Arts & Culture

Step outside your comfort zone: pop culture that changed our minds

WSHU | By Aisha Harris,

Published April 11, 2025 at 2:17 PM EDT

Regina King in Watchmen. — Regina King in *Watchmen*.

At a certain point, most of us settle into a groove with our pop culture consumption. We know what we love and what we're not into. But sometimes, all it takes is one great outlier or a willingness to step outside our comfort zone to make us reconsider what we don't like. Today we're talking about our pop culture revelations, including Friday Night Lights, Train to Busan, the poetry of Mary Oliver, and Watchmen.

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Aisha Harris

Aisha Harris is a host of Pop Culture Happy Hour.

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Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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Glen Weldon

Glen Weldon is a host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. He reviews books, movies, comics and more for the NPR Arts Desk.

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