Our 12 favorites moments of 2024

By Linda Holmes,

Stephen Thompson, Aisha Harris, Glen Weldon, Mike Katzif, Jessica Reedy

Published December 11, 2024 at 9:20 AM EST

Sabrina Carpenter performs at the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

We check out a lot of things in a given year: Lots of movies, TV shows, and music. Today, we are highlighting some of the best pop culture moments we enjoyed the most in 2024.

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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.

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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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