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Pop Culture Happy Hour: Live From The Bell House, Part 2

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Last week, we brought you the first half of the live show we recently held at the Bell House in Brooklyn, featuring producer emeritus Mike Katzif and a conversation about what we'll take away from this summer and what's to come this fall. This week, we have the second half, packed full of special guests and good pals and quizzes that are, in some cases, very difficult, apparently. You'll learn more than you wanted to know about television, shoes, teeth, Susan Anton, super dogs, fighting cats, and the deep, deep insecurities that lie within us all.

First up, we have a hard-fought battle between Stephen and Glen of Team PCHH and Ophira Eisenberg and Jonathan Coulton of Team Ask Me Another. Can Stephen and I redeem ourselves from our humiliating performance at an AMA event here at NPR last year?

Oh, you never heard it? By all means, let us share it with you.

Listen to the Abject Humiliation Of It All

Next up, we invite my former Television Without Pity colleagues Sarah Bunting, now the east coast editor of Previously.TV, and Joe Reid, now entertainment editor at The Wire, to answer a bunch of questions about old and obscure television. Will they be able to tell the real variety show acts from the fake ones? Can they guess what a show called Small & Frye was about?

As if that weren't enough, we hold a competition between two media giants: our pal Parul Sehgal, an editor at the New York Times Book Review, and the marvelous Josh Gondelman, web producer (and Twitter voice) for Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.

Finally, we wrap up with what you all really are eager to hear, which is a very difficult Glen quiz about superhero animals, with which a couple of audience members were kind enough to jump in and help out.

We are eternally grateful to everyone who came to the show, everyone who was in the show, everyone who listens to the show, everyone who helped us put on the show, everyone at the Bell House, everyone at NPR, everyone in New York, everyone in Washington, everyone on the internet, and especially the place where we got barbecue for dinner before the show, because that was really good.

Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: me, Stephen, Glen, Mike, and producer Jessica. We'll be back with regular shows starting next week, despite the fact that I'll be exploring the wonderful films of Toronto, and we hope you'll all be with us.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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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