Happy Thursday. I know I say this every time, but I'm so excited about today's podcast because I get to

interview my friend Melanie Shankle. She's an author who has a new book coming out called The Church of the Small Things, and she is such a delight.

We discuss our love of This Is Us, Heart of Dixie, Jane the Virgin. We make a deal that she's going to introduce me to a certain

famous, very good-looking, and hilarious male celebrity when the opportunity arises, of course,

and Melanie answers some questions I asked y'all to provide on social media. You can tell by my

obnoxious giggling that I had a ball. I hope you do too.

Hey everyone, I'm Lindsay and welcome to the I Hate Green Beans podcast. During each episode,

I'll be discussing television, movies, music, and books with friends who love pop culture as much as I do.

For those of you wondering, yes, we will be talking about the Bachelor franchise.

And no, I do not want to try your grandmother's famous green bean casserole recipe.

But thanks for offering.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

We're here with Melanie Shankle.

She is on episode 20 of the I Hate Green Beans podcast. Very exciting.

She's one of my favorite people. Melanie, how are you doing?

Good, Lindsay. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for agreeing to it too. I wanted to tell

everybody, they've probably read about it on my blog before, but I kind of stalked you as a fan girl and I just beat you down until you became my friend.

And so I'm very excited that you're on the podcast.

Well, I don't know though, because I feel like I kind of stalked you for a long time.

I think we were co-stalking and we just didn't know it.

Maybe we weren't smart enough to realize like, hey, just send each other an email because I told you, I started

back when the, back when your bachelor blog now was an email. I got it as an email forward. I mean,

...