Aisha Harris
Appearances
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What women want: to embrace their inner monsters
This balance is not working! I barely have any time to enjoy myself while she wastes seven days stuffing her face in front of the TV!
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
Remember Spitgate? Remember Spitgate? Oh my God.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
You're welcome. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
For better and to some extent for worse, we come to pop culture with all of our baggage. And Code Switch's B.A. Parker.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
The furthest back I can go of a recent example of this is Wicked. Wasn't even coming from, you know, Randall's On the Internet or Strange on the Internet. I imagine both of you saw A Strange Loop, the really great Broadway show by Michael R. Jackson. I'm familiar with it, but I haven't seen it. So he had some very interesting opinions on Wicked.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
And he actually wound up writing about this around the time of the Oscars in The New York Times. He wrote an opinion piece about titled, Is Wicked Really a Resistance Musical? He's kind of going after people who, when Wicked came out, were claiming that it was very relevant to our times and And Wicked came out like maybe a couple of weeks after Trump was elected.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
So people were, you know, tying threads together to call Wicked a musical that is representative of our times. And Michael R. Jackson basically wrote like he calls this progressive magical thinking and that people are trying to reclaim Wicked as like this resistance musical when it's not actually Wicked. And to me, that's kind of inaccurate.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
I'm not saying that Wicked is necessarily a super radical piece of theater or as a movie, but the novel that it's based off of is incredibly political. It's very different from the musical, and it is intended to be an allegory. And I will also say, the production notes for Wicked, they literally say that it is a show about the quiet, insidious rise of a fascist movement...
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
that seeks to demonize the intelligent speaking animals of Oz, end quote. So whether or not you believe that it's actually resistant is one thing, but I think it is like inherently a political piece. of movie and show in a way that, like, I'm not sure Jackson is willing to give credit for. But that's a really fascinating read.
It's Been a Minute
Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
This is something that I've written about and thought about a lot, which is that for better and to some extent for worse, we come to pop culture with all of our baggage, all of ourselves, and especially women.
It's Been a Minute
Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
In the age of the Internet, when we are all kind of identifying amongst groups and demographics, whether it's like I'm a Trekkie or I'm a Harry Potter fan or I'm whatever, it's like everything becomes super personal. And you often think about things from your perspective and then you project your perspective onto others. film, TV, whatever, in ways that maybe aren't always there.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
They don't actually exist, but you are bringing it to whatever piece of art you're consuming. And there's some good that can come out of that. Queer and people of color fans who have inserted themselves into lab culture in that way. And I think those things are not disconnected. I think about something like Joker, the first movie, which came out in 2019.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
And how that movie, like, depending on where you were on the political spectrum or how you view things, like, there were some people who viewed the Joaquin Phoenix character as an incel, as, like, the worst kind of thing. And then there were other fans who were like, what are you talking about? This movie is, like, it's the greatest thing ever.
It's Been a Minute
Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
And Todd Phillips, he's the one who directed the film. He had to come out several times and kind of talk about it and how he claimed, like, it's not a political film. And it's like, come on, man. Of course it's a political film. Like, yeah. You can't backtrack there.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
It's straight up denial. So it's like these things can get out of hand and you have to acknowledge that and acknowledge that people are going to interpret it in different ways. First of all, everything is political in some way. It's just some are more overtly so. So I think everyone's just bringing something different to these movies.
It's Been a Minute
Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
And with social media, people are able to share that more readily than they were 30 years ago.
It's Been a Minute
Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
How the hunt for gangster Al Capone launched the IRS to power.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
There are clues, but if you are half watching on your phone, you're going to miss it. And so is it media literacy in the sense of like people are watching and just not picking up what is being put down? Or is it also just like they are literally not even seeing it half the time?
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
In the same way, right? Like I think about that story about Katie Couric and The Pit, right? It's like there are clues, but if you are half watching on your phone, you're going to miss it. And so is it media literacy in the sense of like people are watching and just not picking up what is being put down? Or is it also just like they are literally not even seeing it half the time?
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
And The Pit is the type of show that you like kind of need to give all your attention to because –
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
it's not giving you everything it's not it's not Grey's Anatomy it's not broad it's not but that's also like very direct of like choose me love me yeah exactly you don't you do not you do not have these big grand pronouncements of love or lust or whatever it's all taking place in a single day so like only so much can happen yeah even the way it duels out information is a way that like I think a lot of modern audiences are perhaps not attuned to or used to
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
getting information, which is usually like those big grand pronouncements. And instead, it's like it comes out in the way it would if you were actually there on that first day. Like you wouldn't learn everything about this one doctor in two seconds. Like that's not how it works.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
Yeah, I think we're already in the abyss. It's just like, how long are we going to wait here? And when are we going to pull ourselves out? I mean, I even just think about sort of this same idea of how we all project our different ideas and beliefs onto our pop culture. I think about Luigi Mangione and how there have been such differing reactions to what he does. is accused of having done.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
He's currently on trial for the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, and how, depending on your algorithm, you might be fed a bunch of stuff that's very pro-Luigi and in support of him, or gushing over how hot you think he might be. And you could be on the other end of things. And I think that it's the same side of the same coin, right? The same thing allegedly happened
It's Been a Minute
Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
And everyone has a different opinion to it and ascribes a different meaning to it. And I do think that this is it's not that dissimilar from the way we consume our pop culture, which is that like, you know, deciding whether or not a character was right or wrong to do what they did.
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Pop culture has a "bean soup problem."
Even something like The Last of Us, like all the sort of like hand wringing over Joel and played by Pedro Pascal and like what he did. There are two sides to every story. And I'm all for debate. But also sometimes what's right in front of us is what's right in front of us.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Yes.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Very millennial movie, it felt like. Yeah.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
I echo a lot of what both Brittany and Corey have said. The thing I came away with from this movie is that making intentional comedy is really, really hard. One of my favorite scenes involves a moment where they... These two characters, they try to go to this payday loan type of place.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
And this is a very astute observation about the way these places are predatory and really, really try to just entrap people. And there's a great back and forth between the two leads and then... A comedic actress who I think you've seen pop up in a lot of your favorite shows. She's in Curb Your Enthusiasm. She's also in Abbott Elementary a little bit.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
She was on an episode of It's Been a Minute on NPR. Oh, yes.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Yes, yes. She plays Kathy. So she's an agent at this payday loan center. And she has no sympathy for their plight. Are you having a heart attack? I've never seen a credit score this low.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
You're denied. You're void. I wish there were more moments like this because there's so many great character actors who pop up in this movie. That I feel like the bits were not quite hanging together in the way I'd like it to. It just felt as though there were moments where the banter could have been faster. It felt shaggy in places.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
And that can be endearing, right? This is clearly trying to evoke an older kind of Black culture. comedy. I'm thinking of Friday. I'm thinking of Three Strikes, if you all remember that movie. Oh, whoa, throwback. Yes, yes, yes. Directed by DJ Pooh, was always on BET from like 2000 to 2010.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
It has that shaggy, like very kind of low budget, but also very crude at times humor that, you know, your mileage may vary. But overall, I did enjoy it. And I agree that they, you know, SZA and Kiki, they could Put them in more movies. I love it.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
But it didn't quite have the same energy and pacing and tightness of something like Girls Trip, which is like, I'm sorry, I'm just always going to keep coming back to that movie as like one of the standard bearers of what a R-rated comedy starring Black people can look like. Like that to me is one of the pinnacles. And it didn't quite have that energy in the way that I wanted it to.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
But yeah, I'm curious, Stephen, about your thoughts about this movie.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Who chooses the wrong men. Yeah.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Yes, that is true. I literally wrote in my notes, Drew needs to dump Alyssa. Why are you friends with her? In all caps. That's what I wrote.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Yes, yeah. I also saw it at like two o'clock on a Thursday, but maybe just because I'm in Oakland, but like my theater was pretty packed. They were enjoying it. My crowd was enjoying it. And it was probably, I'd say the majority of the people were Black and or over the age of 30. So like do with that what you will. But I think there was a lot of nostalgia.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
I could sense like people were like, they were into it, right? Like, and it's also, it's California. So it's like, there's just a lot of little Things about California and L.A. specifically that I think a lot of people in my crowd could relate to perhaps in a way that Steven, you're – well, there are only three people in there. But, you know. Yeah.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
I mean, Issa Rae produced this. So like, of course, there's going to be two to three different very good looking men.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
I mean, I can't claim. I mean, California is a big place. Yes. And also, I've only lived here for like four and a half years. So I'm not I'm not here to like I don't want anyone who's actually like from L.A. to be like, you don't know anything about this place. I did get a sense from especially again, this goes back to the movie Friday.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Like you have all these different types of personalities and everyone knows everyone or is like two or three degrees away from someone. I thought Aziza Scott, who plays Big Booty Bernice. She was a character and she was sometimes kind of a caricature, but I still enjoyed that because there are people who are just, they are, that's who they are.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
The Joshua David Neal who plays Keyshawn, Alyssa's boyfriend. Deadbeat boyfriend.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
Everyone just felt real. And the sense of the place where they actually live, the apartment where they live and how they have the older woman who's kind of the mother figure in the place. Shout out to Vanessa Bell Calloway.
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Need a laugh in these trying times? 'One of Them Days' is the comedy for you
It just, it felt like the little that I've experienced of LA and what I've experienced of living in the Bay, it felt true in a way. And I would expect nothing less from Issa Rae because, you know, again, she's producing this and LA is her home. And she, most of the things she does are like love letters to LA in a way. And I don't think this is any different.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Yeah. I mean, we saw, we can look at the boomer generation, for example, as heavily subsidized by government programs of highway building, of housing loan subsidies that provided a whole generation with cheap houses that they can own. a whole road complex that they could drive on and enjoy. And we see the whole lifestyle that's built on that, right?
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
There was a whole generation that came to understand itself in relation to cars and the highway system, for example. And that was heavily subsidized by the state decision to build that highway system. So I don't think we're the Uber generation because we loved cars. taking Ubers or whatever.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
We were the Uber generation because capitalists saw an advantage in investing tons and tons and tons of money in these cab services. And we absorbed that and it changed our lifestyle. And that's where that money went. And the bill has come due and now We're a generation that spends a sort of ridiculous amount of our income on taking cars around places.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
But that's how our lifestyle has been shaped by the investment decisions of a relatively small group of people. And now we're seeing it to a really absurd degree to change how we live to be dependent on these services.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
But at a huge cost, hundreds of billions of dollars, just sublime amounts of money invested into these services that are really, like you said, like
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
transforming the way that people do everything in their lives and you can think about that as a lifestyle subsidy quote-unquote right because young people are getting all these answers to their homework and don't have to pay for them or whatever that the compute required to produce these things that people are using costs way more than they're paying for them and
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
I don't think that's necessarily the right way to think about it. It's more like they're shaping the way that we live through their investment decisions, to which they are not accountable to us, right? They've set up a situation in which they know that people are going to use these services. They're providing them below their costs. They're flooding the market with these services.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
But the real risk is that we lose the ability not to use them. And that we lose the ability to like read critically and think for ourselves, which is sort of analogous to the ability to like flag down a cab or to like take a bus if you need to go somewhere.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Right. That these are the things that we lose. And so we can think about it as like a subsidy or whatever. But I think we maybe are better off thinking about it as a change to the way we live.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Thank you so much for having me, Brittany.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Uber, when it was first founded, was called Uber Cab. And when they discovered that that would mean that they were subject to all of these regulations that the cab industry was subject to, their strategy was to chop the name cab off. So they were just Uber.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
So what the product is with DoorDash or any of these other food delivery services is that convenience. And honestly, if I'm looking a few steps down the line and I'm thinking, what are the plans for these industries? Tech has been looking at attempts to disrupt the credit score industry for a long time. And they're desperate.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
generating the kind of data that you would need to offer an alternative kind of credit score.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
We saw the same pattern of activity with cab companies and Uber and Lyft, for example. where you had big, deep-pocketed investors who were financing these companies at a loss in order to build up market position and a user base and change people's habits in a really fundamental way into this phone-mediated convenience access.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Yeah, I think Klarna and Affirm and any of these other buy-now-pay-later companies are really inserting themselves as a solution to this problem of how do you pay for the last round of internet services? How do you pay for the rising costs that come with Airbnb and come with Uber and come with the destruction of the previous industries?
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
How are you going to pay for the extra fees that come now at the end of every subscription, every service that you're buying is going to come with these paying back those investors in those services at the last round. And I think Buy Now, Pay Later is a button you can click at the end to make it that much easier to afford those things.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
So it doesn't surprise me that food delivery is a natural for using one of these services, even if we think of consumer credit as traditionally more useful for larger purchases. The way it inserts itself there right at the checkout and is able to do so really naturally in the internet landscape. That's part of the users becoming accustomed to buying things online, to shopping online.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
As far as the legal protections go, it's a really interesting question, and it's one that's still up in the air. In the summer of 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Board issued an interpretation that basically said buy now, pay later providers are credit card providers. the buy now, pay later is a credit card for almost all intents and purposes.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
It's not an open-ended line of credit in the same way that credit cards are because it's for specific purchases, but that the users of buy now, pay later services were entitled to some of the same protections that credit card users were entitled to, such as being able to dispute a charge and having that resolved regularly. Credit card providers don't offer all these services because they're
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
swell people or because they're competing for the most business. They do it because they're regulated by the Truth in Lending Act, which is a 1968 law that says, this is what an APR is. These are the disclosures you have to make. This is how you have to do disputed charges. So for the CFPB to come out and say, but this buy now, pay later stuff is just an internet wrapper on a credit card.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
It was, I think, a blow to the industry. And we've seen now with the Trump administration's efforts to eviscerate the CFPB, they issued a new interpretation in May of 2025 saying, never mind about that other thing. We're trying to undo it. We're not going to focus on buy now, pay later providers. And in fact, we're looking at repealing that whole interpretation.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Well, and that would be in the industry's interest, right? And especially if, as we've seen in these first months of the new administration, the If they're going to take out the regulator, right, if the CFPB isn't going to exist or can't function, and they are the ones who have put themselves out there and said, we're going to look at this industry.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
And the Trump administration has already come in and said, no, you're not. No, we're not. then what rules they end up following are sort of, they're on their own, right? Yeah, alarming and scary. And honestly, if I'm looking a few steps down the line and I'm thinking, what are the plans for these industries? Tech has been looking at attempts to disrupt the credit score industry for a long time.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
And they're generating the kind of data that you would need to offer an alternative kind of credit score.
It's Been a Minute
Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
And so I would not be surprised, especially if one company, whether it's Klarna or one of the other ones, is to start issuing their own Klarna score, right? Oh, my gosh. The credit reporting industry is ripe for disruption and has been for a long time. And this would be the kind of body of data that you would need to try something like that seriously. Coming up?
It's Been a Minute
Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
I don't think we're the Uber generation because we loved Uber. taking Ubers or whatever. We were the Uber generation because our capitalists saw an advantage in investing tons and tons and tons of money in these cab services. And we absorbed that and it changed our lifestyle. And that's where that money went. And the bill has come due.
It's Been a Minute
Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Yeah. I mean, and they call it disruption, right? Disruption is the nice gloss that you put on regulatory arbitrage, because so many of these business models are about continuing a previously existing business model, but dodging the regulations. So Uber is a great example, because Uber, when it was first founded, was called Uber Cab.
It's Been a Minute
Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
And when they discovered that that would mean that they were subject to all of these regulations that the cab industry was subject to, their strategy was to chop the name cab off. So they were just Uber. And then they were an internet service for riders or whatever. And so that's how they could dodge all of the cab industry regulations, which was the key to their success.
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Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Because if they'd been subject to all the industry regulations, they never could have got off the ground. Same thing is absolutely true with Airbnb, which is not a hotel service, obviously, which hotels are heavily regulated. We shouldn't be surprised to see a regulatory arbitrage strategy from Buy Now, Pay Later.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 04-15-2025 12PM EDT
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NPR News Now
NPR News: 11-07-2024 4PM EST
Hey, it's Aisha Harris from Pop Culture Happy Hour. If you love NPR podcasts, you'll want the new NPR Plus podcast bundle. Enjoy an all you can eat selection of NPR Plus podcasts with sponsor free listening and bonus episodes. Plus, you'll be supporting public radio. Check it out at plus.npr.org.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 11-09-2024 9PM EST
Hey, it's Aisha Harris from Pop Culture Happy Hour. If you love NPR podcasts, you'll want the new NPR Plus podcast bundle. Enjoy an all you can eat selection of NPR Plus podcasts with sponsor free listening and bonus episodes. Plus, you'll be supporting public radio. Check it out at plus.npr.org.