This week, Dancing With the Stars decided to redefine “stars,” eating hot dogs continued to be, somehow, a sport, and that Oasis reunion was not as smooth as … well, maybe it was exactly as smooth as expected.
Here’s what NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.
The “Break Up With BFFs” episode of the How to Be Fine podcast
I host a podcast called How to Be Fine. It’s a show about being better, not perfect. And this whole season is dedicated to the loneliness epidemic and quandaries about friendship. And we recently had author Chelsea Devantez on the show to talk about BFF breakups, how common they are, how devastating they are. And after we interviewed her, co-host Jolenta Greenberg and I actually lived by her advice while recording ourselves — reality show style. So listeners literally hear us navigating our own BFF break ups on the show, and it has led to hundreds of people writing in to share their own stories with us. I think it’s a topic we as a society should talk about more — and it clearly touched a nerve with our listeners. — Kristen Meinzer
Drunk Bollywood
Drunk Bollywood is a group of South Asian comedians who do retellings of famous Bollywood movies, on-stage in Brooklyn. They really play up the absurdity that is the modern Bollywood movie — there are songs, dialogues, wild additions. In a similar vein as Drunk Shakespeare, Bollywood films are equally interesting fodder for the drunk format. They did Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham… which is one of the most famous Bollywood films of all time, and they’re doing Main Hoon Na this week. This is like all of my childhood and modern interests combined. — Priya Krishna
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a 2009 anime TV series about two brothers who live in a magical alternate history, kind of like World War II-ish. They play around with magic in a way they’re not supposed to — trying to bring back their dead mother — and one of them loses parts of their body and the other one loses their entire body. And they go on a quest to get their bodies back. To me, it didn’t sound like something I’d want to watch. But now, over 15 years later, I’ve watched it and it’s so good. Join the party late with me. It’s good fun. — Regina Barber
Beyond Good & Evil
YouTube
Beyond Good & Evil is an action adventure game first released in 2003. There is a new 20th anniversary edition recently released. In this game you are a photojournalist on a planet that’s being attacked by aliens. You live in a lighthouse with your best friend, a talking pig. Your name is Jade, you’ve got a kicky haircut and a bandana and a leather bolero jacket and an overall sassy vibe. And you save the world by joining a resistance movement that suspects that the military dictatorship of your planet is working with the aliens. And you fund your quest for justice by photographing a representative of every species of animal on your planet. The subject of this game is dark, but its tone is very light. Because it’s not about killing aliens, right? It’s about exposing their sinister plan through journalism. — Glen Weldon
More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter
by Linda Holmes
You may know that last week, I recommended the show Disaster Autopsy. Well, after I talked about that, someone told me I should be checking out Air Disasters, which is on Paramount Plus. There are literally 19 seasons of this thing. I will grant you that it’s not for everyone, dissecting exactly how horrible things happen, but somehow, learning how many things have to go wrong for a plane to crash is something I find oddly comforting. And the reenactments are cheesy enough to make the whole thing seem significantly less scary. (I hear you saying, “What is going on with your desire to seek out stories about terrible things happening and how they can be avoided?” and I say, “Shhhhh.”)
I am something of an Apollo 13 completist (having seen the movie a zillion times and listened to a detailed podcast), so the new Netflix documentary Apollo 13: Survival didn’t add too much to my own understanding of the original disaster or the rescue. But if you haven’t ever listened to much of the actual audio of the communications between the crew and the people on the ground, it’s well worth checking out.
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist is based on the true story of a massive armed robbery that took place in Atlanta on the night of a historic Muhammed Ali comeback fight in 1970. At times, I found that its divided attention between the people being robbed and the people doing the robbing slowed the story down, but you can’t argue with the terrific cast, which includes Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Hart, and Taraji P. Henson. The first three episodes are streaming on Peacock, and you can listen to Eric Deggans’ review, too.
Beth Novey adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment “What’s Making Us Happy” for the Web. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.