Pop Culture Happy Hour
Episodes
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...
Disclaimer
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the powerful new Apple TV+ drama Disclaimer, Cate Blanchett plays a woman who's terrified after she's sent a novel that's based on a chapter of her...
Saturday Night And What's Making Us Happy
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new film Saturday Night attempts to capture the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the very first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Untried producer...
Pop Culture Pumpkin Spice Lattes: Basic But We Love It
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The word "basic" often gets thrown around to describe anything that's mainstream, popular, frictionless, or otherwise inoffensive. But sometimes basic...
SNL, Late Night, And The Election
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're in a pretty critical election year. And in times like these, a lot of us are turning to political comedy to help make sense of (and fun of) the ...
A Different Man
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The off-beat psycho dramedy A Different Man follows Edward (Sebastian Stan), an aspiring actor living with facial disfigurement. He takes an opportuni...
Joker: Folie à Deux And What's Making Us Happy
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new film Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to 2019's Joker, which won Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar. This new film is a courtroom drama and a romance ...
The Wild Robot
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Wild Robot is a gorgeous and moving new animated movie from Dreamworks. It follows a helper robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) who washes up on the ...
Nobody Wants This
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new Netflix series Nobody Wants This, Kristen Bell plays an agnostic podcaster, who meets a rabbi, played by Adam Brody. They like each other i...
Industry
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The latest season of HBO's Industry was over the top. The drama is about backstabbing, morally compromised investment bankers. But it managed to make ...
Megalopolis And What's Making Us Happy
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary filmmaker behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, is back with his first new film in over a decade. It re...
His Three Daughters
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon, and Natasha Lyonne are often the best thing about their projects, and they're all together in the moving new Netflix fil...
Colin From Accounts
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The fun series Colin From Accounts is part raunchy comedy, part romantic comedy, part friendship story, and part very cute dog. It begins with a chanc...
The Substance
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Substance is a bloody, campy, fiercely feminist body horror film. Demi Moore plays a TV aerobics instructor desperate to stay in the spotlight. Sh...
Transformers One And What's Making Us Happy
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Transformers franchise has been around for decades, and it's brought us many toys, TV shows and movies. Now, in the new animated film Transformers...
My Old Ass
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What would you do if you met your future self, who's a couple of decades older and maybe a little wiser? Would you freak out? In the delightful new mo...
Fall Guide
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fall is beginning, and it's the perfect time to talk about all the great things we're excited to watch and listen to between now and the end of the ye...
2024 Emmys Recap
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last night's Primetime Emmy Awards included big wins for Hacks, The Bear, Shōgun, and Baby Reindeer. And if you're nostalgic for shows like Schitt's ...
Speak No Evil And What's Making Us Happy
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Never visit your weird new friends at their enormous isolated country estate. That's a basic rule that an American family fails to follow in the new h...
Rebel Ridge
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Netflix's new film Rebel Ridge, Aaron Pierre plays Terry, a young Black man who enters a small Southern town to post bail for his cousin. But when ...
The Front Room
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maybe you think you've seen every scary mother-in-law fiction has to offer — you absolutely haven't. In the new movie The Front Room, a pregnant wo...
The Perfect Couple
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We all love a fancy wedding. The music, the flowers — the body washing up on the beach. At least that's what happens in Netflix's fun new thriller T...
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice And What's Making Us Happy
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's a reason Beetlejuice was a hit back in 1988: it delivered both the spectacle and big stars of a major studio film, and the hilarious, weird vi...
Songs To Boost Your Confidence
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maybe you're going up for a promotion, or just got out of a bad relationship. Whatever it is, your mood needs a boost. Today, we're recommending three...
Kaos
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the clever new Netflix series Kaos, the Greek Gods are a rich and powerful modern-day family. They're led by an impulsive and deeply insecure Zeus ...
Reality TV, Romance, And Race
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Some people may flinch at the genre of reality TV – it's full of tropes and manipulative editing and ridiculous premises. It's been referred to as a...
Afraid And What's Making Us Happy
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new movie Afraid is latest in the well-established genre of "the computer is alive" stories. John Cho plays a dad who has a chance to try out a ve...
The Crow
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new film The Crow, Bill Skarsgård plays a man who gets brutally murdered alongside his soulmate (FKA twigs). He returns to life as an unstoppa...
Sabrina Carpenter's Album Short N' Sweet
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sabrina Carpenter has had two of the year's biggest hits with "Espresso" and "Please Please Please." Now, she's released a new full-length album calle...
When Celebrities Portray Themselves
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's practically a tradition for famous people to portray a really offbeat version of themselves in TV and movies. The latest season of Only Murders i...
Blink Twice And What's Making Us Happy
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new psychological thriller Blink Twice, Naomi Ackie plays a woman who is invited to the private island of a tech billionaire, played by Channin...
The Reality TV Shows We'd Actually Win
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Part of the fun of reality TV is putting yourself in the shoes of the people you're watching. Maybe you'd make a great Real Housewife. Maybe you could...
Bad Monkey
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey, a fishing boat in the Florida Keys pulls in a human arm, and a suspended detective is the only one who can cra...
Physical Media We Still Treasure
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 giv...
Alien: Romulus And What's Making Us Happy
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alien: Romulus is the latest entry in the venerable Alien sci-fi/horror film franchise, and it leans hard into the horror. The new movie stars Cailee ...
Didi
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The movie Didi is a vibrant coming-of-age dramedy and was a Sundance film festival favorite. It stars Izaac Wang as a 13-year-old just trying to survi...
$#@*! Profanity In Pop Culture
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've got dirty words on the brain, and we're chatting about the use and functions of profanity in entertainment. In this encore episode from 2013, we...
Hunter Schafer's Movie Cuckoo
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new, stylishly odd horror film Cuckoo, Hunter Schafer plays an American teenager who reluctantly moves with her family to a mysterious resort i...
It Ends With Us and what's making us happy
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The 2016 Colleen Hoover novel It Ends With Us was a massive bestseller. And now that book is a movie. Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a woman who fa...
Three great fiction audiobooks
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's summer, and whether you're taking a trip – or simply staying out of the heat with the AC running – there's nothing like relaxing with a good ...
Here's why we love the Olympics
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There is nothing better for the summer doldrums than a blast of Olympic glory. For a couple of weeks this summer, athletes are showing us how they fli...
Colman Domingo's Sing Sing is a rare empathetic prison drama
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The moving drama Sing Sing stars Colman Domingo as the leader of a tight-knit theatre ensemble within one of the most notorious maximum-security priso...
Trap and what's making us happy
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller Trap stars Josh Hartnett as a father attending a pop concert with his teenage daughter. But all is not as it appear...
House Of The Dragon season 2 makes it Rhaen(yra)
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The second season of HBO's House of the Dragon is almost over. The war between two rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty is fully underway, complete...
Time Bandits maps contemporary vibes over a cult classic
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The dryly funny new Apple TV+ series Time Bandits reimagines the 1981 Terry Gilliam film of the same name. A squad of inept thieves — including thei...
We're talking songs of the (Brat) summer
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Trying to declare the "official" song of the summer isn't a new sport. But this year feels like the first in a while where the field's been so crowded...
Deadpool & Wolverine and what's making us happy
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the highly meta Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman finally meet up for their own big movie. Deadpool is still smarmy, Wolverine i...
In The Decameron, the Black Death makes for black comedy
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Netflix's weirdly compelling dark comedy The Decameron, the bubonic plague is ravaging Florence in 1348. A group of rich nobles and their servants ...
Three great karaoke songs
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a good karaoke song? In this encore episode, we're suggesting three great songs to sing at karaoke night.Learn more about sponsor message c...
Sunny is a robot buddy comedy about loss
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the new Apple TV+ series Sunny, Rashida Jones stars as a woman living in Kyoto, whose husband and young son go missing in a plane crash. To help co...
Twisters and what's making us happy
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Twister was one of the biggest disaster movies of the '90s. Now, it's finally got a sequel — one with an all-new cast, state-of-the-art effects, and...
We unpack the 2024 Emmy nominations
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The nominations the Emmy Awards were just announced, and it was a good day for The Bear, which set a new record in the comedy category. And plenty of ...
Exploding Kittens is a simple card game turned wild cartoon
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The best-selling card game Exploding Kittens has been adapted into a new Netflix animated series. It does plenty of its own world-building: God (Tom E...
Longlegs is a (satanic) panic
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They're calling it the scariest movie of the year. The new horror film Longlegs follows FBI special agent Lee Harker (Mika Monroe) tracking a serial k...
Fly Me to the Moon and what's making us happy
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The cheeky new romantic dramedy Fly Me to the Moon stars Scarlett Johansson as a NASA publicist at the height of the space race. She must stage a top-...
Three great sports documentaries
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sports aren't just games. They're intertwined with epic stories about struggle, human behavior, historic greatness and grand emotions. In other words,...
Despicable Me 4 serves up 90 minutes of bankable mayhem
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despicable Me 4 is the latest film in an animation franchise that made household names of reformed supervillain Gru (Steve Carrell) and his army of na...
How we entertain and amuse ourselves on a road trip
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's summer, so we're talking all about road trips. Should you blast music that's familiar or unfamiliar? What makes for a good road trip audiobook? W...
MaXXXine and what's making us happy
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new movie MaXXXine stars Mia Goth as an adult-film actress who gets her big break in Hollywood, only to be revisited by horrors from her past. Set...
Bowen Yang thinks being present is overrated
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Pop Culture Happy Hour team is off today, so we're bringing you an episode of the NPR podcast Wild Card with Rachel Martin. This episode is an int...
Megan Thee Stallion sheds her skin on Megan
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A lot has happened to rapper Megan Thee Stallion over the last couple of years including a highly publicized trial after being shot by a former friend...
Yes, chef: The Bear has a lot going on in its third season
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Bear just returned for its third season and it's still one of the most stressful and most interesting shows on TV. Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and ...
In A Quiet Place: Day One, Lupita Nyong'o makes silence golden
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the post-apocalyptic world of A Quiet Place, aliens kill anyone who makes a sound, forcing humans into a near-silent existence. The new movie A Qui...
Kinds of Kindness and what's making us happy
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kinds of Kindness is a weird, dark, and bleak film. It's directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) and it re-teams him with Emma Stone and Willem Daf...
Lily Gladstone's Fancy Dance is a road trip worth taking
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new film Fancy Dance offers something all-too-rare on screen: contemporary Indigenous perspectives, front and center. Lily Gladstone plays a woman...
Will they or won't they? Unpacking TV's eternal question
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jim and Pam. Mulder and Scully. Janine and Gregory. Carmy and Sydney. Meredith and McDreamy. You know how it goes: two television characters with obv...
Is Star Wars' The Acolyte a force to be reckoned with?
24 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The new Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte is a murder mystery. Someone is killing great Jedi masters, and while we learn the killer's identity earl...