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Pop Culture Happy Hour: Posthumous Projects And People We're Pulling For

NPR
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This week's show finds us chatting with our pal Gene Demby of NPR's Code Switch about, among other things, posthumous projects. There are still films coming out from Paul Walker and Philip Seymour Hoffman, there's an upcoming release of Michael Jackson recordings, and life after death for musicians is practically a tradition. We talk about Kafka, J Dilla, David Foster Wallace, and the ethics of piecing together work that was unfinished or perhaps even abandoned when the artist is no longer around to say yes or no. It's a particularly wide-ranging, cross-medium examination that might make you wonder about your own personal library.

We then return to a segment we've done in the past called People We're Pulling For. Whether they're actors we want to see more of, personalities we'd like to see challenged, or artists we hope will continue to push themselves, we're pulling for all of them, really.

As always, we close the show with what's making us happy this week. Stephen is happy about a First Listen from a musician whose brain he says is always both working hard and playing around. Gene is happy about a book he fully admits he could easily become insufferable about bringing up over and over again, because he finds it just that smart. Glen is happy about Free Comic Book Day, and if you haven't yet read his preview, you absolutely should. I am happy about a book that's been entertaining me and a performance that was utterly charming.

Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: me, Stephen, Glen, Gene, producers Jessica, Lauren and Nick, and our dear pal Mike.

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.