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
May 12, 2025 • 20 mins
If you're a celeb visiting The Jennifer Hudson Show, it's almost guaranteed you're going to make your way down the Spirit Tunnel – and possibly go viral. In just a few seconds, these videos can reveal a lot about a celeb's personality and persona: Do they have rhythm? Are they any good at improv? And how famous are they, really? The answers are (sometimes) really surprising!
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May 9, 2025 • 23 mins
The new action movie Fight or Flight finds Josh Hartnett playing a onetime Secret Service agent who is pressured into one more job: fighting off a series of increasingly over-the-top assassins trying to kill a mysterious criminal. And they're all packed onto a plane together. Plus, what's making us happy, including a classic R&B song, a new sports documentary series and a iconic thriller.
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May 7, 2025 • 19 mins
Another Simple Favor reunites Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in a new movie full of murder, deceit, and great hats. Set at a splashy wedding in Capri, it turns out you can't keep a good – or in this case, a very bad – woman down. Directed by Paul Feig (A Simple Favor, Bridesmaids), the film also stars Henry Golding, Allison Janney and Elizabeth Perkins. It's streaming on Prime Video.
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May 6, 2025 • 19 mins
Monday was fashion's biggest night: the Met Gala. And our pal Brittany Luse was paying attention to all the best and worst dressed. Today we've got an episode of the podcast It's Been A Minute – they've got a recap of the highs and lows of the night.
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May 5, 2025 • 19 mins
Tina Fey returns to TV on the charming Netflix comedy The Four Seasons. It's about a group of couples whose friendship dynamic is rocked by their midlife crises. The impressive cast includes Colman Domingo, Will Forte, and Steve Carell. And while the jokes may not fly quite as fast as they did on 30 Rock, Fey's comedic sensibilities are written all over it.
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May 2, 2025 • 22 mins
Thunderbolts* is the latest Marvel movie and this one's a bit more fun than they've been lately. It stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour and emotionally broken super-people who've done some very bad things. Will they manage to put their guilt aside and come together to form a rag-tag team of losers who somehow manage to save the day?
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May 1, 2025 • 19 mins
If you wanted to escape reality and move to a fictional TV world, where would you live? Many are dystopian hellscapes and stressful workplaces. But other TV shows are a fun hang. Today, we're talking about TV shows where we'd like to live — including Game of Thrones, Derry Girls, Parks and Recreation, and Gilligan's Island.
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April 29, 2025 • 23 mins
Weddings make great fodder for TV writers. It's wedding season, so today we're breaking down the different types of TV weddings featured on Friends, General Hospital, A Different World, Grey's Anatomy, Cheers, Schitt's Creek and more.
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April 28, 2025 • 17 mins
Étoile is the latest series from Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It's about the wacky goings-on between two prestigious but struggling ballet companies, one in New York, and one in Paris. You'll see some of your favorite actors from the Gilmore and Maisel universes all speaking that signature rapid-fire, joke-dense patter. But can a comedy set in the rarified world of professional ...
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April 25, 2025 • 28 mins
There was Barbenheimer Summer, then Brat Summer, what will this year bring? Maybe it's the season of actually good superhero movies, like The Fantastic Four and Superman. We've got a guide to the movies and TV we're most excited about this summer, including M3gan 2.0, Pixar's Elio, and Mission: Impossible.
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April 23, 2025 • 22 mins
Pope Francis' death not only led to an outpouring of remembrances. It also unleashed a new wave of memes from the Oscar-nominated movie Conclave. It tells a very fun and very fictional story of the secretive process by which a pope is replaced. It's a twisty political thriller, it's a tense jury drama, and it's got some strong commentary on the state of the Catholic Church. Conclave stars Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow,...
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April 22, 2025 • 18 mins
The lovely rom-com The Wedding Banquet has a stellar all-star cast, including Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, and Bowen Yang. It's a twisty comedy of errors where proposals, hookups, and harsh words fly. Directed by Andrew Ahn (Fire Island), the film offers a modern take on Ang Lee's classic queer film.
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April 21, 2025 • 14 mins
We cover a lot of TV on this show, but we don't get to everything. Today we're recommending some of our favorite recent TV comedies you don't want to miss, including #1 Happy Family USA, The Righteous Gemstones, North of North, and Deli Boys.
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April 18, 2025 • 25 mins
The very scary movie Sinners finds Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers who open a 1930s juke joint. And opening night does not go as planned. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, (Black Panther), the film mixes blues music with classic horror in a standoff between the brothers and their friends on the inside and the bloodthirsty – and growing – menace outside.
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April 16, 2025 • 15 mins
In the Apple TV+ series Your Friends and Neighbors, a very rich guy reacts to becoming a bit less rich by turning to a life of crime. Played by Jon Hamm, in full charming-but-morally-compromised mode, he starts sneaking into people's and taking their stuff. Part drama and part dark comedy about rich jerks, the series also stars Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn.
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April 15, 2025 • 25 mins
The last season of the venerable British science fiction series Doctor Who brought a lot of change. The Doctor is now played by Ncuti Gatwa, who is Black and openly queer. And it marked the return of the showrunner who birthed the modern era of Doctor Who. The show just returned for a new season on Disney+, so today we're revisiting our conversation about the series.
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April 14, 2025 • 15 mins
The new film Warfare dispenses with a lot of things you've come to expect from Hollywood war movies. It's based on the memories of a platoon of Navy SEALS, and attempts to capture the chaos of one specific Iraq War conflict as accurately as possible. The only thing Hollywood about it is its cast of young actors, including Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, Kit Connor and D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai.
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April 11, 2025 • 19 mins
In the bonkers thriller Drop, Meghann Fahy plays a woman whose first date goes off the rails when she starts getting increasingly alarming message drops from someone nearby. And this potentially romantic dinner turns into a life-or-death situation, real quick.
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April 10, 2025 • 22 mins
At a certain point, most of us settle into a groove with our pop culture consumption. We know what we love and what we're not into. But sometimes, all it takes is one great outlier or a willingness to step outside our comfort zone to make us reconsider what we don't like. Today we're talking about our pop culture revelations, including Friday Night Lights, Train to Busan, the poetry of Mary Oliver, and Watchmen.
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April 9, 2025 • 22 mins
The premise might be a tough sell: a young woman attempts to finally own her sexuality following a terminal diagnosis. In the new show Dying For Sex, Michelle Williams stars as a cancer patient confronting the unsatisfying relationships in her life. The series is also a raunchy sex comedy that suggests it's never too late to insist on your own happiness. And it's got a stellar cast, including Jenny Slate, Rob Delaney, and Sissy Spa...
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