America’s Next Top Model

America’s Next Top Model has been rewatched in the years since its 2003 premiere, and its handling of race, body image, and other issues has been loudly and heavily criticized. A new Netflix docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model interviews the major players including Tyra Banks, J. Alexander, Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker. And it doesn’t let Tyra off easy. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://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 https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Linda Holmes?

  For 24 seasons, America's Next Top Model asked the question, you want to be on top? And host and creator Tyra Banks told the aspiring model contestants that she could make it happen. Years later, as the show is rewatched over and over on streaming, Top Model's handling of race, body image, and other issues has been loudly and heavily criticized. And a new Netflix docu-series talks to a lot of the major players, Tyra included, and it doesn't let Tyra off easy. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes. And today, we're looking back at America's Next Top Model on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 1:42Speaker 02

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• 2:01Linda Holmes?

  Joining us today is culture writer and critic Shamira Ibrahim. Hello, Shamira.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Hey, Lynda. Happy to be back.

• 2:07Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely happy to have you. Also with us is Sidney Madden. She's a music and culture critic. Welcome back, Sidney.

• 2:13Aisha Harris?

  Hi, Lynda. Hi, Aisha. I'm excited.

• 2:16Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're all excited. So America's Next Top Model premiered in the spring of 2003. It was the brainchild of supermodel Tyra Banks with executive producers Ken Mac and Kenya Barris. Most seasons were hosted by Banks herself until it ended in 2018. The format was simple. A group of contestants, all young women until a couple of late cycles that also featured Ben, would live in a house together, be taught about modeling, and participate in photo shoots. Each week, based on those photo shoots, somebody was eliminated. The Netflix docu-series Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model, which is streaming now, is part of the ongoing reevaluation of the show we've seen in recent

• 3:00Linda Holmes?

  years. E will also have its own special in a few weeks. The Netflix docu-series features interviews with Banks, a collection of contestants, and the trio of creative director Jay Manuel, runway coach Miss Jay Alexander, and photographer Nigel Barker, all of whom were major onscreen presences on the show, and all of whom were fired in 2012 when the ratings went down, although Miss Jay did return for a few later seasons. All three of those, by the way, served as consultants on the documentary. I'm going to start with you, Aisha. You have a piece about this that people can read at npr.org. You and I come to Top Model with slightly different-- I was a little older when I was watching it than you were, but

• 3:44Linda Holmes?

  I know we both watched a lot of it. Where do you come down on sort of the legacy of Top Model as seen through the lens of this docu-series?

• 3:52Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I was, you know, a teenager when this show came out. So I would also say I was quite impressionable at that time. And I had not revisited the show since I stopped watching somewhere around cycle nine or 10. I watched a lot of cycles. Also, the fact that they call them cycles, it's just so.

• 4:09Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Aisha Harris?

  Just call them seasons.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  It's supposed to be chic, you know?

• 4:13Aisha Harris?

  Yes, it's the couture way of saying season. No, I think what's interesting about this docu-series is the fact that, as I note in my piece, like Tyra Banks isn't credited as an executive producer or a producer on this. And so I'm kind of interested in the way that this show is attempting to provide a platform for her to take something like accountability, and I guess we can all decide. Accountability feels like the type of word that we throw around a lot, but like, no one has the same definition of accountability or like what they expect from that. And so I think a lot of people are going to get different reactions to this docu-series. But for me, where the accountability came through is not in what Tyra said, but in the

• 4:54Aisha Harris?

  fact that we got to hear so many people kind of rebut her apologies or her abdication of responsibility. And hearing these voices in one forum, I think, is very powerful, even if there are limitations to what a docu-series like this could ever achieve, no matter how much is said here. So, yeah, there's a lot going on, and your mileage will vary with this, I think.

• 5:17Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I think that's true. Sid, how about you? What do you think?

• 5:20Speaker 05

  Well, jumping off Ayesha, accountability is the million-dollar question going into this. The fact that there's been so much hindsight outrage with the pandemic-era rewatch of the show and everything. The documentary definitely heavily relies on the social media outrage as almost a proxy for accountability. So the big get in this documentary is the fact that you get Tyra in the hot seat. You get the Jays, and you get Nigel, you get Ken Mac, you get the former executive from UPN who greenlit the show. But I will say, for me, it is a moving target accountability, and from my point of view, the accountability was not really taken on the show for a few key reasons.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  She talks about how originally the show was meant to be a mashup of The Real World and American Idol, but set in the modeling industry. But then she contradicts herself by comparing it to other reality shows that were big at the time.

• 6:17Aisha Harris?

  Fear Factor.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Yes. Fear Factor, Survivor, and she said all of these things were so big, and the viewers wanted more and more and more.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Viewers wanted more and more and more. That was the record scratch for me because I was a viewer back then. This show started when I was 12 years old. Again, I was also highly impressionable. And some things, some of the challenges in the first, I'll say, three cycles were very realistic. The challenge is getting more and more absurd and honestly, more gross. That's why that idea that the audience wanted it felt like a cop out. Because to me, I was 12, 13, 14, 15. I wanted to know what it meant to go on a go see. I wanted to know what it meant to think of yourself as a blank canvas and learn how to walk as a model. I wasn't interested in watching people, you know, have to consume raw meat or put raw meat on their body. That was just the shock value.

• 7:12Speaker 05

  It didn't feel like, the shock value started to trump the on the job training that the show originally promised. And that was kind of the most frustrating part to me. The way they put it, they set out to change the modeling industry. And as the documentary shows, it kind of became more about storytelling and the limits that could be pushed rather than training someone to really be a model in this world. And over the years, or sorry, over the cycles, when things got more and more absurd, they do end up perpetuating a lot of the same dangers that Tyra herself was victim to, like the body shaming. But you see time and time again that all of these dangers are reinforced,

• 7:55Speaker 05

  even by Tyra herself and the judges who are in the hot seat. And to me, accountability would have been more of a face to face sit down with all of the former contestants who do show up in this show. Because I think that's where the documentary shines the most. When they talk to the contestants and, you know, they can answer back and forth. But if it was actually a face to face sit down, because they got everybody in the room just all at separate times. If it was something more of a communal conversation, that would have been a bigger hit for accountability to me.

• 8:28Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I think that's probably true. And because you mentioned, one of the pieces of background on that is that there's a woman named Kenya, who was a contestant on Cycle Four. A big part of her narrative centered on her weight. She was criticized for her weight. She portrayed gluttony when they did Seven Deadly Sins. She was an elephant in the animal photo shoot. But then also during a photo shoot with some male models, which was something they did over and over again, that often had like really... Like strange or awkward or bad results, I feel like. In her version of it, she stopped production because she was very uncomfortable with the way one of the men, they were sort of dancing and he was touching her.

• 9:09Linda Holmes?

  And during the judging panel, Tyra and the other judges gave her advice about how to handle it. I feel personally that their advice came down to sort of, you need to handle it. In the documentary, Tyra says that she's sorry, says, I did the best I could at the time. So just for background, that's sort of what we're talking about. When you get into those two things, that's part of it, particularly the body shaming. There's a lot of other stuff too. Sorry, Shamira, I do want to get directly to you. Tell me where you came down on this whole thing.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  I think, you know, for me, what kind of comes out is not just accountability, but like the concept of storytelling, right? I think a big part of this documentary was the stories that we tell ourselves and how we square that with the narratives that other people have of us, right? So like the story of America's Next Top Model is like a phenomenon around what was supposed to be an inside look as to all the trials and tribulations it takes to become a successful model. But then it ends up becoming a saga of how can we make a good reality television show? How can we sell a good narrative? And they say that at different points, like they point out that to keep, you know, certain cast members on for longer, they'd have to pick good shots or bad shots of others to justify preserving the story because now it was about selling a narrative and putting people in archetypes.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Similarly, the documentary itself is about confronting each of the participants' stories around themselves and what they've told themselves and whether or not that squares with some version of objective truth. So a lot of what you see with Tyra is a lot of the application of like, well, I did the best I could with what I had at the time. I was trying to show tough love. I was trying to meet, you know, producers' needs. It was above me, right? But does that square with the story she tells of this is my chance to be a boss? This is my chance to do something on my own terms. This is my chance to be able to have authority and change the industry. Not really, right? You know, similarly, even, you know, with the Jays, who are probably, I would say arguably a little bit more upfront around some of the failings of the show at different points, you know, they would go from saying, I'm a creative

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Director to, oh, I had, you know, no ability that was up to production.

• 11:12Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  So was there really no possibility for you to have a voice? And even just the fact that all those things were happening simultaneously. I think what really came out to me is that, yes, this is of course, a story about exploitation, a story about the dangers of reality television and how things can become, you know, the animal that you claim to want to avoid. But also I think in part it's about the things we tell ourselves about our complicity in harmful systems, right? I don't think anybody could reasonably expect that Tyra and Jay Manuel and Miss J would unilaterally take down, you know, fat phobia, colorism in the industry, right? But absent being able to unilaterally take that down, does that mean that your complicity is acceptable? And I think that was the big question.

• 11:53Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. It's interesting because I think you're all exactly right that accountability through this documentary was not really in reach for them as much because Tyra was never going to take it because they weren't trying to kind of explain the things that she did. And I think for me, one of the things that was the most interesting about the docu-series is that Tyra Banks, she doesn't always understand how she comes across. And there's a moment late in the series where she kind of gives one of, I mean, I think of it as like a classic Tyra speech about growth and, you know, I hope that everybody

• 12:36Linda Holmes?

  has a chance to grow from this like I did.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  It even sounded like a judging panel, the way she spoke.

• 12:42Linda Holmes?

  Hundred percent. And she sort of does this whole, you're absolutely right, Sid, it's kind of a classic judging panel, Tyra, you know, I want to talk about growth as a person. And then it's sort of punctured immediately with a comment from one of the contestants.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  I want you guys to be just as open as I am now about getting called on my [BLEEP], but when somebody calls you out on yours, because that day will come and continue to evolve, because that's what we're all doing.

• 13:14Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely ridiculous. And she doesn't understand the reason you were able to control the narrative in that situation is that it was your show. It is not how good you are at explaining yourself and it's not how wise the things you say are. If you took the same thing she said on the show and you punctuated them with a person making a WTF face, it would look completely different. It's because she controlled the show that she was able to sort of come away with this idea that she seems like a nice person. Another instance where I don't think she comes off too self-aware is when she's talking about the

• 13:53Linda Holmes?

  quote unquote, "race swapping" photo shoots that they did a few times, which essentially put models in black and brown face.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  The fact that it was plural was just Plural, yes. Egregious.

• 14:04Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. Tyra says that looking at the show now through a 2020 lens, she sees why it's an issue.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  And that's the thing. It's like a revisionist lens on it. No, I remember watching it as it happened and similar to Zakiya Gibbons, who's one of the experts, one of the few experts we do get to hear from in this doc.

• 14:23Aisha Harris?

  She might be the only one, I think.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  She, mm-hmm, I'm gonna get to that. But I remember the show back in the day going on commercial break and it was me and my sister watching it was like, was that blackface? So it's not that everyone was upset with it now. It's just we didn't have camera phones and our own mics. Everybody didn't have a voice to share their disdain or their confusion or their disgust about it because exactly to your point, Lynda, all the chips were in Tyra's hand. Like she was becoming more and more powerful with every season. And she even says in the doc, "Oh, I thought this was my way of showing the world that black is beautiful." And then they cut to a judging panel where they put the white girl in blackface. She was like, "I was loving it. Okay, girl. I'm sure you were, sister."

• 15:06Speaker 05

  You know, it was just completely devoid of any sense of reality because she was getting so powerful. But I do want to go back to the point we just made before about Zakiya Gibbons being the only outside voice who's considered an expert on this show. One place where this doc falls flat for me is Adding that context, they're acting as if the social media outrage is the only proxy for how we're looking at this. When, if we're talking about disordered eating, why not have someone from N E D A come on as an expert and talk about the psychology and the psychosis of that illness? Or if we're talking about how social media outrage can be amplified of something that happened years and years ago, why not have a sociologist to speak to that, you know?

• 15:50Speaker 05

  And this is not a stroke of shade to Sahiya Gibbons because I think she's a stand-in for a lot of us who grew up with it and who was affected by the show. But I do think there was more expert context that could have been added to this.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:04Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  And to that point, you know, if we're gonna talk about assault, you know, we need someone on camera that can talk about it.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Because, to be frank, you know, we have Shani give a very harrowing story about what she went through and really confront what is clearly traumatic to her over and over again, not just in the process of making the documentary, but also just throughout her career as a public figure. But what I think becomes ultimately striking is in confronting, you know, the other participants, the producers, Tyra, so on and so forth. No one says the word assault. It's not used, not as a question or as a response.

• 16:42Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. Right. So she, Shandy, if you don't know this story, was a contestant in Cycle Two. They went on a trip during the season to Milan. The models met up with a bunch of guys. They started drinking. She says in the documentary that she blacked out after the amount of drinking that they did. Production filmed her having sex in the shower and she says, nobody put a stop to it despite the fact that she was blacked out. As Shamira pointed out, she does not say assault. The documentary does not say assault. It was framed as a story about cheating on her boyfriend and what it means for her to have cheated on her boyfriend. Both Ken Mac and Tyra say they did not put everything that happened on camera on television. To me, the part that was so devastating about watching that was seeing her the next day

• 17:27Linda Holmes?

  just sobbing and sobbing. And the presentation of the show is she's sobbing because she cheated on her boyfriend and she's So upset with herself for doing that. And I'm sure that that may have been part of it, right? I'm sure her feelings, you know, may have been very confused, as many people's feelings are after an experience like that. But she's not just sobbing because she cheated on her boyfriend. There's so much more going on when she looks so devastated and traumatized.

• 17:54Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, I went back and rewatched that episode in full after watching the series. And it is just sort of diabolical, the way they really hammer home that she cheated. And even just filming her telling her boyfriend back home what happened, and then him yelling at her and berating her over the phone. And look, I understand, especially back then in the early 2000s, when this was filmed and aired, like, so many people did not have the language to call these things assault. I mean, people still have that issue, but I think, generally speaking, there has been more in the culture now that like more people can label things in the way that they are. So I can understand why she wouldn't necessarily have been maybe thinking that at the time.

• 18:35Aisha Harris?

  But what the series really showed to me was, yes, there was a lack of context. There was a lack of more expert opinion. But I think if you watch it closely, there is still something you can get from it, which is not just the story of like how awful this show was in many ways, but also just the way that reality TV at that time was such the Wild, Wild West. And like, people were trying everything and anything to get people to tune in and watch. But I do think they do a good job, intentionally or no, of explaining just how like the gutter reality TV was back then and still can be.

• 19:12Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  I think a couple of things stuck out to me about that specific storyline. I think one thing that stood out to me was the outright, not just implication, but outright statement that the main reason why anything was really edited around was not because of real propriety reasons out of any sort of moral concern, as much as it was on the heels of Janet Jackson's halftime show and the fracas that had happened around that. And so they felt pressured to go into the editing bay to still give this salacious story, but try to meet The like rapidly accelerating, you know, FCC regulations. And so the vision of like going through that footage over and over again to try to make some version of it that is still titillating enough for television.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  I remember as a teen watching it, and I do remember it was framed as like, oh my God, she's such a insert any slur you want here, you know, she cheated, did all these things.

• 20:04Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  And now being someone who actually writes about people who have survived sexual assault and actually, you know, opines publicly about it in the industry. It is remarkably striking that like the implications of what we see on social media now when these things happen were happening very cutely to, you know, she and the in person because social media wasn't as big then. So to hear her talking about how she was being approached in public repeatedly, being slut-shamed to her face with her partner next to her, you know, those sort of.

• 20:32Linda Holmes?

  This is one of the reasons their relationship collapsed.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Exactly, you know, that sort of impact, I feel like one of the frustrations I have with the docu-series is that if you're gonna have these people in front who were involved, we should force them to be more explicit about the failure there. And I do think the documentary gave a little bit too much free rein as to what, you know, the Jays, what Nigel, what Tyra were willing to talk about or not willing to talk about. And I think it ultimately allows for like a little bit of slipperiness, right? You know, where they can say like, we feel bad about this, but this was really out of our hands. I don't wanna make this sound like I'm cutting Tyra Grace because it's not true, but I do think that there are moments where it's quite obvious that in Tyra's head, she felt like she was helping, right? Whether that's the case is not true, right?

• 21:18Speaker 03

  I equate it to like, if you've ever had to like be in a workplace with like someone of an elder generation and they're giving you like tough love tips, right? And so they're telling you, you just have to kind of get with the program, but you're like, but the program is wrong. Why wouldn't I not wanna change the program? And you feel that generational tension, right, with Tyra where I think in her had a lot of the lessons that she felt like she was imparting was about how to make it work. And what she still struggles to acknowledge or realize is that that is not what those women receive. But those women receive is how to make yourself smaller, right? Both metaphorically and literally.

• 21:51Speaker 05

  And I think a great example of what you're talking about, Shamira, is the Tiffany moment when she goes off at Tiffany. But it created one of the most viral moments of the show. When she berates Tiffany after she's eliminated because Tiffany is not giving the type of devastation in her response that she. Maybe expected she would for the cameras. I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this. When my mother yells at this, it's because she loves me. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. How dare you? But she does talk about it in the documentary. She's like, that is some deep black girl stuff. And I really wish the documentary would have gone in on that more.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  Because it's such a fleeting moment that people have memed to death and they've made skits out of. But when you talk about, Shamira, what you're saying, like, Tyra was moving in an industry that was very much against her. She made herself a success despite a lot of this stuff. And what she was imparting on the next generation was this is how to survive. This is how to maneuver, right? Maybe you could have taken a step back and see like, where was the harm done to me that I don't want to perpetuate? Because otherwise, like, you're just continuing the cycle through all these cycles, you know? That's a part of the documentary I really wish they would have gotten like more in on.

• 23:08Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Tyra was, you know, she's a young woman from the inner city. She's from Inglewood. You know, she doesn't hide these parts of herself, right? I do think she tries to play it into like a more kooky persona. But you can see that kind of sense of hyper individualism that comes out when she scolds someone like Tiffany of like, I had all these roadblocks in front of me and I set it up and I made a way. How dare you not fight for the same thing? Does that make what she said acceptable? Absolutely not, right? It also defies logic of how systems work. But you do understand where it comes from. I think what really struck me as well is that most people said that the rant was actually way worse than what we saw. And that it actually involved legal interference. And I think their reluctance to even acknowledge what was said, absent an NDA, also really

• 23:51Speaker 03

  put me off a little bit because if we're going to allude to the fact that it was more harmful than we even know. And Tiffany has gone on record in interviews since saying that that was, you know, something that really decimated her at the time, right? I think it's worth it to at least allude to what was actually the themes that we were omitting.

• 24:09Aisha Harris?

  Right. It's notable that Janice Dickinson, who was another panelist, is not in the hot seat here at all. I don't know what she's doing these days, but like, she gets a lot of heat from other people talking about her. She was awful, like it was bad.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, she was kind of like the Simon Cowell of their. Like she was a designated mean one. Say it as harsh as possible. Yeah.

• 24:30Aisha Harris?

  The mean one in a panel of mean, like they're all kind of mean.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Right. I think that's my ultimate question, right?

• 24:37Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Like they framed Janice as so, you know, callous and cruel, which she was, don't get me wrong, right? You know, um, like telling models that you lose a hundred and fifty pounds, all the things that she said were beyond the pale, right?

• 24:49Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  But I think what really continued to strike me was, you know, is the idea that because she said it so caustically, make it inherently worse than you quietly and tacitly agreeing with her?

• 24:59Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Because what happened is that they would banter entirely and say, that's wrong to say, that's cruel to say. And said, well, maybe she could lose a little weight, right? So it's like, you're actually not fundamentally disagreeing with her. You're disagreeing with the delivery. And I think if the issue was a delivery, then you're not confronting the reality that the actual issue is the message that you're communicating to these women, right?

• 25:21Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I will say, you know, as a plus size lady myself, it is always worse when it comes from when you're not expecting it. So to me, to stand in front of a judging panel where you know you're looking at Janice Dickinson, she's gonna say something rude to you. Would not be as bad for me personally as we're gonna send you off to this photo shoot, it's gonna be great, you're gonna be so glamorous and beautiful. And then you get there and they're like, we don't have any clothes that fit you.

• 25:47Aisha Harris?

  Oh, my God, that happens so much.

• 25:49Linda Holmes?

  Or you get there and they want to cover you up, right? Because it's so clear that they just think you're unacceptable, right? And those are all things that the show set up. That's not necessary. Like, I am no fan of Janice Dickinson, but when I think about the most humiliating things that they did to the plus size models on that show. It is not that.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:10Linda Holmes?

  It is the other stuff.

• 26:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  It's bringing someone in front of, you know, showing them a nice photo and then chastising them for how much it costs to retouch, right?

• 26:21Speaker 05

  Or even Whitney, who was the first plus size model to win the whole thing during cycle ten and then her contract with the modeling agency and they didn't even have a plus size division. There's a lot of questions right now because again, we're talking about hindsight being 2020. Ayesha, you said reality TV back then was the Wild Wild West and it very much was. And it gave us so many chaotic moments because of that, because there were no rules, there were no guardrails. But even think about the world we're moving in now, where streaming is the new economy. The creator economy is just booming. That's still the Wild Wild West and a lot of these transgressions still go on. We're absolutely in a new era of body shaming and thin culture and thin is in and packing everything with protein and just incentivizing, taking weight loss GLP-1s in a new era.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  And if you look at even the modeling space, I think the creator economy has opened up a whole new lane for who could be potentially a model. I know a lot of working models who are not stick skinny. But if we're talking about supermodels, top models, beyond top, a lot of them are still very, very thin. And so much of what was promoted back then is still very much the MO. I know there was a time when Victoria's Secret Fashion Show went off air and Savage x Fenty by Rihanna started to push a lot more representation and diversity. But I feel like that pendulum is swinging right back to where it was of the early 2000s. You know, like where we're moving right now is the Wild Wild West, except it's just in an online forum.

• 27:51Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I think that's right. Well, we want to know what you think about Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model. Find us at facebook.com/pchh. And that brings us to the end of our show. Shamira Ibrahim, Sidney Madden, Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here. I absolutely loved this.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 28:11Linda Holmes?

  This episode was produced by Carly Rubin 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 Linda Holmes and we'll see you all next time.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation is doing more than raising awareness. They're funding answers. Your support funds top breast cancer researchers, developing groundbreaking new treatment options, improving screening tools, and getting closer to a world where no one hears the words "you have breast cancer" at all. Today's research is tomorrow's cures. Donate at b c r f dot org slash support.