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.

4.5

8,140 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

The Morning Show

10.28.2021

If you like secret relationships, morning television melodrama, men singing Neil Diamond unexpectedly and a rom-com set against the backdrop of COVID, you're going to love the kooky, uneven and profoundly strange second season of the Apple TV+ series The ...

Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

10.28.2021 The Morning Show If you like secret relationships, morning television melodrama, men singing Neil Diamond unexpectedly and a rom-com set against the backdrop of COVID, you're going to love the kooky, uneven and profoundly strange second season of the Apple TV+ series The ...
10.27.2021 Foundation Foundation is set in the far future, when humanity has expanded into a vast galactic empire. A mathematician comes forward to announce that he's crunched the numbers — and found that the empire is on the verge of collapse, and ...
10.26.2021 The French Dispatch Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch is a love letter to classic French cinema and The New Yorker magazine. Like all of his films, it's highly stylized — this one adopts the format of a magazine. It's an anthology of sorts, ...
10.25.2021 The Things That Scared Us As Kids A lot of us are about to have the experience of opening our front doors to find witches, goblins, ghosts, and those guards from Squid Game standing on our porches. Why? Because it's almost Halloween. We decided this would be ...
10.22.2021 Dune And What's Making Us Happy Dune is a sweeping epic set way into the future, where various groups are vying for control of a planet's highly coveted substance. Timothée Chalamet plays a duke's son who comes of age and exhibits messianic tendencies. The cast also ...
10.21.2021 Three Songs For Cleaning Your Bathroom NPR Music has song recommendations for every occasion, from major life events to tidying up the house. As we enter the fall season, it doesn't hurt to spruce up and start afresh with a new playlist. Today, we're recommending three ...
10.20.2021 Auteurs And Film Franchises This fall, a number of auteurs are directing major blockbusters: Cary Joji Fukunaga took on the James Bond movie No Time To Die; Chloe Zhao joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Eternals; and Denis Villeneuve hopes to launch a film ...
10.19.2021 Impeachment: American Crime Story FX's Impeachment: American Crime Story is less about President Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment and more about three women who played central roles in the saga, including Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky was a consultant on the series, which examines ...
10.18.2021 You When the Netflix thriller series You premiered three years ago, it started a lot of conversations. The show was told largely from the point of view of a charismatic serial killer named Joe, played by Penn Badgley, and it followed ...
10.15.2021 The Last Duel And What's Making Us Happy It's been more than 20 years since Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote their Oscar-winning screenplay Good Will Hunting, but that changes with Ridley Scott's bloody epic The Last Duel. Co-written by Oscar nominee Nicole Holofcener, the film features performances ...
10.14.2021 Squid Game The Korean drama Squid Game is a worldwide sensation. According to Netflix, it's topped their rankings in more than 90 countries. Written and directed by the filmmaker Hwang Dong-Hyuk, it's a violent and artful horror miniseries, a survival drama, and ...
10.13.2021 Maid Based on Stephanie Land's memoir, the Netflix series Maid stars Margaret Qualley as a single mom who must learn to survive on public assistance. While the series takes a hard look at the logistics of poverty, it's also a riveting ...
10.12.2021 Y: The Last Man The FX on Hulu drama Y: The Last Man is the latest in a long line of post-apocalyptic narratives of TV, but this one comes with a novel twist: A mysterious event wipes out every mammal on Earth with a ...
10.11.2021 Soul Train When Soul Train was first nationally syndicated in October of 1971, there was nothing else like it on TV. It became an iconic Black music and dance show — a party every weekend that anyone could join from their living ...
10.08.2021 No Time To Die And What's Making Us Happy No Time To Die is Daniel Craig's final outing as James Bond. This time, he's dealing with the skeletons of his past while trying to build himself a future. That future may or may not include Léa Seydoux, who returns ...
10.07.2021 Venom: Let There Be Carnage Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not your standard superhero action flick. With more human-on-goo romance and symbiote-on-symbiote violence, the sequel to 2018's Venom already posted the biggest box-office opening weekend of the pandemic. Tom Hardy returns as reporter Eddie ...
10.06.2021 The Guilty Director Antoine Fuqua is no stranger to compromised cops — he famously put Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke through their paces in Training Day. Now, he's back with The Guilty, a Netflix thriller that stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a suspended ...
10.05.2021 Beyoncé's Homecoming Two years ago, Beyoncé unleashed two major projects called Homecoming. On Netflix, a documentary captured the process of putting on headlining appearances at the Coachella Music Festival. She also surprise-released a double-length live album containing just some of the highlights ...
10.04.2021 Star Wars: Visions Star Wars: Visions is a new animated anthology series on Disney+ that brings together seven anime studios to tell nine stand-alone Star Wars stories. There's some recurring elements — Padawans and Masters, Lightsaber duels — but the choice to view ...
10.01.2021 The Many Saints Of Newark And What's Making Us Happy If you've been waiting for more of Tony Sopranos's universe, you're in luck. The Many Saints Of Newark isn't a sequel but a prequel to the influential HBO series The Sopranos. Co-written by Sopranos creator David Chase, the film examines ...
09.30.2021 The Sopranos The Sopranos changed television. The HBO series was centered on mobster Tony Soprano — a deeply flawed male antihero played by James Gandolfini. But the thing that really set The Sopranos apart was the fact that Tony was in therapy, ...
09.29.2021 Scenes From A Marriage The original Scenes From A Marriage was an influential 1973 Swedish miniseries written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Updated for a modern audience, HBO's remake is written and directed by Hagai Levi, who takes many elements from the original, while ...
09.27.2021 2021 Tony Awards Recap The Tony Awards came back last night, after being gone for over two years. It was an unusual ceremony — a mix of performances and award presentations that aired on two different platforms. It was all a coordinated, tuneful effort ...
09.27.2021 Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros loom large over the literary landscape. In fact, their respective careers have a lot of parallels. They both published their first novels around the same time: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits was published ...
09.24.2021 Dear Evan Hansen And What's Making Us Happy The stage musical Dear Evan Hansen debuted on Broadway five years ago. It won six Tony Awards, including one for its star, Ben Platt. It's now a movie, and Platt, who's now 27, is back to play Evan, a deeply ...
09.23.2021 Lil Nas X's Montero In just two short years, Lil Nas X has proven he's much more than "Old Town Road." He's taken a successful novelty song and parlayed it into a budding and influential music career. He's come out as gay and arguably ...
09.22.2021 Everybody's Talking About Jamie Everybody's Talking About Jamie is a coming-out story with some familiar contours, but it doesn't have your typical splashy musical pedigree. Adapted from a successful West End production, the Amazon Prime film follows Jamie, a teenage boy in England, who's ...
09.21.2021 Three Great Fiction Audiobooks Curling up with a good book is a pleasure with which we're all familiar. But when you find just the right narrator to bring characters to life, a novel can be even better. The right voice, or the right cast ...
09.20.2021 2021 Emmys Recap It was a really good night for three very popular TV shows, and a groundbreaking night for Netflix. Yes, it was time again for the Emmys, which saw Ted Lasso, Mare of Easttown, and The Crown win big. There were ...
09.17.2021 TIFF Film Guide And What's Making Us Happy The Toronto International Film Festival traditionally helps launch awards season. This year has been a little different, with pandemic restrictions leading to a hybrid remote and in-person festival. After watching a batch of entries from home, we've seen some things ...
09.16.2021 What We Do In The Shadows The comedy series What We Do In The Shadows imagines what a slacker reality show might look like if all the roommates were vampires. The show is based on a 2014 film of the same name, which was co-directed and ...
09.15.2021 Kacey Musgraves' Star-Crossed Kacey Musgraves's 2018 album Golden Hour was a huge breakthrough. It's a soft but spangly celebration full of love songs that helped cement Musgraves as both a country star and a pop star. Now, she's released her follow-up. Star-Crossed is ...
09.14.2021 Ted Lasso A strong first season and a huge haul of Emmy nominations gave Ted Lasso all kinds of momentum going into its second run this summer. It's the story of American football coach, Ted Lasso, who gets a job coaching AFC ...
09.13.2021 Brooklyn Nine-Nine This week, the police comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine will end its eight-season run. Starring Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher, among many other gifted comic actors, the show has enjoyed a devoted following and strong reviews. It's also survived shaky ratings and ...
09.10.2021 Fall Guide And What's Making Us Happy We're here to bring you some of the things we're most interested to check out and talk about this fall. Whether you read it, watch it, or listen to it, we want to make sure you know about it.
09.09.2021 Q-Force In the Netflix animated action-comedy series Q-Force, a rag-tag team of queer spies who've been relegated to working out of a West Hollywood garage finally get their shot at the big leagues. Starring Sean Hayes, Wanda Sykes, Patti Harrison, Laurie ...
09.08.2021 Only Murders In The Building Hulu's fun mystery-comedy series Only Murders in the Building stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as a trio of true-crime podcast fans who live in the same ritzy building on New York's Upper West Side. When a mysterious ...
09.07.2021 Drake's Certified Lover Boy On Friday, Drake dropped his long-awaited sixth album: Certified Lover Boy. The album contains 21 songs in 86 minutes, and it's generated conversation around everything from its many guest stars (including Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Future, and Lil Wayne) to its ...
09.03.2021 Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings And What's Making Us Happy The Marvel Cinematic Universe opens a new chapter with the release of Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the movie is ambitiously packed with dizzyingly choreographed battle scenes and complex family dynamics. It's ...
09.02.2021 High School Required Reading Heading back to school is always a stressful but exciting time of year, whether you're doing it at home or in a classroom full of people. And we are always up to talk about books. Summer reading lists, class syllabi, ...
09.01.2021 Pig In the film Pig, Nicolas Cage plays a once-famous Portland chef who's now a recluse, living in a cabin in the woods with his beloved truffle-hunting pig. When some nefarious types kidnap said pig, Cage comes out of seclusion to ...
08.31.2021 What If...? The Disney+ animated series What If...? mixes and matches major and minor characters and events from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to explore what might have happened if things shook out differently than they did in the films. Many of those ...
08.30.2021 Happy Endings The early-2010s sitcom Happy Endings was a show about six best friends in Chicago. Created by David Caspe, the series was sharp, hijinks-filled and altogether fun. The show aired on ABC for three seasons before its cancellation, but it's now ...
08.27.2021 Candyman And What's Making Us Happy Legend has it that if you say "Candyman" in front of a mirror five times, you'll summon the spirit of a terrifying killer with a hook for a hand, who's constantly surrounded by a swarm of bees. That's the premise ...
08.26.2021 Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books: A Guide The worlds of science fiction and fantasy can be almost anything — a distant planet, an alternate timeline, a land of magic and mystery, or our own familiar world, just tweaked a bit. Whether you're a longtime science fiction/fantasy reader, ...
08.25.2021 Aaliyah: Essentials It's been 20 years since the untimely passing of Aaliyah in a plane crash when she was just 22. In that time, her influence has been felt everywhere in music and pop culture, even though the bulk of her catalog ...
08.24.2021 The Chair In the Netflix show The Chair, Ji-Yoon Kim (played by Sandra Oh) has just become the first woman to chair the English department at the fictional Pembroke University. Ji-Yoon is determined to usher in a new era, but is immediately ...
08.23.2021 Reservation Dogs The new series Reservation Dogs follows four Indigenous teenagers who live in Oklahoma, but are scheming and saving to get to California. It's a loose and dry-witted comedy that has notes of countless teenager hangout stories. And it's made by ...
08.20.2021 Lorde And What's Making Us Happy Lorde became a pop superstar at 16 with her hit single "Royals" — winning two Grammy Awards and following up with her second album, Melodrama. The New Zealand singer's third album Solar Power finds the artist reflecting on stardom, boredom ...
08.19.2021 Brand New Cherry Flavor The new Netflix series Brand New Cherry Flavor is weird. It starts off pretty straightforward: A student filmmaker played by Rosa Salazar heads to Hollywood, hoping to direct her first feature, and gets screwed over by a sleazy producer. But ...

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 Morning Show

Foundation

The French Dispatch

The Things That Scared Us As Kids

Dune And What's Making Us Happy

Three Songs For Cleaning Your Bathroom

Auteurs And Film Franchises

Impeachment: American Crime Story

You

The Last Duel And What's Making Us Happy

Squid Game

Maid

Y: The Last Man

Soul Train

No Time To Die And What's Making Us Happy

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

The Guilty

Beyoncé's Homecoming

Star Wars: Visions

The Many Saints Of Newark And What's Making Us Happy

The Sopranos

Scenes From A Marriage

2021 Tony Awards Recap

Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros

Dear Evan Hansen And What's Making Us Happy

Lil Nas X's Montero

Everybody's Talking About Jamie

Three Great Fiction Audiobooks

2021 Emmys Recap

TIFF Film Guide And What's Making Us Happy

What We Do In The Shadows

Kacey Musgraves' Star-Crossed

Ted Lasso

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Fall Guide And What's Making Us Happy

Q-Force

Only Murders In The Building

Drake's Certified Lover Boy

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings And What's Making Us Happy

High School Required Reading

Pig

What If...?

Happy Endings

Candyman And What's Making Us Happy

Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books: A Guide

Aaliyah: Essentials

The Chair

Reservation Dogs

Lorde And What's Making Us Happy

Brand New Cherry Flavor

Other shows like Pop Culture Happy Hour: