Primetime and What's Making Us Happy

The new docudrama Primetime is a weird and highly fictionalized account of the meteoric rise of To Catch a Predator. Robert Pattinson plays host Chris Hansen, who is struggling to get bigger ratings. Hansen and his team work with local law enforcement to drag the accused sexual abusers of minors before the camera and arrest them. But does director Lance Oppenheim’s highly stylized approach work, or leave viewers feeling empty? If you’re looking for more dramas loosely inspired by real people, check out: ‘Tony’ is a biopic that cooks https://www.npr.org/2026/08/21/nx-s1-5937536/tony-is-a-biopic-that-cooks In 'Marty Supreme,' Timothée Chalamet is good at being supremely annoying https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5653269/in-marty-supreme-timothee-chalamet-is-good-at-being-supremely-annoying ‘Blue Moon’ will bewitch, bother and bewilder you https://www.npr.org/2025/10/27/nx-s1-5583762/blue-moon-will-bewitch-bother-and-bewilder-you 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 public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. 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

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's Flex Path learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  The first choice it makes is to yeet us straight into the slime. And y'all said, see me, Gene? The first word in my notes is scuzzy. This is a scuzzy movie.

• 0:25Aisha Harris?

  Scuzzy, yeah, yeah.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  The new docu-drama Primetime is a weird and highly fictionalized account of the rise of the NBC series To Catch Predator, which became a cultural phenomenon back in the mid-aughts. It stars Robert Pattinson as the show's square-jawed host, Chris Hansen, who's feeling pressure to get bigger ratings as he and his team work with local law enforcement to drag the potential sexual abusers of minors before the camera and arrest them. I'm Glen Weldon, and joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is my fellow host, Aisha Harris. Hey, Ayesha.

• 1:01Aisha Harris?

  Hi, Glenn.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Also with us is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby. Hey, Gene, welcome in.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  How's it going, us?

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Great to have you. All right, so in the film Primetime, we enter the world of To Catch Predator, just as it's becoming a huge hit for NBC. We enter it through the eyes of Dan, a wannabe actor played by Skylar Jussondo. He's hired to act as a decoy, pretending to be a 13-year-old boy who lures men to suburban homes where the To Catch Predator team ambushes them and cops arrest them. Dan has qualms about the job until he meets with the charismatic host, Chris Hansen, played by Robert Pattinson. Hansen convinces the impressionable Dan to stay, even as the host is distracted by a troubled home life amid the show's meteoric rise. The show is so successful, in fact, that another network is looking to poach Hansen's very stressed-out producer, Andy. She is played by the great Merritt Weaver.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Primetime is the first scripted feature directed by documentarian Lance Oppenheim. It was made without the cooperation of Chris Hansen. He's spoken out against it and continues to stand by his work on To Catch Predator. Also, he hasn't seen it. He says the nondisclosure agreement he was asked to sign by the film studio A24 was restrictive. Primetime is in theaters now. Gene, kick us off. What did you make of this weirder-than-I-thought-it-would-be movie?

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Weirder-than-I-thought-it-would-be is exactly how I felt about it, too. It's really claustrophobic, right? Like, the way it opens is literally, you hear Chris Hansen repeating, muttering to himself, "I will address you, and you will address me." And, you know, the conceit there is that Chris Hansen is creepily watching the creepy people. Who is the voyeur? Who is the creepy person? Like, oh, who is the gross person? There's so many, like, tight shots, and the people and the stuff we're talking about is so gross that just, like, even the sound of him narrating the text conversations is like, it's really, knowing that these people who are thought to be predators and children, it's like, the movie, like, really leans into, like, the seaminess of this enterprise. And so you're watching, and you just feel like, kind of, like a visceral disgust.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  And I don't think I actually ever got over that feeling, because the whole time I was like, ooh, I don't want to look at this, right?

• 3:13Speaker 03

  For better, for worse. I'm curious what you guys thought about it.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  All right, Ayesha, see me, that's one word. Give me another, give me a few more.

• 3:20Aisha Harris?

  See me is a great word. I would also say, kind of, like, funhouse, mirror, nightmare, fever dream is, like, were other things that came up for me.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  These are all good words.

• 3:31Aisha Harris?

  I was really into what this movie was doing for the first, like, 30, 40 minutes or so. I think that it's making very deliberate choices. One of the things that stood out to me was the score by Ari Balusian, which, to my mind, kind of called to mind Bernard Herrmann's scores for Taxi Driver and Psycho.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:51Aisha Harris?

  And so I was, like, really into that sort of, like, menacing, hazy, like, very unsettling feel that this is going for. And I think Robert Pattinson is just really, really good in this role.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC. And we're doing a story on adults who try to meet teens online. Please don't put this on TV, please.

• 4:14Aisha Harris?

  I've seen him in three movies this year where he's playing some form of, like, dirtbag. And each one feels very, very different. And this one felt very different from what I saw in the Odyssey and what I saw in the drama. So I was, I was feeling it. But overall, this feels very undercooked to me. Like, the vibe kind of works when it's, like, circling that Tim Robinson wagon, that kind of thing.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  That was not a name I thought you would invoke.

• 4:41Aisha Harris?

  I mean, it's, but you can kind of see it, right? Like, you can kind of see that. But then, it's not really in service of anything insightful or particularly impactful, emotionally speaking. Maybe we'll get into this, but like, I couldn't help but think about the great documentary that came out last year, Predators by David Ossit, which is focusing on this exact topic, but is able to get into so many more things and is really kind of, like, questioning this idea of vigilante justice and, like, you know, whether the benefits of that really outweighed the cost for everyone involved. And I think this movie gestures towards that, but does not actually try to explore that in the way that Predators, the documentary, does.

• 5:25Aisha Harris?

  So I quote-unquote "enjoyed it," or like, I wasn't bored, but I don't think this is deep as I, or like, thoughtful as I wanted it to be for all of the, like, theatrics that are involved with it.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good point. I had a rolling reaction to this. In the moment, I thought, this is a ride, and Robert Pattinson is always fun to watch. He's always gonna make the big, bold choice. The more I sat with it after seeing it, the more it kind of curdled on me. And I don't question that what it's doing is exactly what it sets out to do. It wants to tackle something this lurid and dark and emotional and complicated in a way that's really lurid and dark and emotional, but without any complications at all. It is really stripping away any nuance. And, look, you go into it, you know that the first choice it makes is to yeet us straight into the slime. And y'all said, see me, Gene? The first word in my notes is scuzzy. This is a scuzzy movie.

• 6:22Aisha Harris?

  Scuzzy, yeah, yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Like, for example, hiring Jeff Zucker, the former head of NBC, to play himself and have him just be there going, "Well, I don't like your show, but America sure seems to." That is scuzzy.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  I was, what, I was like, is that someone who looks just like Jeff Zucker? That's wild.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  So the approach here is to go fully subjective, because objectivity is a myth, whatever. And so it's all character-based, it's all emotional-based, highly stylized, which apparently is a Lance Oppenheim thing. Have y'all seen any Lance Oppenheim documentaries before this?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  I have not.

• 6:52Aisha Harris?

  No, I have not. He produced a doc that I saw last year that I loved, The Python Hunt. So it's kind of similar territory, yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  But you instantly know, seconds into this movie, that this is not going to be one of those docu-dramas that ends with, like, a series of, like, title cards and Chyrons, where you kind of get an impassive, here's what happened to everyone involved. No, it's gonna end on a character beat, it's gonna end on an emotional beat, in a way that won't answer your questions about anything that happened to any of these actual people. It's not interested in doing that, and it's doing everything it can with all this stylistic bells and whistles and hand-waving to convince us that we shouldn't be interested in that stuff either. I mean, Jussondo plays Dan, decoy Dan, and that's an inserted character. And he plays him, and, look, I love Skylar Jussondo. If you want to see a great comedic performance, watch him on Santa Clarita Diet.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Here, he just plays this guy as such a mouth-breathing cretin, so stupid, that you're like, is he playing this so that he comes off as an intellectual child? And maybe that's the point, they're drawing some parallels here. And look, Pattinson's always fun, always makes the big choices. And he's definitely found a way into this character, right? He definitely has a point of view. Because at one point, Hansen says to Dan, "Nothing I do is acting, Dan." And Hansen, in that moment, is saying, "I only care about journalistic integrity, capital J, capital I."

• 8:13Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  But what Pattinson, the actor, is saying in that moment is that Hansen is a shell. Hansen is an empty vessel, who only cares about how he's perceived. He's only always acting. And he, this guy reads a room with such a lizard-like intensity that you kind of kept expecting to see those little, you know, dictating membranes every time he blinks. And I'll shut up after this, but last thing, Merritt Weaver, love Merritt Weaver.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Couldn't figure out what she was doing in this film for a while.

• 8:44Aisha Harris?

  She was chewing a lot of gum, chewing a lot of gum.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  She's chewing a lot of gum. But she also pitches her voice way high up, and she gives every sentence this kind of sing-song cadence. And I couldn't figure out what she was doing until we get a scene where she has to deal with somebody that she actually respects for the first time, somebody she sees on her level, which is this person from another network who's trying to poach her. There, she drops the voice, and that's when it clicks. You're like, oh, she treats the people at Predator like toddlers, like, she's a kindergarten teacher, and she's trying to get them to lay down for naptime. All of these are very big choices, and they're very entertaining, and I enjoy them in the moment. But I hate to say this, but given the subject, I felt this was too slick, too glib, too empty. I mean, sleaze has its pleasures, but it's not a meal.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  And this kind of left me feeling kind of hollowed out, this film.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  To the point you guys are making about, they didn't have anything to say about these crimes, this predation. Because inherent to this, like, journalistic exercise that Hansen, is it a journalistic exercise? So like, that he was undertaking was like, all questions of entrapment, of like, of whether you are, like, damning people without evidence, to trap people, get caught in. It's like, how do you talk about that without sounding like you're defending people who are sexual predators?

• 9:56Aisha Harris?

  Right, right.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  But this movie, this is maybe not the reaction I was supposed to have, but every time one of these guys got nabbed, there was this moment where it felt like... I don't know, they felt like they were being victimized and that was not the thing I wanted to feel like, you know what I mean? And I don't think that's, I guess, wrong. I think we should be thinking about sort of like what the implications of this project are. But the, the movie did not seem to know, and, and I'm fine with like that stuff being a little bit opaque. Did not seem to know whether it wanted to sort of show these guys as complete creeps or like, sort of like guileless nitwits, right? Like who sort of got like swooped up in the like, ensnared in this sort of dragnet, right?

• 10:30Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  And I, I don't want to sound like I'm defending these men at all, but it, but it felt like it was walking up to this line and being like, some of these people may, they may have more going on than just sort of the top line, right? Anyway.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:41Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I saw this movie kind of trying to do a few things at once and not really doing any of them successfully, like, I think part of the issue is that it feels so insular and we're so focused on like a handful of characters that we don't zoom out to see the bigger picture of like, why are we not indicting the audience that was encouraging this? Like the ratings, like what does that mean? Like we get one scene where Hanson is on a plane and a guy next to him is like fangirling over him and he's like, if I were you, I would have like beat them or done something violent. And like, that's a hint at like this vigilante justice and all of like what that means, but like,

• 11:17Speaker 03

  It's kind of bloodlust, yeah.

• 11:18Aisha Harris?

  It doesn't really, it doesn't go much further than that. But then you also have this other factor where it's trying to sort of hint at what the TV landscape was like at that time. So it's trying to hint at, you know, scripted television is kind of on its out. It's no longer as fashionable and now we have all of this, like this cesspool of just like reality TV and shows like this. And also like a show like What Would You Do, which is like the happy, it's like the quote unquote happy version of this where it's like people getting caught doing nice things for other people as opposed to trying to molest them. And but like, again, I hate to say this as someone who is constantly railing about movies being too long, but like,

• 11:59Aisha Harris?

  it ended so abruptly that I was like, oh, wait, so everything just felt very not well done. And, and I think that that is something that I just wish that it had been a little bit more fulfilling in terms of what it was trying to say and, and focus on one or two of those things as opposed to trying to attack all of them. It just, it just felt, I don't know, icky. It also, I don't know about your audience, but my audience, including myself, that, yes, it's seedy, but like there are also moments that are clearly funny or like meant to be funny.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:32Aisha Harris?

  And I'm not sure what to do. Like I, I don't believe that everything needs to be taken seriously. Like we can make jokes about horrific things. It's very hard to do, but you can do that. But I also like the tonal balance of that was a little jarring and I think that was the point, but also is it working? Was your audience also very kind of laughing at funny things that happened?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was too. There are, there are very funny things that happened in this film. You know, the fact that Scarlett Johansson's character is dumb, you know, it's not just because of his taste in musicals, but I'm gonna say it's in the mix.

• 13:06Aisha Harris?

  Come on, Rent is a good musical. I will stand by that.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  He prefers the movie to the play.

• 13:14Aisha Harris?

  That's an abomination. Yes.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  They were 40. Ayesha, anyway. It's a little besides the point. But you both have nailed something. You both have crystallized something for me and I've already written the review for this. I'm gonna have to go back and revise it because I just, you just made me realize something, that there is a thinness here. This is a very simple, lowest common denominator approached characterization where every character in this film has only one thing they want. And that pursuit of it blinds them to how sick and sad the world they live in is. And the project of this film, to your point, Gene, the project of this film seems to me to be to say, yeah, these predators were bad people, but in the act of chasing them, didn't these To Catch a Predator people become just as bad? To which the only answer is, um, hell no.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  What are you talking about? I mean, there are real questions about guilt and complicity and entrapment. That's, Gene, that's what Documentary Predators really tangles with. This film, as Ayesha said, just sort of like waves towards it. And, you know, it's kind of left us to wrangle with the fact, the question of would any of these sad men have stayed in their pathetic basements? Would all of this have remained like a sick, sad fantasy? If they hadn't been, you know, encouraged and drawn out, enticed, would any of them have entered those weirdly overlit suburban houses? Um, you know?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  That, that question, it's in the movie, but Ayesha, I agree with you. It's not the subject of the movie. And I don't like to say it should have been, but I kind of feel that instead it's asking, see what chasing fame will reduce you to, which is just such a much less interesting and challenging question to make a movie about. And I do think that all this directorial stuff, you know, there's a moment where Hanson is telling a story to Dan and that, that story is so transporting that it literally transports him to the village. Like all that stuff is there just to so we don't look past this kind of slick surface of this film at what's uglier underneath it, because I don't think it's interested in that.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned it sort of not wrestling with the audience response. Like I feel like Bokeem Woodburn, who, by the way, has like become like just one of my most like favorite actors to watch.

• 15:30Aisha Harris?

  I love him. Love him so much.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Bokeem Woodburn is playing this like cartoon of a Texas like sheriff. Yep. He's got the whole accent. Um, and he's like gonna prove that this town don't have no predators in it. He almost, that accent is not right. I'm sorry.

• 15:46Aisha Harris?

  It's close, though. It's close.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  It's, it's kind of what he's doing.

• 15:49Aisha Harris?

  He rails against the Democrats.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  He rails against the Democrats and the child molesters. And like he's holding that, like, which is, which is like funny, but it's also less effective than like if you, this is a show that was on for a long time. It was really popular and they were like, you know, like it feels like showing that there's like just a lot of like bloodlust or just like lurid sort of curiosity in this. That what like widely dispersed that, you know, Chris Hansen exists as a meme today, right? You know, like the sort of, you should have a seat, right? Like it's a, you know, that.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  There's like a way that this particular seedy enterprise that was To Catch a Predator was a staple of popular culture. And it's like, I don't know, it feels like this movie feels so insular that none of the sort of wider implications of any of it just show up in it at all, which is really fascinating. It's a really interesting choice.

• 16:34Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. I think the other issue I came up against with primetime is that I found at one point, like, once we get into the main crux of the story and the climax that the show, the series was known for, and which ultimately led to its cancellation after the incident at hand that had happened, which was the suicide of an assistant DA who was allegedly talking to one of the decoys involved in the operation. But like before that, there's moments where I wasn't sure where it was going. There's like a disabled predator. And it's very confused, like it gets muddy as to like what exactly they're doing. And I think if you're able to watch the Predators documentary, you'll have a little bit more sense.

• 17:16Aisha Harris?

  It goes more deeply into how the show got linked up with the police, local law enforcement, how entrenched that all was. And it kind of fills in some gaps that I think the movie and its like very thinly drawn script and just its attempt to be kind of like dreamlike and not always clear, like deliberately clear about things. Like it gets a little messy and I, I didn't know where it was going. So that's all to say, Predators, the documentary is a good supplement, I think, before watching this movie to kind of understand a little bit more what's going on and what is not included in primetime. The documentary will make you really, really angry. This just makes you wish you could have a shower, like a hundred showers.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. See? That's like, that's a great place to end on. I love that. I love that. We are wrestling with this film in a way the film doesn't seem to want to wrestle with itself, but that's primetime. It's in theaters now. Up next, what is making us happy this week?

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from AT&T. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with eligible trade-in. It has the ultimate pro camera system and a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Connecting changes everything. Requires trade-in of $230 or more and eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Angie. When it comes to home projects, it matters who you hire. Angie has been helping homeowners find skilled pros to get their home projects done well for over 30 years. Angie's nationwide network has experts in everything from landscaping to roofing and more. Read verified reviews, see photos of past work and request and compare quotes to find your best price, all in one place.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Download the free Angie app today or visit angie.com. That's A N G I dot com.

• 19:35Speaker 01

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

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Yes, I got permission to shout this one out because you guys covered this already. My wife and I started watching Colin from Accounts just last week.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Oh, there we go.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  And it is so funny and ridiculous. So if you don't know the premise of the show, it's set in Australia. These two youngish, one younger than the other, people end up in this relationship. It's like a rom com, but it happens backwards. The young woman flashes, the guy who's driving the car, he slams his car into a little dog, and they end up both raising and caring for this dog, sort of through this confluence of events, they end up living together. It's a rom com, but they're already in a house together and they're doing all the rom com stuff sort of backwards, right? Like, it is hilarious. The ensemble cast is so good. There are all these characters who just have like one scene and they like knock it out the park. And I was like, oh, we don't do that on TV anymore, right?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Just one scene, sort of like, great character actor moment, and then like offstage. It's a really, really, really funny show. Legitimately excellent joke writing, but like some real heart and stakes considering the premise. I just really, really, really dig it. I was not surprised to find out that the couple was married in real life because I was wondering when watching, I was like, oh, these people seem to fully convey the ethos and the vibe of this show. I was like, I wonder how they cast them. I was like, oh.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  They cast themselves. Okay, that makes so much more sense. So, yeah, Colin from Accounts, that's what's making me happy.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Thank you very much, Gene Demby. That is Colin from Accounts, streaming on Paramount Plus. Aisha Harris, what is making you happy this week?

• 21:07Aisha Harris?

  Well, we rail about the algorithm, and by we, I mean I do, all the time. But sometimes the algorithm serves me up exactly what I need. It knows me better than I know myself. And the algorithm recently stirred me up. Comedian at Kevin T. Porter on Instagram.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 21:25Aisha Harris?

  He has, do you know him, Glenn?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yes, I do.

• 21:28Aisha Harris?

  Oh, okay, okay. He has a recurring bit that is probably best described as a girl talk mashup filtered through the random chaotic mind of Eric Andre or like early Robin Williams. So basically, the premise is that Porter has something along the lines of like, I'm the DJ at your coworker's birthday party and I'm really bad at it, followed by a very unhinged discordant medley of songs, jingles, deeply specific cultural references. One of them is Madonna's Holiday with O'Reilly's Auto Parts ad, George W. Bush saying, now watch this drive, Hamilton, Hugh Jackman's opening number at the 2009 Oscars. Can I just play a little bit of this, please?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  The Reader.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  I haven't seen The Reader.

• 22:23Speaker 06

  Somebody get these beggars out of here.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  That is so unhinged.

• 22:34Aisha Harris?

  Oh, my god. Meanwhile, he's just like jamming in his living room with sunglasses on, lip syncing, like with all the nerdy enthusiasm of Weird Al. It is very fun. There's a moment in that one where he goes from the Reba theme right into Destiny's Child Survivor. It is the greatest thing ever. He has other ones, like Broadway themed ones, of course. I tackle every time. I've watched them like so many times.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 23:00Aisha Harris?

  And I think they will bring you joy. They're so bad that they, sometimes they are good, like there are moments when the mashup just like soars. That is comedian at Kevin T. Porter on Instagram. I think also his mashups are on SoundCloud, too.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 23:15Aisha Harris?

  Oh, so much joy.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I'm so glad you discovered Kevin T. Porter. He is a very funny guy. He's also a very nice guy. Happened to know Kevin slightly.

• 23:24Aisha Harris?

  Oh.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  And he's had me on his podcast, Good Christian Fun, where he and guests kind of discuss bits of Christian media in a way that kind of goes right down the middle, slightly making fun of it, slightly appreciating for what it is. He's a very funny and one of the nicest guys on the internet. So that's Kevin T. Porter. Great pick. I will send you a starter kit.

• 23:45Aisha Harris?

  Okay. Yay.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  That's amazing. All right. Thank you very much, Aisha Harris. Great pick. What is making me happy is also served up to me by the algorithm, so maybe, maybe we should all just get over it, right?

• 23:56Aisha Harris?

  I know, yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  We should just roll over and play dead. The Instagram account ScottyIsFat, Scotty with two Ts and two Es, is a fat, gay, British guy who travels and runs and does yoga, and his content is him traveling and running and doing yoga while complaining about how much he hates traveling and running. And actually, he likes yoga. The thing about it is he's so good at it, and he's kind of trading on the, our collective unkind assumption that he doesn't look like he'd be good at these things. But this guy runs for miles. He hikes up and down mountains. He's got great yoga form, and he does, he travels, even as he's bitching and moaning about the other tourists, who are often Americans.

• 24:39Aisha Harris?

  Fair.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  If this is a thing for you, he does curse a lot, but he does it with such style and flair. I just find him really inspiring because this is the goal, right? Do the healthy thing, but be funny about it. Have a sense of humor about it, so you're not like a fitness influencer guy who is so hugely annoying and judgmental and sanctimonious, and you're not.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  And suffering.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Doing your chest lines all wrong. He gets it. He is a joy to follow. That is ScottyIsFat on Instagram. And that is what's making me happy this week. That brings us to the end of our show. Gene Demby, Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Appreciate you guys. Thank you for having us.

• 25:16Aisha Harris?

  Thank you, Glenn.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Lennon Sherburne, Kayden Mills, and Mike Katsev, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Kim, 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 time.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Leaf Filter. You need to clean your gutters before they become a bigger, more costly issue, so let the pros at Leaf Filter handle that for you. You'll get a free gutter inspection and a no obligation estimate, plus a lifetime warranty and no clog guarantee. Right now, you can get up to 35% off when you go to L E A F filter dot com slash NPR. Restrictions apply.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  See rep for warranty and promotion details.