Linda Holmes

We at PCHH are not together this week for the holidays, as we are scattered hither and yon, literally from coast to coast. But before we scattered thusly, we sat down with our friend (and film critic and musical theater aficionado) Bob Mondello to talk about Disney's new adaptation of ...

I am not a great maker of lists. Unless pressed, I will make exactly one each year, and this is it.

This is a list of 50 of the wonderful things that wandered through my field of vision in 2014. It is not a definitive list of the best things. ...

This week's show brings our pal Audie Cornish into the studio for a conversation about Chris Rock's comedy Top Five. We get into the balance of industry satire and romance, the particular variety of raunchy comedy the film favors, and how his deft handling of the agony of junkets contrasts ...

The sun'll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun

There is a thing that happens with songs where, when you've heard them enough times, you stop hearing them at all. They are less pieces of music than cultural baubles that pop up to stand for ...

Serial, the hugely popular (and sometimes controversial) podcast spun off from This American Life, wraps up its first season today. NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Serial creator Sarah Koenig.

As The Conversation About Serial reaches a fever pitch in certain circles, those of us behind Code Switch and Monkey See have been talking quite a bit about the show. You can read Matt Thompson's initial entry in this conversation here and Gene Demby's contribution here.

...

Perhaps you are familiar with the oft-quoted wisdom of (allegedly) Coco Chanel that when a woman gets dressed and believes she's ready, she should take off one accessory before she leaves the house. If Chanel's advice had instead been that the woman should paint herself with glue, roll in glitter, ...

Chris Rock has been on a tear — a widely shared interview with Frank Rich in New York Magazine, a widely shared guest column in The Hollywood Reporter, interviews with Audie Cornish on All Things Considered, Terry Gross on Fresh Air and ...

My friend Alan Sepinwall and I have both written in the past about our affection for Parks And Recreation, the NBC comedy that is not only about to end, but is about to end in a burst of weekly back-to-back episodes that will have it over ...

U.N. talks on global warming are wrapping up in Peru, but a divide between rich and poor countries and how to divvy up targets to reduce greenhouse gases is a key sticking point that has remained unresolved.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has acknowledged that the issue is ...

On Tuesday night, December 9, we gathered at the historic Sixth & I synagogue in Washington for our biggest live show yet. Along with our great friend Barrie Hardymon, Stephen, Glen and I talked about some of our takeaways from the year, from podcasts to great books to the music ...

I very much liked the musical The Last Five Years when I saw it in Toronto in September. It features Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan in the story of a marriage that begins as the marriage is ending, leaps back to the beginning, and then follows the story ...

Here at PCHH HQ (PCHHQ?), we are hard at work preparing for our December 9th live show at Sixth and I in Washington. For that reason, we decided to bring you a couple of encore segments from past holiday editions of the show.

The first comes from only ...

The Nat Geo show Eric Greenspan Is Hungry is certainly not the first food show to get gritty about the origins and transformations of food; Anthony Bourdain, in particular, has been doing that for years and years. Still, it feels unusual in its pure focus on an established chef/personality — ...

It's a holiday weekend for many of us, but we've still got a fresh episode — and a sparkly new panelist in the fourth chair: Guy Raz, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. When we asked Guy about coming on the show, we learned that pop-culture-wise, he — like our ...

Christmas cable movies are a genre unto themselves. We take a look at some of the Hallmark (and other) romances that are surprisingly big business this time of year.

We're getting into the thick of Oscar movie season, and one of the interesting and curious entries is Foxcatcher, starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in a film fairly loosely based on a true story out of Delaware in the mid-'90s. (Details here; to the degree ...

[At the top of this post, you'll find a discussion from me and my Pop Culture Happy Hour colleague Stephen Thompson about Mike Nichols and his work. Stephen tells a great family story about the impact of Nichols' comedy — give it a listen.]

Separated by 21 years and joined ...

Serial, from the This American Life family, is a hit — to the point where it's now got spinoff podcasts at both Slate and The A.V. Club, the latter of which calls its Serial recap podcast the Serial Serial.

The air is getting pretty thin up ...

I was not raised in Minnesota, but I earned my stripes there during 10 winters as a resident, scraping my windshield through a fog of existential despair. Not every portrayal of the Midwest is based in reality, but this still speaks to a profound piece of my soul. I have ...