The Odyssey and What's Making Us Happy

The Odyssey is director Christopher Nolan’s spectacular take on Homer’s epic work – full of gods, monsters, love and very bloody revenge. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, who is trying to get home to his wife and son, played by Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland. But the journey home is not easy, as Odyssey and his crew are confronted with sea monsters, nymphs, whirlpools and cannibals. If you’re looking for more great epic blockbusters, check out these recommendations: 'Oppenheimer' looks at the building of the bomb, and its lingering fallout https://www.npr.org/2024/02/26/1197962134/oppenheimer-looks-at-the-building-of-the-bomb-and-its-lingering-fallout Ryan Gosling gets serious (and very funny) about saving the planet in ‘Project Hail Mary’ https://www.npr.org/2026/03/20/nx-s1-5751896/ryan-gosling-gets-serious-and-very-funny-about-saving-the-planet-in-project-hail-mary Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support Pop Culture Happy Hour+ 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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• 0:19Speaker 01

  Maybe you read The Odyssey in school, and that process can turn Homer's epic adventure full of gods and monsters, magic and murder, love and some very bloody revenge into a pretty dry and dusty academic exercise. Well, Christopher Nolan is here to remedy that. The Odyssey is a sprawling, gorgeous, spectacular take on the material that's also pure Hollywood, bursting with big names like Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, and Zendaya. I am Glen Weldon. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is my co-host, Stephen Thompson. Hey, Stephen. Hello, Glenn. Also with us is the co-host of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money, Waylon Wong. Hey, Waylon. Hi, guys.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Also with us is writer and host of the Film Spotting Podcast movie Death Match. We saved him for last because he's gonna do a bit. Chris Klemic, hey, Chris.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Look at that horse. Look at that horse. Look at that horse, Glenn.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  There you go. Well, y'all know The Odyssey. There's this guy, Odysseus, which is funny because it's like his name is Trip. He was the hero of the Trojan War. And now he's trying to get back home. That's Matt Damon. Specifically, he's trying to get back to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telamachus. They're played by Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland. But he's been gone so long that dozens of men have taken up residence in his castle, feasting on his food and attempting to convince Penelope that she should marry one of them. The guy campaigning the hardest is the oiliest and most sniveling of the bunch, Antinous, played by Robert Pattinson, of course. Odysseus, meanwhile, can't seem to get home, and it's not like he doesn't stop to ask directions. No, it's just that the Aegean Sea is a dangerous place, full of cyclops and giant cannibal

• 1:56Speaker 01

  warriors and witches and sirens and nymphs and whirlpools and sea monsters. The whole thing is filmed entirely in IMAX and clocks in at just under three hours. Stephen, what'd you make of it?

• 2:07Stephen Thompson?

  Well Glenn, you know, this summer on Pop Culture Happy Hour, I have been tasked with, you know, leading discussions of films such as Scary Movie.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:16Stephen Thompson?

  Jackass Best and Last, Minions and Monsters, the Moana remake. And I had only one ask after, you know, I had had covered all those films, said, just let me do this one.

• 2:32Stephen Thompson?

  Just something a little different.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:34Stephen Thompson?

  And darned if it isn't, you know, a massive, sprawling, beautifully made, not entirely without flaws, but I found very enjoyable, epic adventure film that still felt true to, you know, what I had managed to glean from an early and failed attempt to read The Odyssey. It felt true to the endless kind of echoes and reverberations of the various ways that this work has influenced thousands of other works. This story felt, even though I had not been able to finish The Odyssey when I had tried to read it, the story still felt familiar, but in a fresh retelling. Is it extremely loud? It is a Christopher Nolan film.

• 3:18Stephen Thompson?

  Does that final battle go on a little longer than it needs to? It's a Christopher Nolan film, but I really, really enjoyed it. I was swept away by it. And not every performance fully resonated with me, but man, you know, everybody is somebody in this movie. Every face is a familiar face.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 3:35Stephen Thompson?

  I found it to be gripping and interesting, and I think it came to some really interesting ideas about regret and heroism.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  There you go. All right. What about you, Willa?

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, I like this a lot. I think it takes a little while to get going, but then I felt like once it locked in, then I was like all in and then the rest of it just absolutely flew by and I was completely riveted. And I actually reread the poem very recently in preparation for this movie because I was so hyped for it. And so I was constantly thinking back to the poem, which I had a great time reading. And I really liked Christopher Nolan's treatment of the material. Like I was very aware of what he had added and subtracted since I'd read it so recently. But I think it was, they were all really smart choices, kind of in support of the specific kind of story and the themes he wanted to bring out, which I really liked. And in some ways this is like,

• 4:33Speaker 04

  A darker and moodier Odysseus than I was expecting, but also a more remorseful Odysseus. And I liked that because Odysseus is, I think, maybe throughout time, he's been kind of flattened into like a straightforward hero, but he's really not. He's a very complex guy. He was like literally committed many war crimes. And I appreciate that the movie kind of looks that complexity in the face and does try to kind of really figure out who this guy is and what he wants. So I really liked it.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  OK, that's great. Now, Chris, I don't want to say you're a Nolan apologist. I don't want to say you're in the tank for Christopher Nolan. That would be unfair to you. I will just say you like Tenet a hell of a lot more than I did.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Sure do.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  So what'd you make of this?

• 5:12Speaker 04

  I love Tenet.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Thank you, Waylon. Thank you, Waylon. I mean, just because the guy has not only never made a bad movie, he's never even made a just OK movie. He's never made a movie that I have only wanted to watch once.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Not in the tank.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  The point being that even his quote unquote failures are utterly singular. This is the kind of big, weighty blockbuster that I like because it's the kind that no one else would have attempted. They're not going to be like, oh, Nolan passed. We need to get Sean Levy to do this. Like, no, that's never happening.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  You're gonna get Dennis Dugan.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yes, this does feel like the culmination of everything that he's done. And more, I was thinking, Glenn, as we were watching this movie last night, I know you and I, it might have been on this show, but like you, one of your knocks against the film adaptation of Cold Mountain, a generation ago, is like you didn't like that everyone we meet along the journey is a famous person, right? It's like, I think this has the inverse effect here because almost everyone in this cast are now part of the Christopher Nolan players.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  And I love that. I love that, like as with Wes Anderson, he has sort of developed a rep company of A-list stars as he's gone along to the point that I didn't even realize that, like, I mean, I knew the top line cast, but I didn't know that like Hemish Patel and Elliot Page would be coming back, right? And there we see them in the first minutes of this movie. And just knowing that these are contemporary actors that we have other associations with. I mean, dear God, how many movies is Zendaya in this year? And Hathaway's in six movies this year, I think.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  No one works harder.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I mean, I love that because that just kind of reinforces like it's the oral tradition. You know, this is an old story. That this generation of storytellers are telling to us, and after we're long dead, but hopefully the planet and the species survive, depending on the outcome of Interstellar, I guess, this story will still be told. So I, yeah, this is what I want from a blockbuster. This is what I want. A auteur filmmaker who has the kind of access to funding and resources, the ability to give his way. This is the kind of ambition that I want. I'm very, very happy with this.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Okay. I also think this is a terrific movie. It is also exactly the Odyssey that I wanted. And, you know, Chris, you'll remember, you reminded me last night when this film was announced, and it was announced that Christopher Nolan was making The Odyssey. My take was him? Because what's he gonna do? He's gonna Nolan-esque it. He's gonna make it kind of grounded and dour. He's gonna leech all the fun, all the fantasy out of it. He's given to a certain amount of cinematic sprawl and spectacle, but he is famously disinclined to the emotive, the expressionistic aspects of the human experience. And it's stuff like wonder and awe and fantasy. Like rightly or wrongly, we think of that as Spielberg's domain.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  But this is the guy who turned the frickin Batmobile into this brutalist doorstop.

• 7:54Stephen Thompson?

  I mean, Interstellar is a very emotive movie.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  And the best performance of Matthew McConaughey's career by a lot. You know, I mean, joke all you want about the meme of him, you know, watching his children grow up as a series of video messages, but I don't think he's ever been better than in that movie.

• 8:10Stephen Thompson?

  Look, look, Interstellar was so long that when I came home, I had to fend off suitors.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:18Stephen Thompson?

  Who had a mask to steal my part.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  The problem is that it didn't have a Muppet in it doing bits with Ryan Gosling, Stephen.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Here's the thing. You can't do The Odyssey and take out the gods and monsters. People have in 2024, The Return, that's Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Penosch, Pasolini film. They did it. When you take the magic, the gods and monsters out of The Odyssey, what you're left with is a story about a deadbeat dad who goes out for some smokes and keeps driving. It is boring. It's classical antiquity Jerry Springer, and I don't want it. I am delighted that he has kept the magic. The gods and monsters are on the call sheet. They are bringing everything they need to. They're doing it with epic sweep and grandeur. And to your point, Chris, budget. This is a big time Hollywood budget. This movie is made to get butts in seats and keep them there for three hours. I should add, though, it's more.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Monsters than gods. I think Nolan's approach, and we can't, we're not going to spoil this, but Nolan's approach to involving the gods in this is the most, I think, classically Nolan-esque thing about this film because it is very restrained and circumspect. It is both logical and psychological.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  And it's also, I think, one of the smartest things about this film. But the effect at the end is you've got this old school cheesestastic Saturday afternoon, swords and sandals, Ray Harryhausen, stop motion skeletons. But there's also modern tent pole action movie, Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood, with a bit of, I don't know, prestige, not the prestige, but like prestige, it's kind of like stiff backed. I don't know, there's something, it's a grown up film with some frickin' kick ass sea monsters.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Glenn, he is, he is very British. He is a British man.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  I mean, I love Dunkirk. I think he should have won his directing Oscar for Dunkirk.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought he did such a good job on that film.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  That quality that you are identifying is Britishness.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  I like that at the end, it's basically like Jason Bourne returns to Ithaca. It's, it's really exciting. The action is staged in such an exciting way. And the lead up in the poem is also very exciting because Odysseus is like skulking around, he's disguised. You're just kind of waiting for all bedlam to break loose. And then when it does, you're like, yeah, get the suitors. And it happens in that way in the movie too. And it's such a bloodbath, but it's so satisfying. To Glenn's point earlier about the gods and monsters, I was kind of thinking about Christopher Nolan sitting in front of like a dashboard

• 10:50Speaker 04

  of like dials, you know, and there's like a gods dial, there's a monsters dial, there's a humor dial, right? Like all these like different things at his disposal that you can kind of crank up or down depending on how you want to interpret the Odyssey. And I was actually quite surprised by the fact that I think the gods dials like turned down a little bit more than I expected, given

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  what kind of presence they have in the poem. And I like that kind of element of almost ambiguity it inserts that

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  the movie is like a little skeptical of Magic. It's not skeptical of monsters. Those definitely exist. They are real existential threats. But in terms of like, are there gods that are really like pulling the strings here? You know, this issue of like, does Odysseus have free will? Or is he simply at the mercy of like Poseidon who's angry with him and not giving him favorable winds? I actually think the movie kind of leaves that open ended and I really liked it.

• 11:43Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, I think the film deploys gods really cleverly as a way to bring out the kind of thorny humanity in this story and to kind of assess the moral weight of the actions in this film. And this film, you know, we're not going to spoil it, but this film has this kind of Nolan-esque turn where you're kind of seeing something play out through a different prism. I think that the humanity that comes out there, I found actually profound and really appreciated and kind of lent weight to this as more than just, we're going to put a bunch of epic flash and battles and money on the screen. The fact that it still boiled down to these very human ideas and the fact that, gosh

• 12:25Stephen Thompson?

  darn it, Christopher Nolan can just like make me cry about a dog.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 12:30Stephen Thompson?

  Just like two hours and 20 minutes.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  I know.

• 12:32Stephen Thompson?

  Into your movie. Like, all of a sudden, I'm crying about a dog. And then I'm like, oh, I'm not crying about the dog anymore. Back to the action.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Can we talk about what I think is going to be the most divisive thing about this film, which is the performance of Matt Damon?

• 12:45Stephen Thompson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Going into this film, I thought he was wildly miscast for the role of Odysseus. Leaving this film, I thought he was wildly miscast for the role of Odysseus, but it worked.

• 12:55Stephen Thompson?

  I actually thought Damon was fine. I mean, I think, you know, Damon is able to carry the weight that this character is carrying. And I think he's able to pull that off effectively. For me, the performance I thought you were going to mention is Tom Holland, where I was never really able to forget that I was watching Tom Holland on the screen. I didn't feel like he really got lost in that character the way others did. Matt Damon, maybe I've just seen Matt Damon in so many movies over the course of so many years that he has become this kind of blank canvas. I don't mean that as a knock on. No, sure. I think he's versatile.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Waylon, check me on this. This is what I'm talking about here because in the poem, Odysseus exhibits one and only one singular trait. He is cunning. Over and over again, in slightly different ways. He uses his, his giff or gab to trick and to confuse. He is a creature of intellect, of wit and cleverness, and mostly guile. And Damon, fine actor, not your go to guy for guile. Like solidness, yes, even a stolid quality. For Odysseus, you need a glint in the eye. You need a ryness, a knowing quality. I mean, if we're looking around Clooney, that's Clooney's whole vibe is already Odysseus in the Hollywood Hills. Like, that's, that's like who he is.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  You know, I'm going to split the difference on this. And I'm going to say that, yes, I agree with you, Glenn, that Odysseus is known for his cunningness and his trickery.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  And his wit in the poem. I think that Christopher Nolan was like, my Odysseus is different. He dialed down the, the trickiness, the cunningness and the humor part of Odysseus. Cause Odysseus in the poem, he's very smart and clever, but sometimes he comes off as just like a huge jerk. Like, he's just kind of like trolling people. Like, when he comes back to Ithaca in the poem, he even like leads his dad on, like his elderly father for a long time and like, doesn't like let him know he's actually Odysseus. It's like, why would you do this to your dad when you've been gone for 20 years? You're like, is this guy just really mean? And I think Christopher Nolan kind of discards that part of Odysseus. And you see the cleverness when he's like figuring out how to like evade the cyclops and, and that kind of thing.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  But that he really is more interested in exploring the kind of regret and remorse of Odysseus and the kind of, you know, tortured soul within Odysseus. That's like, I've done all these horrible things and I've violated like the moral code of men and gods. I want to go home, but like, am I being punished? And do I need to atone for the terrible things I've done, even as I'm trying to get home? I think Christopher Nolan was like more interested in that question, which is maybe why he cast Matt Damon in that role, you know?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  And that's why it works, because he's deconstructed Odysseus and reformed it to be a. And this is not a knock, a very conventional Hollywood hero with an uber-conventional Hollywood narrative arc that involves the processing of guilt and remorse. And that's what Matt Damon can do and does here and does it well. So that he does things all the time in this movie that Homer's Odysseus wouldn't do, but Nolan's Odysseus, yeah. And that's how I know it's working. Because like, no, I buy this. I buy this Odysseus. I don't think it's Odysseus, but I buy this Odysseus.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Is there anything to say about the whole American accent? It's one of the many, many things that a lot of people had a knee-jerk reaction to when the first trailers dropped. Is there anything to say about that?

• 16:19Speaker 04

  I literally did not care.

• 16:20Stephen Thompson?

  Did not bother me at all. You know what might have bothered me? If everybody had tried to do some kind of fakey fake Old English accent.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  To which I would refer any of the complainers to Wolfgang Peterson's Troy. The movie where they're like, well, it's ancient Greece, so we need Brad Pitt to try to sound like he's from the Royal Shakespeare Company. That makes sense. My favorite example of this is The Last Temptation of Christ, right? The Scorsese movie where it's like, everybody just talks like that David Bowie sounds like David Bowie, Harvey Keitel sounds like Harvey Keitel. It's a deez and doze.

• 16:54Stephen Thompson?

  And honestly, I think that's fine, except I think for whatever reason, Tom Holland stuck out to me as like, I'm just watching Peter Parker.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Well, again, we have to acknowledge that the adoption of a British accent to emulate the real or imagined past is nothing but a convention. There's no reason for it to exist. To Americans, it makes it sound like there's a gloss on it that everybody's very heightened and removed. But to Brits, it's always sounded like just, you know, oh, these are some posh jerks I went to school with. There's nothing that separates you, right?

• 17:24Speaker 02

  I mean, it's kind of ironic that Pattinson's American accent is better than the American accent of any of the British actors that Nolan put in his Batman movies.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  They're doing the American accent the way that Brits always do. They with the hard R, very nasal, yonder lies the castle of my dad. That's kind of what they're doing here.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  But I'm fine with it. It goes away immediately. You just don't notice it.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Well, we don't, we don't have that many Brits here, right? I mean, there's a.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  Samantha Morton?

• 17:49Stephen Thompson?

  Oh, Samantha Morton, yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Can we talk about Cersei for a second? Because that sequence.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Talk about Cersei.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  I was like, oh, so now we've just entered a horror movie. That was too scary.

• 17:59Stephen Thompson?

  All of a sudden, it was Evil Dead Rise.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  So scary, but so well done.

• 18:03Stephen Thompson?

  The squelchy sound design of that scene.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  I mean, that's cinema. It was really scary, though.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  I think you just nailed it, Waylon. That's cinema. That's what it felt like watching this movie. Like, I was watching it on a big screen, that's A. But B, like, this is, this is old school. This is Hollywood, man. This is what audiences need right now. This is what the theater industry needs right now. This is, let's bring it. That's what I feel.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Is anyone else troubled by the, like, the Holland Zendaya, Jon Bernthal triumvirate in this movie? Which, you know, everyone who goes to see this is gonna see a trailer for Spider-Man in front of them. It's, it's leading more into that, that reparatory company thing. It's like, and also playing this summer on alternate nights. The same cast brings you Spider-Man.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  No, I love it. I mean, to your point earlier about how Nolan has developed this kind of repertory company, his like little troupe of traveling actors. I think that actually does a lot here in terms of like Hamish Patel, a face I love, an actor I love, that I really only see kind of pop up in. Well, he was in Station Eleven, right? But he pops up here as Odysseus is kind of second in command. I don't even remember his name, if his name is ever said, but you kind of immediately trust him and are really like focused on this guy being like, okay, like, he seems like a cool guy to follow. And I think it's just because of the aura Hamish Patel brings to the screen, based on what we know of him as like a Nolan player. And I appreciate that shorthand. I thought that was really cool.

• 19:28Stephen Thompson?

  You find his eyes in every scene that he's in. He's such a compelling presence among Odysseus's men who. You all, you all know, you know, I'm gonna get attached to each and every one of these dudes.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  So Stephen, the one thing I wanted to ask you about is the score. It's not Hans Zimmer, it is Ludwig Gordinson. Any thoughts?

• 19:46Stephen Thompson?

  I mean, Gordinson is on an absolute winning streak. This score is part of the kind of mammoth sound design of this film where you may actually have your fingers in your ears for stretches of it. No one makes loud movies. And Gordinson, man, top of his game. I mean, just a gorgeous, big, sweeping, but still surprising, still like taking these interesting tonal shifts. And I was sort of fascinated with the way that it pivoted into an original song at the end. I wasn't looking for an original song.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, me neither.

• 20:17Stephen Thompson?

  It's James Blake with Travis Scott. Travis Scott, the first face you see in this film. My initial reaction to it was like, what an interesting combination of vibes. I haven't gone back and like, listened to that song again and again. But I think it fits the grandeur and vibe of the film and I love, I always love hearing what James Blake does.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  All right, this is one of those times when we all really dug it. And sometimes that makes for a, you know, a kind of a one note conversation. This one was really good because we all, for different reasons, are telling you, go and see this film in the dang theater if you can. My God, it's such a great experience. It's such a great, old school movie going experience. Up next, what is making us happy this week?

• 20:59Speaker 00

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• 22:19Speaker 01

  Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What is making us happy this week? Waylon Wong, kick us off.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm here to recommend a content creator on TikTok called Jenna Anderson. Her handle is Jenna Sequois. And I don't know how much of the audience, like Nolan Head audience, is also interested in High School Musical, but I am. And she had this really, really fun video about my algorithm served me where she talks about the Marxist themes in High School Musical 2. And she walks through them very methodically and kind of, yeah, like links everything back to Marx and talks about like class struggle and like is the kind of the weakest Marxist argument of this film, that class struggle can be resolved at the talent show. It's really delightful. I actually learned a ton and it supports my kind of overarching theory, which is that every text is

• 23:11Speaker 04

  an economic text. And so that includes High School Musical 2. So you should check out this video by Jenna Sequois on TikTok about the Marxist themes in High School Musical 2.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  That is a great and very you pick. I love that.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  All right, Chris Klemic, what is making you happy this week?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Uh, what's making me happy is Isaac Butler's new book, The Perfect Moment. This is about the, I don't know what phase of the culture wars, we would call it, you know, through the Reagan era. And this really centers around the fight around 1990 or so to reauthorize the N E A, you know, after controversies arose over, be like Robert Mapplethorpe. This is an era of history that I thought I knew all about and really, uh, reading this book, I knew, you know, two paragraphs deep. This is a fascinating, well researched, well reported cultural history, you know, written with a sense of drive and suspense. That taught me. A lot about these events from, you know, 35, 40 years ago and how they they continue to echo now.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  So again, the book is The Perfect Moment by Isaac Butler. I recommend it.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Great pick. Thank you very much, Chris. Stephen Thompson, what's making you happy this week?

• 24:17Stephen Thompson?

  Well, you know, we just spoke about one high minded literary adaptation, you know, ancient Greek texts are my passion. I wanted to pick something that carries, you know, similar cultural weight. So I wanted to talk about the 28th season of Big Brother, which just premiered. Remarkable parallels to The Odyssey. The Odyssey has its grand quest and its trials and wars and sirens and whatnot. And Big Brother brings together, in this case, 17 players, locks them in a house and surveils their every move while they scheme and plot against each other and are also very bored. Big Brother has long been the distant third best CBS reality show after Survivor and The Amazing Race.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:58Stephen Thompson?

  This show is perfect to have on while I fold laundry, while I pay bills, while I noodle on my phone. It engages roughly 32% of my brain when it's on. So that is the return of Big Brother, a show I will definitely watch for at least a few weeks. If you love The Odyssey, you will also find that Big Brother is a show available to watch on TV.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  All right.

• 25:22Stephen Thompson?

  It's on CBS. You can stream it on Paramount Plus.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  On Christopher Nolan's favorite medium, terrestrial broadcast television.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Gonna say, these are all on brand picks. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. All right. What's making me happy this week? Upcycled Vintage Art is an Instagram account in which an artist finds some old art, usually the kind of, you know, thrift shop landscapes that somebody originally bought because their colors match the couch, right? You know what I'm talking about? Those kind of bland scenery, seascapes, whatever. She takes the art, the painting, she matches the colors exactly, she matches the style, the approach exactly. She also matches the patina, the aging on the art, and she adds maybe a dragon, maybe an ant, maybe a hobbit.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Some element of fantasy that blends in so perfectly with the original in such a subdued, very skillful way that it looks like it's always been in that painting. It is a great idea, and it is so perfectly realized, so perfectly executed, that it is an endless source of fun. That is Upcycled Vintage Art by Heather Castles, and you can find that on Instagram. And that is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter, npr.org/popculturenewsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Waylon Wong, Chris Klemmick, Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for being here.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Thank you, Glenn. Thank you.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Hufsa Fatima, Lennon Sherburne, and Mike Katsev, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Kimin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  It should be Edith PF. I only just learned that the bong, it is that same Edith PF song that we hear throughout inception, just like slowed down to like 1/100th speed.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  The best, the best.

• 27:22Speaker 00

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• 27:26Speaker 06

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• 27:49Speaker 07

  Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back. It sure does, Casey. And what a time. The world is talking about AI and what's going on in Silicon Valley. And we are here with a new show to tell you all about it. That's right, Kevin. On our new show, Machine Gods, twice a week, we'll be bringing you the biggest news in tech and bring you unmatched access to the real titans of this industry. You can find Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.