0:00

This message comes from NPR

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sponsor, Sony Pictures Classics, presenting

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Freud's Last Session. Anthony

0:06

Hopkins is Sigmund Freud, and

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Matthew Goode is C.S. Lewis in

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Freud's Last Session, now playing

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Select Theaters. What

0:19

do we do at the end of

0:21

every year? We hope, we fear, and

0:24

we make wild guesses. We are

0:26

predicting what's ahead for pop culture

0:28

in 2024, but first we'll look

0:30

back at what we thought was

0:32

coming on the pop culture front

0:34

in 2023 and see how things

0:36

turned out. I'm Stephen Thompson. And

0:38

I'm Linda Holmes. It's predictions time

0:40

once again on Pop Culture Happy

0:43

Hour from NPR. Joining

0:45

us today are our Pop Culture

0:47

Happy Hour co-hosts Ayesha Harris. Hey

0:49

Ayesha. Hey Linda. And Glenn Weldon.

0:52

Hello Glenn. Hey Linda, what better

0:54

way to bookend the year on

0:56

either side than with failure?

0:59

The sweet smell of failure. Oh

1:01

boy. It's true. Well, we've

1:03

been doing this for many years. If you've been

1:05

with us for a while, you know the drill.

1:07

We go around the table. We check on how

1:09

we did making predictions for 2023. And even though

1:13

they're usually wrong, we boldly make new ones for

1:15

2024. We prove we're bad at this and then

1:20

we do it. Yes. Accurate.

1:23

Without further ado, Stephen, I want to hear first what

1:25

your 2023 prediction

1:27

was. So let's start there.

1:29

We'll go back in time. Best

1:33

picture, everything everywhere all at once. I am

1:36

going to say bills over any team but the

1:38

Vikings in the Super Bowl. Rihanna will release an

1:41

album in the first quarter of 2023. It's going

1:43

to, sure, it's going to happen. I'm

1:45

going to predict it. But then I got to the

1:47

Grammys and I wanted

1:49

to say finally, Beyonce wins album of

1:51

the year, Beyonce wins record of the year.

1:53

These things have never happened before. This is

1:56

going to be the year that the Grammys

1:58

get it right. These are things I want to do. to

2:00

happen. But I am instead going to

2:02

predict two things about the Grammys that

2:04

are, I think, going to be major

2:06

pop culture stories in 2023. One,

2:08

I think Adele will win album,

2:10

song, and record of the year. And

2:13

that that will speed a

2:16

reckoning about the Grammys that will

2:18

be a story all year long.

2:21

Everybody feels like this is Beyonce's year, right?

2:23

Like, Renaissance is at or near the top

2:25

of most publications, Albums of the Year lists.

2:27

That record had just enormous pop cultural penetration.

2:29

It was a big hit. People loved it.

2:32

It is a perfect time for that album

2:34

to win Album of the Year at the

2:36

Grammys. And I think the fact that it

2:38

may not, I'm going to

2:40

predict that it doesn't, I'm going to predict that that

2:43

prompts a kind of Golden Globes

2:45

style backlash and reckoning around the

2:47

Grammy Awards in 2023. Mark it

2:49

down, it won't happen. Were

2:56

you right? Did it not happen? How

2:58

did you feel like it went? Okay, everything

3:00

everywhere, all at once, won Best Picture. Let's

3:03

just leave it at that. I'm amazing at this. Did

3:06

the Bills win the Super Bowl? They did not. The

3:08

Kansas City Chiefs did. Did Rihanna put out an album

3:10

in the first quarter of 2023 or in any quarter

3:12

of 2023? She did not. Did Adele win any

3:19

of those major Grammys? She did not. Beyonce

3:21

didn't either, so I'm going to give myself,

3:23

I don't know, 25% credit

3:26

there. Harry Styles won Album of the Year. The

3:28

big mistake I made was centered on the

3:31

assumption that anyone gives a crap about the

3:33

Grammy Awards like 10 to 11 months out

3:36

of the year. The idea of a major

3:38

reckoning around the Grammys certainly seems possible at

3:40

some point, but basically Harry Styles won Album

3:43

of the Year, people were like him, and

3:45

then they forgot all about them. I

3:47

did the math here and I gave myself 1.25 out

3:49

of 4, which is everyone knows is

3:54

a passing grade. Yeah, but you went up to bat so

3:56

many times. You made so many guesses. You made

3:58

so many predictions. You

4:00

know, we I think most of us stuck to one

4:03

maybe two so you should give yourself some points for

4:05

that. It's bold Yeah, very bold.

4:07

What are your predictions for this year?

4:09

So I'm going to say that Oppenheimer

4:11

wins best picture Basically goes wire to

4:13

wire I'm gonna say that Taylor Swift's

4:16

Midnight's wins album of the year because

4:18

the Grammys love Taylor Swift and never

4:20

change I am going to

4:22

say that the 49ers win the Super Bowl

4:24

over the Ravens because they seem like the

4:26

only two good teams in The NFL I'm

4:28

gonna say that Rihanna does not put out an album in

4:30

2024 because if I'm gonna be wrong I

4:34

might as well get a new Rihanna album out of it and

4:36

I am going to say I've

4:39

noticed a trend that I think will continue

4:41

and accelerate in 2024

4:43

and that is the rise of

4:45

ever shorter hit songs I

4:49

think the tick tock-a-fication of The

4:52

pop charts and the rise of

4:54

artists like Pink Pantherists who really

4:56

specialize in Short

4:58

form songwriting. I think

5:00

the line between song and

5:02

fragment is Going to

5:05

get blurrier and blurrier in 2024 to

5:07

the point where the metric I'm looking

5:09

at is that two of the five

5:13

biggest songs of 2024

5:15

as defined by Billboard magazine I'm gonna say

5:17

that two of the five biggest songs of

5:20

2024 will be shorter than

5:22

two minutes long. Whoa Okay,

5:24

that is bold again. I thought you were

5:26

gonna go with three but two that's three I

5:28

think is a slam dunk, but I'm

5:31

gonna say that that number just keeps

5:33

shrinking because of the

5:35

rise of tick tock having a compelling

5:37

fragment is more important than ever because

5:40

Spotify algorithms, you know you put out an album

5:42

with 20 tracks That's better economically than

5:45

putting out an album with 10 tracks I

5:47

think you're gonna see pop songs getting measurably

5:50

shorter and that that will be borne out

5:52

in the metrics Wow. All

5:54

right. Okay, Aisha Harris. Let's look

5:56

back on your predictions for 2023 I

6:02

do think Beyoncé is going

6:04

to win Album of the Year just

6:07

because the Grammys' voters

6:09

love a throwback. They

6:12

love something that seems to be

6:14

playing into nostalgia. And even

6:17

just like the fact that Beyoncé on that

6:19

album is calling back to so many other

6:21

previous Grammy winners, as well

6:24

as, you know, a deeper house

6:26

music history, it's her year. And

6:28

I don't think the Grammys are going to screw this up.

6:30

We'll see. That's my prediction. My

6:32

other prediction, I have a feeling that Warner

6:35

Brothers' discovery is probably going to be sold

6:37

to Amazon or some other corporate giant, or

6:39

it'll at least be announced before 2023

6:42

is over that that's going to happen. Because if you just

6:44

look at all these shakeups and all

6:46

these execs that have been leaving and

6:49

all of the many titles that they've decided

6:52

to eat out of their existence,

6:54

that's part of their trying to

6:57

get themselves back into the black. I understand that.

6:59

And that's a temporary thing. But they're going to

7:01

have to figure out something else to sort of

7:03

stop the bleeding. And now

7:06

I can imagine that Amazon

7:08

is probably going to own discovery,

7:10

Warner Discovery, before this is all up. Okay.

7:17

Neither one of you saw Harry coming. Neither one

7:19

of you saw the Scales. No, Harry.

7:21

Harry came out of nowhere. So I won't

7:23

belabor that I was very clearly absolutely

7:25

wrong about this. Beyonce did not

7:28

win out of the year. Nor record, nor song.

7:32

She won some Rammies, but not the ones that

7:34

people really care about. As for

7:36

Amazon, this didn't quite pan

7:38

out. They did not buy

7:40

Warner Discovery. Though David

7:43

Zaslav has continued to ruin the

7:45

brand between renaming HBO

7:47

Max, Just Max, and

7:50

scrapping release plans for already completed

7:52

or newly completed projects, including that

7:54

Wylie Coyote movie, which Warner is

7:57

now apparently trying to sell to

7:59

other companies. companies, but I was

8:02

kind of in the ballpark

8:04

here because recently

8:06

Axios broke big news, which is

8:08

that Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery

8:11

are apparently in talks for a

8:13

merger. That's true. So, you know, I

8:15

kind of give myself a little bit of credit. It

8:18

hasn't happened yet and we don't know. You

8:20

know, as of this taping, we don't know what is going

8:22

to happen with that, if anything. But

8:24

I was kind of right, right? Ayesha, your

8:26

prediction was not that this would be complete.

8:28

Sure. At the end of 2023,

8:30

your prediction was that something would be announced by

8:33

the end of 2023 and you said Amazon or

8:35

some other big company. True.

8:40

To me, like, this is late breaking. But

8:42

like, if the Grammys suddenly were like,

8:45

oh, sorry, we did a recount, actually

8:47

Beyonce was our big winner. That

8:50

would be in keeping with what's happening. Yeah.

8:52

I think I give you full credit for this.

8:54

I think this was incredibly prescient and I'm

8:57

extremely happy for you. Well, I don't know if

8:59

I'm happy for me or us. No,

9:01

I'm not happy generally. We

9:03

are this close to a Warner

9:06

Discovery Paramount Hulu, Disney, Peacock, Amazon,

9:08

Apple Plus streaming service. And

9:10

what do we do then? It's going to cost $100

9:12

a month. They're rebuilding

9:15

cable. Basically. Yes. Yes.

9:18

So I guess, you know what? I mostly got it. So

9:20

there. All right, Ayesha, what do you have on tap for 2024? So

9:24

for my 2024 prediction, I'm going

9:26

to be a little nerdy here

9:28

and actually put a number on

9:31

this. I'm going to predict that

9:33

for the first time since 2007, 2020 accepted because 2020 was

9:37

the year basically nothing made sense.

9:40

No movie is going to cross the

9:42

$1 billion mark worldwide. Wow. That

9:46

is bold. I've noticed, you

9:48

know, obviously we have this continued downward

9:51

turn of the superhero genre. And

9:53

we don't really have too many promising things

9:55

coming on the horizon in the next year. We

9:58

have the Joker movie, which I guess is the first time we've ever seen a superhero I guess

10:00

could be an exception because the first movie did

10:02

make over a billion dollars. And you also have

10:04

the Lady Gaga factor of it all with that

10:07

movie. So maybe this could throw

10:09

a wrench in my prediction. But, you know,

10:11

when I look at what happened this year,

10:13

the only movies that topped 2023 with $1

10:15

billion were

10:18

Barbie and Super Mario Brothers. They

10:20

weren't really expected necessarily to make that much money.

10:23

And I think that, you know, we have

10:25

all these other big franchise movies coming. Beetlejuice

10:27

2, okay. Furiosa,

10:29

Mad Max Saga, Inside Out

10:31

2, yet another Transformers

10:34

movie, yet another Planet of the Apes,

10:36

a Twister reboot. Yes, that is coming,

10:38

apparently. You can know that.

10:40

Deadpool and Mufasa, which is

10:42

the Barry Jenkins sort of prequel,

10:45

I guess, to The Lion King. I

10:47

don't know. I don't see any of these

10:50

necessarily being able to crack that billion dollar

10:52

mark, considering how hard it is just to

10:54

get people's butts in the seats still in

10:57

this like post-pandemic era. And,

10:59

you know, we don't have the Marvel

11:01

anymore. Marvel is not the dominant force.

11:03

And for most of the last 15-ish

11:05

years, a lot of the billion

11:08

dollar movies have been hinging on the Marvel

11:10

universe. So that's my guess. I don't know

11:12

if that's gonna happen, but I do think

11:14

that it's very possible that no movie will

11:16

cross over into the $1 billion mark

11:18

worldwide. Yeah. And Star Wars has kind

11:21

of migrated to TV. Yes, that too. So

11:23

we don't have like a

11:25

giant Star Wars movie coming out either.

11:27

I like it. It's bold, it's tactile, it's

11:29

concrete. It's pointable at, I like it. That's

11:31

what I was going for. I

11:34

really like this one too, because it

11:36

is bold, but you've also made a really

11:38

strong case for it. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

11:40

Yep, I like it too. Glenn,

11:43

it's time to hear what you predicted for 2023.

11:47

The year 2023 will be the 50th anniversary

11:52

of the film The Last of Sheila.

11:54

This was a whodunit directed by Herbert

11:57

Ross starring maybe the

11:59

most quintessential. 1973

12:02

cast imaginable. I remember. Raquel Welch,

12:04

Diane Cannon, James Coburn, Richard

12:06

Benjamin, James Mason. It's

12:09

about a wealthy guy who invites his wealthy friends

12:11

aboard his yacht in the Mediterranean to play a

12:13

murder mystery game that turns... Pause

12:16

for suspense. Very real. So

12:19

for years this movie has had a cult following. I'm

12:21

in that cult. Ryan Johnson

12:23

counts himself among this fandom, this cult,

12:25

and that is one reason you saw

12:27

so many echoes of this movie in

12:29

glass onion and to a lesser extent

12:31

knives out. I think it's most

12:33

notable however for the two dudes who

12:36

wrote the screenplay, the actor Anthony Perkins

12:38

and one Mr. Stephen Sondheim. My

12:40

prediction is that this film is

12:42

finally going to attain a kind of cultural currency,

12:44

a cachet that it has always sorely lacked. It

12:47

will enter the zeitgeist, it will

12:49

go mainstream. We always run into trouble

12:52

when we try to quantify these predictions.

12:54

There is some squishiness here but I

12:56

mean will a remake be announced? A

12:58

streaming series? A board game? A

13:01

theme park ride? Funko pops?

13:03

I'm not sure exactly but I just feel that

13:06

glass onion has primed the world to embrace this

13:08

very fun and very weird movie in a way

13:10

that it was not possible to embrace it before.

13:17

Yeah well none of that

13:20

happens. What is this movie called again? The

13:22

Last of Sheila. Yeah I'm sorry Glenn,

13:24

what is this movie again? Yeah. Yeah

13:26

let's see right. See here's the thing, it

13:28

absolutely worked and I'll tell you why. When you

13:31

made this your prediction, I

13:34

knew of this movie but I had not watched

13:36

it. Now I have watched it.

13:39

Well see I appreciate that. I did

13:41

try to keep it as squishy as possible.

13:44

I invoked cultural cachet but

13:46

that's the risk of going bold, right?

13:48

Going niche, going specific. When a specific

13:50

thing that you predict does not happen,

13:52

it feels like its absence is just

13:54

deafening. I think it's easy to say

13:56

I did not get my Richard Benjamin

13:58

Funko pop but... Look, we

14:01

need a metric. And if you twist

14:03

my arm, I can find one with the help

14:05

of our producer Jessica Reedy, Google Trends, right? We

14:08

can go to Google Trends because it started in 2004 and

14:11

the DVD for this movie was released in

14:13

2004 and turn up there's a spike there.

14:15

Now this is Google Trends measures the numbers

14:17

of times people search for the, I think,

14:20

unique string of words, the last of

14:22

Sheila. I think the best you can

14:24

say is there's been a general uptick.

14:27

The number of searches there have been in 2023

14:29

did spike three times, but those spikes are

14:33

generally smaller than the one that happened around

14:35

their premiere of Glass Onion, which again owes

14:38

a great deal to Last of Sheila. So

14:40

there was no flashpoint really. There was no

14:42

currency. There was

14:44

no zeitgeistiness. But there has been, as you

14:47

speak to Linda, there has been a general

14:49

increase in awareness of this film. And if

14:51

I contribute to that in any teeny

14:54

tiny way, then I've done the Lord's work. You

14:56

did Glenn. We don't know. Those spikes

14:58

could have been because of you. I like the idea

15:00

of a lot of spikes that are like the last of Sheila, Glenn Weldon,

15:02

the last of Sheila pop culture, happy hour, the last

15:04

of Sheila NPR. I

15:07

definitely give you partial credit for this. Yes. It's

15:11

no Funko pop, but I'll take it. All right, bud.

15:13

So what are you predicting for 2024? In the year

15:15

2024, a novel will be released

15:18

by a named publisher of literary

15:20

fiction from a first time novelist

15:22

and it will receive critical praise and maybe

15:24

win a literary award or two or get

15:27

nominated at least. And it will later be revealed

15:29

to have been written by AI. Okay.

15:33

It's been a long time since we had a literary

15:35

hoax. That's my prediction. Now, there's

15:37

a lot of obstacles here to have this happen

15:39

because, you know, if it comes from a major

15:41

publishing house, well, a lot of media companies and

15:44

PR included have, you know, written up these

15:46

AI ethics guidelines. But

15:49

they're guidelines, right? And I think

15:51

a publishing company will want to

15:54

drive a discourse, which granted will

15:56

be tiresome. It will be awful. You

15:58

know, that you'll have to do it. have some critics

16:00

backtracking on their positive reviews and saying, I knew

16:02

it all along. Maybe it won't be

16:04

a novel. Maybe it'll be like a debut short story on

16:07

The New Yorker, but we're due

16:09

for this, right? I mean, it's got to

16:11

happen eventually. I don't know what's going to

16:13

happen this year, but it's inevitable. Not to

16:15

throw cold water on this. I think a

16:17

number of unlikely things would have to come

16:19

together. One thing that's popped

16:22

up like Sports Illustrated got

16:24

into a huge scandal over

16:26

the use of AI, quote

16:28

unquote writers. The biggest problem

16:30

they had and what people kind of

16:32

found out was they created these simulated

16:34

people. People were able to

16:37

immediately suss it out. You would have

16:39

to basically have like an

16:41

Elena Ferrante style, like this is

16:43

done by an artist working under

16:45

a pseudonym. Then that pseudonym would have to

16:48

turn out to be AI. I don't know

16:50

if AI is there yet. There's such an

16:52

uncanny valley with so much AI writing. Well,

16:54

yeah, that's certainly true. Because I mean, when

16:56

everybody started talking about it this year, I

16:58

started reading some of this stuff and it's like,

17:00

oh, you people have never taught seventh

17:02

grade English because this is a try

17:04

hard seventh grader who thinks

17:06

that writing is about conveying information

17:09

and not proposing and supporting

17:11

or advancing a thesis. I

17:13

understand it's not there now. I just

17:15

think it's going to happen. I don't know why. I

17:17

like this idea, but I feel like it'll probably be

17:19

a movie or a TV show premise first.

17:22

That's a good point. Before it

17:24

actually becomes a thing. I think

17:26

this is like a great prediction for like 2026. I

17:29

think you're a little early. But

17:32

you're right that it's coming. I think the exact

17:34

scenario that you outline will come along at

17:36

some point. All right, we

17:38

are going to look back now at my predictions

17:42

for 2023. One sort of general prediction

17:44

is that I do think you're going

17:46

to see

17:51

more and more of the retreat from

17:53

the public eye that you've seen

17:55

from a certain number of athletes

17:57

and actors and people who say like,

18:00

I need to go take care of my mental health. So

18:02

I think in a general sense, a zeitgeisty sense,

18:05

you're going to see more discussion of what I

18:07

personally think is a very positive

18:09

development of people being willing to say, I

18:11

cannot do everything all the time. I cannot

18:13

do all the press and

18:15

maybe some continuing conversations around that.

18:18

My more concrete prediction is I think

18:20

the biggest entertainment story of the year

18:23

is going to be labor unrest in

18:26

the entertainment industry. There is a

18:28

looming writer strike.

18:31

The kind of stuff Aisha and I've been talking about

18:34

in terms of HBO and the

18:36

pulling of stuff off of

18:38

HBO and HBO Max is

18:41

related to a fundamental reckoning

18:43

with how to pay and

18:46

compensate people fairly. I think

18:48

you could potentially see a long strike

18:50

for at least one of these guilds.

18:54

I have heard that you're starting to see the

18:56

stockpiling people trying to get stuff

18:58

done, at least written in time

19:00

to avoid long, long

19:03

droughts of content. But I

19:05

think that's going to be the story of this year

19:07

is going to be the very

19:10

difficult business of how do

19:12

you figure out how

19:14

to make it economically workable for people

19:16

to create the kind of content that

19:19

people are excited to see and willing to

19:21

pay for. Yeah,

19:26

just winner, winner, seven course

19:28

chicken dinner. Yeah, boy, home

19:30

fee. I give myself a

19:32

swish on the labor unrest, I gotta

19:35

say. The other thing,

19:37

I feel like that's still happening. I

19:39

don't know that I can think of

19:41

any recent examples that were as high profile as some

19:43

of the ones that were going on at the time. That

19:46

was a reaction partly to like Simone

19:48

Biles and some of that kind of

19:50

stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think in

19:52

a way your latter correct prediction undermined

19:54

your less accurate prediction

19:57

in that so many people.

19:59

People didn't have to go through the

20:02

publicity grind because they

20:04

weren't allowed to promote

20:06

stuff. Also, I don't think

20:08

you anticipated that in 2023, the only

20:10

celebrity we were allowed to pay attention

20:12

to was Taylor Swift. Yes, accurate. I

20:15

will say, I think conversations about mental health

20:17

continue to expand in a way that I

20:19

think is very healthy. I think it's easier

20:22

than it used to be for people

20:24

to talk about their mental health struggles and

20:28

whether it's talking about therapy or medication

20:30

or whatever. So I think there's

20:32

some truth to that, but really, I want to focus on

20:35

the strikes, man. All right. My

20:37

predictions for 2024. I

20:40

have two. Jesse Armstrong, who

20:42

created Succession, will announce a new

20:45

series. I just think with

20:47

Succession over and everybody having loved it so

20:49

much, it's just hard for me

20:51

to believe that that guy is not going to get right

20:54

back to work. And I could be wrong. I could be

20:56

writing a feature or something like that. I haven't actually researched

20:58

what exactly he's doing, so I'm kind of

21:00

pulling this out of the air. But

21:03

I think that he's a very hot property.

21:05

I think he can probably get just about

21:07

anything greenlit. So

21:09

that's one. The other one

21:11

is somebody is going to

21:14

win, by which I mean either get a

21:17

big verdict or get a big settlement in

21:20

a reality show lawsuit, which

21:22

comes from two kind of developments. One

21:25

is lawsuits like there's one about the

21:27

Squid Game game show that I

21:30

hate about the conditions

21:32

that that was done under and

21:34

how they were treated. The

21:38

other is this kind of

21:40

agitation from originally from Bethany

21:42

Frankl, who is one of the original

21:44

real allies of New York City, about

21:47

unionizing reality

21:49

show participants. Now, reality show

21:52

participants on both

21:54

The performing and the production

21:56

side have had struggles to

21:58

be included. In labor organizations

22:01

that are otherwise involved in

22:03

the making of television. There

22:05

was a whole thing about whether

22:07

the people who write something like

22:09

America's Next Top Model should be

22:11

part of the Wgn. I don't

22:13

know how it's going to turn

22:15

out. I think the part of

22:17

it where somebody wins something or

22:19

guess somebody to acknowledge that something

22:21

went wrong. I think that's coming

22:23

and I think that is gonna

22:25

be part of the development of

22:27

this issue. So somebody is going

22:29

to get some money and a.

22:31

Big Reality so lawsuit says. My

22:33

second predicts i love that are

22:35

both. Yeah, I wonder how much

22:38

the ability to do that is

22:40

tied up in how those contracts

22:42

are written, right? If you're essentially

22:44

signing away all your rights in

22:46

perpetuity throughout the universe. How possible?

22:48

was it can be together, a

22:50

settlement, or goes haywire, but some

22:52

kind of reckoning, especially since they're

22:54

still making shows like that's? good

22:57

game show where the conditions are

22:59

deplorable. It does feel like something's

23:01

coming, so. I think we're going somewhere

23:03

and I will leave that. that's what we

23:05

would love to know what your pop culture.

23:07

Predictions are for the New Year You can

23:09

find us on Facebook and say spoke that

23:11

Com/t C H H. Next up was

23:14

making us happy to sleep. This

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Linda Homes. Twenty Twenty three has

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23:40

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at donate.npr.org/happy. And

24:24

thanks. Now it's

24:27

time for our favorite segment of this week

24:29

and every week. What's making

24:31

us happy this week? Blaine Weldon. What's making you

24:33

happy this week? Five second

24:35

films is exactly what it sounds like.

24:37

It's a group of folks who make

24:39

these incredibly distilled,

24:41

often very funny movies that are

24:44

five seconds long. They've been at

24:46

this since 2008. It's

24:49

giving quibby vibes here. Well, no, no,

24:51

no, no, no. They're jokes, right?

24:53

It's an exercise in narrative

24:55

essentialism. You just get

24:58

just enough to establish the premise, the game,

25:00

and then you get the ending. Now, not

25:02

everyone works, but their motto

25:04

is wasting your time, but not very

25:06

much. You just gobble these

25:09

things up like popcorn. Sometimes you go

25:11

back to Marvel at how

25:13

much was conveyed using

25:15

so little of everything. So

25:18

obviously that a lot of work goes into them,

25:21

but that is all conceptual work to

25:24

kind of slice away everything that is

25:26

unnecessary just to get that hit in

25:28

five seconds. They're on TikTok, they're on

25:30

the grams, they're on Twitter, they're on

25:33

YouTube. That is five second

25:35

films. That's the number five second

25:37

films. Blaine Love it. Can't wait

25:39

to look it up, doing that immediately after we get

25:41

off this call. All

25:43

right, Aisha Harris, what is making you happy

25:45

this week? Well, have you heard of a little

25:47

show called 30 Rock? Wow.

25:51

Yes, I'm in the middle of a rewatch.

25:53

I've been on a puzzling binge and when

25:55

I do puzzles, like actual physical

25:57

puzzles in my living room. I

26:00

like to put on stuff that I don't have to

26:02

think too hard about. And 30 Rock has

26:04

been one of those shows that I've just been re-binging,

26:07

re-watching. And right now I'm in the

26:09

middle of season three. Of

26:11

course, you know, the show parts of it

26:13

have not held up quite well. But when

26:15

this show was firing at all cylinders, I

26:18

keep getting reminded of just how classic all

26:21

of the songs are and how that

26:23

was really that shows bread and butter,

26:25

whether it's werewolf bar mitzvah, muffin

26:27

top, the mystic pizza song, the

26:29

scene where they're all performing midnight

26:31

train to Georgia. Like this

26:33

show is just, it makes me so

26:35

happy. So I'm enjoying rewatching 30 Rock

26:38

and just getting to live with

26:40

these characters yet again. You know, it's still funny

26:42

for the most part. It's great. Thank you very

26:44

much, Ayesha Harris. Steve and

26:46

Thompson, what is making you happy this week?

26:49

Well, in 2024, NBC is going to be airing

26:51

the Summer Olympics, which are going to be held

26:53

in Paris. And to

26:55

prepare us for the Paris Olympics,

26:57

NBC has been airing commercials that

26:59

use a song from 1977 by

27:03

plastic Bertrand called Saplan pour

27:05

Moi. So

27:22

Saplan pour Moi by plastic Bertrand

27:25

may be the first cool song

27:27

I ever knew. It

27:30

came out when I was five or six

27:32

years old. My cool uncle Paul got into

27:34

it. My mother got into it. My parents

27:36

spoke a little French and were trying to

27:38

pick apart the lyrics and couldn't make sense

27:40

of it. It's not like

27:42

this is some completely lost song, but

27:45

hearing a song that so strongly connects

27:47

to my childhood has been really delightful.

27:50

And then going down the rabbit

27:52

hole of the very weird

27:54

history of this song, every

27:57

element of this song can

27:59

be disputed. or has been disputed. The fact

28:01

that it is plugging the French Olympics when

28:04

it is by a Belgian artist, who

28:06

is this song actually by? It's billed

28:08

to Plastic Bertrand, but there was like

28:10

a whole legal dispute because it's actually

28:13

written and sung by a guy named

28:15

Lou de Pris, who died this year.

28:17

Plastic Bertrand has sort of been taking

28:19

credit for this song for decades in

28:22

kind of this weird Millie Vanilli story.

28:25

It came out in the late 70s

28:27

amid the rise of punk and new

28:29

waves, but it's kind of a pastiche

28:31

of those things that doesn't necessarily fit

28:33

into any of those worlds. The song

28:36

doesn't fit into anything neatly except a

28:38

commercial for the 2024 Olympics

28:40

on NBC. It delights me. I

28:43

love the song. The song has

28:45

not aged at all.

28:47

It is just as inscrutable and

28:49

weird and unbelievably catchy as it

28:51

ever was. It is truly delightful.

28:53

That is Sapland pour

28:56

Moi by Plastic Bertrand with an

28:58

asterisk next to Plastic Bertrand. Yeah,

29:01

and because it is hard to spell, we

29:03

are going to link to the song in

29:05

the newsletter so that you can find it

29:07

and listen to it for yourself. You can

29:09

sign up for our newsletter as always at

29:12

npr.org pop culture

29:14

newsletter. Alright, so

29:17

making me happy this week, a story ran

29:19

in slate called

29:21

the virus inside your TV by

29:23

Isaac Butler. And this

29:26

tells the story of a project that

29:28

was done by a group that called

29:30

themselves the gala committee. And

29:33

what they did was smuggle political

29:36

art into the set

29:39

dressing and otherwise

29:42

the appearance of Melrose Place

29:44

in the 90s. These

29:46

included things like a

29:48

set of sheets on the bed of

29:50

one of the shows many sexually active

29:53

men that was decorated with unrolled condoms.

29:55

And once you see it, you cannot

29:57

unsee it. They are clearly unrolled

29:59

condoms. They did this

30:01

initially by having a contact with

30:04

the set designer. But then eventually

30:06

it became kind of the higher

30:09

ups on the show kind of knew about it and

30:11

would tell them what was coming up on the show

30:13

so that they could prepare things. Somebody

30:15

gives each other a box of cigars. And

30:18

if you look at it, you can see that it's a cigar

30:20

box where all of the sides of it have

30:22

hinges, which means it can't open,

30:25

which was meant to represent

30:27

the Cuban embargo. And

30:30

it is a completely fascinating piece.

30:32

I highly recommend it. Again,

30:35

it's called the virus inside your TV. It is

30:37

a stunner. So that is

30:39

what is making me happy this week.

30:43

And that brings us to the end of our

30:45

show. Stephen Thompson, Aisha Harris, Glenn Weldon. Thank you

30:47

so much for being here, you guys. Thank you, buddy. Thank

30:49

you. This episode was produced by

30:51

Mike Cassis and Rommel Wood and edited

30:53

by Jessica Reedy. Hello Come

30:56

In provides our theme music. Thanks

30:58

for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from

31:00

NPR. I'm Linda Holmes. And we'll see you

31:02

all next week for our annual resolutions episode.

31:28

This message comes from NPR sponsor

31:30

Nature's Bakery. Thanks

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