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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Bros And What's Making Us H...

09.30.2022

In the grand tradition of the modern rom-com, stories about queer couples are still few and far between. Which is part of what makes the new movie Bros so special: Billy Eichner stars as a lanky intellectual who boasts a ...

Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes:

09.30.2022 Bros And What's Making Us Happy In the grand tradition of the modern rom-com, stories about queer couples are still few and far between. Which is part of what makes the new movie Bros so special: Billy Eichner stars as a lanky intellectual who boasts a ...
09.29.2022 She-Hulk: Attorney at Law In the Disney Plus series She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, Tatiana Maslany plays Jennifer Walters, an ambitious, eager lawyer. She's also the Hulk's cousin, and accidentally acquires some of his powers after an accident. So now she has to juggle her ...
09.28.2022 Maury For more than three decades, Maury has been a platform for flamboyant guests seeking paternity and lie detector tests for significant others. They've yelled, bawled and kicked over chairs. Now, the show's host Maury Povich is retiring and it's the ...
09.27.2022 Mariah Carey Mariah Carey's landmark album Butterfly recently turned 25. The album is certified five-times platinum, and includes singles like "Honey" and "My All." The singer-songwriter and pop star seems as omnipresent and ever, thanks to a perennial holiday hit and her ...
09.26.2022 Don't Worry Darling: Spoiler Episode In the new film Don't Worry Darling Florence Pugh plays Alice, a woman living in an idyllic planned community with her husband Jack, played by Harry Styles. But strange things begin to happen that make her suspect that all is ...
09.23.2022 Don't Worry Darling And What's Making Us Happy In the new movie Don't Worry Darling, Florence Pugh plays a woman living with her husband (Harry Styles) in an idyllic planned community that looks like it came out of about 1955. But soon, strange things begin to happen that ...
09.22.2022 See How They Run The new comedy See How They Run is a whodunit for people who really like a whodunit. Set behind the scenes at a 1950s production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the film is a murder mystery with a big cast ...
09.21.2022 Do Revenge The new Netflix film Do Revenge takes its cues from a lot of other films. Some are comedies about the psychology of high school, like Clueless and Heathers. Some are more traditional tales of dark plotting, like Strangers on a ...
09.20.2022 Reboot The new Hulu show Reboot follows a fictional behind-the-scenes attempt to create a gritty update of a TGIF-style family sitcom. The effort is led by Hannah (Rachel Bloom) who is constantly clashing with the show's original showrunner Gordon (Paul Reiser). ...
09.19.2022 Archer The animated comedy Archer explores the exploits of Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin), the world's most dangerous spy. Now in its 13th season, it's a workplace comedy full of guns, sex, and the occasional mad scientist. Created by Adam Reed, ...
09.16.2022 The Woman King And What's Making Us Happy The new movie The Woman King tells the story of the Agojie, a real-life group of women warriors who protected a West African kingdom in the 1820s. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the film stars Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, ...
09.15.2022 2022 Fall Guide Today, we're telling you what new shows, movies and albums we're excited about this fall.
09.14.2022 Serena Williams Serena Williams recently played what might be her final professional tennis match. She's had a singular, remarkable career, including 23 singles Grand Slam titles. Along the way, she's had an enormous impact on culture inside and outside sports, and even ...
09.13.2022 2022 Emmys Recap At last night's Emmy Awards, The White Lotus, Ted Lasso, and Succession all picked up major awards. But there were also unexpected wins for Abbott Elementary and Squid Game. And several of those wins came with wildly charismatic acceptance speeches.
09.12.2022 Emmy Nominee Squid Game Netflix's Korean drama Squid Game was a worldwide sensation. It's a violent and artful horror series, a survival drama, and a commentary on debt and capitalism. The show earned 14 Emmy nominations, and could make history as the first-ever non-English ...
09.09.2022 Disney's Pinocchio And What's Making Us Happy The new Disney Plus movie Pinocchio is a mostly live-action remake of the 1940 Disney animated classic about a wooden boy who longs to become real, but must first undergo a series of trials and temptations in order to do ...
09.08.2022 Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II died today at the age of 96. She was the longest-serving British monarch, and she was undeniably a major figure in pop culture. Her image on television shows like The Crown, and in movies like The Queen, ...
09.08.2022 Mo The excellent new Netflix series Mo is about a man who figures out how to get by: how to find work as someone who can't work legally, how to navigate the asylum process as a Palestinian refugee in Texas, and ...
09.07.2022 Bluey The children's TV cartoon Bluey centers on a family of four anthropomorphic dogs. Each episode balances gentle humor with some kind of lesson about emotional intelligence. Bluey is an Australian series that first premiered in 2018, and is streaming in ...
09.06.2022 Mississippi Masala The 1991 film Mississippi Masala stars Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington as two very beautiful people who meet and unexpectedly find they're just right for each other. Directed by Mira Nair, it's also about family and displacement, knowing your history, ...
09.05.2022 Auditioning For RuPaul's Drag Race The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we are bringing you an episode the podcast Snooze. It's a show about things people put off, how they conquer them, but most importantly, how they conquer themselves. In each ...
09.02.2022 Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. And What's Making Us Happy In the movie Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul., a Southern Baptist megachurch has been rocked by a lurid scandal. The always delightful Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown star as the first lady and pastor of the church, who ...
09.01.2022 Manti Te'o And The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist Manti Te'o was a decorated college football player at Notre Dame with a heartbreaking story. Early in his senior year, he had learned on the same day of the deaths of his grandmother and his girlfriend. But a few months ...
08.31.2022 Industry The HBO series Industry is a workplace drama about a cutthroat investment bank in London, where employees cater to wealthy client egos and undermine one another. Bosses are bad, drugs are plentiful, business jargon is everywhere. But even if you ...
08.30.2022 Three Great Karaoke Songs What makes a good karaoke song? Today, we're suggesting three great songs to sing at karaoke night.
08.29.2022 Physical Media We Still Treasure The vinyl record, the CD, the DVD, the VHS tape — even the paper book has been the subject of debate and concern over its future. But we haven't given up our collections just yet. Today we're talking about the ...
08.26.2022 Three Thousand Years Of Longing And What's Making Us Happy In the new George Miller-directed film Three Thousand Years of Longing, Tilda Swinton plays an academic who buys a glass bottle and soon discovers it contains an ancient djinn, played by Idris Elba. He says he will grant her three ...
08.25.2022 The Rehearsal On HBO's reality series The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder hires actors and production crews to create spaces to help real people practice for real moments in their real lives. Then he puts them through every possible permutation, attempting to account for ...
08.24.2022 King Of The Hill This year marks the 25th anniversary of King Of The Hill the animated sitcom King Of The Hill. Created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, the series ran for 13 seasons on FOX from 1997 to 2010, and is now ...
08.23.2022 Best Video Games Of 2022, So Far This summer, NPR asked its staff and contributors: What are the best video games of 2022, so far? Join The Game, NPR's column on games and gaming culture, has the results in a sortable guide of recommendations. Today, we round ...
08.22.2022 Rap Sh!t The HBO Max series Rap Sh!t feels like a comedy for The Moment. Created by Issa Rae, the show focuses on Shawna and Mia (played by Aida Osman and KaMillion), two aspiring rappers from Miami, and documents the challenges they ...
08.19.2022 Better Call Saul And What's Making Us Happy The sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman was meant to appear in only a handful of episodes of Breaking Bad. Instead, Saul (played by Bob Odenkirk) became an integral part of the series and eventually earned his own acclaimed spin-off, Better Call ...
08.18.2022 Harley Quinn The HBO Max animated series Harley Quinn is filled with characters from a version of the DC Universe where the violence is frequent, the language is explicitly salty, and the jokes come at you fast. In the show, Harley (Kaley ...
08.17.2022 A League Of Their Own (1992) The 1992 film A League Of Their Own is a beloved sports movie classic – thanks to a memorable all-star cast led by Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, and repeat showings on cable TV. It's a fictionalized account of The ...
08.16.2022 A League Of Their Own (2022) The professional women's baseball team the Rockford Peaches were immortalized in the 1992 box office hit A League Of Their Own. Thirty years later, they're back in a new Amazon Prime series of the same name. Co-created by and starring ...
08.15.2022 Checking In With Indian Matchmaking There's marriage, and then there's love marriage. That's the philosophy of Sima, the matchmaker at the center of the Netflix reality series Indian Matchmaking. The show has gotten a lot of attention, but also some critiques. It recently returned for ...
08.12.2022 Bodies Bodies Bodies And What's Making Us Happy Bodies Bodies Bodies starts with a fairly standard horror-movie premise: A group of wealthy and attractive pleasure-seekers gather at a mansion to party and ride out an oncoming hurricane. But things get quickly messy when one of them turns up ...
08.11.2022 Prey The new film Prey isn't just another installment of the Predator franchise. For one thing, it's a prequel to the original 1987 movie — set more than 300 years ago. More important is who's telling the story this time: Amber ...
08.10.2022 Desus and Mero For nearly a decade, Desus and Mero cultivated a unique space in media. With popular podcasts and late night talk shows, the comedy duo earned a devoted fanbase and became the destination for any celebrity looking to earn some cultural ...
08.09.2022 The Sandman The new Netflix series The Sandman is based on Neil Gaiman's much-beloved comic book series about an immortal and powerful being known as the Master of Dreams. The series introduces us to a world of fantastic adventure where dreams and ...
08.08.2022 The Wire This year marks the 20th anniversary of HBO's crime drama The Wire. Creators David Simon and Ed Burns spent five seasons dissecting various institutions in Baltimore, producing what is now considered one of the best television series of all time. ...
08.05.2022 Bullet Train and What's Making Us Happy In the new film Bullet Train, Brad Pitt plays an assassin hired to steal a briefcase from a pair of rival assassins played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry. Also in the mix are Andrew Koji, Joey King, Bad ...
08.04.2022 Beyoncé's Renaissance On Beyoncé's new album Renaissance, the superstar channels a rich history of Black and queer music. There's disco, dancehall, bounce, house, gospel, freestyle and funk — all served up in a confident, sexy and thotty gumbo. Now that we've had ...
08.03.2022 Uncoupled The new Netflix comedy series Uncoupled stars Neil Patrick Harris as a man whose partner leaves him after 17 years together. The show comes from Darren Star, the prolific producer behind Sex and the City, and Jeffrey Richman, who worked ...
08.02.2022 3 Great Movies Under 90 Minutes What do you do when you need a good movie, but you don't have much time? The answer is that you find a short one. We recommend three films that deliver a lot of punch without taking up your whole ...
08.01.2022 $#@*! Profanity in Pop Culture We've got dirty words on the brain. In this encore episode from 2013, we chat about the use and functions of profanity in entertainment. We cover everything from Anchorman to South Park to Shakespeare.
07.29.2022 Vengeance and What's Making Us Happy B.J. Novak (The Office) wrote, directed, and stars in the new indie comedy Vengeance. He plays Ben, a New York City journalist who decides to turn the mysterious death of his former hookup into fodder for a podcast. The film ...
07.28.2022 The Gray Man The Netflix movie The Gray Man stars Ryan Gosling as an inmate who becomes an assassin for the CIA in exchange for his freedom. When a mission goes awry, he has to contend with a sociopathic ex-agent played by Chris ...
07.27.2022 Summer TV We Missed Today there's more TV than ever before. And in such a crowded landscape, we can't get around to everything. That's why we wanted to highlight some of the recent shows that we didn't get around to, but we still think ...
07.26.2022 Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward had one of the most legendary partnerships in Hollywood. They were married over 50 years, and made 16 films together. Now they are the subject of a compelling new HBO Max docuseries called The ...

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