Pop Culture That Changed Our Minds
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At a certain point, most of us settle into a groove with our pop culture consumption. We know what we love, but we especially know what we're just not that into. A certain type of art or a specific genre or artist that usually makes us say...

No thanks. Sometimes, though, all it takes is one great outlier, or just a willingness to step outside our comfort zone to make us reconsider what we don't like. And what a pleasant surprise that can be. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Aisha Harris. And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about our pop culture revelations.

Joining us today is our fellow host, Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn. Hey, Aisha. Glad to talk about Revelation. I've been doing a lot of prep work. Number of the Beast, Rider on a Pale Horse. Oh, my gosh. Seven Seals, I'm ready. Yes, yes. That was inevitable. Thank you, Glenn. Awesome with us is...

Hello, Ronald. Hello, Aisha. Glenn stole my joke. Or a joke that I aspire to make someday. See? See? Told you. Inevitable. Inevitable.

Some say inevitable, some say predictable. Let's go with inevitable, Ronald. Yes, yes. Look, if it's inevitable, maybe that means it's absolutely right. There are no questions to ask there. Well, we've each brought a piece of pop culture that we didn't expect to like, but did. I'm very excited to hear these picks because, you know, I think we all know each other fairly well, so this should be very interesting. Yeah.

Let's get right into it. Glenn, why don't you kick us off? Sure. If you were to come up to me, Aisha, and say, Glenn, there's this show about high school football, the response you would get from me is not, go on. It would not be, say more. It's not be, I'm listening. No, the response you'd get from me is you'd look up to see a Glenn-shaped hole in the

I grew up in a household of hardcore football fans. My dad was a high school quarterback. My mom was a cheerleader. She grew up to be the athletic secretary of the school, a high school that I attended. I was dragged to high school football games my entire childhood, which I think explains some of my hatred for the whole world of it. And, you know, and then you tell me, by the way, the high school in this show, they're playing it straight. There's no Buffy, Heather's, Mean Girls Edge. It's just they're playing it straight. Miss me. But somehow...

Friday Night Lights is my jam, is my total jam. And I have no idea why. I mean, I do know why, because back in 2010, I was assigned to watch Friday Night Lights by this show because we did a segment on pop culture blind spots. And I went back to listen to that episode and you can hear me

struggling with it still because I had just hit season two, which people who know the show will know that it takes a turn. And I was like, I'm almost out, people. But I did get suckered in. I mean, I don't know why. The show is so normcore. It is straight culture. It is the target stretch chinos of television. Yeah.

The gayest thing about the show is Connie Britton's hair, which, I mean, it's not that considerable. You didn't even mention the music. Yes. I mean, gorgeous needle drops, all that explosions in the sky. Yes. This show sets a scene and like has such an incredibly specific sense of place.

How can you not get lost in it? And Glenn, I'm just excited that you're into football now. Now you can come over and watch the game with me. Yeah, this turned me. This is the thing. I just got so invested in every tiny change in the coach and Tammy Taylor relationship. And the show kept thinking it knew what I wanted. It kept throwing shirtless hugs at me.

Taylor Kitsch and Michael B. Jordan and Scott Porter and Matt Laura. But I kept loving the characters along the edges. Jesse Plemons, Landry Clark is such a great character, such a great performance. They did some very dumb things with that character, but I never left his side.

And, you know, this is a show that centered itself completely on decency. I didn't check before coming on to record this, but I bet there is on YouTube just a mashup of Coach Taylor looking at somebody from underneath that baseball cap with that stare that says, well, I mean, it doesn't matter what it says. It could say, I'm disappointed in you. It could say, I'm proud of you. But what it really says is I care about you. We should all hope to get looked at better.

The way Coach Taylor looks at, I mean, everything. Everything. Like drywall he looks at. I mean, it's just like... You know, we could talk about how it dealt with its women characters. I think they eventually attained some complexity. I think in the first season they were a little kind of hanger-on-y. But, man, what a great ensemble show that kept rotating characters in and out, right? So that if you...

Did get bored by the Taylor Kitsch, Minka Kelly storyline, as I was. You got some Jesse Plemons. You got some Jesse Plemons right around the corner. What a great show. What a great show. Yeah, I'm actually kind of disappointed in myself for not thinking of this. Like, Glenn, I mean, I didn't grow up with football, but I did grow up just not caring about it. And I still don't care about it. This is the only piece of culture that I actually like that has to do with football. And yeah, this show I've watched several times.

It's just a really good show that feels like one of the last series that people from all walks of life can agree on. Which is strange to say. It seems like such a product of that era. Even if that wasn't the case, things weren't all sunshine and rainbows in the late, mid-2000s when the show was on. But still, this was something most people could agree was great.

This is good. This is a good show. I never watched it, so this is a bit of a revelation, I guess, for myself. Where do you come down on football, Ronald? Because people are going to tell you, oh, the show's not about football. The show is about football. You should know that. It is about football. I like football, and I liked the movie Friday Night Lights. And the problem is the show started, and I remember seeing a preview and being like, why are they wearing different uniforms from the movie? I don't... Oh, jeez. You're a Friday Night Lights the movie purist. Parkour.

But you're convincing me that I need to go back and give it another shot because I know I'm probably going to like it. I just haven't really dedicated the time. Plus, there's so much of it. First of all, Ronald, you're going to love the show. Second of all, I just imagine you tuning into the TV Buffy the Vampire Slayer and being like, that's not Christy Swanson. There are people who do that. I know people who are like, oh, no, it's not the movie. It's like, it's not the movie.

Well, Glenn, thank you for that. That was the TV series Friday Night Lights, Texas Forever, as they said many times on that show. Ronald Young Jr., what is your pop culture revelation that you want to share with us here? Okay, so my revelation is there's an entry point, and then I'm going to widen the lens for you. So the entry point is the film Train to Busan, right?

which is a Korean film about zombies, which y'all are all nodding. I hope that you have seen or at least heard of. I'm a huge fan of the zombie genre. I've seen everything. I don't watch horror movies. I will watch a zombie movie. If you tell me there's zombies, I'm going to watch it because I love trying to strategize. But the reason why Train to Busan is my revelation is because at the time, I hadn't watched a lot of foreign language movies.

Anything. Any of the Korean, the robust library of Korean dramas and films that exist out there. And this opened the door. I watched this and I'm like, okay, Train to Busan might be my favorite zombie film of all time in terms of like spectacle and drama. Like it'll make you cry. And Koreans do drama very, very, very well.

So fast forward to 2020, Bong Joon-ho is receiving an award for Parasite at the Golden Globe Awards. And he says, once you overcome the one inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films. I'd watched Train to Busan. I transitioned over to Alice in Borderland, a Japanese series.

Squid Game. There's a show called All of Us Are Dead. And overcoming that obstacle of the subtitles opened this new world of film and television to me that may have been obvious to others. It's opened the door even I'm watching Dutch stuff. I'm watching Belgian stuff, German, everything that comes in my purview. I'm like, it looks all right. I might check it out. So I've overcome that subtitle obstacle and it's really opened a whole lane for me. I love this, you know, because other people know how to make good movies besides people who speak English.

No, it really is, I think. It was a barrier that I also had to sort of get over. And I wouldn't say it was a conscious barrier, but it was kind of like what was available, right? When I was growing up. And I do wonder, though, what it's like for those younger people now who maybe only speak one language and that language is English and then like,

Is that barrier harder because we are so attached to our screens when we watch things now? I've tried watching Love is Blind in other languages. And the thing about Love is Blind is that I like to watch Love is Blind while doing something else because it's a really hard show to just sit and watch. It does, yes. I have at least, and obviously anecdotes are not data, but I have two kids who were immediately subtitle snobs. I did not teach them to be subtitle snobs, but they were like,

Oh, the dubbed version, you know, when they were like eight. And so I think kids in general are pretty willing to go down this route. And with the way so many TV shows are, the sound mixing on TV shows is so widely so bad. A lot of young people today will just put the subtitles on. That's true.

In order to follow what's going on because dialogue can be so hard to hear, particularly in an age of mumblecore. Yeah. Yeah. And Ronald, even if I didn't know you, I would, from this pick, I would know that you were not an insufferable snot.

As a teenager, the way I was, I was seeking out subtitles. I would go into the Ritz Five in Philadelphia just to watch subtitled films because I thought that made me smarter. And now, you know, it's exactly as Stephen said, now I return to the land of subtitles on absolutely everything because I can't hear a damn thing. I've come full circle when it comes to subtitles. Well, I haven't seen Train to Busan mostly because I'm not a huge...

I'm not a zombie person, but we are talking about a revelations. And if Ronald Young Jr. is very excited about this movie, I might give this a shot. So worth a try, worth a try, not for everybody, but worth a try. So thank you, Ronald. Of course, that is trained to Busan, but also just generally speaking, foreign language films. We are, we are here for it. I love it. Steven, revelate me. You know what I mean? Just, just tell us what you're. Yeah.

Reveal, reveal your revelation. So in the spirit of football, TV and zombie movies, I've often struggled to read poetry.

Okay. Same. All right. It is hard for me to get into the right headspace. You know, my whole life I feel like poetry has been kind of stigmatized as self-serious. And I have to confess that I've often liked to think of myself as a Philistine. Someone who is too dumb and, of course, too cool to read poetry. Now, enter the late, great Mary Oliver.

Now, my partner Katie has loads of Mary Oliver's poetry books. They've been at my fingertips for the last decade or so that we've lived together, which is great because if you search for Mary Oliver's stuff online, you're going to find a lot of it excerpted on blogs that have like a big live, laugh, love. Because Mary Oliver's poetry is extremely popular.

and relatable. Her themes, she comes back a lot to nature and animals and self-acceptance. This is not poetry that has an extremely high barrier to entry. And so it often gets referenced in very basic ways. One of her classic poems is called The Summer Day. And that's the one with the line, tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And that is one of the most embroidered pieces of writing in existence. Yes.

Someone I knew in middle school or high school definitely had that as their aim away message. Like, that was their aim. For sure. See, also Wild Geese, which is one of my favorite pieces of writing. But the thing is, you know, talking about these things, oh, that's been embroidered on a million pillows. It's so basic. And yet in pulling up The Summer Day and revisiting it to make sure I quoted the line completely accurately, I got super verklempt.

If you don't know Wild Geese, which I just mentioned, it's using nature as a backdrop for putting life into perspective and forgiving yourself. If you Google Mary Oliver Wild Geese, you don't know that poem. You read it now. Prepare to weep. It's weird. Like, you know, for me, poetry has always been one of those things that I will kind of

Right.

I can just, you know, dip into her poems and really appreciate them. And that has started to serve as an entry point that has certainly at the very least made me more notionally open to reading other poetry. Ever since I like started dipping my toes into the very, very tepid and well-attended waters of Mary Oliver poetry, I've

that's made it a lot easier for me to embrace it. So she's super basic in that everyone loves her, but everyone loves her because she rules. Yeah.

I love it. Well stated. Steven, I love this pick for you. I think this is a fascinating revelation for you. And I also have a couple names to throw at you because I hear you fighting against the perceived self-seriousness of capital P poetry. Right. I have a couple names for you. One is James Tate. Right.

One of his books is called A Worshipful Company of Fletchers. Another name for you is Louise Glick, spelled G-L-U-C-K, U with an umlaut. She has a book called The Wild Iris. Both of these poets are funny as hell. And not like funny, hmm, hmm, I see what you're doing. But actually like really funny, really tackling this academic notion of self-seriousness.

And really just speaking in language that is accessible, but also if you're willing to kind of dig into it, it just has...

The word of the day, revelations to impart while being funny. Well, I don't even have to trundle down to my local library for Louise Glick. I know Katie has, I think, the book you referenced, so I can just pull it right off the shelf. Yeah. But will they make Stephen weep? That is the question. Right, Glenn. See, that's the limiting reagent in that equation. I don't think they will. You know, I'll send out the call I send out so often, Glenn Weldon, help me cry. Oh, boy.

Yeah. No, it's interesting because I have the same sort of aversion to poetry. I have much stronger feelings about slam poetry and that's it. Sure. Spoken word. Oh, God, don't even get me started. What do you mean, Aisha? How could you not love slam poetry? Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, no, not my thing. But like, I think for me, there's just there's something about it that has always just felt inaccessible because I just don't get it. And I felt like I was supposed to get it. It's like going to a museum and looking at art and being like, OK, this is here. What am I supposed to take from this?

I think this is a really beautiful pick. Like, it's making me now want to go pick up some poetry, which is something I never thought I would say. I like the pick, too. I think that's one thing that always got me about art generally was I thought that I was disconnected from, Aisha, you just said museums, and Stephen, you're talking poetry, until you find the right one that actually moves you. Yeah.

And I felt that way several times about specific poems, but not necessarily about entire books. You know what I mean? But it is making me curious to say like, oh, maybe I do need to like pick up a couple of books and maybe Mary Oliver is the gateway for me as well. So I like this pick, Steven. That is Mary Oliver, the poet and the poems of Mary Oliver. So before we started recording this, Glenn said, I really hope, Aisha, that you've chosen something that is...

the most sci-fi fantasy full of lore type of thing. Nerdy and gnarly is what I said. I wanted it to be nerdy, gnarly, and full of lore. And so I think you're correct about this to some extent, although my pick is something that I think is more of an outlier within the genre than it is representative. Okay. I'm so excited. I'm going with Damon Lindelof's Watchmen. Good choice. Good choice.

What a great pick. Yes. Yes. Okay. So longtime listeners of the show maybe have noticed, or maybe not, I don't know. If we're ever talking about anything DC Marvel for the most part, I am almost certainly not going to be on that episode because I don't care. One of the exceptions, the very few exceptions, was like when we talked about the Penguin, the TV series with Colin Farrell. And I liked that one too. I could have chosen that one, but I went with this instead because

Of course, this is, you know, Watchmen is based on the DC Comics series. And in this version, which came out in 2019, it is an alternate U.S. history where basically in the present day of 2019 at the time, Robert Redford is president. See, you've already got me right there. I'm in. And apparently the U.S. has won the Vietnam War conflict. It's an alternate history. And I think the reason why this spoke to me is because Lindelof is very specific about

about not making this a straight up comic book show. And as someone who knew nothing about The Watchmen before this, I had never seen the movie. I absolutely have never read the comics. This was a completely new world to me. I was still able to mostly follow everything

and also dig into the themes. And the themes are relevant as hell. This is the series where the Tulsa massacre of 1921 plays a huge part in the story. And you have Regina King. Yes. The king, the queen, the everything playing Angela, aka mass vigilante sister knight. You also have Jeremy Irons as Ozymandias. He's a character from Watchmen, I guess. Gene Smart is an FBI agent. Yeah.

And I wouldn't say this is a show that made me say, like, I want to watch all comic book shows and movies because it didn't. It didn't make me do that. But I had heard about it and the premise intrigued me. And of course, this cast was just too good for me to miss. And the fact that it turned out to be a standalone miniseries. I.

I just think it was so creative. It has fantastical elements. I'm not a huge fantasy person either, but the fantasy elements serve the story. It doesn't feel overrun. Like there's all these different themes that I've seen in so many other things that I've loved. And I think that was what drew me to this. So Glenn, I'm more or less...

There's lore, but it's not like it's like lore that I had to catch up on in the same way that you might other things. No, but you picked up on something that's so smart about this because this is an outlier in the world of comic book adaptations. Yes. Because you have the Zack Snyder adaptation of Watchmen, which is basically –

Just almost a shot for shot recreation of the comic. And the comic of the time that it came out was also a revelation of a kind because it was about what if superheroes were real? Well, it's been a few decades now. And that concept is no longer new. And it's so much...

What adaptations should do, which is to innovate and make new and not simply reproduce. And it's such a great choice. Such a great choice. So I love this choice because the Watchmen ending the way that it does the series, I was like, no, you don't need to make another. Please don't make another season of this. Like you answered. Everything's fine. I know there's a question mark at the end, but it's the type of question mark that I want.

And I could just imagine the ending. And also this series connected me back to the comic book and the movie in a way that I wanted to be, you know what I mean? Like I felt like the, there was ways in which I felt separate from it, but this includes me and includes black folks in a very like

meaningful way that also is in aligned with the history of the United States. So I, I just loved this show from beginning to end and just like quick shout out, you know, did the music for this show was a Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Um,

who obviously have gotten awards for their work in other movies, but it just reminds me of when you put together such a stellar cast, stellar directors, writers, and even composers, what you can really come out with if you all just concentrate on that one without trying to make something. Everything has to be IP these days.

And this is how you do IP. If you gotta do IP, do IP like this. I could go into a whole rant about sometimes really the best thing you can do for a TV show is end it. Leave people actually wanting more. This show ends...

at the exact right time. Yes. Yes. So you may not, you still may not catch me on too many Marvel DC discussions on this show, but if we ever talk about Watchmen again, call me up. Yeah.

Well, we want to know what some of your pop culture revelations are. Find us at Facebook.com slash BCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Ronald Young Jr., Stephen Thompson, and Glenn Walden, thanks so much for being here. This was fun. Thank you. It's good to be here. Thank you. I'm going to go check out some poetry and some Train to Busan now. So thank you. This is great.

This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Lennon Sherburn and edited by Mike Katzen. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris and we'll see you all next time.

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