Oh my gosh, hi. I'm Dave Holmes. Welcome to Troubled Waters, the show that treats popular

culture as the most important kind of culture, because it is often the kind that bums us

out the least. Although, after another goddamn interview with George R.R. Martin, that's

not going to last for very long, but that's beside the point. Back in the before times,

Troubled Waters would pit two teams of comedians against each other in a pop culture of battle royale.

But now, still, teaming up with another person who is not in your quarantine pod is possibly lethal.

It's definitely more frowned upon than trying to think of a fucking argument against student loan forgiveness that has any kind of consistency

and doesn't make you sound like Ebenezer Scrooge.

So for now, it is one comic against another.

And to win this battle, each comic will be called upon to use their smarts, their rhetorical

skills, the really good comebacks that they have in a tiny little part of their brain

to earn the coveted Waters title

Pundit Amaritus. That title will give

a person's opinion on, let's say,

Nicole Kidman's jellyfish haircut?

It's pretty good.

More weight than a civilians.

We come here for magic.

This is Troubled Waters.

Music Come here for magic. This is Troubled Waters. Let us meet our comics.

I love when we do this.

Our first contestant is a comedian who hosts the Blackout Diaries podcast with C.J. Sullivan.

...