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.

2013 HAD US ASKING…

• What is the science behind a Sharknado?
• Is that really what a fox says?
• Are you a F*ckboy or did you just date one?

THE FILMS

Sequels, predictably, remained a reliable source of income for movie studios: Iron Man 3, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, Fast and Furious 6 and The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug were all in the top ten at the end of the year. That’s not to say that there weren’t any original hits this year – this was the year Disney gave us animated musical Frozen, which was a sensation as a movie and as a soundtrack. Man of Steel with Henry Cavill was a darker, Zack Snyderier entry into the Superman canon, but Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock as an astronaut alone in space fighting for her life, was something entirely new. World War Z was a new take on a zombie apocalypse movie, and We’re the Millers was a fun but raunchy family comedy. And Pacific Rim was a different take on the kaiju monster movie that was great if for no other reason than because it starred Idris Elba. Other notable movies this year include Thor: The Dark World, The Conjuring, Star Trek Into Darkness, Snowpiercer, The Wolf of Wall Street, Identity Thief, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Silver Linings Playbook, 12 Years a Slave, 42 and Captain Phillips. We also got Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down, which might possibly be the exact same movie with different titles. And technically a movie that aired on television, Syfy’s Sharknado starred Ian Ziering and Tara Reid as LA residents who had to face the deadliest weather system yet: tornadoes full of hungry sharks. It was rad.

THE TUNES

Macklemore/Ryan Lewis’ 2012 sleeper hit ‘Thrift Shop’ went supernova in 2013, as did their follow-up ‘Can’t Hold Us’ which actually was released earlier, in 2011. It’s hard to say a song was popular in a single year when it becomes a massive hit after the fact like this. Robin Thicke with T.I. and Pharrell Williams scored big with their lack-of-consent song ‘Blurred Lines’, though they would later lose a lawsuit to Marvin Gaye’s estate for their copying of the style of one of Gaye’s original songs. This year we could Imagine Dragons singing ‘Radioactive’, and Baauer gave us their version of the viral dance sensation ‘Harlem Shake’. Justin Timberlake had us dancing to ‘Mirrors’ and Bruno Mars scored with hits like ‘When I Was Your Man’ and ‘Locked Out of Heaven’. Pink sang ‘Just Give Me a Reason’ with fun’s Nate Ruess, and Katy Perry let out a ‘Roar’. The unlikely duo of Florida Georgia Line and Nelly went on a ‘Cruise’ and Pharrell was back on the charts, this time with Daft Punk with the danceable ‘Get Lucky’. Lorde was everywhere in 2013, singing about regular kids living like ‘Royals’ and Miley Cyrus came in like a ‘Wrecking Ball’ with hits like that and ‘We Can’t Stop’. Taylor Swift charted with another naughty ex song, ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and the late Avicii (he wasn’t late then) sang ‘Wake Me Up.’ And Beyoncé released Beyoncé on December 13, 2013 in the early hours of the morning without any prior announcement or promotion exclusively on iTunes, surprising us all.

THE TELEVISION

Not knowing what we know now, the world embraced Kevin Spacey as a corrupt politician on the critically-acclaimed House of Cards. Spacey wouldn’t make it to the end of the series as his #MeToo scandal forced producers to replace him. Continuing our love of anti-heroes in 2013 were hit shows like Vikings (brutal raiders), Orange is the New Black (women prisoners), Hannibal (serial killer, gourmet), Rick and Morty (amoral scientist and his messed up grandson), The Blacklist (criminal mastermind), and Peaky Blinders (gangsters.) On the other side of the law were the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a spinoff show for Marvel featuring Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who was as trustworthy as he was dead, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a sitcom featuring Andy Samburg and Terry Crews as good cops. Stephen King’s Under the Dome was a sleeper summer sci-fi hit that lasted a bit too long, and Orphan Black starred Tatiana Maslany as numerous cloned iterations with the same face, but different personalities, accents, and hairstyles. Other noteworthy shows debuting this year are The Americans, Ray Donovan, Attack on Titan, Bates Motel, Sleepy Hollow and Masters of Sex, with Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan playing researchers Masters and Johnson who pioneered the exploration of human sexuality.

THE TRENDS, TOYS AND TECH

The bombing at the Boston Marathon this year was horrific, but the perpetrators were caught and brought to justice. Edward Snowden revealed thousands of classified NSA documents after his ethics concerns were ignored, forcing him to flee the wrath of the US government and live in a Moscow airport terminal for a month while he sought asylum. The first (but not last) explosion of a lithium battery-powered Tesla car raised concerns for many, and actress Angelina Jolie underwent a prophylactic mastectomy after learning she was a carrier of a gene making it very likely she would get breast cancer. This prompted many to research their own likelihood of carrying the gene, though few followed her example to the point of getting surgery. In less serious news, Great Britain welcomed a new royal baby, as Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, begat baby Prince George, and Justin Bieber tried to take his pet capuchin monkey OG Mally to Munich, but the beast was confiscated by authorities, and the two were never reunited. Jennifer Lawrence adorably tripped up the stairs to collect her Best Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook, and in San Francisco, the entire city transformed itself into Gotham City for a five-year-old boy with leukemia named Miles so he could live out his wish to be Batkid.

Did you have Google Glass? Released in 2013, the goggles with Google were supposed to revolutionize mobile browsing with an interface that used voice commands and head motions to work the apps, but the product never took off commercially. Short-form video app Vine did better, but the video app with six second video loops was gradually disabled before being completely discontinued in 2019. Within one week in November, gaming got an upgrade when the Sony Playstation 4 and the Xbox One were introduced, and this year the world had a brief love affair with the 8 bit game Flappy Bird, which was removed from phones everywhere by creator Dong Nguyen, who was concerned at how addictive his game had become.

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 2013.

• The top trending video on YouTube this year was the annoying earworm ‘What Does the Fox Say’ by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis.
• Taylor Swift’s…um, interpretive dancing along to songs at awards shows gave everyone a chuckle. Work those shoulders, girl.
• Beyoncé’s fierce poses had us all practicing in our mirrors.
• Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey buried the hatchet after the two had beef while recording an American Idol episode.
• The “This is Fine” dog made its first appearance in the comic strip Gunshow, and the pooch who declared that he was ok with current events while everything around him was in flames struck a chord with many.
• While its definition varied over time, the world was introduced to the word “Fuckboy” in 2013; the term would come to mean a man who wooed a mate by promising a relationship while only being interested in sex…something that always existed, whether defined or not.
• We started calling our boos ‘Bae’ in 2013 – but whether it’s short for “Before Anyone Else” or just a modification of the word “babe” is a linguist’s call
• The rising of streaming television led to the sitting down of America, because binge-watching became the rage. According to surveyors and historians, bingeing shows means watching around 3-6 consecutive episodes of the same show, and to the decreasing desire to do anything productive with your day.

SAYING GOODBYE

Margaret Thatcher, Hugo Chavez and Nelson Mandela passed away in 2013, as did author Tom Clancy. Country singers Mindy McReady and George Jones died, as did actors Bonnie Franklin, Jean Stapleton, Eileen Brennan, and We also lost film critic Roger Ebert and special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. Singer Lou Reed passed away, and actors Cory Monteith and Paul Walker both tragically died too young.

This was pretty much the last year for the Blackberry mobile device, and cooking show host Paula Deen was cancelled in 2013 (don’t be racist, y’all), as were the shows Breaking Bad, Private Practice, 90210, CSI: NY, Rules of Engagement, The Cleveland Show, 30 Rock, The Office, Enlightened, and Fringe.

And that’s a bigger, better look at the year in pop culture, circa 2013.