Pop Culture Happy Hour
Episodes
A Minecraft Movie And What's Making Us Happy
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Based on the best-selling game, A Minecraft Movie stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa in a goofy and sprawling adventure full of blocky animals and magic...
Daredevil: Born Again
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Daredevil: Born Again, Charlie Cox returns as everyone's favorite blind-but-with-heightened-senses Marvel superhero. This time out, he hangs up his...
Survival Of The Thickest
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The delightful Netflix series Survival of the Thickest is about an up-and-coming stylist whose professional and personal ambitions go sideways when sh...
The Studio
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the very funny new satire The Studio, Seth Rogen plays a Hollywood studio head desperately trying to do a job he's afraid of failing at every singl...
Death Of A Unicorn And What's Making Us Happy
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Death of a Unicorn, Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega star as dad and daughter facing off against some angry-as-hell horned beasts. Like so many creature ...
The Residence
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new Netflix series The Residence, a dead body shows up in an awkward location: the White House. A sprawling list of suspects try to outsmart a ...
Dope Thief
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Apple TV+ series Dope Thief is a great high-stakes crime thriller to stream now. It stars Brian Tyree Henry as a man running a risky con: Robbing ...
Severance
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In season two of Severance (streaming on Apple TV+), we got a blowout finale with answers to mysteries and even more layers of weirdness. The show sta...
Snow White And What's Making Us Happy
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Disney's first fully animated feature film back in 1937. Now, it's getting a hi-tech "reimagining" complete with n...
Novocaine
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the gleefully grisly action movie Novocaine, Jack Quaid plays a sweet, nerdy guy who does not experience physical pain. He falls for a woman (Amber...
Oscar-Winner Anora Is Now Streaming
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anora recently cleaned up at this year's Oscars, winning five awards, including best picture. Directed by Sean Baker, the movie follows an enterprisin...
Ayo Edebiri's New Movie Opus
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new movie Opus, Ayo Edebiri plays a journalist who attends a press event at the compound of a reclusive pop star (John Malkovich) who'd been in...
Black Bag And What's Making Us Happy
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The cool, stylish new Steven Soderbergh film Black Bag is about a group of British spies who discover there's a traitor in their midst. It stars Micha...
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You should watch the surreal new movie On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. It opens with a Zambian woman finding her uncle's body on the road. His death brings...
Lady Gaga's Mayhem
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lady Gaga has kept busy as a singer and actor, but it's been five years since she's released a full-blown pop album. Now, she's back with Mayhem, whic...
Best Moments In Live TV
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Live television is all about high risk, high reward. Whether it's musical performances, awards ceremonies, sports events, or comedy shows, there's an ...
Mickey 17 And What's Making Us Happy
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mickey 17 is writer-director Bong Joon Ho's follow-up to the Oscar-winning film Parasite. In the sharply satirical sci-fi film, Robert Pattinson is a ...
Terrible But Bingeable TV shows
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is it about a show that turns you into a bitter-ender, that keeps you dutifully watching every last episode, long after the train has jumped the ...
Favorite SNL Musical Moments
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps you've heard that Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th anniversary — they've mentioned it once or twice. From Lazy Sunday to Domingo ...
Our 2025 Oscars Recap
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year's Oscars was a big night for Sean Baker's Anora, including wins for best picture and director. The film's star Mikey Madison scored one of t...
2025 Oscars Guide And What's Making Us Happy
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year's Oscar nominees include Wicked, The Substance, Emilia Perez, and Conclave. And we watched all the nominated movies so you don't have to. We...
Paradise
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Hulu's twisty drama series Paradise, Sterling K. Brown plays a Secret Service agent caught up in a web of intrigue after the president of the Unite...
Zero Day
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Netflix series Zero Day begins with a terrifying moment in which everything in the United States goes briefly offline. Thousands of people die, an...
Actors Who've Never Been Nominated For An Oscar, But Should Win
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The standard line for awards season goes: "It's an honor just to be nominated." But when it comes to the Oscars, there's quite a long list of great pe...
The Monkey And What's Making Us Happy
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new horror-comedy The Monkey, Theo James plays a pair of identical twin brothers who get saddled with a cursed wind-up toy monkey that causes p...
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For more than 20 years on screen, Bridget Jones has been making her way through dating, working, having a baby, and even ending up in jail. Now in the...
We Fantasy Cast The Traitors
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Peacock reality show The Traitors continues to be a delightful mix of treachery, foolishness, and Alan Cumming's outfits. In the United States, th...
Paddington In Peru
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new movie Paddington In Peru, Paddington Bear and the Brown family fly across the globe, into the wilds of Peru, in search of Paddington's Aunt...
Captain America: Brave New World And What's Making Us Happy
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony Mackie is the new Captain America, and he's finally got his own movie. In Captain America: Brave New World, Cap finds himself battling Preside...
The Substance
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Substance is a bloody, campy, fiercely feminist body horror film. Demi Moore plays a TV aerobics instructor who learns of a mysterious drug that c...
Guide To Great Shows On Network TV
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the age of streaming content and "Prestige TV" it's easy to forget that old school TV networks are still out here, pumping out television shows. AB...
2025 Super Bowl
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At this year's Super Bowl, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22. During the halftime show, Kendrick Lamar performed his Grammy-wi...
Love Hurts And What's Making Us Happy
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new action movie Love Hurts, Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan stars as a real estate agent who has remade his life after leaving the employ of his terr...
You're Cordially Invited
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the raunchy movie You're Cordially Invited, Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon face a mortifying conundrum: Their families' destination weddings ha...
2025 Sundance Film Festival: Best Movies
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We watched many films at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Today, we're recommending some of the best things we saw, including a thrilling debut fro...
2025 Grammys Recap
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year's Grammys was a huge night for Beyoncé, who finally won album of the year for Cowboy Carter. Kendrick Lamar picked up record and song of th...
Companion And What's Making Us Happy
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the smart, twisty thriller-comedy Companion, three young couples gather at a swanky lake house for the weekend. One of the couples is not like the ...
Mo
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The excellent 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 ...
Presence
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new Steven Soderbergh film Presence, a family moves into an old house, and weird stuff starts happening. But what's different about this haunte...
The Pitt
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Max hospital drama The Pitt stars ER veteran Noah Wyle. It takes some elements that are common to the medical genre and mixes them with some very ...
The Night Agent
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An FBI agent working in a lonely, secret office in the White House basement gets a phone call. A woman needs help, right away. That's the beginning of...
2025 Oscar Nominations
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year's Oscar nominations are out, and if you liked Emilia Pérez, Anora, Wicked, The Brutalist, and A Complete Unknown, then you're in luck. As a...
One Of Them Days
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Keke Palmer is one of Hollywood's most charismatic leads, and SZA is one of the world's biggest pop stars. Now, they've teamed up for the raunchy budd...
The Brutalist And What's Making Us Happy
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The new movie The Brutalist is earning a lot of Oscar buzz. Adrien Brody plays a fictional Hungarian architect who settles in America after his family...
Wolf Man And What's Making Us Happy
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everything old is new again, it seems, and there's no reason that wouldn't apply to werewolves. We now have a chance to enjoy a new Wolf Man starring ...
XO, Kitty
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Netflix series XO, Kitty is a spinoff of the hit YA book and movie franchise, To All the Boys I've Loved Before. The show follows the messy advent...
American Primeval
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Netflix's gritty, brutal Western series American Primeval, Betty Gilpin plays a woman determined to get herself and her son across the frontier. Bu...
The Best One-Hit Wonders
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Some bands are The Beatles and some singers are Beyoncé: Smash after smash, their legend grows. And some artists aren't. For any one of a bunch of re...
The Last Showgirl And What's Making Us Happy
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the new movie The Last Showgirl, a woman finds herself with few options as she approaches the end of her long career as a dancer in Las Vegas. The ...
Hot Moms In Film
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the past year, there have been a lot of movies that feature older women falling in love with much younger men. There's The Idea Of You, A Family Af...
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
08 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is the latest film in the beloved stop-motion animation series. This time, clueless inventor Wallace and his lon...
Great Movies We Missed
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We covered dozens of new movies in 2024, some we loved, some we didn't, and everything in between. And there are always a few favorites that we don't ...
Nickel Boys
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Adapted from the Pulitzer prize-winner novel from Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys tells the story of two Black boys who form an unshakeable bond at a se...
Squid Game
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Korean drama Squid Game became the most popular offering in Netflix's history by combining pitch-black satire of late-stage capitalism with bloody...
2025 Pop Culture Resolutions And What's Making Us Happy
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a new year arrives, it's only natural to have some goals in mind: What you want to achieve, what heights you want to hit. Today, we make pop cultur...
2025 Pop Culture Predictions
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody can predict what the future holds, but that doesn't stop us from trying. Trying, that is, to predict what will happen in the world of pop cultu...
A Complete Unknown and What's Making Us Happy
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Complete Unknown isn't a traditional biopic. Instead of covering Bob Dylan's life story from birth to old age, it covers the period shortly after hi...
Babygirl
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new movie Babygirl, Nicole Kidman plays a high-powered CEO who has an affair her mysterious intern (Harris Dickinson). Their affair gets compli...
Nosferatu
25 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nosferatu is a Dracula story with a twist. It stars Lily Rose-Depp as a new bride stalked by an evil bloodsucking creature of the night who brings dea...
Juror #2
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Some people hate jury duty, but in Clint Eastwood's new film Juror #2, one guy's experience is worse than most. Nicholas Hoult plays a man assigned to...
Laid
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new Peacock series Laid is a very dark rom-com. Stephanie Hsu plays a young woman who discovers that all of her exes have started to die under mys...
Mufasa: The Lion King And What's Making Us Happy
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's been five years since Disney remade its animated classic The Lion King as a photorealistic blockbuster. This leads us to Mufasa: The Lion King, a...
Best Movies To Watch On An Airplane
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Watching a movie on a plane can be a great way to pass the time if you're traveling for the holidays – particularly if you're going a long way. But ...
Bad Sisters
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We first met the Garvey sisters two years ago when the Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters made its debut. The show follows four sisters in Ireland who are h...
No Good Deed
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody ever said the housing market was easy. In the new Netflix ensemble dark comedy No Good Deed, a couple played by Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano, alo...
Queer and What's Making Us Happy
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The movie Queer stars Daniel Craig as you've never seen him: as a junkie prowling the streets, hooking up, shooting up and guzzling tequila. He meets ...
It's A Wonderful Life
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For a lot of people, It's A Wonderful Life is the Christmas movie. George Bailey's story of learning how much you really matter to the world has famil...
2024 Pop Culture Favorites
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We check out a lot of things in a given year: Lots of movies, TV shows, and music. Today, we are highlighting some of the best pop culture moments we ...
Black Doves
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new Netflix series Black Doves is a pulpy and stylish British spy show starring Keira Knightly and Ben Whishaw. Knightly plays a politician's wife...
Nightbitch And What's Making Us Happy
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new movie Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as an exhausted stay-at-home mom to a toddler. Missing her career and frustrated by her inattentive husband (...
2024 Holiday Movie Guide
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's holiday movie season, and there are so many new movies to choose from. So where do you start? We've got you covered. This year we've got the retu...
Great Movies Under 90 Minutes
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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. In this encore episode, we recommend...
The Madness
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the Netflix series The Madness, Colman Domingo plays a CNN pundit who witnesses a brutal murder, and then finds himself on the run as he's framed f...
Interior Chinatown
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The super-meta Hulu series Interior Chinatown mashes up a whole bunch of genres — including kung fu movies and police procedurals — to explore Asi...
Moana 2 And What's Making Us Happy
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the hit Disney film Moana, a girl (Auli'i Cravalho) finally gets her chance to see more of the world. And with a whole new batch of songs, in Moana...
The Piano Lesson
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You may not see Denzel Washington in the new Netflix film adaptation of the August Wilson play The Piano Lesson, but his influence as producer – and...
A Man On The Inside
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The charming Netflix sitcom A Man on the Inside stars Ted Danson as a lonely widower who's hired by a private investigator to live undercover in a sen...
Wicked And What's Making Us Happy
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The musical Wicked is a bold, revisionist take on The Wizard of Oz. It imagines that back in college, the Wicked Witch of the West (Cynthia Erivo) and...
Gladiator II
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new film Gladiator II is a sequel to Gladiator, Oscar-winning swords-and-sandals blockbuster that starred Russell Crowe. It tells a similar tale —...
A Real Pain
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The moving dramedy A Real Pain stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as two very different cousins attempting to reconnect by going on a heritage to...
The Best Movie Musical Numbers
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you've ever loved a movie musical, then you've probably got a favorite movie musical number — a song that makes you want to sing along, swoon, ce...
Red One And What's Making Us Happy
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the deeply goofy Christmas action comedy Red One, the holiday season comes to an emergency halt when Santa (J.K. Simmons) is kidnapped. It's up to ...
Say Nothing
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One night in Belfast in 1972, a mother of ten was abducted from her home in front of her children and never seen again. But the new FX series Say Noth...
Emilia Pérez
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Emilia Pérez is Netflix's new divisive musical about a Mexican cartel boss who disappears from the criminal underworld to create a new life as a woma...
Can't Sleep? Catch Some ZZZs With These Songs
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are songs you want to groove to, and songs you want to pump up to. But sometimes, you just want something for the come down at the end of a long...
Heretic And What's Making Us Happy
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the claustrophobic thriller Heretic, two young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) knock on the door of a charming man played by...
Tom Hanks Explains How To Deal With Attention
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we're bringing you an episode of How To Do Everything, a new NPR podcast from the team behind Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! On each episode, Mike ...
YouTube Rabbit Holes That Are Great Distractions
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elections can be pretty stressful. And it never hurts to have some emergency distractions on hand if you just need to shut down for a while. One of ou...
The Penguin
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the HBO new series The Penguin, an unrecognizable Colin Farrell reprises his role as Oswald Cobb from The Batman. This time though, the caped crusa...
Tom Hanks' Movie Here And What's Making Us Happy
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if you spent eternity in one living room? That's the premise of Here, a new drama starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as a married couple whose l...
The Diplomat
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the Netflix drama The Diplomat, Keri Russell plays an ambassador who's thrust into an international incident with massive stakes. She's also sortin...
Conclave
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new movie Conclave is a fun and twisty political thriller. Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal tasked to managing the secretive process in which the po...
Agatha All Along
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Agatha All Along is a darkly funny new Marvel show on Disney Plus. It stars the selfish, sardonic and hilariously petty witch Agatha Harkness, played ...
Venom: The Last Dance And What's Making Us Happy
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns for a third time as a sad-sack loser with an alien symbiotic life-form bonded to him. This time out, it's ...
Woman Of The Hour
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Netflix's Woman Of The Hour is not your conventional serial killer movie. It's based on the true story of a serial killer who appeared on The Dating G...
We Watch Classic Movies For The First Time
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've all been there. A major movie is mentioned, you shrug, sheepishly, and someone says, "I can't believe you've never seen that!" Today, we make a ...
Anora
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new movie Anora is a dark rom-dramedy about an enterprising sex worker (Mikey Madison) who links up with a very rich and very immature young man (...
Smile 2 And What's Making Us Happy
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The horror movie Smile was a massive hit. Its flashy new sequel Smile 2 finds the franchise's terrifying entity infecting a new host: a pop star (Naom...
We Live In Time
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Two people meet, they fall in love, and someone gets sick. The new film We Live In Time tries to bring something new to that familiar story of the pre...
The Pop Culture That Scared Us As Kids
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of us are about to have the experience of opening our front doors to find witches, goblins, ghosts, and Moo Deng standing on our porches. Why? B...