Each week, the guests and hosts on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour share what's bringing them joy. This week: Babel or The Necessity of Violence, Sultana's Dream, La última copa/The Last Cup, and Brick.

The 1985 novel has been described as "unfilmable." Baumbach wasn't deterred — and though the movie brims with terrific moments, his White Noise doesn't hold together as well as Don DeLillo's.

Congressman-elect Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) will (eventually) swear himself in on a copy of the Constitution, a photo of his parents, his certificate of U.S. citizenship and ... a copy of Superman #1.

More than a century ago, a Met librarian made some of the first live music recordings. Now, (with an assist from NPR) 16 of the Mapleson Cylinders are joining the New York Public Library collection.

Maia Kobabe set out to express an experience with gender identity. The graphic memoir Gender Queer is now the most banned book in the United States, according to the American Library Association.

Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of the Oscar-winning 2016 film The Salesman was released from Tehran's notorious Evin Prison nearly three weeks after her arrest.

Olivia Hussey, then 15, and Leonard Whiting, then 16, allege sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud, and are seeking more than $500 million from Paramount Pictures.

The Pointer Sisters won three Grammy Awards and had 13 U.S. top 20 hit songs between 1973 and 1985, Anita Pointer's publicist said. The 1983 album "Break Out" went triple platinum.

In 2020, Gender Queer was given a Stonewall Honor and an Alex Award and was headed for a fourth printing. By spring of 2022 it topped the ALA's list of most challenged books.

The real-life "Spider Killer" murdered 16 women in Iran between 2000 and 2001. The case inspired Holy Spider, which has resonated abroad during a time of amplified state violence in Iran.

Robert Gottlieb has been working in publishing since 1955. The documentary Turn Every Page, by daughter Lizzie Gottlieb, examines his decades-long editing relationship with author Robert Caro.

Bill Nighy plays a bottled-up bureaucrat on a quest for meaning in Kazuo Ishiguro's adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film Ikiru. The first film felt inventive and urgent — Living doesn't live up.

Lola "Gangsta Boo'' Mitchell was found dead Sunday in Memphis, Tenn., her hometown at the age of 43. The cause of death has not been released.

A publicist for actor Jeremy Renner said in a statement that the 51-year-old Avengers star is in an intensive care unit following surgery.

Themes like everything is connected, nothing happens without a purpose, and nothing is what it seems are central to both yoga philosophy and conspiratorial thinking.