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 (The years 2010 – 2017 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.

2014 HAD US ASKING…

• Did you participate in “The Fappening.” or are you a good person?
• How much did you raise for the Ice Bucket Challenge?
• What’s your favorite Adele Dazeem performance?

THE FILMS

2014 was a year of original ideas, like the Richard Linklater film Boyhood, which was shot over the course of 12 years, Michael Keaton’s Oscar-worthy turn in Birdman, James Franco and Seth Rogan’s undiplomatic The Interview, Christopher Nolan’s trippy Interstellar, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, tear-jerking The Fault in Our Stars, cringy Gone Girl, Edge of Tomorrow, the time-traveling sci-fi starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, creepy horror The Babadook, and the most intense movie ever made about drumming, Whiplash. It was the year the first films in continuing franchises, like John Wick. The Maze Runner and The Kingsman, and star turn movies like Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game, Bradley Cooper in American Sniper, Reese Witherspoon in Into the Wild, and Meryl Streep, I guess, in Into the Woods. It was the year of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and the one sequel worthy of mentioning was Captain America: Civil War.

THE TUNES

Meghan Trainor had us dancing our basses off with ‘All About that Bass’, as did Taylor Swift with ‘Shake It Off’ off her 1989 album. Sam Smith begged someone to ‘Stay with Me’, but Idina Menzel cautioned that we should ‘Let It Go.’ DJ Snake and Lil Jon wondered ‘Turn Down for What’, and we still don’t know what we were turning down for. Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX had us feeling ‘Fancy’ and Pharrell Williams made (some of) us ‘Happy’. OneRepublic had us ‘Counting Stars’ while Jason Derulo and 2 Chainz wanted someone to ‘Talk Dirty’. Magic! had a hit with ‘Rude’ while Eminem teamed up with Rihanna again for ‘The Monster’. The late Avicii asked someone to ‘Wake Me Up’ but Pitbull and Kesha were felling us with ‘Timber.’ And finally, the year was no ‘Problem’ for hitmakers Ariana Grande with Iggy Azalea. And in ‘Music We Didn’t Want’ news, Apple forced every iTunes user to reckon with U2’s End of Innocence album, which was force fed in to everyone’s music library.

THE TELEVISION

If you understand what “time is a flat circle” means, then you must have been paying attention to True Detective, which debuted on HBO this year. The CW expanded the Arrowverse by introducing The Flash, while over on Fox, a grittier, less cheery DC show premiered: the Batman origin story Gotham. The world of the movie Fargo was expanded for an FX television series, and NBC put another movie (and comic book) character on the small screen: Matt Ryan as Constantine. Though the series only lasted the year, his character ended up on the CW in Legends of Tomorrow. The time-traveling romance novel series Outlander made it to Starz, and the characters in the Frankenstein novel appeared in Showtime’s gothic horror Penny Dreadful. Shonda Rimes (and Viola Davis) taught us How to Get Away with Murder, and a bunch of dudebros took over Silicon Valley on HBO. Broad City had us falling in love with the hilarious exploits of big city gals Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, and Bojack Horseman was one of the most beloved and weird animated sitcoms ever, hit Netflix this year. A late night shakeup was in the works: Jimmy Fallon took over the Tonight Show, and Seth Myers got the Late Night slot. Former Daily Show correspondents were on the move too: John Oliver got his own show (Last Week Tonight) while Stephen Colbert said goodbye to his Colbert Report character in order to…well, we’ll get to that in 2015.

THE TRENDS, TOYS AND TECH

The Ice Bucket Challenge splashed cold water on a good cause: people recorded themselves getting doused in icy water, then called out friends, family and celebrities to do the same, all in the name of raising money for ALS. Tons of money raised by the trend went to ALS research, which resulted in some significant breakthroughs. Go us! On the less heart-warming side, this was the year of hacks: Apple’s iCloud was breached, and nude photos of celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton were distributed to any lowlife who wanted them. Over at Sony, the James Franco/Seth Rogan film about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un made someone (a group called “Guardians of Peace”) so unhappy that they hacked the company’s servers, leading to a massive data leak that included plans and scripts for future Sony films, personal information about Sony employees, including salary information, and a boatload of emails that disclosed what film execs at the company really thought about some of there stars. Sorry, Angelina. At the Academy Awards, Ellen posted a star-studded selfie that was retweeted a jillion times, and Pharrell’s hat became more popular than the man wearing it. Serial kicked off a mania for podcasts, urban legend Slenderman sparked a real-life murder attempt, and Matthew McConaughey’s career upswing had its own name: the McConnaissance. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West wed, as did fellow luminaries Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. RIP to those marriages. Jay Z and Solange Knowles got into an ugly fight in an elevator, and we finally got the memo that Bill Cosby is a garbage person.

This was the year of the selfie stick, because our arms just aren’t long enough to make our necks look good. We also tried to lose weight on Peloton bikes, put a Fitbit app on our mobile phones, and installed Ring doorbell cams so we could spy on our own front porches. Hey, anything could be happening out there. 3-D printers allowed us to fashion anything we had the blueprints for in our homes, On the more modest side, we could finally stop dropping our cell phones by sticking a knobby plastic pop socket to the back side.

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 2014.

• “The Fappening” was the name given to the ‘event’ wherein people enjoyed those leaked celebrity nudes. Yuck.
• A super handsome felon named Jeremy Meeks gave the world the vapors with his steely-eyed mugshot
• Kim Kardashian broke the internet with classy yet butt-naked pictures from her Paper magazine shoot.
• Shia LeBoeuf went out in public wearing a brown paper bag on his head, upon which he wrote “I am not famous anymore.” Was it a bit of performance art or a self-fulfilling prophecy? I think you know the answer to that one.
• “Hands Up/Don’t Shoot” was more than just a catchphrase: it was the phrase that expressed the anger, sadness and weariness of Black men and women in America who were tired of fearing for their lives at the hands of the police.
• Here’s a hot take: if you have to call your comment a ‘hot take’, it’s probably lukewarm at best.
• Yeet became a verb this year, meaning to throw or yank something away. Ask the nearest Zoomer you know to conjugate it.
• Basically, if you’re basic, you’re into pumpkin spice lattes and Ugg boots and other bland areas of interest.

SAYING GOODBYE

Both David Letterman and Craig Ferguson retired from late night this year, and the ISIS Mobile Wallet became victim of it’s own short-sighted marketing department. This year, we lost beloved actors like Robin Williams (known for so many great movies but beloved by most as the voice of the Genie in Aladdin), and OG (original Ghostbuster) Harold Ramis, We also lost Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lauren Bacall, James Garner, Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Pena, and Mickey Rooney. Beloved Gilmore Girls dad Edward Herrmann died, and the imposing Richard Kiel lost his life. British comedy legend Rik Mayall died too young, as did SNL‘s Jan Hooks. This year we also lost Russell Johnson of Gilligan’s Island, and Anne B. Davis of The Brady Bunch. Author Maya Angelou passed away, as did radio host/voiceover legend Casey Kasem, comedienne/talk show host Joan Rivers and singer Joe Cocker,

Television shows we lost this year include How I Met Your Mother, and thanks to the way it ended no one was too broken up about it. We also said goodbye to Being Human, Best Week Ever, Californication, TNT’s Dallas reboot, Drop Dead Diva, Eastbound and Down, The Killing, Nikita, Raising Hope, Revolution (Eric Kripke’s followup to Supernatural), Suburgatory, Treme, The X Factor, Warehouse 13 and True Blood.

And that’s a bigger, better look at the year in pop culture, circa 2014.