Linda Holmes
Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.
Holmes was a writer and editor at Television Without Pity, where she recapped several hundred hours of programming — including both High School Musical movies, for which she did not receive hazard pay. Her first novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over, was published in the summer of 2019.
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In HBO Max's The Pitt, an ER full of doctors, nurses and staff are put through tense, high-stakes shifts. The second season is close to an end, and it's clear that everyone, including attending physician Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) is stretched very, very thin. -
Steve Carell is a writer of pulpy crime novels and a hapless new writing teacher at a small college in the HBO comedy series Rooster. -
In the Prime Video series Scarpetta, Nicole Kidman plays a tough, smart medical examiner whose latest murder case is entangled with a much earlier one. -
It's thrilling to see the Academy recognize a weird, funny, scary performance like Amy Madigan's in Weapons. Here's what NPR critic Linda Holmes thought of the awards. -
An Academy Award in Best Casting will be the newest prize at the Oscars in March. An NPR panel examines what an achievement in casting might mean.
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Sit down with pop culture critic Linda Holmes as she watches the 2026 Winter Games. She is exhausted by cross-country, says "ow ow ow" during moguls, and makes the case, once and for all, for curling. -
James Van Der Beek, who played heartthrob Dawson Leery on "Dawson's Creek," died Wednesday at 48 years old.
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The first season of The Pitt was about acute problems. The second is about chronic ones. -
Up First Winter Games brings you the latest news and culture from the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. -
Sinners landed a record number of nods, while Avatar: Fire and Ash and Wicked: For Good fell short of their franchise predecessors.
