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Picking Pop Culture's People We're Pulling For

Television producer Shonda Rhimes at the 2017 Success Makers Summit in New York City.
Mike Coppola
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Television producer Shonda Rhimes at the 2017 Success Makers Summit in New York City.

Ever since the early days of Pop Culture Happy Hour, we've set aside the occasional block of time to champion a few of our favorite entertainers in a segment we call People We're Pulling For. We keep the criteria pretty loose: They can be little-known up-and-comers, major stars at a crossroads, or anything in between. The important thing is that we're rooting for them, and we think others ought to root for them, too.

To whip up this particular blizzard of positive energy, I sat down with Glen Weldon — the man you've come to know as "Mr. Positive Energy" — as well as It's Been A Minute host Sam Sanders and longtime NPR Music contributor Katie Presley. Together, we assembled a terrific little bundle of folks to praise. Glen always enjoys comedian John Early, who livens up every project he touches. Katie is transfixed by the deeply weird books of American author Nell Zink. Sam is fascinated to see the next move of TV mogul Shonda Rhimes, even if he's given up on her current shows. And I say a few words about the deeply wonderful, deeply dry character actor Marc Evan Jackson.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson
Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)