Pop Culture Happy Hour: Fall Television, With Donald Trump And Zombies

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On this week's show, Stephen Thompson offers an update on the Big Bachelor Pad Recap Giveaway we kicked off last week. It turns out that answering your e-mails has been rather an involved project. (Of which he is loving every minute.)

We then devote most of today's show to a discussion loosely structured around fall television's premiere week. We'll talk about some of the shows we're eager to see back and some of the new shows making us curious. (And no, we're not doing much more Lone Star, or more Community and Modern Family — we tried to branch out from the shows we've been conspicuously in love with before.)

Naturally, this is only the loosest of structures — we use this as an excuse to discuss Donald Trump and his plan to fix the economy, how your life is going when you find yourself selling cupcakes out of a truck, where Bret Michaels falls on our personal continuum of badness, and that scene in Shawshank Redemption where they play opera to the inmates. (It's all very complicated.)

All this, plus some updates on where we stand on rectifying Stephen's self-imposed illiteracy and my unfamiliarity with Middle Earth.

So join me, Stephen Thompson, Glen Weldon, Trey Graham, and our silent but indispensable producer Mike Katzif. And if you want Pop Culture Happy Hour in your ear every week, subscribe to NPR's arts podcast Culturetopia, and you'll get NPR arts stories as well as the kicky music that means, every week, that it's Happy Hour again.