I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

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Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

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From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette.

I'm Greta Johnson. It is the end of what we can arguably call a very weird year. And to celebrate, we are thinking about all the great stuff that came out in 2021. Last week, we talked about books. And today, it is all about the best TV of the year. With us this week, we have Linda Holmes and Ayesha Harris, who host the NPR podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour. Linda, welcome back. Hi, Greta. Thanks for coming on. Aisha,

it's also great to have you here. Thank you. Hello there. Okay, so before we dive into the picks,

I'm curious if y'all have noticed anything like particularly

interesting about the TV landscape from this year. What do you think, Aisha?

Well, you know, I think that we've seen, as usual, and this has been a trend for a while,

I've seen a lot of reboots and visionings of things. I mean, I think top of mind right now for me and a lot of us is obviously in just like

that, the Sex and the City reboot or I guess the continuation of the show and the two movies.

So we're seeing, we've seen a lot of those, but I also think it's

been interesting to watch. And I think we might get into a little, a little bit with our

picks, but it's been interesting to see the way in which like TV has tried to tackle some sort

of big button issues, whether it was race. I mean, a lot of it is race, class, COVID, like all of those things

were swirling throughout a bunch of different shows, including shows like the White

Lotus and the Underground Railroad, which was the Barry Jenkins and Amazon Prime series.

So it's been interesting to see how we've been tackling

with those things. And I think we're going to keep kind of figuring out, okay, what does a post-COVID

...