War and What’s Making Us Happy

Nothing’s fair in love and war — and it's especially true in the very watchable HBO series War. Dominic West and Sienna Miller play a high-profile British couple duking it out in a high-stakes divorce. And the cutthroat litigation between the law firms representing them threatens to rival any of the marriage drama they’ve got going on. War was created by George Kay, who is also behind shows like Lupin and Highjack. If you enjoy high stakes, bingeable dramas, check out these episodes: 'Nemesis' brings strong 'Heat' vibes, and we're not mad at it https://www.npr.org/2026/05/18/nx-s1-5821272/nemesis-brings-strong-heat-vibes-and-were-not-mad-at-it ‘The Pitt’ approaches the end of a very long shift https://www.npr.org/2026/04/08/nx-s1-5775876/the-pitt-approaches-the-end-of-a-very-long-shift 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 FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:14Linda Holmes?

  I dug this. I thought it was really fun. It's a really kind of diverting show. It's not too heavy.

• 0:21Aisha Harris?

  No.

• 0:22Linda Holmes?

  No, no, no. I thought it was a lot of fun.

• 0:27Aisha Harris?

  Nothing's fair in love and war. We all know that, right? It's especially true in the very watchable series War, which is about a high-profile British couple duking it out in a high-stakes divorce. That couple is played by Dominic West and Sienna Miller, but the cutthroat litigation between the law firms representing them threatens to rival any of the marriage drama they've got going on. I'm Aisha Harris, and joining me on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is my lovely co-host, Linda Holmes. Hey, Lynda. Hello, Ayesha. All right, let's get right into it. In War, Dominic West is Morgan Henderson and Sienna Miller is Carla DuVall. He's a wealthy tech entrepreneur. She's a famous actress, and together, they're headed for divorce. There was a prenup, but their financial and career circumstances have changed drastically in the year since then.

• 1:12Aisha Harris?

  Now, they've hired two of London's most powerful firms as representation, and those attorneys come with their own baggage and histories. One of those attorneys is an ambitious junior associate whose ethics are shoddy and extremely consequential to the proceedings, Johnny, played by Archie Renaud. War was created by George Kay, who previously co-created Lupin and Hijack. It's airing on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. Now, Lynda, I think it's been more or less established that you and I both are fans of legal thrillers, legal dramas. Very much. We enjoy them. Yes. But of course, like, not all of them are created equally. So I'm curious how this one lands for you.

• 1:52Linda Holmes?

  Well, for most of its run, this show is not necessarily primarily legal in nature. It's kind of, I mean, it is, but it's more about the machinations between the couple and between the lawyers, but not necessarily like courtroom drama until, you know, later in the proceedings.

• 2:08Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 2:08Linda Holmes?

  But I enjoyed this a lot as a kind of, I would call it sort of classy, trashy, British, high drama of a sort that I basically really enjoy. It was really interesting to me when I saw that George Kay had done Lupin and Hijack, because I think he brings a kind of thriller approach to this show that benefits it so you don't get too bogged down in the legal stuff.

• 2:35Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 2:35Linda Holmes?

  The thing that I thought was most interesting about it, though, is that it does have that balance of, you know, really brutal fighting between the attorneys and to some degree between the couple, but also this kind of underlying sense that you feel a bit bad for these people. This couple originally loved each other, you get the sense, and were happy together for a time. And you do follow kind of what is happening in that relationship. I'm curious how you felt about that side of it, sort of.

• 3:05Aisha Harris?

  Hmm, yeah. I mean, going into it, I was very intrigued. I am very interested in this kind of dynamic, and especially in a time when we're seeing so many stories about rich people, and especially rich people trying to like, deal with their money. It's like, why do we need this now? I will say, I think that, yes, like, the stakes are high, but they're high only for this couple. Like, the rest of us, like, why would we care?

• 3:28Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:28Aisha Harris?

  But yeah, I still did find it very interesting to watch, and I thought that I did believe them as a couple who once did love each other, and that this wasn't just, you know, this wasn't a romance that was not just financially beneficial for both of them, but also like, they cared about each other. And I think that is part of the reason why, like, the only way that this could work as well as it was, because if it felt more sleazy...

• 3:53Linda Holmes?

  Parts of it certainly are sleazy.

• 3:54Aisha Harris?

  Parts of it are certainly sleazy, but like, there is something about the way that these two are able to really show that they, yes, they're fighting, and they definitely do not belong together anymore, but you can understand why they care for each other and why, like, so much of what's happening is being more orchestrated by the people around them than it is by them. And I liked that aspect of it.

• 4:17Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Aisha Harris?

  It gave it a little bit of heart, even when it was like, sometimes veered into tabloid, trashy, and all that kind of stuff.

• 4:24Linda Holmes?

  Definitely. And I think one of the things that helped this feel a bit different from the many kind of, "look at these miserable rich people" stories that we've seen is that one of the dynamics that kind of takes a little time to come out, but as you kind of get to know this couple, they make it clear is that when they originally got together, she was like a super, super, super A-list actress, and he was sort of a, an up-and-coming tech guy, if I can put it that way. Like, I think he already had money, but like, he wasn't the mogul that he is at this point in their relationship. And over the course of their relationship, as she has gotten older,

• 5:02Linda Holmes?

  her sort of stock as a movie star has begun to inevitably decline, and she doesn't get necessarily the quality of opportunities that she once did. You know, and meanwhile, he has developed this social media platform that's incredibly successful, and he's now enormously rich. You get that feeling that, yes, they're rich, but there is still a bit of a shift that's taken place between them in terms of whose money we're really worrying about when you talk about something like this prenup that is sort of at the heart of the divorce dispute for much of it, is whether this prenup is going to be followed.

• 5:41Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  We did a drop-hands arrangement, as in, they each walk away with what they brought to the marriage at the time. The problem is, she was worth much more back then, and he was worth significantly less.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  And you'd want to reflect that.

• 5:52Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. So I did care about that couple story. The other thing that you alluded to that I think is interesting is this kind of, originally, it feels a little disconnected, this story of Johnny, this young lawyer who has left Manhattan. He's from London, but he had been in Manhattan, working for a firm there, and has kind of come back to London with his girlfriend for kind of not fully clear reasons.

• 6:17Aisha Harris?

  He's got a past.

• 6:19Linda Holmes?

  He's got a past, and he's having trouble, you know, you spend a good amount of time in the first episode, sort of going with him to different interviews where he's trying with an increasing amount of desperation to find a new job.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  I'm talented, I'm loyal, I'm cheaper than I'll admit, and by working harder than anyone else in this building, I will only get better. So I advise you strongly, take me on, or I walk across the street and I get a job over there.

• 6:45Linda Holmes?

  Johnny has been hired by the big, old law firm, which is Morgan's law firm, the husband. But he's essentially being used as a mole, working for Carla's law firm, which is the smaller, newer law firm. So you basically have, and like, I don't know how it works in the, in the UK, but like, I looked at this and was like, all these people would be disbarred for this, like, I would think.

• 7:09Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Linda Holmes?

  I mean, I think you can't pretend to be representing a client while you're actually doing something else entirely. So I assume if they got caught, all these people would be in an enormous amount of trouble.

• 7:18Aisha Harris?

  Absolutely.

• 7:19Linda Holmes?

  But they don't spend too much time worrying about that. And the result is that they have Cathcart, this big, old law firm, has a mole in this smaller operation that's representing her. And I'm not sure I ever, like, really got a feel for Johnny as a character that much.

• 7:37Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Linda Holmes?

  But I understand why, for plot purposes, it's useful to have him kind of throwing a wrench in the plotting that in particular Carla's lawyers are trying to do, because every time they're planning on doing something, he is undermining them on behalf of this other firm.

• 7:57Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, Johnny is, I kind of called him, like, midway through watching this season, I was just like, he is the Rob Roush from Traders, season four of this entire enterprise, because he's very ridiculously good-looking, and he has this way of being able to just like, move about in the world that I think other characters, especially like, the other characters who are at his same level at the law firm that is representing Carla, he's able to operate in a way that they are not.

• 8:24Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Aisha Harris?

  Partially is that he's just like, brand new, and so he's thrown in, and he has like, he doesn't understand the way things work, so he's not like, beholden to it in the same way that they might be. But also, again, he's very hot. And so like, he has this way of sort of ingratiating himself to everyone.

• 8:39Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 8:39Aisha Harris?

  And that gets, like, it lets him get away with a lot more things than I think he ever would be able to in real life. And I found that incredibly fascinating. I also think it's just like, as the season goes on, we kind of get to know each of the different litigation sides, and Johnny fits into that. But then he also kind of reveals, his presence kind of reveals that like, they all have histories with each other.

• 9:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Aisha Harris?

  Like, some of them used to work together, some of them used to train under, they were their mentors or whatever. And I'm not in the law world, but I do find it fascinating that like, the way that works, or can work, at least based on this show, the people you used to work with are now your rivals, and how that kind of plays into the way that things work with this couple is incredibly, like, I just think it does a good job of depicting that in a dramatic fashion. Whether or not it's accurate, like, actually accurate is, I don't care, but it works. It just shows how kind of, at least to me, it was like, oh, man, lawyers are, they already have a bad reputation, generally speaking, but the show is not going to do them any favors.

• 9:44Linda Holmes?

  And I think what's interesting is, I came into this show thinking...

• 9:50Linda Holmes?

  That maybe it was going to be one of these real incredibly bleak, nobody here is a human being. Nobody here has anything sympathetic about them. It's just going to be all about the empty hearts of these rich people and their lawyers. And it's not that quite.

• 10:05Aisha Harris?

  No.

• 10:05Linda Holmes?

  And in fact, I would say there's a difference between the presentation of the two firms and that the big old firm Cathcart's is more heartless and more

• 10:14Aisha Harris?

  Weasley.

• 10:15Linda Holmes?

  inhuman.

• 10:16Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Linda Holmes?

  And this other firm that is run by this married couple and the woman is pregnant, which I think is an interesting kind of little, they don't pay a ton of attention to it.

• 10:25Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Linda Holmes?

  But it's an interesting thing that's kind of sitting there.

• 10:28Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, that's Serena and Nicholas.

• 10:30Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 10:30Aisha Harris?

  Who are played by Phoebe Fox and James Macardle. Yeah.

• 10:33Linda Holmes?

  Yes, exactly. Who run this smaller firm. They definitely have a little more humanity to them, which does not mean you don't see them do things that will make you be like, ugh.

• 10:43Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:44Linda Holmes?

  But they have a little more humanity to them. They are also on the, I guess you would call it the victim side of this scheme to plant a mole in their firm.

• 10:54Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 10:55Linda Holmes?

  So you're sort of waiting for them to, are they going to figure that out?

• 10:58Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Linda Holmes?

  I did like the fact that I think they found a bit of a balance between some people who still have some humanity and then some people who are just the absolute most cartoonishly wicked.

• 11:08Aisha Harris?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:08Linda Holmes?

  Which is kind of one of the things that you want from a show like this, I think.

• 11:13Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. I mean, to that point, like this season kicks off with like a honeypot contraption, which is, you know.

• 11:21Linda Holmes?

  Honey trap, yeah.

• 11:22Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Carla essentially asks a friend of hers, who's a very hot actress, fellow actress, Flora, played by Rose Williams, asks her to sort of like test Morgan to see if he will be unfaithful, has been unfaithful. And then, you know, Flora carries it out. But even Flora gets to have a lot more shading than you would expect her to have. And, and one thing that I, I kind of thought was interesting about this is that like, obviously they seem to be drawing, not directly, but like to some extent, George Kay and the writers and all the creative teams seem to be drawing, not directly, but indirectly from other recent

• 12:04Aisha Harris?

  high profile back and forths and how that plays out, especially in British media. And so you get the sense like that the lawyers keep talking about how like, well, if it comes out that he slept with this woman, like the judge is not going to like that. Like, it's like cheating is the worst possible thing you could do.

• 12:21Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 12:21Aisha Harris?

  And, you know, I think some of us have, I don't want to say evolved because that sounds kind of something, but like, I think some people have kind of moved on from that as being the worst thing that someone could do in a marriage. But like.

• 12:31Linda Holmes?

  I think that's fair to say.

• 12:32Aisha Harris?

  But in, in Britain, and at least to the public and to the tabloids and to a judge, especially an older judge, that could like detonate the whole case. And so seeing those little bits of how, you know, things have both changed but not changed and how like that could be the smoking gun that could, you know, ruin Carla's like chances at the money, like if it's revealed that she did in fact pay her friend to do it. Like, there's so many things that are going on there that I, I like, it doesn't drill those things home. It's not didactic about it, but it does come up in ways that feel organic and in the litigation of how they're trying to like play chess essentially and get the other side.

• 13:12Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Linda Holmes?

  And one of the things that I also think is interesting about this project is that the idea is supposed to be that it is an anthology series where each season will be about a different case.

• 13:24Aisha Harris?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:25Linda Holmes?

  You know, they have, in addition to this season, they have already greenlit and cast and have talked about the second season, which is going to star Marisa Tomei and Richard Chif and some other people. And I'm so, I think it's interesting that they want to do it that way. How do you feel about the kind of anthology element of it?

• 13:46Aisha Harris?

  Oh, I'm so in.

• 13:48Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Aisha Harris?

  I'm so in for that, especially because it sounds like the second season is going to focus on defamation, which I think obviously that's very, very ripe for a lot of drama. And I do think at least some of the lawyers are coming back, or if not all of them, that this will be like the same team, but different clients. I love that we will get to learn more about these attorneys and various people and, and see, you know, how they handle another case. And I just think it's like, you know, anthology series, they can be very hit or miss. I think some have, some that are currently running have gone on for far longer than they should because they keep kind of like reiterating the same points over and over again.

• 14:28Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:28Aisha Harris?

  But I think this kind of anthology series, I don't know if we've seen something like this recently where it's like a legal drama. So I think that could be, usually legal dramas, at least in TV form or case of the week sort of things, right?

• 14:41Linda Holmes?

  One of the things that's interesting is that this sort of draws on what legal dramas were like in this, in the age of like LA Law and Ally McBeal and The Practice and things like that.

• 14:52Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 14:53Linda Holmes?

  Where it was always this thing where you really were following the lawyers as these different cases sort of came through.

• 14:59Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Linda Holmes?

  This one is a little more balanced between it's about the lawyers, but it's also about the people in the case. They're trying to do both things. But I do think it's interesting, you know, I look at this cast and, for example, one of the people who works at one of the firms, one of the guys who works at one of the firms is played by Nick Mohammed, who's plays Nate on Ted Lasso.

• 15:19Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 15:19Linda Holmes?

  Who's, you know, at this point, a pretty significant actor to get for your show because of the popularity of Ted Lasso and other things. But he does very, very little in this first season. He's not in it very much.

• 15:31Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Linda Holmes?

  And my first thought was like, oh, I assume he's going to do more in the second season, but they're kind of seeding him now in terms of who he is. I don't know if that's true. Like, the reason they're there is things that are going to happen in a whole future season.

• 15:45Aisha Harris?

  Yes. Nick Mohammed showing up was very fascinating. I also, we've talked about a few of the other attorneys, but I also really enjoyed seeing Celia Emery here.

• 15:54Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 15:55Aisha Harris?

  Who's playing, her character's name is Budgie, and she's kind of one of the lead, lead attorneys on the case. I loved her in better things, playing Pamela Adlon's mom, and I loved seeing her here. She, she's got like a very spicy, saucy edge to her.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  Cathcart's can get awfully grumpy. They'll try and hit you in other ways.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Take it to court, you mean?

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Take it to court, string it out, bleed you dry. And they can do that, Nick. They've got very deep pockets.

• 16:20Linda Holmes?

  You can completely believe she would be a terrifying lawyer.

• 16:22Aisha Harris?

  Absolutely. That, that's the other thing. Like, I think that the banter here and the sort of like, the dialogue here is just, it's just so juicy.

• 16:30Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Aisha Harris?

  I enjoyed, even if I didn't always understand what they were saying, because I, I always have a hard time with British accents and I was not able to, with the screeners we had, I was not able to watch it with captions. So it was a little bit, but like, what I could gather, I was like, oh, yes. I love these little jabs and these little

• 16:47Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Aisha Harris?

  notes here and there. Yeah.

• 16:48Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. And I do respect the fact that I think Dominic West has made a whole, and I wrote about this show for NPR a little bit and made this point, has kind of made a whole career out of playing men who are startled and kind of offended by experiencing the consequences of their own actions. If you, if you watched him on The Wire.

• 17:08Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Linda Holmes?

  Where he played McNulty, a cop, one of his sort of catchphrases was, what the F did I do? His whole career is sort of what the F did I do? And he was like that as Prince Charles, like it's now King Charles, but then Prince Charles on The Crown.

• 17:24Aisha Harris?

  And also The Affair. Remember The Affair?

• 17:25Linda Holmes?

  He was that way in The Affair, and he's that way in this a little bit, too.

• 17:28Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Linda Holmes?

  He's always sort of like, why is everybody mad at me?

• 17:31Aisha Harris?

  I'm a good guy.

• 17:32Linda Holmes?

  In a way, he's sort of hitting the same note, but in another way. First of all, there's a good amount of variation between those characters, but also he's just really good at it, where you can almost believe that he believes that he hasn't done anything wrong and why is everyone mad at me all the time?

• 17:48Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 17:49Linda Holmes?

  So I enjoyed seeing him kind of operate in his maybe natural habitat.

• 17:52Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. And you can kind of understand why Sienna Miller's character would have fallen for that.

• 17:57Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Aisha Harris?

  There's just something very kind of charming about it. And, you know, when they're doing the debating and litigation, and the mediation and all that stuff, it's, one of my favorite aspects of it was the fact that we get into both Carla and Morgan sort of careers and how, the way that he and his team, Morgan's team, keep kind of digging at Carla being like, not filmed, she's a movie actor.

• 18:21Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 18:22Aisha Harris?

  Like, all of this sort of condescension as to her career and her job and the fact that now she's doing like theater, which is, even though theater you would think to British people would be more legit, like it's seen as a downgrade. There's so much going on in the, the way that they talk about just the woman, her career versus his career. That was to me, one of the, also just like, again, getting beyond the surface level, it really kind of understands to some extent what it means to like be a woman and what that means to, at one point, having been the breadwinner or like the main provider and then how that switches and.

• 18:56Linda Holmes?

  That maybe this prenup that they had was originally more to protect her and now is, is more maybe to protect him.

• 19:02Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 19:02Linda Holmes?

  And how they both feel about that.

• 19:04Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Linda Holmes?

  I dug this. I thought it was really fun. It's a really kind of diverting show. It's not too heavy.

• 19:11Aisha Harris?

  No, no, no.

• 19:12Linda Holmes?

  I thought it was a lot of fun.

• 19:13Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. I think we can both agree, if you're not watching it, you should definitely check it out.

• 19:17Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Aisha Harris?

  If you're into this kind of thing. It just goes down really, really well.

• 19:21Linda Holmes?

  It does. It goes down easy.

• 19:22Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Yeah. And can't wait for season two. We shall see how that goes.

• 19:27Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:28Aisha Harris?

  All right. Well, up next, we're going to be talking about what is making us happy this week.

• 19:33Speaker 00

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• 20:54Aisha Harris?

  All right, now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week, what's making us happy. Linda, let us know.

• 21:01Linda Holmes?

  All right. So what is making me happy this week is a new Netflix documentary called Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story.

• 21:09Aisha Harris?

  Hmm.

• 21:09Linda Holmes?

  And it is directed by Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley, and it is, as you might imagine, about the comedian Maria Bamford. You know, he's kind of moved toward doing these kind of documentaries about comics and comedy.

• 21:23Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 21:23Linda Holmes?

  Recently, and he sat down with her, he kind of got her to do this. She, there's a great scene where she kind of is like, well, yeah, absolutely. You can follow me around. We'll do documentary. You have to pay me, though. She feels like if I have to be on and you're going to follow me around, then you should pay me. And so he agrees to that. And but it's all very kind of lighthearted. And then she goes on to, it intersperses, you know, looks at her life, following her around, looking at her stand-up comedy, showing clips of her stand-up comedy, going back a long way to when she was a violin act. She was comedian who also had a violin with her. And apparently, there were, there was more

• 22:02Linda Holmes?

  than one woman comedian at the time kicking around doing a violin act. It deals with the part of her life when she was a Target spokesperson, which I had forgotten that she was this Target lady.

• 22:14Aisha Harris?

  Oh.

• 22:15Linda Holmes?

  For quite a while and quite successfully, and how she came to decide to stop doing that. And she just seems to be a person everyone loves. There's a sequence when they start to talk about, the interviewers start to reveal to some of the interview subjects they're talking to, what she's doing in terms of developing material, how she's meeting up with people who agree to kind of give her an audience for material. And they just crack up laughing because they can't believe this is how she's doing it. But the affection for her is so palpable. I just think the documentary is ultimately really satisfying and lovely. Again, it's called Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story. It is streaming on Netflix. I highly recommend it. It's funny. It's sweet. It's sometimes sad, but it's, it's great.

• 22:59Aisha Harris?

  Ah, that sounds lovely, Linda. Thank you so much.

• 23:02Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. What's making you happy, Ayesha?

• 23:04Aisha Harris?

  Ah, so what's making me happy, this one is for my board game fans, my fellow board game nerds, and especially my board game nerds who love Wingspan and like myself have spent many, many hours playing Wingspan, which of course is a very fun game. That's about like collecting birds and, and hatching birds and all these fun things.

• 23:26Linda Holmes?

  I tried to learn it once and it was too complicated for me.

• 23:29Aisha Harris?

  You know what's not as complicated? Maybe, I don't know, it's FinSpan, which is from the same people, the same developer as Wingspan. FinSpan is for the marine biologists in your life. So it's fish instead of birds. And essentially, you are a marine biologist. And each turn, you like get to take a dive into different aquatic zones and attempt to hatch eggs and form schools and collect fish. It's actually like way more streamlined than Wingspan. And everyone is playing with an open hand. So there's still a lot of strategy involved, but you also have a little bit more like clarity, like you can kind of understand the machinations, I think, a little bit better, especially if you're just starting out. I

• 24:09Aisha Harris?

  think it's just different enough from Wingspan to feel worth it. The gameplay is quite different, but it still has like the same very beautiful art and cool looking fish, if you like fish. Some of them are scary, but like, some of them are scary, are not very pretty, but like, they're very well designed and detailed. The one downside to this game, I will say, is that the boards you play with are quite big. And if you have a not very big table like I do, it can be a little bit more difficult to play. I think you can play with up to five people, but my table can just barely accommodate two of us. So.

• 24:44Linda Holmes?

  Got it.

• 24:45Aisha Harris?

  That's something to keep in mind. Eventually, I will have to get a bigger table. I've needed one anyway.

• 24:50Linda Holmes?

  I was gonna say, you just gotta get a bigger table.

• 24:52Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, FinSpan is fun. I highly recommend it. I also think it would be good to play with like, young kids, if that's something you're considering. Like, I think it'll be a little bit easier than Wingspan. So.

• 25:01Linda Holmes?

  Young kids or people like me who find it too difficult.

• 25:04Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes. So that is FinSpan. You can get it wherever you would get board games. And that is what is making me happy this week. That brings us to the end of our show, Linda Holmes. It was just the two of us, but we had a blast. I had fun.

• 25:19Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely. It was wonderful to sit here with you.

• 25:21Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. This episode was produced by Hufsa Fatima, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katsev, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. And thank you for listening to Pop What You're Happy Are from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next week.

• 25:38Speaker 05

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