AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Let's take a step back in time to 2010. That was the year "Inception" came out.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "INCEPTION")
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: (As Dom Cobb) Dreams - they feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.
RASCOE: "The Walking Dead" and "Downton Abbey" premiered.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DOWNTON ABBEY")
MAGGIE SMITH: (As Violet Crawley) Your quarrel is with my daughter Rosamond, not me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
RASCOE: And the debut of a very special NPR podcast.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: I'm Linda Holmes, and you have arrived at Pop Culture Happy Hour, an entirely real discussion taking place over entirely imaginary cocktails.
RASCOE: Here on WEEKEND EDITION, when we needed recommendations or when we have a pop culture quandary, we go to the experts from Pop Culture Happy Hour, and you all at home are free to listen with real drinks if you want to. Today, the crew includes Aisha Harris, Glen Weldon, Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson, and Linda and Stephen are here with me now. Welcome, guys.
HOLMES: Hello.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Hey, Ayesha.
RASCOE: All right. I mean, I'm so excited to celebrate with y'all 'cause y'all let me go on sometimes, and I always have the best time. So - but let's celebrate this birthday by going back a little bit. Some would say that you guys were a little bit ahead of the curve by creating a podcast in 2010. What was the early vision for the show?
THOMPSON: Well, there were certainly a lot of podcasts in the world where, you know, people were kind of talking with their friends about pop culture and music and world events. There weren't as many at NPR. We had done some stuff like that on All Songs Considered where Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton, Carrie Brownstein and I would talk about music in this kind of chatty way that helped kind of form the DNA of our show. But NPR didn't have a long track record of kind of conversation-driven discussion podcasts, and that's where, you know, I think we got to be, you know, among the first out of the gate.
RASCOE: And 2010 was the year that Instagram launched. It was also the year that Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, and Netflix was beginning to take over. Can we talk a little bit about how much has changed in the pop culture landscape over the past 15 years?
HOLMES: Well, the thing I always go back to is that in our very first episode ever, the topic was just something that has made you happy this summer. This was in July. And, of course, that eventually evolved into the segment called What's Making Me Happy this week that we do every Friday, even now. But back then, in the summer of 2010, our then-colleague Trey Graham chose what he called Netflix Instant Streaming, which...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HOLMES: ...Wasn't brand new, but it was still young. They were not making their own shows yet. So that's how old PCHH is. Tons of change in the industry in that regard - lots of media consolidation. We, of course, went through the lockdown year during the beginning of COVID, social media, a lot of shows that focus on making things that can live on YouTube or Tik Tok. So yeah, there has been a lot of change, even over and above the rise of Netflix instant streaming.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Yeah. Well, and, like, over that time, do you feel like your tastes have changed?
THOMPSON: I mean, I think, for me, my tastes have only expanded, I think in part because we do this show. You know, I didn't used to watch every major Oscar nominee just as, like, part of my regular life. But in order to prepare for our Oscar coverage, I'm seeing movies I might never have seen otherwise. And so there are so many things that I have consumed because we do the show that have allowed me to find out things about my own tastes that I didn't know.
HOLMES: Yeah, and I think that, you know, you talked at the beginning about the four of us who host the show together. But on top of that, the really most important change to the show over those 15 years is that we now have tons and tons of people come in as panelists. They are sometimes people from around NPR, like yourself.
RASCOE: Yeah.
HOLMES: Some of them are critics from outside NPR. Some of them are just interesting writers and thinkers. And I think that expansion has made it much easier for exactly the same thing to happen to me that Stephen talked about.
RASCOE: So I want to end on a topic that you recently talked about on the podcast. In honor of your 15th year, can we talk about what movies you were loving when you were 15?
HOLMES: Absolutely. The first thing that comes to mind is "Pretty In Pink" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Both came out when I was 15. I was right in the sweet spot for both of those. "Stand By Me" came out that year. I was already a Stephen King fan. That was, of course, directed by Rob Reiner, who died recently...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
HOLMES: ...And who made many of the movies of my younger years that I was most attached to.
THOMPSON: Totally.
HOLMES: So I mean, it was a pretty good year to be 15 in terms of the movies, as far as I'm concerned.
THOMPSON: Yeah, my - the movies that I really loved when I was 15 are definitely shaped by the landscape of basic cable and kind of what was not necessarily in theaters, but showing up on HBO or even channels with commercials. So several things that came out when I was 13 that were huge for me when I was 15 for that reason, things like "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," things like "Back To The Future." Those movies really shaped my pop culture tastes, and I still love them and revisit them to this day.
RASCOE: I looked this up for this very conversation. And when I was 15 - and this movie, I did love - it was "Memento."
HOLMES: Oh.
THOMPSON: Oh, yeah.
RASCOE: I had never seen anything like that before.
HOLMES: Classic.
THOMPSON: Wow. That would have blown my mind at 15.
RASCOE: It blew my mind. And I was just like, that's, this is an incredible movie.
HOLMES: You were one classy 15-year-old.
RASCOE: But yeah, so, you know, congratulations again to you guys. And here's to 15 more years, at least.
HOLMES: Why not? Let's do it.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: Thank you so much for having us. It's so sweet that y'all invited us.
RASCOE: That's Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. You can hear Linda and Stephen and their co-hosts, Aisha and Glen, at npr.org/popculturehappyhour or wherever you get your podcasts.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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