A celebratory book-to-screen conversation anchored by cast praise and opening-credit awe.
Greta Johnson's conversation with Rufy Thorpe keeps its focus on the simple thrill of watching Margot's Got Money Troubles move onto Apple TV Plus.

Book-club brains, TV-club warmth.
Happy To Be Here is a conversational culture show built around books, television, authors, and the small pleasures that make a week feel less grim. Greta Johnson steers interviews and club-style discussions with a loose, funny rhythm that makes serious subjects feel approachable without sanding them down.
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Happy To Be Here is a culture-and-conversation show with books in its bloodstream and television close by. Greta Johnson hosts with an easy, highly verbal curiosity that gives guests room to explain the premise, argue the feeling, and wander into the detail that suddenly matters. The show is not stiff. It likes a long setup, a fast aside, and a moment where someone realizes what they actually mean while saying it. Recent episodes move across author interviews, Greta Graham book club discussions, and an extended My So-Called Life rewatch. The literary side is substantial. Rufi Thorpe talks through the Apple TV Plus adaptation of Margot's Got Money Troubles, from the strangeness of seeing opening credits to the particular casting energies of Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nick Offerman. Kate Schatz brings Where the Girls Were into a conversation about pregnancy, sex education, birth control, and the danger around abortion before Roe v. Wade. Tayari Jones discusses Kin through friendship, childhood witnesses, grief, and the way old bonds can survive change. Amor Towles appears in live Nerdette Book Club material about Table for Two and the narrative pull of secrets. The TV-club episodes widen the frame. With Kristen Meinzer and guests including Jen White, Soraya Roberts, Linda Holmes, Ronald Young Jr., and Winnie Holtzman, the show revisits My So-Called Life with nostalgia, skepticism, and real tenderness. It can laugh at awkward teen-story choices while still noticing loneliness, religion, despair, family tension, and the cultural memory wrapped around a teen drama. The tone is warm but not precious. It is often funny, sometimes grave, and rarely over-polished. The pleasure comes from watching smart conversationalists build a reading together in real time. For PlayNext, it fits listeners who want literary discovery, author access, and companionable criticism without a seminar-room chill. It has the comfort of a book club and the looseness of friends catching each other's half-formed thoughts. Its best episodes leave room for recommendations, digressions, and emotional turns. The result is a show that makes reading and watching feel social again.
Made for: For readers, rewatchers, and culture fans who like thoughtful conversation with a casual pulse. It especially suits listeners drawn to contemporary fiction, author interviews, and emotionally observant pop-culture discussion.
What sets it apart: The show blends author access, spoiler-friendly book-club analysis, and TV rewatch chemistry without flattening everything into generic recommendation talk. Its strength is the live process of thinking: recap, reaction, correction, joke, then a sharper read.
Happy To Be Here is a new interview podcast for the recovering perfectionist and the perpetually curious, full of conversations that make you feel right at home and allow you to learn a little bit about almost anything. Host Greta Johnsen (formerly of Nerdette) invites you to meet journalists, chefs, authors, and all kinds of excellent humans who will delight and inspire you. Packed with recommendations for stuff to eat, read, watch, and enjoy, this show is great for helping you make sure you actually take it easy this weekend, wherever you might happen to be.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Greta Johnson turns books, screen adaptations, and kitchen quandaries into warm, specific conversations shaped by attentive questions.
Happy To Be Here follows Greta Johnson's curiosity from books and screen adaptations to cooking questions and close rewatch conversations about My So-Called Life.
A cupcake wrapper becomes a genuine dilemma, and you are exactly the person who wants to discuss it.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A celebratory book-to-screen conversation anchored by cast praise and opening-credit awe.
Greta Johnson's conversation with Rufy Thorpe keeps its focus on the simple thrill of watching Margot's Got Money Troubles move onto Apple TV Plus.
A novel, a history lesson, and a sharp look at what women were never told.
Kate Schatz's first adult novel follows Elizabeth, known as Baker, a class valedictorian whose future narrows after she becomes pregnant. Greta Johnson keeps the focus on the pressure around that moment: Roe v.
A Christmas rewatch that lets holiday sentiment sit beside teenage awkwardness and adult skepticism.
Christmas gives Happy To Be Here a sturdy frame for its My So-Called Life rewatch: religion, loneliness, and the strange durability of a holiday episode that knows exactly how hard it is pushing.
Tayari Jones and Greta Johnson connect Kin's reunion scene to the grief and witness carried by childhood friendship.
This author conversation about Tayari Jones's Kin keeps returning to a quiet but sturdy question: what happens to friendship when the people inside it have changed?
A precise baking question becomes a funny debate about sugar, frosting, scales, and cupcake etiquette.
Cupcakes and muffins make room for a sharper baking debate than the question first suggests, as Greta Johnson and Shilpa sort through fat, sugar, frosting, and the oddly decisive paper liner.
A warm kitchen conversation where leftovers and chicken cutlets become small studies in domestic life.
Tamar Adler's return with Greta Johnson turns a home-cooking advice episode into something warmer and more revealing than a tidy list of tips.

Two classical-education teachers slow-read novels like Jane Eyre, chapter by chapter.


Book talk with room to wander.


Host Greta Johnsen explores the culinary distinction between cupcakes and muffins with Bon Appétit senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic.
This episode of the Culture Study Podcast features host Anne Helen Peterson and critic Katherine Van Arandenken discussing the popular romantasy book series 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' and exploring its cultural significance.
Host Greta Johnsen welcomes cookbook author Tamar Adler to answer listener-submitted kitchen questions.
Greta Johnson, Jacoby Cochran, and Margaret Willison play “A Burden or Delight” with summer stories including the World Cup, Taylor Swift's reported July 3 wedding at Madison Square Garden, and Christopher Nolan's three-hour Odyssey.
Greta Johnson welcomes Rufy Thorpe, the author of Margot's Got Money Troubles.
Greta Johnson talks with writer and activist Kate Schatz about Where the Girls Were, her first adult novel, set in 1968 and centered on Elizabeth, who goes by Baker.
This episode explores the lighthearted but intriguing question of what distinguishes a cupcake from a muffin, featuring an interview with Bon Appetit senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic.
This episode features a deep dive discussion with spoilers about the book club pick 'Kin,' a novel by Terry Jones about two black girls growing up in 1950s Alabama.
The hosts discuss the series finale of the 1994 teen drama 'My So-Called Life' with special guests and an upcoming interview with creator Winnie Holtzman.
The hosts discuss episodes 17 and 18 of the 1994 teen drama My So-Called Life with guest Soraya Roberts, who wrote a book about the show.
Greta Johnson and Kristen Meinzer revisit So-Called Angels and Resolutions with Jen White.
Greta Johnson talks with Tayari Jones about Kin, the March book-club pick.
This episode features additional live interview content with author Amor Towles discussing his short story collection 'Table for Two' from a Nerdette Book Club event.
This episode features an interview with cookbook author Tamar Adler, where she answers listener-submitted questions about kitchen dilemmas, such as storing fresh herbs and managing leftovers.
This episode features a live interview with author Amor Towles discussing his new book 'Table for Two', a collection of short stories and a novella, as part of the Nerdette Book Club.