Bum-ba-d-d-dam-fob-bom-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom-bada-bba-da-bba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-fading, fading, fading. Hey, wow, it's Alex.

Thank you for listening to that very professional music.

Welcome to this holiday hello from me and from, you know, the podcast, secretly incredibly fascinating.

And yes, this is a holiday hello.

That's a change to the usual programming schedule.

There's a regular new episode next Monday, and there's been a regular new episode every Monday, ever since this podcast launched with two episodes on a Wednesday, actually, a ways back.

But then there's been a regular episode every Monday.

For a variety of reasons, I want to use this particular Monday to give you a holiday hello and give you a set of new-ish podcasts, the whole rest of this audio file that you have

downloaded or streaming or whatever else.

The whole rest of this audio file is some podcast episodes that are new to almost all of you

that I think you'll love.

First things first, happy final Monday of 2021.

There are a few more days left. None of them are Mondays. And, you know,

let's have an amazing rest of this year. I also want to thank you for making my year amazing

by making this show part of your 2021 and part of how you experienced it. Before I taped this, I was

sitting and I was looking at the little Christmas tree that we have

and I was being very, very, very, very glad that this podcast can exist because it can.

It's awesome that a small handful of kind listeners are the whole reason I get to do this.

It's the best. I also want to say thank you

for the joy I get in making this thing. And I do make it. I have my friend Chris Sousa,

who I'm able to pay a bit to master the audio each week, which is improving and evening out

the sound quality of what everybody taped

...