This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

And just like that, season 34 of Dancing with the Stars has come to a close.

The winner has been crowned.

The freestyles have been performed.

The confetti cannons have exploded.

And I am Daniel Fischel, podcaster, TV director,

mother of two, and soon to be vagabond, traveling city to city and the Dancing with the Stars live

tour. In the end, it seems I did indeed become a professional dancer. I am home now. I am just back from

one of the year's biggest TV moments, the closure for one of the most memorable few months of my life.

Tonight, I was lucky enough to perform one last time on the show,

but the real news here is that Robert Irwin is our king of the ballroom. More on that in just a bit because I continue to record this

podcast, even through the final musical note, chronicling my own journey through the show,

learning dance from scratch and living to

talk about it. And I continue to fulfill my professional duty, please to report back as your

eyes and ears from the season finale. So, oh my gosh, what a day, what a week.

What a few months.

The finale has obviously been in full swing for at least the last week.

But the prep starts for it weeks ago.

You know, the pros are all, anybody who's still in the competition

is already having the conversations about finale week. As a matter of fact, the week I was eliminated,

which was week eight, we had our first creative meeting about a finale, about a freestyle. What are we going to do if we,

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