Linda Holmes, pop culture critic and author of 'Back After This'

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Linda Holmes knows what goes into a good romantic comedy. Linda has written about pop culture for more than 20 years and is a huge fan of the genre. She's also written romantic comedy novels herself. Linda joins us on Bullseye to discuss her latest novel Back After This. She breaks down the clichés that make rom-coms great and the tropes that make them stink.

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0:00.0	NPR informs and connects communities around the country, providing reliable information in times of crisis.
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0:17.1	Learn more about safeguarding the future of public media.
0:20.6	Visit protectmypublicmedia.org.
0:25.3	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximum fun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:31.8	Music It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:47.4	My guest this week is Linda Holmes, and she knows what goes in to a good romantic comedy.
0:54.0	It's got to be breezy enough to feel funny and
0:57.1	light, but the stakes also have to be real. You have to actually want the couple to get together,
1:01.9	or at least be happy. The characters can grow and change, but the story can't be about one
1:07.6	person changing the other one. And there are other guidelines, many, many more.
1:13.0	We'll get into it, I promise. Linda's kind of an expert on the topic. She's been a pop culture
1:17.7	writer for two decades. She co-hosts the NPR podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, and she has
1:23.8	indeed been a guest interviewer here on this program. In 2019, she tried something different.
1:29.7	Instead of just covering romance and pop culture, Linda wrote a romantic novel.
1:35.9	Evie Drake starts over. It's a mix of rom-com and baseball. Then in 2022, another flying solo
1:42.8	about loss, love, and a mysterious missing duck decoy.
1:47.5	Also great. And now, back after this. Back after this tells the story of Cecily, a podcast
1:53.8	host who agrees to do a dating podcast where she has to go on 20 blind dates. 20.
2:00.7	Does she find love along the way? Well,
2:03.2	it's a fun romance book, but I'm not going to spoil it. I will say this. This novel is a delight,
2:09.9	and our pal Linda Holmes, is a delight as well. So let's get right into it.
	...

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