Culture

NBC wants Snoop Dogg to return for future Olympics

Published

1 year ago

August 7, 2024

Press Room

NBC wants Snoop Dogg to return for future Olympics

Follow live coverage of Day 12 of the 2024 Paris Olympics, with 21 gold medals on offer

Bow-wow-wow, yippie-yo, yippie-yay, Snoop Dogg may continue on NBC’s Olympics coverage in a big way.

Asked by The Athletic this week if NBC Universal plans to ask Snoop to return for on-air work at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games and Olympics beyond, two key members of NBC Universal’s leadership group answered in the affirmative.

“Snoop has done everything and beyond what we ever expected him to do here in the Paris Games,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said. “He has been enthusiastic. He has been optimistic. I think we’d be really thrilled to have Snoop back in any capacity he would want to come back in.”

Cordella’s boss, Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, when asked if the company would ask the performer to return to the Olympic family, quickly responded, “Yes.”

Snoop Dogg has been ubiquitous on NBC’s Olympic coverage and at various Paris venues. He has become such a part of the Olympics that BBC News ran a headline tagging him as” America’s cheerleader at the Olympics.” The 52-year-old had a small role at the Tokyo Games in 2021 as part of a recap commentary show on Peacock alongside comedian Kevin Hart but has exploded in Paris where he has put himself in all sorts of situations with athletes and sports as a roving correspondent. It’s resonated.

Watching the #ParisOlympics steeplechase got us thinking about Snoop Dogg’s unforgettable commentary. 😂
📺 NBC & Peacock pic.twitter.com/GawPPJXoDO
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) August 5, 2024

“This all dates back to Tokyo in 2021. Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg were co-hosts of a comedy highlight show on Peacock called ‘Olympic Highlights,’ and there were several clips that went viral, but also what stood out to me was Snoop’s passion for the Olympics, and also in his own unique way his reverence for the athletes and their stories,” said Molly Solomon, the executive producer and president of NBC Olympics production and the point person who championed Snoop’s increased on-air visibility.

“Over the last year and a half, we got together with Snoop and really brainstormed what this role could be. I called him an Ambassador of Happiness. If you watch his content, everybody wants to meet Snoop, take a selfie with Snoop and just be around Snoop. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by his popularity, but you never ever underestimate Snoop Dogg. He’s this wonderful mix of swagger and positivity and just the charisma and vibes are so positive. He’s got this curiosity about the Olympics that is undeniable.”

Said Snoop to The Associated Press this week: “This opportunity was nothing but a chance for me to show the world what it’s supposed to look like when you put the right person in the right environment.”

#FollowTheDogg Snoop n Phelps!! Tune in tonite 😁😆🔥💪🏿 🏊🏽‍♂️ 8/7c on @nbc & @peacock pic.twitter.com/6EuMHgVjBR
— Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) July 30, 2024

The performer has been part of an Olympics that has been wildly successful for NBC Universal so far. Through the first full 11 days of the Games, NBCUniversal said it had a total audience delivery average of 32.6 million viewers across the combined live Paris prime time (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. prime time (8-11 p.m. ET/PT).

“We judge success here first and foremost by having a product that is appealing to audiences in that they come to in large numbers — and that is clearly happening in the Olympics,” Lazarus said. “The last few haven’t been as large as we had thought they would be. These Games are exceeding all of our expectations.”

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(Photo: Tom Weller / VOIGT / GettyImages)

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Culture

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Published

1 day ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions — or even books. With the Academy Award nominations announced last week, this week’s challenge celebrates past Oscar-winning films that were based on books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.

Culture

What Kind of Lover Are You? This William Blake Poem Might Have the Answer.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 16, 2026

Press Room

What Kind of Lover Are You? This William Blake Poem Might Have the Answer.

By A.O. Scott and Aliza Aufrichtig

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review. Aliza Aufrichtig is a visual journalist.

Jan. 16, 2026

Not every poem about love is a love poem. This one, from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” first published in 1794, is more analytical than romantic. Instead of roses and violets, it offers us dirt and rocks.

William Blake (1757-1827), obscure in his own time and a hero to later generations of poets and spiritual seekers, made his living as an engraver and illustrator. He conceived and executed many of his poetic projects as works of visual as well as literary art, etching his verses and images onto copper plates and printing them in vivid color — a style designed to blur the boundary between word and picture.

From a 1795 copy of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.”

The Trustees of the British Museum

“The Clod & the Pebble” is set in a rustic tableau populated by wild and domesticated animals. In the print, we can’t quite see the main characters, who are presumably somewhere beneath the hooves and the ripples. But the cows and sheep, the frogs and the duck, are nonetheless connected to the poem’s meaning.

The two sections of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” are meant to illustrate “the contrary states of the human soul” — the purity and wonder associated with early childhood and the harder knowledge that inevitably follows.

“The Clod & the Pebble” recapitulates this fall from sweetness into disillusionment, and the plate suggests it in contrasting ways. The wild animals down below symbolize a natural condition of innocence, while the livestock above live in confinement, bound to another’s use. At the same time, though, the cows and sheep are peaceful ruminants, while the frogs and the duck are predators.

In the poem, the Clod is an avatar of innocence. As it happens, this is a recurring character in the Blakean poetic universe. In “The Book of Thel,” a fantastical meditation composed a few years before the publication of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” the Clod appears as a maternal figure selflessly nursing a baby worm:

The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice, & raisd her pitying head;

She bow’d over the weeping infant, and her life exhal’d

In milky fondness

“We live not for ourselves,” she tells the poem’s heroine, a young girl named Thel. But in Blake’s system self-sacrifice can never be the last word. There is no innocence without the fall into experience, and no experience without the memory of innocence. Giving gives way to wanting.

Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.

Get to know the poem better by filling in the missing words below.

Question 1/6

First, the Clod’s perspective.

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.

Culture

Try This Quiz on Myths and Stories That Inspired Recent Books

Published

2 weeks ago

January 12, 2026

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Try This Quiz on Myths and Stories That Inspired Recent Books

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of 21st-century books that were inspired by ancient myths, legends and folk tales. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.