Linda Holmes

On Tuesday's Morning Edition, NPR's Neda Ulaby has a story about Chuck Lorre, the producer whose name is attached to three of the five highest-rated comedies on American television last season: The Big Bang Theory, Two And A Half Men, and Mike & Molly.

We know you're traveling; we're traveling, too! But we thought we'd send the show out early, just in case you have time to throw it on your iPod before you go over the river and through the woods.

Full disclosure: The first thing I said when I saw that Rob Delaney would be talking to NPR's Audie Cornish on today's All Things Considered was that I was curious to see whether he had ever said anything on Twitter — where he has almost 670,000 followers (including me) as of this writing — that they thought they could read on the radio. It's an exaggeration. But not by that much.

Julie Klausner's podcast, How Was Your Week?, has been featured on all manner of lists of the best shows of its kind — in Rolling Stone, in GQ, and in The New York Times. Comedy podcasting is a field growing so fast that, as NPR's Audie Cornish mentions in talking to Klausner on today's All Things Considered, comedian Colin Quinn recently commented that the only thing comedians talk about anymore is doing each other's podcasts.

Given my constitutional opposition to women being told to smile and look happy, it takes a lot for me to pick on scowling.

It's Thanksgiving time again, and while we're very sad to be without our pal Glen Weldon this week, we're happy to be joined by the lovely Barrie Hardymon.

We start with a discussion of Thanksgiving and pop culture — and, more specifically, why there's not as much Thanksgiving-themed pop culture as you might think, particularly compared to Christmas. We explore the turkey episodes of Friends and other comedies, but talk a little about the surprising dearth of Thanksgiving movies.

When you set out to take on the great battles, it's only a matter of time before you get to this one. The battles. The spaceships. The creatures. The Shatner and Vader of it all.

Yesterday, cats emerged victorious over dogs in our opening round in what was a very hard-fought and close contest. But here, we ought to be able to come to a simple agreement, right?

As I'm currently separated from most of my earthly possessions for the rest of this week, some of my cultural intake has been interrupted. (There's this great Hitchcock Blu-ray set I wanted to tell you about, and I will, but it has to come out of storage first.) Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but the news is really weird, and we're coming off a time where it's contentious over very serious things.

As you may recall, last week's storm (big hugs to those of you still dealing with that mess) left us without a show, but we have returned this week with a fully stuffed episode in which we spend a little time on what we meant talk about last week: Cloud Atlas, which Stephen and I in particular did not want to have seen at almost 10:00 at night for nothing.