A Charlie Brown Christmas is undoubtedly in the pantheon of holiday tv shows. This week pop culture historian Blake Scott Ball drops in to talk about how that almost didn’t happen, as well as the politics of Peanuts in the 20th century.

First the first time ever, HATM has a guest host! This week John Wyatt Greenlee steps on the other side of the mic to talk with David Perry and Matthew Gabriele about Sean Connery, Medieval detectives, and their new book, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe.

This week Pulitzer Prize winner Emily Nussbaum joins to talk about the 90s, Generation X, and the rise of reality television during our discussion of Reality Bites.

About our guest:
Emily Nussbaum is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and previously, was the magazine's television critic. She worked as an editor and a writer at New York Magazine, where she created The Approval Matrix. She's also written for Slate, The New York Times, Lingua Franca and Nerve, among other publications. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

​She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Clive Thompson and her two children. She doesn't have a favorite television show, but under pressure, she'll choose "Slings and Arrows."

Find her new book, Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV right here: https://amzn.to/3CSw6tB