy

Pokémon Detective Pikachu

People We're Pulling For and What's Making Us Happy

Long Shot: Charlize Theron And Seth Rogen Mix Romance And Politics

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Comedies About Music

Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos in Pop Culture

'Avengers: Endgame' and What's Making Us Happy

Beyoncé's Homecoming

Our Summer Movie Preview

We Offer Some Pop Culture Advice

The Twilight Zone and What's Making Us Happy

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Shazam! And What's Making Us Happy

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