Aisha Harris
Aisha Harris is a host of Pop Culture Happy Hour.
From 2012 to 2018, Harris covered culture for Slate Magazine as a staff writer, editor and the host of the film and TV podcast Represent, where she wrote about everything from the history of self-care to Dolly Parton's (formerly Dixie) Stampede and interviewed creators like Barry Jenkins and Greta Gerwig. She joined The New York Times in 2018 as the assistant TV editor on the Culture Desk, producing a variety of pieces, including a feature Q&A with the Exonerated Five and a deep dive into the emotional climax of the Pixar movie Coco. And in 2019, she moved to the Opinion Desk in the role of culture editor, where she wrote or edited a variety of pieces at the intersection of the arts, society and politics.
Born and raised in Connecticut, she earned her bachelor's degree in theatre from Northwestern University and her master's degree in cinema studies from New York University.
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The new film Saturday Night attempts to capture the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the very first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Untried producer Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) and his cast of complete unknowns prepare to make television history. At the same time, network suits breathe down their necks, and just about everything that can go wrong does. -
The word "basic" often gets thrown around to describe anything that's mainstream, popular, frictionless, or otherwise inoffensive. But sometimes basic stuff is just what we crave, whether it's a binge-watch, a popular song, or a pumpkin spice latte. It's fall, so today we're talking about what we're calling... Pop Culture Pumpkin Spice Lattes. -
We're in a pretty critical election year. And in times like these, a lot of us are turning to political comedy to help make sense of (and fun of) the bizarre, ongoing news cycle. Today on the show, we're talking about how late night comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The Daily Show are speaking to the moment. -
The off-beat psycho dramedy A Different Man follows Edward (Sebastian Stan), an aspiring actor living with facial disfigurement. He takes an opportunity to try a new procedure and reconstruct his appearance. But then, he encounters a guy with the same condition he once had, and who lives a fun, fulfilling life. To put it mildly, Edward now has some regrets. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour -
The latest season of HBO's Industry was over the top. The drama is about backstabbing, morally compromised investment bankers. But it managed to make its characters even more backstabb-y and ethically dubious than ever before. Frenemies fought hard. Buried vices and addictions came to light. And death hovered over the entire season in shocking fashion. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour -
Industry is less concerned with whether its characters are “likable” and more interested in how they get what they want. In the Season 3 finale, those ambitions reached their inevitable – sometimes gruesome – conclusions. -
Each week, guests and hosts on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour share what's bringing them joy. This week: The show How to Die Alone, the book You Gotta Eat, and Batman on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. -
Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary filmmaker behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, is back with his first new film in over a decade. It reimagines the fall of Rome through a futuristic American city, and has a lot of big and messy ideas about time and the fate of humanity. It's also jam-packed with stars like Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and Aubrey Plaza. We try to make sense of it all. -
The Substance is a bloody, campy, fiercely feminist body horror film. Demi Moore plays a TV aerobics instructor desperate to stay in the spotlight. She learns of a mysterious drug she can inject that causes another, younger, entirely separate version of herself (Margaret Qualley) to splurt out of her back and assume her consciousness. They must switch back and forth or very bad bloody things will happen. -
What would you do if you met your future self, who's a couple of decades older and maybe a little wiser? Would you freak out? In the delightful new movie My Old Ass, a teenager named Elliott (Maisy Stella) faces this very scenario. Her older self is played by Aubrey Plaza, and she's got some advice to impart. But her younger self may or may not take it.
