MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Arts & Culture Stories from NPR

• What's making us happy: A guide to your weekend reading, listening and viewing
  Each week, the guests and hosts on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour share what's bringing them joy. This week: Lizzo playing James Madison's flute, Usher's thirst traps, and more.
• Trevor Noah's 'Daily Show' departure hints at deeper problems in late night TV
  Noah increasingly looked like a performer who was growing beyond the grind of a late-night Comedy Central show. If he doesn't find a new perch in the genre, the industry will be all the worse for it.
• 'Bros' offers lots of laughs — plus a serious commentary on queer identity
  Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane star in a nuanced comedy about how opposites can attract and also learn from each other. Bros means to send you out of the theater in a good mood — and it does.
• 'Mercury Rising' explores treacherous U.S. attempts to control space
  Historian Jeff Shesol recalls the early days of the space program, when Cold War fears ruled and no one knew if John Glenn would survive America's first orbital flight. Originally broadcast June 2021.
• Trevor Noah said he is leaving The Daily Show. Take a look at some memorable moments
  Noah announced Thursday he is leaving the show, seven years after he took over as host from Jon Stewart.
• Raymond Antrobus uses spoken word poetry to portray a diverse experience of sound
  The First Time I Wore Hearing Aids aims to make sound more inclusive for listeners by broadening the way in which we experience it.
• In a bio-engineered dystopia, 'Vesper' finds seeds of hope
  In the sci-fi drama Vesper, the title character is a 13 year old bio-hacker who lives in a future where humankind has wiped out all edible plants.
• 'Luda' isn't a book you read — it's a book you experience
  Luda is a magical, multilayered, intoxicating story about identity, stardom, performance, lust, and death that could only have come from the prodigious mind of Grant Morrison.
• How one Filipino American artist influenced the work of a generation of others
  When Carlos Villa asked about Filipino artists as a student he was told: there weren't any.
• Ginger Root's Cameron Lew wants his new EP to showcase city pop as familiar yet fresh
  NPR's Juana Summers talks with Cameron Lew of the band Ginger Root about his new EP Nisemono and the vintage Japanese pop that inspires his sound.