If the Golden Bachelor sounds to you like a single man you win at the end of a video game, you're not alone.

But it is in fact the new season of the long-running Bachelor franchise in which the

Bachelor is a 72-year-old widower named Gary.

Because Gary's potential matches are also significantly older than the usual crop, the priorities are a little different, but the weird dates, the awkward conversations and the fixations on who has kissed whom so far remain.

I'm Stephen Thompson. And I I'm Linda Holmes and today we're

talking about the Golden Bachelor on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining us today is journalist, writer, and founding member of the Code Switch team, Karen Grigsby Bates. Welcome back, Karen.

Hey guys, thanks, I'm excited to be here.

We are excited to have you here.

So as you know if you've seen other editions of The Bachelor,

the conceit is that an attractive single man is presented with 22 or so single women who are

competing for his affection. He gradually narrows them down to one. He proposes

to her, they get engaged, and a little bit later they break up in a statement to us weekly or at least that's how it usually turns out with the golden bachelor they shook things up this time around they have centered the show around a

72 year old widower named Gary Turner rather than around some young athlete or race car driver

or whatever. The women too are 60 and older. Many of them have kids, some of them

are widowed, some of them are divorced. As we record this episode, Gary is down to his final

three women, Teresa, Leslie, and Faith. The Golden Bachelor is

airing now on ABC and streaming on Hulu. I am so curious to hear what you both

think about the Golden Bachelor.

Karen, are you a Bachelor viewer normally?

You know, I wasn't really because I thought it was so exclusionary.

It was boring.

...