What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend reading and listening

This week, Natasha Lyonne offered to solve a crossword puzzle with you, two shows that normally have writers claimed they could wing it, and NSYNC is in a "Better Place."

Here's what the NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.

The audiobook of Steph Fry's Mythos

I took a vacation to London for a few days, and on the plane I listened to Stephen Fry reading his 2017 book which is his retelling of the Greek myths. He's a very funny writer and performer and he is an He's also fascinated by history and language, which made this book very much in his wheelhouse. He lays the myths out in a very strict chronology so that they all seem like part of one continuous, serialized history instead of little standalone tales. And he's imbued them with cause and effect, so that one story casts ripples into future ones. He is also only too happy to take very long, discursive dives into how the names of all these characters have infiltrated the English language. Plus, not for nothing, it's Greek myths — it's queer AF. It is hella queer — Hellenic queer.