We've all been there. You're excited about watching something and you somehow stumble across

information you didn't want to have. Maybe somebody tells you too much about the twist ending,

or they tell you who dies at the end. In other words, you've run into a spoiler. I'm Stephen Thompson.

And I'm Linda Holmes.

And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about how we handle spoilers.

Joining us today are our fellow Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts Glenn Weldon.

Hello, Glenn.

Hey, Vader is Luke's dad. Hey, Linda.

Oh, geez. And Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha. Soiling green is... Wait, does no one know this one?

No, ever know it? I know it. I know it. You're just averse to spoilers, Aisha. Oh, my goodness. Whatever.

All right. So a couple of things. I don't think there's any one right way to handle spoiler etiquette. So I don't think we're trying to settle on a

single set of hard and fast rules. There are a lot of different fact patterns where spoilers come up.

And when we talk about it in preparing an episode of the show,

it's always a case-by-case thing. We talk about each thing individually. We talked a lot behind the scenes about how to cover the drama, for example. And another peek into the production process.

We actually recorded this episode about spoilers before our episodes about the drama. So if you're

wondering why we don't talk about

that movie here, that is why. What we want to do today is talk about how we think through

questions about spoilers generally. What is a spoiler? What isn't a spoiler? Whether there's a

kind of statute of limitations on something that's been out for 10 years or 50 years. Glenn, apparently,

think so. And how to balance how much people like being surprised with how much people like

talking about stuff. So, Stephen, I'm going to start with you. I know you have a very

particular history with this. Yeah, I was raised by anti-spoiler extremists. My parents have believed to the

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