Pop Culture Happy Hour

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Get obsessed with us. Four 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

Episodes

November 14, 2025 24 mins
The Running Man is a new dystopian thriller starring Glen Powell as a man so desperate for money to care for his family that he volunteers to run for his life. As a contestant on a TV game show, he must survive for 30 days while being hunted by a group of highly skilled assassins and by his fellow citizens. Based on a Stephen King novel, director Edgar Wright brings in an all-star cast including Lee Pace, Colman Domingo, William H....
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Netflix’s Death by Lightning pits President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) against Charles Guiteau (Matthew McFadyen), the disgruntled would-be political operative who shot him. But it’s not quite the stuffy, stately historical drama that you – and your dad – are probably expecting. Toss in a brace of white middle-aged actors in great big bushy beards and sideburns – Shea Whigham, Nick Offerman, Bradley Whitford – and you’ve got ...
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November 11, 2025 19 mins
The new and highly anticipated Apple TV series Pluribus, from Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), asks a simple question: What if a proud misanthrope suddenly found herself truly alone? Pluribus stars Rhea Seehorn (Better Call Saul) in a tour de force performance as a miserable romantasy author who escapes an event that swallows practically everyone on Earth. The show is a creepy, lonely, darkly funny look at loss and what makes us huma...
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November 10, 2025 17 mins
Predator: Badlands is the latest film about an alien race that hunts things using all sorts of space-gadgets. It’s told from the Predator’s perspective. He’s an outcast sent to a hostile planet to hunt down a deadly monster to prove his worth to his people – with Elle Fanning joining as an unlikely ally. It’s from the same team that made Prey. And both Predator movies are much better than they had any right to be.

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November 7, 2025 26 mins
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is a new reimagining of Mary Shelly’s classic gothic horror tale about a misunderstood monster who’s abandoned by his creator and shunned by society. Oscar Isaac is the narcissistic doctor Victor Frankenstein, and Jacob Elordi has a gargantuan yet humanizing turn as The Creature. Now streaming on Netflix, Frankenstein is dark, epic, and preoccupied with the existential dread of life and death.
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November 6, 2025 20 mins
Rachel Sennott’s next project, the HBO series I Love LA, has finally arrived. And like plenty of shows before it, it’s about young people trying to work and socialize in a big city while screwing up in every conceivable way. Sennott stars as an ascendant employee at a boutique talent management firm with a very online crew played by Josh Hutcherson, Jordan Firstman, Odessa A’zion and True Whitaker. 


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November 4, 2025 19 mins
In the new film Hedda, Tessa Thompson plays a woman bored with her dull husband, and who devilishly manipulates the affections of everyone in her orbit. Writer/director Nia DaCosta makes some bold changes in this adaptation of the classic Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, and sets almost all of the action during a lavish party gone awry. But this is not your grandmother’s Hedda. It’s sexy, chaotic, and, above all, messy as hell. It’s...
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November 3, 2025 21 mins
In new HBO prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry, we return to the clown who keeps on giving. Based on the Stephen King novel and a prequel to the films It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019), the show finds a whole new crop of kids being terrorized by whatever lives underneath their little town in Maine. And at the nearby military base, some of the local adults are acting pretty sketchy, too. There is a lot going on and a lot of it is ...
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October 31, 2025 23 mins
Bugonia stars Emma Stone as a high-powered CEO who’s kidnapped by conspiracy theorists, one of whom is played by Jesse Plemons. The conflict grows more and more complex and intense — and, given that this is a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, it gets 1) very dark; and 2) very weird. 

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October 29, 2025 18 mins
Rose Byrne shows off her dramatic chops in the new movie If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, where she plays a therapist shouldering all the responsibility of caring for her ill daughter while her emotionally absent husband is away for work. Her patients have their own issues, and sometimes they don't grasp the meaning of "boundaries." And her relationship with her own therapist/co-worker, who’s played by Conan O’Brien, is… messy. And that...
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October 28, 2025 22 mins
Who's the Mariah Carey of Halloween? Every year we hear many familiar Halloween songs – from the Ghostbusters theme to “Thriller” to “Monster Mash.” But beyond those Halloween staples, what’s next? Today we've got an episode of NPR’s All Songs Considered that offers up a new canon spooky season songs – from the truly terrifying to autumnal and nostalgic.

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October 27, 2025 20 mins
In the new movie Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke plays songwriter Lorenz Hart, who is having maybe the worst night of his life. His long term collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has forged a new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II, and tonight is the opening of Oklahoma!, their first show. And it's safe to say Hart is miserable. Blue Moon is directed by Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise, Boyhood), and co-stars Margaret Qualley.
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In the new film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the currently red-hot actor Jeremy Allen White plays the eternally red-hot rock star, Bruce Springsteen. And yes, White does his own singing. The film tells the story of the 1982 album Nebraska. It came at a time of personal and career uncertainty for Springsteen, and ended up being recorded in a bedroom, without a band. It’s largely a film about fighting to preserve the integri...
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October 23, 2025 18 mins
In the Netflix series Nobody Wants This, Kristen Bell plays an agnostic podcaster, who meets a rabbi, played by Adam Brody. They like each other immediately, but there are some hurdles for them when it comes to being together. The show offers plenty of romantic comedy banter and good chemistry, as well as some pretty deep questions about faith and compatibility. Nobody Wants This just returned for a second season, so today we are r...
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October 22, 2025 23 mins
When you watch a competitive reality show, you might think about how you'd win. But maybe you think about a much more powerful role for yourself: the judge. We discuss which reality tv show we’d like to judge - including Top Chef, American Idol, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Rhythm + Flow.

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October 21, 2025 15 mins
In Good Fortune, Keanu Reeves plays a doofy, well-meaning guardian angel named Gabriel who gets a little too involved in the life of a gig worker named Arj (Aziz Ansari). In trying to teach Arj a life lesson, Gabriel grants him the opportunity to swap places with a finance mogul (Seth Rogen). This mostly buddy comedy is Ansari’s feature directorial debut and has a bit to say about wealth inequality and even some musings on what mak...
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October 17, 2025 18 mins
Grabbers gonna grab, even from beyond the grave. In Black Phone 2, Ethan Hawke returns from the dead as the serial killer who hides behind a demonic mask. It’s four years later, and the siblings (Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw) who survived the Grabber’s killing spree are having a hard time with things. They head off to camp to investigate Gwen's psychic nightmares of the Grabber's early victims.


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October 15, 2025 17 mins
In the new movie Roofman, Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst ooze with their signature charm and chemistry. Tatum plays an exceptionally savvy military veteran who robs fast food joints by entering through the rooftops. Eventually he gets caught and sent to prison, but he’s able to escape and hides out in a Toys “R” Us for several months undetected. Obviously, he can only survive on M&Ms and keep up the ruse for so long before the ro...
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October 14, 2025 17 mins
In the new movie After The Hunt, Julia Roberts plays a Yale professor who finds herself in a hard place when one of her star students (Ayo Edebiri) makes an allegation against another faculty member (Andrew Garfield). Who’s telling the truth? Who’s the victim? Is there a victim? Directed by Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me by Your Name) the film poses a lot of questions. But are any of them answered?


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October 13, 2025 22 mins
Jennifer Lopez stars in the new film adaptation of Kiss of the Spider Woman. Set in an Argentine prison, one man (Tonatiuh) tells his cellmate (Diego Luna) the story of his favorite old Hollywood musical, starring the silver screen goddess he worships – that’s J. Lo. The musical is packed with glitz, glamour and songs written by Kander and Ebb, the minds behind Cabaret and Chicago.


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