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Pop Culture Happy Hour: Jingle Madness And Oscar Gold

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NPR

If last week's Oscars-themed Pop Culture Happy Hour was unusually meaty and structured, this week's post-Oscars podcast is about as loose and goofy as we get, thanks to a lack of sleep, the awards season hangover, and the fact that panelist Stephen Thompson is elbow-deep (probably neck-deep by now) in preparations for the South By Southwest music festival.

Thus, we made this week into what we declared an "earworm war," in which we tried to get at the ins and outs of the lost art of the commercial jingle. Will Glen recognize a horrible Philly relic of my youth? What are the advantages of spiking your jingle with contact information? How many pieces of tape can our peerless, fearless producer Jess Gitner cram into one podcast without losing her mind or causing you to lose yours?

Of course, we also will round up the Oscars telecast in a somewhat abbreviated fashion, from the speeches to the jokes to the performances — although I didn't have a lot to say beyond what I've already said on the topic. You can certainly relive the entire thing through out live blog, as well, if you missed it.

As always, we close with what's making us happy this week. For Stephen, it's an unusual video meme. Trey acknowledges that for him, it's really just the joy of not having to think about awards season for a while. For Glen, it's a conversation between two big personalities. And for me, it's a neat article by a writer I like a lot (who wrote a book I love).

Please keep in touch with us — you can find us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter: me, Trey, Glen, Stephen, Jess, and our producer emeritus and music director Mike.

Copyright 2020 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.