Wicker and What’s Making Us Happy

Wicker is somehow the coziest and horniest movie of the fall. Olivia Coleman and Alexander Skarsgård star as the unlikely couple: She’s a fisherwoman who commissions a husband literally made of wicker. The newly-kindled romance upends their small medieval town, where the men are the worst and the women are — surprise surprise — bored and unsatisfied with their own husbands. Are you looking for more Alexander Skarsgård? Check out these episodes: In ‘Pillion,’ submission is the mission https://www.npr.org/2026/02/16/nx-s1-5712656/in-pillion-submission-is-the-mission 'Murderbot' envisions a caustically funny future https://www.npr.org/2025/05/20/1252435991/murderbot-envisions-a-caustically-funny-future 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We haven't even really talked very much about the fact that it is real, super horny.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very horny.

• 0:05Speaker 02

  Very horny.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  And I think the horniness of it is connected to the philosophical things in it.

• 0:10Speaker 03

  As horniness so often is.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  In the whimsical and, yes, very horny new movie, Wicker, Olivia Coleman and Alexander Skarsgård star as an unlikely couple. She's a fisherwoman who commissions a husband who's a literal wicker man.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  The newly kindled romance upends their small medieval town where the men are the worst and the women are, surprise, surprise, bored and unsatisfied with their own husbands. It's silly, it's bawdy, and we'd argue a nice cozy fall season watch. I'm Stephen Thompson.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  And I'm Aisha Harris, and we've got our core for today. Joining us are our pop culture happy hour co-hosts, Linda Holmes. Hey, Lynda.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Hello, Ayesha.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  And Glen Weldon. Hey, Glenn.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Hey, pal.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Oh, no pun. Okay, I was expecting it. I was waiting.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  I feel like we've got to pace ourselves.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  This movie disarmed me, but go ahead.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Fair, fair. Okay, I'm sure we will have more later on in this episode. So, in Wicker, Olivia Coleman is the fisherwoman, a spinster who's the laughingstock of her village. She's contentedly unmarried and she smells like fish. How dare she exist? That's basically the first few minutes of this movie.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Pretty much.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So tired of being ragged on, she enlists the local basket weaver, played by Peter Dinklage, to make her a wicker husband. He's played by Alexander Skarsgård. Much to the delight of the fisherwoman, this fibrous Swede is very sweet. Not only does he satisfy her earthy desires, but it turns out he's compassionate, thoughtful, and handy around the house.

• 1:53Speaker 04

  The bed is broken. Bring me a hammer. I will fix it.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  I just got to say, the sound design in this movie, A+, A+. Very effective. So the wicker husband, he's basically everything every other man in town is not. And the whole community weaves itself into a resentful tizzy, threatening to splinter, threatening to splinter. Yeah, yeah, yep. This fabulous scene in.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  I'm so proud of you.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  I guess she paused and backed up just to make sure.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Just to make sure.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  We didn't talk over it.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  It's in theaters now. Lynda, I'm going to start with you. Wicker? Yes, yes.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. I really enjoyed this. I mean, I think on the one hand, it is whimsical and funny and weird. And I think when the trailer first came out, people looked at Alexander Skarsgård in this really well-done getup where he is enough like a person, but he's also still clearly made of wicker. And I think the way they did that is really impressive. But at the same time, what I like about it is it does have thoughts in its head about the people who are in the story. And specifically, I liked the fact that I think the movie gives space for the idea that the women in this particular community have come to accept

• 3:18Speaker 00

  so little as the condition of being married. And that applies to everything from just kind of how they're treated. When you see a woman get married the first time in this movie, you see that they attach a collar around her neck, which is apparently.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Matrimonial collar.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Matrimonial collar, which is sort of their custom, really, to indicate that she's now being controlled and essentially owned by her husband. And nobody in the movie has a name. They really are just distinguished by things like basket maker, fisherwoman.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  The tailor's wife.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so you see that in that sense, the women are an additional degree of removed from having an identity because not only do they not have a name, but they're identified only by being the wife of their husband.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  And I think as you get into it, we'll talk more about this, but you know, the reactions of the other women and the other people in the town, as you said, are so resentful because these people are daring to have a more satisfying marriage than some of the other folks in town have.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. All right, Lynda's pro. Glenn, wicker? Yeah?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely also pro. I mean, this is a remarkably simple story. I guess I should say uncluttered, streamlined. You know, the story beats hit where you expect them to, but there is always something satisfying in that. And you know, it's not like it's a surprise, right? Because we get tipped off from the jump. The title card says, "Based on the fable by Ursula Wills." The F-word. That's a tell. Not the novel, not the short story, but the fable. And there is definitely something kind of arch, archetypal, larger-than-life. If you're being less generous, you would say broad about it. I mean, I think very intentionally the village looks like a movie set of a village, and the clothes look like costumes.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  And, you know, obviously, we're going to be satirizing patriarchal roles with the bottle washer and the basket maker that you mentioned, the matrimonial collar. You don't have to sift through this to get the message, which is why it's great that they very smartly hired Olivia Coleman, who can take the broad and narrow it down, right? So she particularizes it, she specifies it, because this is an actor who can, just with her expression, take you from the woundedness of the fisherwoman. And you can watch it transform into resolve, rage, whatever, and it happens in a few seconds. Also, Elizabeth Debicki as kind of the tailor's wife, the kind of matriarch of the town, who I think is really great here. I mean, arguably

• 5:47Speaker 02

  the most layered character in the town because she, on the page she might read as the evil stepsister, you know, comically wicked, but Debicki plays her as like the most popular girl in high school.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Who is seemingly nice and seemingly kind, but is actually condescending and narcissistic and awful. And then you've got Skarsgård, who is fresh off of playing Murderbot, another sentient construct who's trying to understand human behavior. You could argue he's doing something similar in Pillion. So I enjoyed this well enough to definitely recommend it. I mean, it's certainly whimsical. I don't think you can come out and call it twee because twee doesn't come with this many sex jokes, right? So I don't know in the end if there's enough kind of grit in the gears, meat on the bone to stick with me. But I mean, that's not the litmus test, is it?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That's totally fair. Stephen, I would love to hear your thoughts on the wicker.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Wicker? I hardly know her. I come down very similarly to Glenn, and I think defining this movie as kind of a cozy fall watch with a lot of sex jokes and a few moments of weirdness pretty well sums it up. There's a sense here, though, that I felt watching this film, and some of this is about maybe tempering my own expectations, I thought this movie might go a little harder. I thought this movie might get a little weirder. And I definitely found myself wondering what this story would have been like in the hands of a Yorgos Lanthimos or a Robert Eggers, how much stranger it might have gone. And there are hints of that here. The genius basket maker who, you know, who crafts the wicker man is played by Peter

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Dinklage, and he gets like these kind of Shakespearean monologues that are very strange and very over the top.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  He's great.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  And they, and he's kind of hinting at an untold story here, right? He's Dr. Frankenstein, and yet he's kind of shuffled off to the margins. And I definitely found myself wondering if this movie might have gone down a few more dark alleys, a little bit more thinking about like the playing god of it all, the ethics of essentially building a stoic pixie helper sex robot. And, you know, what does that end up meaning? The movie never really wrestles with any of that, leaving you with a kind of cozy, fun, fall watch. And to me, this is like a perfect afternoon streaming movie, more than a rush out to the theaters kind of thing.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. I hear you all. And I think I lean a little bit closer to Lynda's enthusiasm for this film. But I also see your point. You mentioned Yorgos Lanthimos, Stephen, and I think that's such a great comparison point. I don't even know how that didn't come into my mind, especially considering something like The Lobster is one of my favorite movies of the last, like, you know, decade or so. But to me, what came to mind was like, oh, this is kind of like Sabrina Carpenter. Like, a Sabrina Carpenter album, like, dramatized in a way because of the way, yes, it's hitting, you know, very, at this point, well-worn beats about how men are the worst and women just have to suffer. But maybe they don't have to suffer, but maybe the only way for them not to suffer is for them to create a man

• 8:56Speaker 01

  out of wicker. And then, like, I think that for me, I agree to a point that, like, I kept having these questions about the Olivia Coleman character, the fact that she does create this sentient being out of nothing who does not ask to be here, like, none of us ask to be here, for the purposes of being her husband. And the movie doesn't wrestle with those things. But I do keep coming back to, I was just entertained. Like, I found this a fun, slightly different way to examine all of the tropes and the ideas around patriarchy and the way, you know, women are willing to settle. I think one of my favorite aspects of this is there is a scene where wicker husband and fisherwoman are all like doing

• 9:41Speaker 01

  a dance with everyone else. Like, I guess it's the dance that everyone does in the village.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  Felicitations. I'm your resident fisherwoman, and this is my husband.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  May your marriage be as full and affirming as ours.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  But their dance is a little different and it kind of spins out of control because everyone else is like, you're not doing the dance the way we usually do it.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  You actually look happy to be doing this dance. What is this? And so like as an exploration of free will and Frankenstein and all those things, does it hold up? No. But I think as an exploration of like a woman finding her happiness, I thought it worked. And I thought that like it just, Olivia Coleman, again, yes, she is such a pleasure. Like she, she knows what she's doing. That's why she has an Oscar.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think the only thing I would maybe disagree slightly with you guys about is that it's brief, but I do think that they eventually tried to deal with the idea of Wicker husband having a soul of his own. You know, she does eventually acknowledge, you do not belong to me. You belong to yourself and you have to belong to yourself. And I think certainly they could have spent more time going through that. And I did sort of expect to see more time spent going through that. But I think it was enough for me that she does have an experience of being sort of chastened by the fact that she has treated him like.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  A piece of furniture.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  More than, yeah. She has treated him more like a possession.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  I think at that moment in the story, there is an interesting tension between, on the one hand, yes, it is wonderful for her that she finally has someone in her life who cares for her. The, the clip that we played earlier where he says he's going to fix the bed because it broke. Yeah, it broke. Um, there's a look that came across her face that I thought was so tender and lovely because it wasn't to me a look of, holy smokes, this is great. I don't have to do anything around the house anymore. It was, someone is going to do something besides me. And she has, I think, had to be so completely self-sufficient.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  It's not that she can't be self-sufficient. It's that when somebody says, I will help you, I will join you in living in this house and doing these things. I thought the look on her face was magical at that moment. And I think although, yes, I agree, Peter Dinklage is, is great in this, I wouldn't really want to go down the, the path of it being about him and about the ethics of what he's doing, because I think that is just kind of taken as, as read in the, in the story, that this is something that he knows how to do and that he does not do this viciously or out of ego. He genuinely does it to try to be helpful. He's one of the few people, even before he makes the Wicker husband for her,

• 12:43Speaker 00

  he's one of the few people who's kind to her even before that.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  And so to me, I appreciated it having, yes, it has, as Glenn was saying, a fairly blunt, you know, message delivery system about the, the things it's trying to do. But I think that's what fables are, right?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Well, yes.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  You know, fables are not typically opaque. Fables have something that they are meant to convey. And I think it was interesting to me that here, what they're conveying is not just what we've been talking about, about, you know, women accept so little and men are terrible. It's that when people see other people who are happy, sometimes their response to that is to translate their envy into viciousness.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yes. She's not welcomed by the other women in the community by like, this is wonderful. I'm so happy for you. I wish I had a man like that. Even though that's what they're thinking, it ends up being translated through this sense of resentment and seething that I think is real. And I appreciated the fact that that was one of the places that the film went.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. But one of the tensions, I think we're all picking up on the same tension, but we're reacting to it in slightly different ways, is that I think this film sets out to be the Fisherwoman story because she's the one with the agency. She makes choices, good and bad. And she's the one who emerges, you know, fundamentally changed in the end. And she does finally answer the question, you know, can she let herself accept love? That's great. But is this love or is it servitude? That's a, that's a question I had driving home from the, from the movie, not in the movie.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  But did it ever seem to you like this movie wanted to be the Wicker husband story, but it's not equipped for it because he's not equipped for it? He's a creation. He's got no agency. He is acted upon entirely through this movie. And so, yeah, you're going to pick up on a not too subtle science fiction AI metaphor, which we're getting more and more of. Uh, he always just acts on his programming. So is this an empowering feminist fable? Or is this the story of someone falling for a medieval ye olde chatbot, right? Is this Lars and the real patio furniture?

• 14:53Speaker 03

  I, I thought about AI a lot watching this.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. But I also think to Linda's point, and I realize now I have this line that the Peter Dinklage character, the basket weaver, says to the Fisherwoman about what he built for her and how she's treating the thing that he built for her. And it is admonishing. It is like, yes, this thing is made of wicker. He is made of wicker, but also you can't treat it like your, your, your little plaything. This is not furniture. Like you need to realize that it has feelings. Um, which of course then gets in, if we're going to talk about AI, then that gets into some really tricky territory because like AI is not sentient. It is not. But like, at the same time, I just, I, I do think that, is she the villain

• 15:38Speaker 01

  of the story? Yes, I think for parts of it. But that's what makes it complicated and I think makes it a little bit more, at least for me, sticky and interesting is the fact that like, I don't think we're supposed to necessarily always side with the Fisherwoman being correct. I think, you know, we are supposed to have more empathy for the Wicker than I think the, the opening of this movie might suggest.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  And I think the more you see kind of them have conflict and her end up acknowledging that she was wrong, in a sense, that's, I think that lends him a greater degree of humanity and, and some separation from her. And what's fascinating is there's a conversation where the Wicker husband is talking to some of the other men in town and they start asking him about why he does all this stuff around the house. Why does he help? Why is he constantly like trying to improve the house and stuff like that? And on the surface, you know, because, because what he says is basically it makes her happy and then I'm happy. And it's, you

• 16:41Speaker 00

  can see that as kind of, as Glenn said, is that servitude. And I thought, sure, but in real relationships, in real life, between human beings, that that happens, right? I do this for this person because it makes them happy and that makes me happy. It's not as clean as I do something for someone else and it makes them happy and I, you don't have to say I get nothing from it, you know, to be acting out of your humanity. So to me, the fact that he recognizes it makes me happy, makes it feel a bit more to me like they do have a relationship in which, I mean, I took it as, at, at his word, that

• 17:25Speaker 00

  he's genuinely happy, whereas there's no such thing as an AI being happy, in my opinion.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  I get that.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the, where our mileage just varies is that like, yes, there's that, but then there's also, the only reason he exists is more or less for that exact reason?

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Oh, of course.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Like, you know, and, and he, again, he would not be here if it weren't for her asking for this.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  And I, and I, I thought about this a lot because I did feel a certain amount of ick about that at the beginning of the movie, right? Can you really love something that has no independent desires from, from you? And I think that's a very, very fair question. But I think it changes the shape of it for me that she asks the basket maker to create this husband for her, not only because I want, I want, I want, and no one picks me, but because marriage as it exists with the real men in her community is profoundly dehumanizing to her. And that's why she is unwilling to accept it on the terms that it's being offered. So it's sort of like, I do not want to be by myself. I want to

• 18:33Speaker 00

  be married. However, the conditions of the patriarchy and the rules of marriage in my community are unacceptable to me. So it's, to me, it's more similar to if you lived in a very isolated community and you decided to go outside of your community to find someone, that to me was more similar to her motivation than I want you to make me a husband out of wicker because I want him to do whatever I say without any resistance. Do you know what I mean?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And where the movie supports your interpretation, Linda, is in that scene where he's in the bar and he says, it makes her happy, so it makes me happy. And the men of the village interpret that as sex. Oh, yes, that means, that means sex.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  And that's not what he means. And that's, that's what the movie's about, I guess.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  I also want to just call out how, how beautifully designed the Wicker man is. Just, just the gorgeous, gorgeous kind of tactile nature of it. And, you know, the, and of course, the sound design of this film. I mean, there is a scene very early in this film in which it's kind of the first, you know, uh, woman on wicker love, love scene. And the sound design of the kind of creaking that takes place with arousal. Look, I'm 54. I get it. Uh, but, but it's so clever. And like, they, they do a really, I think, beautiful job with just kind of the, this physical presence.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. There are shots where you can see firelight or sunlight kind of pouring through.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  It's just really kind of beautiful.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  And yeah, you're right, Stephen. The, the Foley artist does go full ham early on. It kind of settles down a bit a while.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  I enjoyed that.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's, we haven't even really talked very much about the fact that it is real super horny.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  When you hear people talking about the fact that it's real super horny, if you sit there and you think, I feel like on P C A J's, they're talking a lot about it more philosophically. Did they not find it as horny as a, it's very horny.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very horny.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  And, and I think the horniness of it is connected to the philosophical things in it.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  As horniness so often is.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  The fact, the fact that Glenn pointed out, they don't mean, he doesn't mean sex when he says it makes her happy, doesn't mean he doesn't want to make her happy having sex with her because he does. And that is a big part of their relationship, especially early on. So yeah, give it a shot. It's funny. It's horny. I think Peter Dinklage is particularly really well tuned to this fable sort of frequency.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yep. If you've missed his dodgy British accent, here it is, baby.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And if you don't, if you don't care to think about the logistics of any of that too much in terms of the horniness and how that plays out, you can also just dive into this. Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  I assume that there's just an amount of impeccable sanding.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Mmm, sanding, yes, softening, yes, yes.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Ribbed for her pleasure.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  On that note, up next, we will be talking about what's making us happy this week.

• 21:42Speaker 06

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• 23:11Speaker 01

  All right, now it's time for our favorite segment of this week, and every week, what's making us happy. Glenn, I'm going to start with you. What's making you happy?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Man Explains Everything is an online account. I get it on Instagram, but you can get it on TikTok and Facebook. There's a YouTube channel. It's this animated British professor. He's bald, he's got a big bushy mustache, and he condescendingly and witheringly explains things to you about natural history, human history. And so the vibe of this is, you know, you've never stopped to think about this thing, and I'm disappointed in you for that. And then he'll toss out an insult, he'll call you a decorative gourd, and he ends every video by saying, now, get out. And I understand that the notion of being mansplained to you by someone who thinks they're smarter than you are is a niche interest.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And for maybe, what, 52% of the population, they'd be like, I don't want to do that. It's like a Tuesday for me. Why would I, why would I want that?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  What movie did we just talk about, Glenn?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  But this is funny, and it's smart. And, you know, as a recovering scientist, it's responsible, because there's a lot of AI slop out there, and influencer accounts that are trying to do this science explanation thing. But this one cites sources, cites actual studies, links to them, and is upfront whenever scientists don't agree about a certain point, which not a lot of these folks do. So, not for nothing, it's a human doing the drawing, it's a human writing the script, there's a real voice actor reading the script. That is, Man Explains Everything on various platforms, including the YouTube.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thank you so much, Glenn. Stephen, what is making you happy?

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Well, today marks the release of maybe my favorite hip-hop album of the year. It's a collaboration between Anderson Paak and Cordae. It's called Heavy Is the Crown. It is an absolute gem from start to finish. There is so much to like here. It's breezy, it's nostalgic, it's funny. Paak and Cordae are really like embedded with each other in every song. They're sharing the spotlight constantly. They're swapping verses, and sometimes they're even just like swapping bars. Throughout these songs, they have this undeniable chemistry. And this whole album is barely a half hour, not a shred of fat on the bone. But what I love the most about it is the way that this record is playing

• 25:29Speaker 03

  with nostalgia. You can hear it right away in the album's first single, "A Good Day."

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Now, you might have been able to pick up that this song is "Interpolating Lovely Day" by Bill Withers, but the nostalgia runs deeper than that. These songs are full of little stories. They kind of take turns piling on details in a way that actually calls back to a lot of rap from the 80s. You can feel echoes of kind of classic story songs, like "Just a Friend" and "Parents Just Don't Understand." Nothing about this, though, is corny. It still feels contemporary. Their rhymes are sharp and packed with pop culture references. The beats are springy and timeless. The whole thing just explodes with personality. That is, Anderson Paak and Cordae, their new album is called Heavy Is the Crown.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  I'm so excited to listen to this.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  Aisha, you are going to love this record.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  I know. I think Anderson Paak is one of the great collaborators of our time. Like, every time he collaborates with another artist, whether it's, you know,

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Bruno Mars.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Bruno, Mariah, like, he's just very good at that, so.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  He's very good at it, but I think this record is nostalgic for a lot of what you're nostalgic for. I think you're going to love this record.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yay, nostalgia. We love it. Put it in my veins. Okay, Linda, what is making you happy?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Well, you might think that you have heard absolutely everything there is to hear about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, given the release of You Can See Everything. I've been so happy to see some work being done that is kind of complimentary commentary and feedback from people who were more involved in reporting out that story as it was actually happening. Because, if you listen to our episode, you know this, one of my concerns about it is that it doesn't necessarily reflect a full understanding of what she, it wouldn't necessarily give you a full understanding of what she was accused of doing. So, in The New York Times, there is a piece by John Kerryru, who did the original reporting in The Wall Street Journal, that did a lot of the work to kind of begin to bring down

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Theranos. He also wrote a book called Bad Blood, which is really terrific and gripping. And he wrote a great piece in which he kind of says, this is a really good movie, because you can tell that everything she says in it is a lie. To him, it's very obvious that she's lying about far more than I think. There's a whole bit in the movie that's gotten a lot of attention about her watching Who's on First, and, and, I don't understand it, I don't get it. He personally looked at that and said, she's not telling the truth about that. She gets it fine. And again, this is his viewpoint, right?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  So he's not necessarily right about that. But I thought it was so helpful to have the perspective of somebody who has a different, you know, view toward her, sees her through the lens of years and years of, of reporting and attention. Similarly, one of the whistleblowers came out and said, like, I think this is a really good movie. Please understand, it's not a documentary. Which, you know, again, that's his opinion, right?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  So I just have felt that those things restored, to me internally, some balance about what is out there that kind of helps people process that movie who may be inclined to think, like, gee, it's really hard to tell, you know, what she's thinking. And these are, these are people who sort of disagree that it's hard to tell. And I found their input fascinating, and I was really, really glad that they had that input. So that's the piece in The New York Times by John Kerryru, and some commentary on social media by Tyler Schultz, who is one of the whistleblowers. And that is what's making me extremely happy this week.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thanks so much, Linda. Well, what is making me happy this week is an album I've been listening to pretty much nonstop for the last couple of weeks. It is Tinashe's Pop Star. I am so obsessed with this album. I've been a huge fan of her since 21, which was kind of her breakout hit years ago. But, and then she keeps evolving, and I think this might be her best work yet. I'm hearing so many influences. I'm hearing Velvet Rope-era Janet, I'm hearing Rihanna, I'm hearing some Britney, some Joan Jett. Like, it's kind of all over the place, sonically, but she's also using her voice in different ways, and she's tackling different topics than I think she usually does about just

• 30:06Speaker 01

  like, people not wanting to dance anymore. And like, she is one of our few remaining actually dancing pop stars. We don't have too many of those today who actually do choreography and are actual dancers. And-

• 30:18Speaker 03

  That's some Tate McRae erasure.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Who?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Tate McRae.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Who? Anyway.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  I'm aware of her work.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  I was going to say, I'm pretty sure it was intentional erasure there, Stephen. I'm taking that away from this.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  I don't know her, to quote someone, another one. No, Tinashe, she is just, like, Pop Star is such a, every song is a great hit. I think the highlight for me, though, is Cloud Nine, which, to me, is kind of like, it sounds like a spiritual successor to Crazy in Love, if Crazy in Love, like, went into outer space. Let's just hear a little bit of Cloud Nine.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's Tinashe. I'm so happy for her. I'm happy that she made this for all of us to enjoy. And Stephen, I think you're a fan of this, too, right?

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Oh, she's great.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Love Tinashe. Listen to Pop Star. It will make you very happy. And that is what's making me happy this week, for a lot of weeks. That brings us to the end of our show, a show full of lots of puns and horniness and all those things. Stephen Thompson, Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, thanks so much for being here. This was so much fun. Thank you.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, Hufsa Fatima, Kaden Mills, and Mike Katsoth, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Kim provides our theme music. And thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next week.

• 32:02Speaker 06

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