© 2024 KRWG
News that Matters.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Pop Culture Happy Hour: A Sense Of Place And A Nostalgic Quiz

NPR
Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour

So let's speak candidly for a moment.

This is not an ordinary day. It has not been an ordinary week. We taped this week's podcast on Monday at 6:00 p.m., in the first hours of coverage of the bombings in Boston. We are posting it on Friday, in the first hours of coverage of a series of events that currently have many of our good pals — and many of our listeners — "sheltering in place" at home.

This is all not to even mention the tragic explosion in Texas, a rather upsetting crime story, and even a giant sinkhole. I don't mean to be glib in the slightest when I point out that an Elvis impersonator arrested in connection with the possible mailing of ricin to the president hasn't managed to even stay at the top of the news. That is how you know you have had a week.

Posting a chat about culture with a strong sense of place and a quiz about television ratings of 1993 while these events are still unfolding feels somewhat weird, I'm not going to lie. But I also believe people need to be able to think about other things, and I always remember getting a message from someone in Tokyo when we posted a show on the day of the 2011 earthquake in Japan who told us that he was perfectly happy to have something else to think about.

And so! Here's our show, in which the wonderful Jess Gitner sits in for Glen as we use the occasion of our new building to chat about the importance of location in both the content of creative works and their creation itself, from whether it matters that Mork And Mindy was in Boulder to whether it matters that The Onion was made in Madison. And then I offer a quiz about what was going on in television in April 1993, and we all manage to come up with things making us happy this week.

You can find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: me, Stephen, Glen, Barrie, Trey, Jess, and Mike.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.