Pop Culture Happy Hour - The best depictions of the American dream

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

America turns 250 this year. So for this special birthday, we discuss our picks for what pieces of pop culture best depict the American dream, including The Wire, Apollo 13, Grey Gardens, and the spiritual successor to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”If you like want more episodes like this one, check out:How we handle spoilersOur 15th anniversary time capsuleWe rewatch the movies we loved as teensPop culture that changed our mindsConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport Pop Culture Happy Hour+See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You may have heard a little something about America's 250th birthday, or to put it in a way that rolls off the tongue, it's semi-quincentennial. So we thought it was a good time to discuss depictions of America in movies, TV, and music. I'm Stephen Thompson, and today we are sharing our picks for what pieces of pop culture best depict the American dream. Joining me today are my fellow Americans and NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts, Linda Holmes. Hey, Homsey. Oh, hello, Stephen. Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Hey, Stephen. And Glenn Weldon. Hey, buddy. I am that Yankee Doodle Boy. Hey, Stephen. You really, really are. All right, we kept this prompt somewhat open-ended. So I'm fascinated to see where we go and how on-brand we stay. Linda Holmes, I'm going to start with you. Give me your pick for a pop cultural depiction of the American dream. Sure. So I am aware that the meaning of the American dream that gets used the most often. is an idea of universally achievable economic security and upward mobility, which is something

that has never been real. There are films that have pretended it's real and recognized that it isn't real. My own heart is so settled in its rejection of that particular myth that I did not feel moved by trying to perceive that. So I went looking for something that feels American dream-like, but that I feel more kind of conflicted about and uncertain about. And that led me to the 1990s. film Apollo 13. Apollo 13 was directed by Ron Howard. It tells the story of the space flight in April of 1970, when an explosion in an oxygen tank disabled some of the systems that operated the spacecraft, took a tremendous

amount of ingenuity and nerd problem solving to get those astronauts home. Even now, if I watch it, even though I know it happens, very suspenseful. Why is it an American Dream movie? I think the space program is one of the things that genuinely still makes my heart swell with optimism. I don't know if any of you are like that. But despite the fact that American space exploration was deeply intertwined with the military and inexorably connected to the Cold War, there is something like neat about space travel that is hard to duplicate with anything else. Even now, I think with a recent Artemis mission, you see that, that a lot of your hardened cynics found something moving about it.

So I think where I came down was that space travel is what I want to be the American dream, knowledge, science, international cooperation, curiosity about the world. And in the case of the Apollo 13 mission, people dedicating themselves fully to solving a problem that seems impossible to solve simply because you cannot let anybody go. you cannot leave anybody on their own. It's competence porn in a way, right? It is certainly a workplace piece and a competence piece. I have a couple of other thoughts, but I am curious to hear how this strikes the rest of you as my effort at the American Dream.

I think this is a great pick. I mean, because this is where the American Dream confronts reality, this movie. I mean, the dream of going to the moon is a dream that meets in this film the very harsh realities and the cost, the human cost. among other kind of costs of space travel. I mean, when this film is set,

we'd already had three astronauts die, but we kept going anyway, and that's a very American thing. Good pick. Yeah, I think this general idea for this episode was my idea, and I realized as soon as I actually started thinking about it, this is really hard to pin down.

What a task I've given us. Not unlike the astronomical task at hand in Apollo 13, I think this is a very good pick, as well because like you said Linda I mean I think a lot of our picks here are going to have a mixture of both like that dream the dreaminess of the dream and then also the like the cold hard reality of like when that dream is confronted and when that dream is attempted to be achieved and iconographically it also just feels very very American in a you know in a way yeah yeah that's the other thing that I wanted to say is that like cinematically I also think it's so interesting

to me. The movie was directed by Ron Howard, who both as Opie on the Andy Griffith Show and as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, became a sort of an avatar for an idealized notion of what the United States is or was. And the kid and the music man. Right, sure, also. And the music man. And it's so interesting to me that as a director, he's often kind of been playing in some of those same spaces right up to the fact that he directed the adaptation of Hillbilly Ellogy, which is J.D. Vance's book that I think over time has been pretty vigorously interrogated for its vision of the American dream. And on top of that, it's Tom Hanks, who has been representing this very particular stripe of American heroosity in movies through this, Sully the Hero Pilot,

Forrest Gump, Wittie. Saving Private Ryan. He played Fred Rogers. He's Woody in Toy Story. Yes, he is. There's a huge, like, part of mythology going on that I am very aware of and find difficult to resist. And of course, it's like there's also this poignancy to the fact that the space travel now is bound up with billionaires and with a lust to sort of colonize space and cast off the planet we're on. So I think, like, I chose this because it captures so much of the love and optimism and also ambivalence that I feel when I hear the phrase American Dream. Yeah, I mean, my immediate response was, oh, Homsey went with optimism. And I feel like that's going to be a through line for all of our picks. Right? Like, we all. We'll see. We'll see. We all.

went with a vision of the American dream that was deeply wholesome to which everyone should aspire. Aisha, give us your pick. From the great expanse of the planets and the stars and the moon and the sky to Baltimore. Here we go. Circa, 2002, 2003.

I went with the wire. And why wouldn't I? Because I think this is truly one of the great American texts. I think this is not a new thing to be said, I am not breaking any ground here. This is well-trod, well-fertilized ground. You know, when I set us up for this very monumental task of trying to pin down something that represents the American dream, how we see it, or how we hope it could be, I did the, you're in high

school now, and you have to go back to the source, and how are you going to write this paper? And you're going to start it off with James Trussell Adams coined the phrase in 1931 in his book, the epic of America. And I went back and I looked at the many ways that he kind of talks about it. And one of the ways he talks about it that stuck out to me was a dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all of our citizens, all our citizens of every rank. And I kept coming back to the wire and how there are so many examples of this both mostly failing or stumbling to get to that point, but also in ways getting to that point. And I chose two characters that I wanted to focus on. The first is the one of failure, because let's start with the sadness and end on a better note.

And for me, I could have chosen a lot of people in the Wire universe. There are so many. For sadness, yes, I agree. For sadness, that show is not wanting for that aspect. But I wanted to go with Frank Sabatka, who's played by Chris Bauer in season two. He is, of course, the Polish-American longshoreman, and he's also the treasure for a dying labor union of Steve Dors. And so what I love about Frank Sabatka's character is that, you know, he's, he's both sympathetic and not sympathetic. Like, he's way too, like his son Ziggy.

He just lets him kind of run Rickshod and do whatever. But he also is trying to help his men. He's trying to do the best he can. And he's out there lobbying the politicians, trying to get these things to work. And at the end of the day, it doesn't. You know, about a dozen dead women girls are found in one of the shipments. Frank didn't know about it. but that, of course, puts the police on him.

All the work that he's done by the end of season two is to help, like, try and push the politicians to listen to what they need and what the union needs is basically undone because of the illegal stuff that's going on. And there's a scene in episode 11 of season two that just kind of sums it up very nicely. He's talking to the lobbyist. He's working with. The lobbyist is like, look, there's nothing we can do. Oh, at this point, he's got to warn out for his arrest. Like, it's over. for Frank. He says this to the lobbyist.

You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make it in this country. Build . Now we should put our hand in the next guy's pocket. Man, we used to build . Could you get any more like this is the decrepiness of the American dream? Like, yes, it is. Do we feel like this is a solid choice for like the sad part of the wire? There are a lot of choices I could have made. Yeah, home run. Most definitely. And I think if nothing else, you certainly know that this is the creator, David Simon, trying to make his.

thesis statement about the American dream, right? So it's like whether you thought this was the American dream or not, it's certainly an interesting example of a creator trying to get at the idea of the American dream and what has been lost and things like that. So 1,000 percent. Yeah. So many storytellers find ways to distill gigantic, complicated ideas down to very linear narratives. And he does this incredible job of capturing complex systems. and how complex systems can fail. And I think that's such a huge part of the power of what he does is like instead of peddling these kind of Aaron Sorkin style,

every problem can be solved with a speech, he really captures the way like trying to run a society really, really, really messy and often results in failure. You know, I think that's part of what makes any Simon show, but particularly the wire, just a perfect pick for the way. just a perfect pick for this. We look at this show and there's a criminal enterprise

at the center of it and if you don't know anything, really, you think, well, it's a criminal enterprise. It must be lawless. There must be no systems. But it's still an enterprise and it is a ruthlessly

capitalistic one and it easily adopts, eagerly adopts the model and even in my favorite scene in the show and maybe the best, certainly the funniest scene in the show, they even adopt Roberts' Rules of Order and they conform to the law

of commerce and capitalism. And they still grind people up in the gears. They're just a lot more honest about it. Yes. Well, in a way, it's so normal that they forget that it's a criminal enterprise, which is where you get that great line about, are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? You know? Yes.

Yes. Yes. I mean, that's the thing, right? And, of course, as we know, and what the wire is very good at is showing how those criminal enterprises, the line between the criminal enterprises and the actual law and order, there's no line. It's completely blurred. They all work together.

Which brings me to my other pick of the focus I feel that should be put when we're talking about the American Dream. And that is on the law side, but this is the law side that I think fully understands that line can be blurred. And that is in the character of Howard Bunny Colvin, played by Robert Wisdom. What I love about the Bunny character, he is the police chief in season two and season three, especially in season three, he's the police chief of Baltimore's Western District, and he's nearing retirement. You know, going back to the Adams' take on the dream and of this better,

richer, and happier life, like I feel like he, Bunny fully embodies this, right? Like, he is frustrated with how the rise of the drug trade and crime related to the drug trade has basically interfered with his quote-unquote real police work, his ability to do it, and he feels as if he's failed as community. Early on in season three, he has this moment where he's talking to another person and he's just like trying to explain how he feels like he hasn't done all that he can. The city is worse than when I first came on. So what does I say about me? About my life.

So what does he decide to do? He decides to pursue the chance for himself to make a better, richer, and happier life for himself in his community by creating Amsterdam, which, you know, is him setting up these abandoned row houses away from the neighborhoods. in designating them as these sort of safe zones for all the drug dealers to sell without any police interference, while also minimizing violent turf wars. And so later on in the season, and by the way, he's doing all of this without getting any permission. He's gone rogue. This is what he does. And he entails his subordinates to help carry this out.

People are selling, but there's no turf war. There's no violence. And I love that. I think that is working within the system of the American Dream. and knowing that the odds are stacked against you, but doing what you can anyway. And then, of course, in season four, he adopts Neiman Bryce,

who's one of the at-risk kids that season. I feel like Bunny, he is the idealized. He's the Apollo 13 of the Wire. He is the idealized version of the American Dream. That also feels rooted in reality. And that is why I think that the Wire, but also Howard Bunny Colvin and Frank Sabatka are the, they are the perfect,

stand-ins for this idea of the American dream. And that is my, that is my TED Talk. All right. Well, we've got more show ahead. We've got Glenn's pick. We've got my pick. But first, let's take a quick break. Welcome back. We are talking about the American dream in pop culture. We're each making a pick, Glenn Weldon. It's your turn. Give us some uplift, buddy. I just, I know you got some. I got some nuanced uplift. I chose the 1975 documentary Great. Gardens by the Maisel brothers, David and Albert, along with Ellen Hubdee and Muffy Meyer, who tend to get overlooked. We're talking about the American Dream, and that definition we've kind of batted around

is the belief that anyone with hard work and some determination can achieve wealth and success and security. This is a film about the American Dream in Decay, how wealth and success can devolve into squalor, basically. And it also hits on a lot of other facets of the American Dream. But before I get to that, I just want to know, have you all seen this film? Okay. So I finally watched this for the first time, like, this year.

So it is very fresh in my mind. I am so glad that I was able to have seen it because, by God, this movie is bonkers, and I love it. I've seen the documentary now parody of this film. And I've seen, like, endless references to it. I have so many friends who are fascinated with it. I'm genuinely not 100% sure I've ever ever ever. actually sat down and watched the source material from start to finish. I'm going to say something that is often a lie when I say it, but it is the truth when I say it this time,

which is I've seen a lot of it. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it start to finish. Okay. Usually that means I've never seen it. You can all be my friends. I mean, Stephen, you're getting in on a grandfathered in on the documentary now. You can all be my friends. All right, here it is.

It's a documentary about these two women, an elderly mother and her middle-aged daughter, both named Edith Bouvier Beal, the mother is called Bigotty, the daughter is called Little Edie. As we meet them, they live in this decaying mansion near the tip of Long Island, a house called Gray Gardens on the beach in East Hampton. It's falling apart. It's overgrown. There's no running water. There's garbage piled up in the rooms. Raccoons have the run of the place.

But both of these women are American aristocracy, if not American royalty. They both come from privilege. They were members of high society, both debutants and socialites in their youth. Big Edy was Jackie Kennedy's aunt and Little Edy was her cousin. But when Big Edy's husband left her, she moved out of Manhattan and moved to Grey Gardens. Little Ety joined her a little bit later. And they became this pair of reclusive eccentrics. Their trust fund dried up and they were living in this dilapidated mansion in one of the most expensive zip codes in the

which is the irony of it. I'll be honest, when this topic came up, I initially told this movie because I thought of its most famous scene, which is where Little Edie celebrates the 4th of July by putting on some marching band music and dancing around the house's foyer in her signature headscarf while she's waving an American flag. The more I became convinced that this film said,

everything there is to say about America. Because Gray Gardens is one of those films that changes every time you see it as different aspects of you kind of chime with the movie, resonate with the movie in different ways. I mean, the first time I saw it, it really seemed to me like the filmmakers were exploiting these women, you know, pointing the camera at them and painting them as grotesques, you know, mocking them. Now, when I see it and I'm much closer to Little Eadie's age in the film, I realize how much of that kind of knee-jerk impression, does these women a disservice? Because it robs them of their,

I don't want to say agency. I never want to say agency, but just say, complicitness. Their complicitness, their volition. Well, their choices. Yes, thank you. The thing that Little Edie is consumed by is self-awareness. These are both very self-aware. Women, they are not just willing participants. They are both performers. Big Edie was a singer. Little Edie was an actress and a model. And Little E. E.E.E.E. especially throughout the film is acutely aware of how she's being perceived. She flirts with the camera. She flirts with the mazes.

And watching it now, it's hard not to impute on her the feeling that she sees this as an opportunity, this film, as a way out. And sometimes watching it nowadays, I get struck by what seems to me to be moments where the filmmakers, you just get this upwelling of empathy. Not pity, but like just basic human kindness, like seeing a moment. these people as they are, tinged with exploitation. Because why not both, right? Well, this is also the way in which it presages reality television, right? And I think when you talk about that combination of fascinating and yet exploitative and yet you don't want to rob people of their right to make choices about how they want to live

their lives and that sometimes they are very aware of how they're being received and they don't really care, you could be talking about below deck. People get really shirty sometimes when you. make these comparisons. But it is true that I think a high-brow movie, a well-regarded classic movie that's part of the canon and a show that is thought of as sort of trashy, can call upon some of the same sources of curiosity. And, you know, it's interesting to see people living all different kinds of lives. Like, those instincts are present, you know, in both. Yeah. I do think it's interesting how this film has kind of created this shorthand for describing a certain way of living

and kind of a certain way of living in your home. And how much of my relationship with this film is through the prism of like my parents' house was really cluttered growing up. It's been like a running family joke in my family for decades of like my mom is big eaty. If I don't, you know, pick up this, you know, stack of books or whatever, I'm going to be little edie. The word that I was always trying to avoid, you were trying to avoid agency. The word that I keep trying to avoid is curdled. Yeah. I think so many portraits of the American dream that feel really true to the idea and true to our relationship with the idea often contains this idea that it started out as this kind of idealistic enterprise and has devolved into, you know, into something a little sadder.

I mean, you will find in my many notes about Apollo 13, if you read it. all of my notes about Apollo 13, you will find in there, you know, the idea that I think disappointment was a part of how I received the idea of American Dream is that there's a constant cyclical hope and disappointment in the sense that like even when you look at this, it's like on the one hand, it's this beautiful, hopeful story. On the other hand, it is still a bunch of, like exclusively pretty much a bunch of white guys doing stuff. And which was the story of the space program for a long time in the popular imagination, although it was not in real life, as we know, fortunately, from hidden figures and the book that inspired it and all of those

things. But there are all of these, yes, but things that are disappointing when you look at this idea of the American dream. And I think one of the things that makes us a brilliant pick from Glenn is that you have these women who in the one sense are connected through blood to Camelot. what would they actually call Hamilton, right? Yeah. The JFK, Jackie Kennedy, which now we know so much about what that really was and what that

world really was. And the fact that these women, this is part of what makes this so brilliant, is that it captures that sort of mirror effect where over here you have the beautiful, glamorous, this, and not that far away, separated by circumstance and personality and fortune and all that. you have a really, really different couple of people. Yeah, and that's why I know this is not a competition, but I think my pick best exemplifies every aspect of the American dream. It's not a contest, but you win, you feel. It's not a contest, but I'm going to win because another thing this film touches on is something else about this country, which is that in American life, there is this weird escape hatch, Z-axis, ejector seat, Ripcourt.

I don't know what to call it, but like a weird workaround to hard work and determination, which is fame. The kind of fame that was completely rare back in, you know, when this film came out, but that this film helped to create, to Linda's point, which is celebrity. And it's celebrity not based in anything you make or that you do or you produce, not based in skill, not based in any craft or even expertise, just personality. Not what you do, but who you are. And that was rare back then. And now with the below decks of it all and the reality TV and the real housewives and influencer culture, it's kind of ubiquitous. And it's that kind of fame that Andy Warhol talked about, 15 minutes of fame. It's that kind of fame, which is very apt because it's the kind of fame that Little Edie achieved.

This film comes out. She gets embraced by people like Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. Contain your shock. Big Edy then dies. And Little Edy sells Grey Gardens. She starts doing cabaret at Reuters. Reno Sweeney at a gay supper club in the village. Then she moves to Miami and she becomes a mainstay at Torpedo, which was a gay bar in South Beach.

So if you want to be cute about it, and I do. She goes from being the subject of the male gaze of the Maisel's camera to the male gaze of Miami Beach. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Good. Worth it. And thank you.

The kind of fandom she found among gay men, that's a distinction without a difference. We love women who are strong and individualistic and eccentric, but to truly be embraced by the gay community. To achieve gay icon status, we need to know that you went through some stuff. We admire strength, but we love vulnerability, even fragility, like brittleness. I mean, there's a reason that the gay rights movement started right after the death of Judy Garland. So the fuel mixture is kind of the same. It's veneration, but it's tinged with. With mockery, it's inseparable.

You can't tear them apart. And again, to think that she didn't know that that's exactly what was going on is to, not to infantilize her, but to underestimate her. In a real way, she just loved attention. She wanted to be adored. And she was. And I don't have an ending to this except to say, in conclusion, Finland is a land of contrast. I don't know to end this. But in conclusion, I made the best pick.

Thank you, Stephen. That's how I should end this. I win. But see, this is why I like this question. This is why I think this question is so interesting, is that none of us chose. I mean, to me, when I sat down to think about this, it's like you can go for one of the pieces of brilliant art that is very specifically about, at least in part, the American Dream. Your death of a salesman. Raised in the Sun.

Any one of several August Wilson plays, right? If you look at something like Fences, that's what Fences is about. If you look at a lot of theater, there's a ton of theater that's about that. the play purpose, which is about this Chicago family of kind of politics and politics adjacent folks that I saw a couple years ago is about it, right? There's lots and lots and lots of art that is very specifically plugged into interrogating the idea of the American dream. And all of that stuff I absolutely recommend, right? I absolutely recommend fences and purpose and death salesmen and all those kinds of things that are about families, all kinds of different kinds of families trying to find, economic security and position, right, and status and things like that. But we all didn't do that.

We all kind of went to different, like, the idea of the American dream makes me think about fame, poverty, policing. And that's why I love this question, Aisha, is that it is so incredibly, like, open-ended, that none of us kind of chose to highlight the art that has made that its very reason for existing, I would say. Exactly. And we haven't even gotten to my pick, which is actually the Correct pick. Bring us home, Stephen. I'm assuming it's going to be great. Well, Glenn went with Gray Gardens, which I think we can agree is fairly on brand.

I also went fairly on brand. I went with a song. Immediately as soon as songs were part of this equation, I went to Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Yes. Which is one of my favorite songs of all time. It is also a perfect summation of a modest American dream that shifts over time. and evolves as its protagonist evolves. And I have talked about that song enough that I decided to go with something else because,

you know, everybody knows that song. So I went with a different song about compromised expectations in America. That's what I kind of came back to again and again when I was thinking about the American dream. And I truly think that this song deserves to be a standard the way that fast car is. It's from 2021. It's by Jasmine Sullivan. It's called The Other Side.

and to set up the clip, it's from the perspective of an attractive young woman who dreams of wealth as a means of escape. I just want to lay back, spend my baby money in his bag, I deserve that life. Be a damn good housewife. It's breakfast and his bracelet. First of all, if you don't know this song, you have to hear this song. It is so good. I've listened to it dozens and dozens of times. It is an absolute master class in conveying an entire.

inner life in like three and a half minutes. The first line is, yeah, I got dreams to buy expensive things. And her pursuit of wealth is entirely secondhand. It's by marrying someone rich and essentially becoming a socialite, essentially kind of marrying into the kind of wealth and status and class that we were talking about, even with like Grey Gardens. And the clip that we pulled is from the bridge. And it just, that bridge just knocks me flat every time.

Two kids from a surrogate, my mama, I'm a stay fit, get a facelift. Now, first of all, I think Jasmine Sullivan's delivery of that line, the way her voice drops with facelift, I gasp, like almost every time I hear it. Second of all, this is an American dream that has conditions attached. Even if her fantasy pans out, she has to stay on her toes. She can't let her body change. She is fantasizing about a future of fabulous wealth, and yet even in that fantasy, she has to get facelifts or risk losing the life she hasn't even attained yet. There's something so bleak in that, so realistic in that, so strangely relatable, even though this is not my particular fantasy, there's something so universal. The way this song embodies all these kind of insidious messages from shows like The Real Highland.

housewives about what we should be striving for feels just deeply American to me. Yes, yes. I mean, I don't know if this song could have existed without real housewives and the Kardashians preceding it. The idea of the housewife and of the social life has existed within American society for hundreds of years. Like, that is not new. I think the very, as you said, even like the specificity of this, like the surrogate,

staying fit, all of that. Oh my God, it resonates so well. I also think, like, this is kind of the, you and Glenn's picks, as you had mentioned, like, they kind of go hand in hand here because it's like, what were big and little Edy before Big Edy, she lost that privilege that she had through marriage and just kind of descended. And that's like, that's the dark side. And this song is like the dark side, but in a different way and also before it can get

even darker because she hasn't even. achieved that dream yet. It's just, oh, so good. Yeah. She hasn't even accomplished this this thing that can be yanked away from her at any time. Well, it's a dream. That's why they call it a dream. They were very specific. This is the other reason why I like this pick and why I think it's so interesting is that one of the questions I always have about when people say American dream, is it a place that you can ever actually arrive at? Or is the dream to be in a constant state of strive, right? That's why everything is maxing now. Like, wherever you are, you're supposed to be farther than that. And the dream itself becomes living in that state of

constantly trying to get to something higher and better than where you're at. Because for her, what I hear in that song, when I listen to those lyrics, part of what I hear, just like Stephen said, is, yeah, I'm going to get what I want. And then I'm going to be, constantly scrambling to try to either keep it or improve on it, right? Keep it or maximize it. And it's interesting to me to think about whether the idea that we have of that dream has an endpoint or whether it would require you, this is sort of where you get to like millionaires, billionaires, multi-billionaires, like, where are we trying to get to? Like, what's the fantasy? What even is the fantasy at this point? Because for some people, it's just security, right? Totally. But for other

people, it's, I'm going to retire when I'm 30, you know? Which is like, okay, then what, right? Also, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, not actual happiness. I don't want to live in a constant state of pursuit. I will tell you that about me personally. I would love to stop pursuing at some point. And at the end of the day, what the song is, it's not an American dream. It's an anxiety dream. It's basically, if I get X, I still have to do Y and Z.

And what is more American than anxiety? Good point. Mic drop. We'll leave it there. So my pick is the other side from Jasmine Sullivan, from her Grammy-winning and fantastic album Hotales. That brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glenn Weldon.

Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. My pick's the only one that has space in it. That's all I'm going to say. I think we all did great. This episode was produced by Hofsefathema, Liz Metzker, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.