Features

This week on Pop Culture Happy Hour, the old gang is back together to tackle a new comedy, just like the guest panel did last week: Last week, it was Girls; this week, it's the less fussed over Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We'll talk about how we responded to her performance, the writing (from the guys behind the great In The Loop), and the depiction of politics.

If there is a dream team in modern American comedies, it might just be Richard Linklater and Jack Black. The two haven't worked together since 2003's The School of Rock — a film that bore all the hallmarks of successful collaboration — and since then Black, aside from a passable turn in King Kong, has been confined mainly to guest spots on television comedies and voice work in big-screen animation.

I like to gaze out the window, but these days I'm not alone. What's got many of us staring out the back window of NPR's D.C. office is some serious construction work. Across the street, a construction crew has literally been picking up buildings, putting them on wheels and moving them to the end of the lot. They moved the last of five buildings yesterday. I time-lapsed this one, partly because it has some lore for us at NPR. It was part of a prostitution bust a few years back that also had us staring out the window.

Alison Stewart is returning to NPR as the host of another innovative project, TED Radio Hour. The program is a joint endeavor from NPR and TED with each show based on a talk delivered from the renowned TED stage, addressing urbanization, sustainability, happiness and much more.

"Most animals learn by trial and error. There's just one problem: error." — Dan Gilbert

Our amazing brain, with all of its harmonious functions, also performs any number of peculiar actions, which we might find unexpected and counterintuitive. What tricks do our minds play when we think it's okay to lie, cheat, or steal? How in control are we of our own decisions? And why do our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy?