Hello, this is Josh Gondelman.

No, I'm sorry, I'm Josh Gondelman, and this is Make My Day, a comedy game show.

The world is a stressful place to be, so every week I try to make it a little nicer for about half an hour.

I play a game with one guest who is guaranteed to win because they're the only contestant. Throughout the game we play,

I will assign them points based on how much their answers cheer me up. The winner at the end and only

contestant wins a $100 grand prize donation to the charity or aid cause of their choice, and we both

give pep talks to a person or group of our choosing, because this isn't all about me. It's just mostly about me.

My guest today is one of the hosts of the wonderful and beloved NPR podcast, Pop Culture, Happy Hour,

and the author of The Delightful Novel Every Drake Starts Over, which is available now and makes a great gift for any gift-giving occasion.

Welcome to the show, Linda Holmes.

Oh, thank you, Josh.

I'm so excited to be here.

I'm so excited that you are here.

How are you?

I mean, I think I'm adequate.

I think I have been taking the position since the beginning of pandemic isolation

that under the best of circumstances,

a lot of us are vacillating right now between

like a B minus and a C plus. And today I'm like a B minus, so it's okay. Hey, that's pretty good.

It's not bad. It's top of the range right now. Yeah. We've scaled. I grew up in New England where all the mountains are very small.

Right. There are mountains, but they're, you know, Mount Washington. Yeah. It's like you go up, climb up 4,000 feet, and there's still like trees and arpies and stuff at the top of the mountain.

But you still climb, you climbed the mountain that there is.

...