What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And my guest today, comedian Roy Wood Jr. takes the serious, sometimes absurd stuff we deal with in everyday life and makes us laugh about it.

Even news events that on the face of it are kind of scary, like white men in America gravitating to militia groups.

You had to know the militias was coming. You knew it was coming. It's America. What we do in America?

You have progress, then you have backlash. That's the cycle of this country. Progress, then backlash.

You knew the malicious was coming. Just look at the last four, five years. You can't have the first black

woman vice president, the first black woman Supreme Court justice, and the first black woman

mermaid. It was too much. And they couldn't handle it. That mermaid, that's the one that broke

them, that damn mermaid. When they get that little mermaid remake, they were like, oh no, brothers.

Meet me at the bakery tomorrow, brothers.

We're losing the White House. We're losing the courthouse.

There's a n-fish in the water, brothers.

That's Roy Wood Jr. in his latest comedy special, Lonely Flowers on Hulu. It's Wood's take on how

isolation has sent society spiraling into a culture of guns, protests, rude employees, self-checkout

lanes, sex parties. And he also talks about why some of us would rather be alone than connected.

Wood is known for his razor-sharp wit. He spent

years on the stand-up comedy circuit dissecting pop culture and current events, and for nearly

eight years he was a correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Wood currently hosts the

CNN News Quiz Show, Have I Got News for You, which was adapted from a long-running British series under the same name.

Roy Wood Jr., thank you for being here, and welcome back to Fresh Air.

Thank you for having me back. It is a pleasure.

You know, at the end of that clip I just played, you heard the beep. That was the N-word.

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