A warning, this episode contains explicit language.

If you travel by plane with any regularity, you've been there.

Stuck in an airport because your flight is delayed.

So we thought it best to give your most stressful

travel moments a soundtrack.

I'm Stephen Thompson.

And I'm Aisha Harris.

And on this episode of NPR's pop culture happy hour we're recommending songs for when your flight is delayed.

It's just the two of us today, so let's get to it. The assignment is pretty simple.

Come up with a short playlist of songs that might be useful when you're stuck at the airport.

And Stephen, you brought us three songs today and I got to admit

when I was first going into this, I was like, I'm curious what kind of songs are going to pick here and I was

not expecting the direction that you went in but I was very pleasantly surprised so

I thought you were gonna totally screw this up no no no I'm very excited for people to hear what you chose. So give us your first pick for when you are stuck at the airport and you are hating everything about life.

Well, I thought I'd actually take us in a few different directions,

and we'll start out mellow and get a little more intense

as we go along.

But the first thing that came to mind was music for airports

by Brian Eno, which is a piece of ambient music that is kind of designed to be in a way almost like elevator music.

Ambient pieces that bring to mind the vibe the airport hopes you get, then what I thought about was the airport that I have spent by far the most of my life stuck at, which is O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. I used to have to fly through O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

I used to have to fly through O'Hare to get to Madison,

where I lived for many years.

...