The Pop Culture Junkie podcast is running a special series of episodes looking back at the past decade, chronicling the highs and lows, at least from a pop culture standpoint. Each episode deals with two years (2010/2011 and 2012/2013 are out as of this writing) so we had to leave some stuff out. A year is a long time! So as a companion piece, here is a more in-depth look at each year in pop culture.

2010 HAD US ASKING...

• Would you survive a zombie apocalypse?
• Is it Kesha or Ke$ha?
• Can you mansplain that to me?

THE FILMS

2010 was a big year for sequels and continuing the franchise. Toy Story 3 was the top-grossing movie that year, which also brought us Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, the third movie in the Twilight Saga (Eclipse) and Iron Man 2. But original movies were big too – Christopher Nolan’s Inception did big box office, and we got original ideas in superhero movies (Kick Ass, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and horror (Black Swan, Insidious.) We had oddball comedy favorites (Get Him to the Greek, Easy A) along with more prosaic titles like Date Night and The Other Guys. Animated films were huge too, with Shrek Forever After, Tangled, Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon all making the top ten list that year. 2010 also brought us movies about personal disasters (127 Hours) and stories about modern-day plagues, like Resident Evil: Afterlife and The Social Network.

THE TUNES

Female artists like Kesha (‘Tik Tok’), Lady Antebellum (‘Need You Now’), Rihanna (‘Rude Boy’), Lady Gaga (‘Bad Romance’) and of course, Katy Perry, (‘California Gurls’, ‘Fireworks’) ruled the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the year. But they had a lot of competition from the men, like Usher (‘OMG’), B.o.B. (‘Airplanes’, ‘Nothin’ on You’), Taio Cruz (‘Dynamite’, ‘Break Your Heart’) all charting big hits. Eminem and Rihanna combined had a big hit with ‘Love the Way You Lie’, and in fact collaborations accounted for 9 of the top 20 songs this year. 2010 was also the year the world said hello to Justin Bieber (like it or not) when he made his YouTube debut with ‘Baby’. In 2010 there were a lot of crossovers, as Taylor Swift (‘Mine’) moved from a more country appeal to the mainstream, and soul/funk singer CeeLo had an unspeakable success with his hit ‘F*ck You’. And finally, a lot of people seemed to like ‘Hey Soul Sister’ by Train.

THE TELEVISION

While hundreds of television shows debut every year, only a few of them really make a lasting impact. and in 2010, the shows that fit this bill are zombie thriller The Walking Dead, Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC’s take on Sherlock, HBO’s old-timey crime drama Boardwalk Empire, the high school mystery Pretty Little Liars and another BBC favorite, Downton Abbey. This was also the year Louie, starring now-disgraced comedian Louie C.K., debuted. Network dramas like Parenthood and the Hawaii 5-0 reboot were hits, while critically-acclaimed crime dramas like Luther with Idris Elba and Justified with Timothy Olyphant were also big. Reality TV made us all a bit dumber when Jersey Shore hit MTV, and the animated Adventure Time endeared itself to fans young and old. Of all these shows, only The Walking Dead remains alive, with two spinoff shows currently running and feature-length films set in the same universe in the works. (A second Downton Abbey theatrical is opening next year, so if you’re in the tea and crumpet crowd, you still have that to cling to.)

THE TRENDS, TOYS AND TECH

In the news in 2010: Obama was still president, there was a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded air travel for much of the northern hemisphere, BP oil rig the Deepwater Horizon exploded, causing the largest marine oil spill in history, and 33 miners trapped in Chile were rescued after spending 69 days underground. Oh, and a massive bedbug outbreak forced many to wash, discard or burn all their belongings. To cope with all the uncertainty, we wore Silly Bandz on our wrists and Instagrammed our food. Instagram launched in 2010, and with it, the rise of the “camera eats first” philosophy. (Instagram wouldn’t be swallowed up by Facebook until 2012.) The band OK Go captivated us not with a song but another viral video, this time one of a Rube Goldberg-ian setup that was shot in a single take.

Microsoft tried to make Bing happen, and on the more successful side, they scored with the Kinect for X-box. And this was the year Apple introduced iPads and Siri, creating a market for things we never knew we needed. An Instant Pot was just what we needed after we spent so much money on Apple products we could only afford to eat Ramen, and everyone with Angry Birds had an intense loathing of green pigs. And though Bitcoin wasn’t invented in 2010, it suddenly became as inescapable as it was inscrutable.

THE MEMES AND CATCHPHRASES

Memes make the world go around, and nothing brings back the feeling of a year like a meme, viral video or the phrase that everyone, even your mom, was saying. While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when one of these begins, it can be noted when something viral reaches critical mass, before becoming overused. Here’s a quick list of everything that had us talking in 2010.

• The ‘Double Rainbow’ video
• ‘Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife’ remix video and song
• ‘David after the Dentist’ video (poor kid)
• Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake with ‘The History of Rap’
• Insane Clown Posse’s ‘Miracles’
• Anything and everything from Despicable Me‘s Minions
• Appreciation of one of pop culture’s most enduring talents, Betty White
• Our hatred of the buzzing vuvuzuelas at World Cup games
• Railing against helicopter parenting, mansplaining, and complaining about first-world problems
• Celebrating guy love, aka bromances, while trying not to be too condescending about older women who date younger men, otherwise known as cougars.

SAYING GOODBYE

In 2010 we said goodbye to celebrities like Gary Coleman, Corey Haim, Rue McClanahan, Dennis Hopper, Tom Bosley and Peter Graves and Leslie Nielsen. The series Law and Order, Lost and Heroes, Monk, Nip/Tuck and Scrubs concluded, as did soaps Another World and Guiding Light. And Jay Leno took The Tonight Show back from Conan O’Brien, after trying to host a half-hour program NBC gave the retired host.

And that’s a bigger, better look at the year in pop culture, circa 2010.