Dear Hank & John - 220: Haunted Christmas Trees

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Is it okay to go to your old house and ask if you can walk through it? How do you research? How do you interject in conversations smoothly? Can you unpickle a pickle? What should my rice crispy sculpture be? Can I enjoy religious music as an atheist? How do you sell yourself? Will this tree haunt us? John Green and Hank Green have answers! Tour info: https://www.hankandjohn.com/appearances If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail]. Join us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn Subscribe to the Nerdfighteria newsletter! https://nerdfighteria.com/nerdfighteria-newsletter

Hey, cold open from Hank and John here just to let you know that it is the holiday season. It's the gift giving season and Hank and I are going on tour. It's a great gift for you or your friends or loved ones. I don't want to prescribe who you give gifts to. Just know that if you live in St. Petersburg, Florida, Raleigh, North Carolina or Atlanta, Georgia, we will be in your town on tour with the Anthropocene reviewed and dear Hank and John in January tickets at Hank and John.com slash appearances or just go to Hank and John.com and you can click on a thing when you get there.

You can click on a thing when you get there. All right, John, do you want to make a podcast? Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Gorgeous, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and F.C. Wimbledon John. Do you know how old Santa Claus is? How old is Santa Claus?

He's 1749 years old. Wow. And do you know when he's going to turn 1750? When? On his birthday, John. No. I refuse to accept that as a joke. I don't acknowledge it. No one knows when Santa Claus' birthday is so that's as good as I can do. That's the most literally the most accurate answer. I wasn't a joke. It was just the accurate answer. Oh, well, in that sense, I appreciate it. Hank, I'm very excited. As you know, we have a Patreon, patreon.com slash,

I don't remember what it is. Do you're Hank and John? All right, that's a good, that's a great Patreon handle. Anyway, we have a Patreon on that Patreon. One of the terrible perks that you can get is this really bad podcast we make every week just for our Patreon subscribers. It's called This Week in Ryan's, but it hasn't been about people named Ryan in like seven

months. So we're finally rebranding it to this week in worries, which is the kind of, it's the kind of podcast topic I can really get behind because I have, I have, I definitely have a new worry every week. And so every week we'll be discussing our worries of the week as well as anything else that comes up. I think there's like an etymology section. It's like a five or 10 minute podcast.

You can get it at patreon.com, such dear Hank and John. We don't spend any of that money. It goes to a complexly to support Crash Course and SciShow or other educational video projects. But yeah, that's, I just, I wanted to say that. Right. Now we can go on to answering questions from our listeners. I am also excited.

We're gonna try to bring a little bit of joy in, and we're also gonna... Oh, it's gonna be a very funny this week in woe, just to be clear. Our initial idea is to do the etymology of the thing we are most worried about every week. Yeah, and last week we did the etymology of the word worry, which turns out as a fascinating history,

it involves ropes and a feeling of strangulation, which is sort of like the emotion of 2019, but Hank is coming to an end. 2019 is coming to an end. What does 2020 hold? Oh boy, who knows what kind of wonderful surprises. Oh my god. This first question comes from Huck who asks, dear Hank and John, is it okay to go back to your house that you used to live in and ask the new owners who you don't know if you could walk through it? If so, what nope that you can't. Huck, I'm sorry. I don't think you can. I understand the urge to do this, like the house that Hank and I grew up in in Orlando. It would be really cool for me to walk through it. And probably the owners would be fine with it. I'm just telling you that I personally wouldn't do it. Yeah, because here's the thing, Huck, both literally and figuratively, you can't go home again.

Right. And the closest you can get is when your old house comes up for sale and they put all the pictures on the internet, which is, yes, great. It's wonderful. And go to zilo.com and you look at all of the pictures and then you think, if you're like me, you think, maybe I'll just buy that house and I'll restore it to exactly what it looked like in 1984 and I'll go there once a year on my birthday

and walk around my home. That's right. Other people can't have this, it's mine. Yeah. So I'm gonna be a part of the housing crisis by owning a house that no one lives in. What'd you do with your money, John? I bought a house in Orlando, Florida that's only for me and only on my birthday. Does it still have a giant radio transmission tower in the backyard? Probably not. That was probably a bit of a safety violation. That was definitely the highlight of our childhood home

was that our next door neighbor had a 200-foot tall radio tower. It was huge. And I don't remember it, thinking that this was as big of a deal at the time, but at one point, the top of the 200-foot tall radio tower fell off and landed, it went through the top of the 200 foot tall radio tower fell off. It did break off. And landed, it went through the screen of our swimming pool and into the pool where we could have been swimming.

Yeah, but we weren't. And we weren't. And like, if you're gonna die, like which you are, you might as well get impaled by the top of a radio tower while swimming. Like, that's amazing. I liked the first half of that sentence a lot. And I disliked the second half of the sentence

tremendously. I agree. Never have I, has my opinion on a sentence changed more than in the course of that sentence, because you are going to die. But the idea that it is a good death to be impaled by a radio tower in a swimming pool in Orlando, Florida. Right.

That, hey, that is in the bottom one percent of all possible deaths. Yeah, but like, at least to get a Wikipedia page, maybe a don't. Yeah, but your Wikipedia page is just list of people who died via impaling of radio towers in Orlando, Florida. And it's like 42 people long. You're not even the star of the list. That was very weird. What were their names?

What were their names? They're definitely dead. Yeah, they were old then. Because they were like a hundred and thirty at the time. What were their names? And I remember, the sort of mythos around the tower was that he worked in the orange groves and she wanted to like, talk to him. And so they had like a radio that they could talk back and forth with, like cell phones,

but in the 60s. Hold on. So she needs a shot. I got a radio tower. I got a comb. Where'd you go, John? He left me. She didn't pick up, but I'll let you know if she calls back. I got a comb bomb. Where'd you go, John? He left me. She didn't pick up, but I'll let you know

if she calls back. I got to remember those people's names. Was it N****? That is correct. Oh my God, where did that come from? How does my brain contain that information? And I haven't access it in 32 years, and I couldn't access it until I called mom,

and she didn't answer. How you called mom? That's great. Yeah, that's why. Oh, did you not notice that I put you on hold for like two minutes? No, I had no idea where you went. You just disappeared. Ah!

Ah! I said hold on. I noticed. I know it is. And then I put you on the hold on. All I heard you say was hold on and then you disappeared. Well, I was calling mom, but she didn't answer, but it doesn't matter because it was definitely the f***ing family.

Anyway, rest in peace. I think we answered the question. Huck don't go home. Don't go. You can't go home. Whatever you do, don't go home. This next session comes from Zynapp who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been watching Journey to the Microcosmos and

Listening to the Anthropocene Reviewed and I was wondering how do you guys do your Research? Do you just do it yourselves or do other people do it for you? Do you read books or just use the internet? Isn't it super time consuming to research all the time? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's super time consuming.

I mean, yeah, John does all of the Anthropocene reviewed by himself, which is super time consuming. And I can tell you that because I see the YouTube videos he watches, and you spend a lot of time researching a single topic, John. I do. I do usually read books as well as using the internet. I mean, the internet's an amazing resource, but the truth is the vast majority of the world's information isn't on it, or at least isn't on my internet. I can go to the library and access all kinds of databases that I can learn so much more from.

So for instance, writing this most recent episode about all-dling sign, I had to learn about Robert Burns and this friendship that he had with this older woman who ended up making a vlog with her video about. And in that process, I started to think like, oh, well, what do we know about where Robert Burns got the poem from? And then I fell down a rabbit hole and I'm reading these biographies of Robert Burns and, you know, go into the library and look at stuff up. But like, for me, that is the joy.

Like, I love writing and I love trying to distill, you know, what I've learned or what I'm thinking about into sentences. But for me, the real joy of it is like the thought that just over the next hill might be some amazing fact. Yeah, and so often is like that's the thing you are rewarded. Yeah. It's like a kind of sport where, you know, if you play long enough, you will score a goal and that feels really good. There's nothing like diving into a well-researched book to be like, oh, this is also much weirder and cooler than I thought. Yeah. So, you know, and prepping for starting Journey to the Microcosmos, I read a couple of books, Microb Hunters, which is an older book. It's several decades old. I think it came out in the 60s, maybe. And it's just a look at, you know, the

deep history of these people who were first realizing that this other world existed beneath our notice, that like organisms didn't stop beyond where our perception stopped. And how, you know, sort of universe changing that was. And also how it was kind of not accepted for a long time. And people were like, this doesn't make any sense that that's not an actual living thing. That's just a piece of dust doing dust things. Right.

But I do have lots of help with microcosmos, especially, which is outlined by James, who does all of the video parts. And then De Boque, who also works on Dear Hank John, also works on tangents, works on a ton of stuff for us, who sort of like does the deeper research to make sure we don't get stuff wrong. And also writes a lot of the episodes. Yeah, I've written all of the other PC and reviewed, not because I think I'm the only person who can write it, but because it is such a source of pleasure for me, and because it gives me a way to do something on my terms and without too much interference from like broader internet culture,

which is really important for me for my brain. And then also, I just love it. I think one of the things that people don't understand about learning until they get the bug is how good it feels to find the thing that you've been looking for that you didn't know you were looking for, that piece of information that changes the way you understand the world or confirms something that you thought but you didn't have much evidence for. It's so fun to find those little moments and to find the places where what you're interested in

meets up with a larger human story or with your own human experience or whatever. That is what I'm really crave when I'm researching and it makes learning fun. Ralph. Ralph? Mom just texted me. Ralph.

Ralph. It's Ralph. It was still in her head too, just sitting around in there. Yep. This next question comes from Echo, who asks, Dear Hank and John, how do you interrupt each other so well and efficiently, but also frequently when you talk and what to move on from certain topics? Whenever I'm with friends, I can never find the proper moment to interject

and most of the time one or two friends will talk endlessly without pause. And when I do interject, I do it abruptly and then I apologize for interrupting and then it talks super fast so that no one can interrupt me. I can never understand how others find ways to creep into conversation smoothly.

Forever a good listener, echo Boy, I, let first, I want to make it very clear that John and I do not talk as efficiently and smoothly and without interruption as it comes out sounding after tuna gets his marvelous fingers on it. That is correct. You should hear a real conversation between us. It's absolute, it just makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah. Tune to put in a bit here where it's just complete, like some of the stuff you cut out. And you know what is interesting and cool?

No matter what, we can't build everything. And if you can't then. Right now, Hank, just so you know, in the background, I'm trying to figure out what happened to Ralph. Oh, right, of course. It's okay, probably not. And smash cut to right now, it has genuinely only been a couple of minutes.

Oh, God. What question were we answering? Oh, man, mom needs to stop texting you. Oh, I don't know. We went so far off the rails. We're so far off the rails. This end of the year's spectacular afternoon day in John Google, someone they met three times 35 years ago. Well, if it's it's telling me anything, it's that small

interactions that we have in people with people in our lives have bigger impacts than we think. All right, this next question comes from Nina because we need to get out of the rapid hole. Yeah, but this however has been a nice exploration of why Hank and I like research and how it happens. Yeah. Nina writes, dear John and Hank, can you un-pickle a pickle? What? What?

Like, Nina, no. You know what? Actually, I looked it up. I looked it up because I thought, why not look it up? Because I love doing research. Yeah. And you know what I found is that it's very hard to unpickle a pickle, probably impossible,

because it's not just a chemical process, it's actually a biological one. Yeah. It's a a biological one. Yeah. It's a process of fermentation, and so like the really marvelous things that microorganisms do happens to your pickle, it would be very difficult to remove the vinegar and the lactic acid from the pickle.

But after the end of that process, you would not have a cucumber again. You would have a mushy piece of trash. I have great news for you though, Nina. You, if you have a pickle again. You would have a mushy piece of trash. I have great news for you though, Nina. If you have a pickle and you don't and you want a cucumber, just go to the store and get a cucumber. They're available extraordinarily inexpensively. They cost less than pickles. Yes, because they are far less complicated to create. I've grown a lot of cucumbers and I've made a few pickles. And just based on my own gardening experience, all vegetables grown in my garden are worth

at least $7. That's just how much labor it takes me to create them. Say cucumbers worth about $750. A pickle is worth like $900. Yeah. Homemade pickles, man. We have a pickle forken that was gifted to us. It's a device that is used in the process of making pickles.

And the only reason I'm keeping this pickle-forken is around is because I really like hearing Orrin say pickle-forken. Well, I mean, it's pretty easy to pickle a pickle. You know, like we pickle all kinds of vegetables, but we pickle them in ways that we eat them right away. You know, not like pickle and can. Like, you do with pickled pigs feet

or with like pickles that you buy in the store. That seems very complicated and hard. Yeah, well, and partially because you have to sort of manage the microbiome of the pickle container so that it does not become poison, which is a very important part. Oh, yeah. No, that's why I don't engage in canning.

Yes. Because I don't trust myself not to die of botulism. This next question comes from Katie who writes, dear John and Hank, my chemistry class holds a Rice Krispy sculpture making contest every year. I guess you make a ton of Rice Krispy treats and then mold them into something. Since the winner is voted by teachers, I have absolutely no clue what to build. What do teachers like?

Also, if my team wins, we get free test points and my GPA really depends on this. What do I build? Wow, that's already in this episode of Dear Hankajon. We've learned that you can learn anything about anyone. So you're just gonna have to go deep in the rabbit hole on your teacher's hand and find out what kind of people they are.

And if they find out that they're sort of like really into meta stuff, you see their Twitter and they're like, really into memes, you could like make some memes or you could make a Rice Krispie treat into a giant Rice Krispie. If they like really like that kind of humor, you just gotta really get deep on these people,

like know them very deeply. I take it all back and also don't know if I should say this. Hank, in my day, when I was coming up, it was difficult to find information about people on the internet. You know, you had to have access to certain databases that not all people were supposed to have access to. And you had to be like a reasonably good researcher. You had to be a private investigator. Yeah, yeah.

To some extent, you had to pay money, you had to have access to tools that not everyone had access to. Yeah, you and I didn't even stop making the pod. Ah! Then again, if somebody Googled me, they would be able to piece together quite a bit of my life as well.

Ahahahaha. Yeah. John, do you think that in another five years or so, Google can just make a draw my life video for you? It just knows everything about you. And it's just like, I'm just going to sketch this person's whole life out and you're like, wow. And there will be a ton of things that you forgot too.

So you'll be like, oh, right. Yeah, no, that is what we called our little bicycle gang when I was nine. Aw, that's cute. That's the Married Park Marauders. Really? Yeah. We wore plastic visors instead of helmets because it was the 80s.

And you were stockbrokers. Or poker players like who else were plastic visors? The plastic, you want to talk about an item of clothing. And I know that this has completely ceased to be a podcast in which we answer questions from our listeners. But you want to talk about an item of clothing that like literally no longer exists. The plastic visor.

It's on sale at Amazon for $6.99 for one or for like 30. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Great point, great point for one. Well, that is a horrible deal. And first off, that's not even a plastic visor. That is not what I mean at all. I mean a rich, right? This is just a cost. There is. Yeah. It's $9.50. Shut the front door. I'm not paying $9.50 for a plastic visor. I know much of those things cost. This one's $15. My God, I guess we got out of the plastic visor business because nobody could afford it. Apparently, the purpose of the green eye shade,

John, which I have now done some research on, is that for people who are engaged in vision-intensive, detail-oriented occupations, it lessons eye strain that was caused by early incandescent lights and candles which tended to be harsh and bright. So, yeah, but just to be clear, this was an opaque, plastic, rigid visor. Oh, yours wasn't see through at all. God no.

We wrote with our own puff paint, Merritt Park Marauders, on the visor part of the visor because that's how you knew that we were in a bite gang. John, I can't wait for you to dress up like you this Halloween. Oh wait, here's one with a 12-pack. Boom, boom, boom, boom, we're back in business. This should not be possible. Yeah, we are living in strange times. Yeah. And that is the end of the sentence. Hey, I have an idea. Yeah. What if we make an advice podcast instead of making a podcast where Hank and John

weren't how much they can learn from Google? Absolutely. This next question comes from Cambria who asks, dear Hank and John, I, can I still enjoy religious Christmas music if I am an atheist or any religious music for that matter? I like it so much, even though it means nothing to me. Is that okay? My name is Latin for Wales.

Yeah, Cambria. John, yes. Also, I will say that this music does not mean nothing to you. Right. It doesn't mean the same thing as it means to other people, but you enjoy it and that is meaning in itself. So I will counter you. Right. It doesn't mean the same thing as it means to other people, but you enjoy it, and that is meaning in itself. So I will counter you on that, but yes, I still enjoy religious music a lot, because for a long time, all music was religious. Not for a lot of it anyway.

Yeah. And yeah, of course you can. This is one of the weirdnesses of 21st century life, I think, that people feel like they need to be so firmly in one camp or another, and that somehow they're betraying their camp by liking something from the other camp or whatever. But like, Silent Night's a great song, and whether or not you actually think that Jesus, the Son of God, was born in a manger on Christmas night, has nothing to do with whether silent night is a good song. Yeah. In the same way, whether or not you actually think that Steve Harwell is not the sharpest tool in the shed, all star is a great song. Maybe a little bit different from that. But I also know it's basically the same. Okay. I also think that you can enjoy many of the ideas of religious traditions without enjoying all like without like believing

in all of the structure around them. And if you can't then like, you can't build everything from scratch every life. Like we have to look to what we learned in the past, and you don't have to, you can, but you don't have to take like everything from one place. You can, you know, you can pick to some extent. You don't have to believe in God to think that the idea of a God or a God-like creature being born to poor parents who are living away from their home and who are not welcomed into the community where they find themselves, whether or not you believe in God is irrelevant to

whether or not that story is interesting. Yeah. There are lots of people who believe in God who don't get, in my opinion, what is interesting about the story. What was unusual was that that person would be born a God in those circumstances. Yeah. I understand that some people have bad feelings about institutions, and so they want to sort of like run away.

And like that's, you know, I completely understand. But for me as a secular person, like there's a lot that's really interesting about these stories. And also, like they informed so much of the history of, you know, like the last 2000 years of the history of the planet. And so I think that there's a lot of value actually in looking at those things and appreciating them. Like there's good stories here. And there's good music here. Our next question comes from Jenny who writes, dear John and Hank, how do you acknowledge

your faults without becoming consumed by them? Also how do you sell yourself really just three dogs in a trench coat, Jenny? Well, it's very difficult to sell yourself when you're three dogs in a trench coat, unless somebody's looking to buy three dogs in a trench coat, which I may be in the market. That sounds pretty cute. I think that like acknowledging your faults, like our faults are in flux. And so I think part of it is like recognizing my mistakes, recognizing like my patterns of mistakes that I've made and trying to correct that pattern. I think is really important part of acknowledging my faults.

Right. Like human nature isn't static and our individual nature aren't static. Right. Like human nature isn't static and our individual nature's aren't static. Right. Like I'm always going to be an anxious person. I'm often going to come at a problem from a place of fear. That's not likely to like fundamentally change about me. But my level of understanding of that changes and my ability to reshape my behavior because I am more aware of that changes. And I like I think that's a big part of how to not sort of like be consumed by your you know your mistakes is to like recognize that they're

they are not something that is necessarily intrinsic to you and if they are then like there is something there are ways to to be better inside of the conditions you live in. And second, how do you sell yourself? It does come from a place of confidence. Like figuring out what are the things that you bring and actually believing it is very hard, especially early on in a career when you're really not sure of all those things. So I think a good way to sell yourself is to acknowledge your strengths and build your strengths because that is again not something that is intrinsic to you. Your strengths are going to change, are going to change as you go

through your life and I'll tell you when you're 40 years old you're going to be less good at dancing than you are as a younger person almost definitely. It hurts more. That's for sure. But you're going to get better at a lot of things. In fact, I guess if it tracks with the experience of most people I know, you get better at more things as you get older. Yeah. You also have to come at these conversations from a place of really understanding that you are valuable as a person. And a lot of us don't feel that way a lot at the time. I know I don't feel that way a lot at the time, but every human life has value. And so I think really coming to a place where you understand that you're a person of value, you're a person who's worthy of being in conversations of like, you know, being in the room where it matters,

or whatever. It's a different room for every person. And I think that we often think that it's the of being in conversations of like, you know, being in the room where it matters, or whatever. It's a different room for every person, and I think that we often think that it's the same room for every person. And like, one weakness I have that I don't have anymore is that I'm much better at understanding that different people have different rooms,

though not perfect at it, because of course, I only have the ones that have eyeballs to live through. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank Set of eyeballs, the only one he has. This podcast is also brought to you by Mr. Mrs. Radio Tower. Mr. Mrs. Radio Tower, but accident waiting to happen.

Literally, until it was just an accident that had happened. Of course today's podcast is also brought to you by looking up your old home on realtor.com, looking up your old home on realtor.com. That's okay. It's when you go further down the rabbit hole that it gets a little weird. It has become mistakes. And this podcast is brought to you by the green eye shade visors. Why not? Just put some puff paint on those boys and be one of the merit park marauders. Please, please, please wear a helmet. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, under on top of your eye shade.

No, just wear a helmet. It comes with a visor. That's an crazy thing. We put items on our heads. We just didn't put helmets on our heads. This next question comes from anonymous. You're right, Steer John and Hank, my family, and I have found a tree we like for Christmas.

My sister and I were looking through its online reviews. What? What? Wait. Excuse me? I'm confused. And all of them were good, except for one that said this tree was haunted and didn't elaborate. My question is, should we still get the tree? Will the tree continue to haunt us after we take it down to thank you, a concerned tree

buyer? I may not understand how this works. I assume that this tree, I assume, is a fake tree. Yeah. Is a tree, pre-lit, because you can't buy real trees online, can you? Also, it would be very much unproductive to review the tree you purchased because of how every tree is beautiful and unique. Yes, they're like trees in that way.

So this is an artificial tree that everyone says is good, except for one person who's clearly a troll who says that it's haunted. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, here's a situation, John. Okay. You don't know what has haunted this tree. Yeah. I think.

So when people die, they haunt houses. They've haunt familiar places. When trees die, they haunt trees. And this was, this is an artificial tree. A tree died with some unfinished business. I'm not gonna speculate on what that was. And the tree spirit moved into this fake tree so that it could try and get all of its unfinished business done.

Whatever that is. Maybe it just really wanted to be a Christmas tree and it just got too big and they just let it grow and then it lived the normal lifespan but it wanted to be a Christmas tree. And that now it is finishing its business in your home. And it's sort of like a responsibility. And this is something that is maybe not known widely,

but artificial tree companies actually do their best to imbue their trees with the souls of the dead. Yeah, I think they use a kind of like a tree version of an IV drip. Right. Yeah. You just sort of like hook them up to each other and there's an Oculus Rift involved. It's very weird.

So the long story short is you need to take this artificial tree home. You need to listen to it closely because trees do not speak our language and they do not speak loudly. You need to listen to this artificial tree closely and over time, having this tree in your home, you will come to understand what mission the tree who is haunting it needs to fulfill, then you will fulfill that mission and then you will write a memoir about the experience. Maybe with the help of the tree. Yeah. Kill it and turn it into paper.

That wasn't where I was going, but I like it. All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and ASC Wimbledon, several people wrote in with versions of this question, but Clara wrote in with the simplest version of this question. She wrote, dear John and Hank, what? Da, da, da, da. Our fudge rounds. version of this question. She wrote Dear John and Hank, what? Dot, dot, dot, our fudge rounds. Oh boy. And it occurs to me that if you don't know what

a fudge round is, and you heard our previous podcast where we waxed poetic about fudge rounds for like 30 minutes, you would likely be extremely confused because it sounds potentially scatological. Uh-huh. I mean, who knows would it be? Well, also, there is no fudge in a fudge round. Of course. And so you might think to yourself, oh, a fudge round, this must be something that's very good

and high quality. It is not that, it is a 25 cent cookie that you can get at gas stations, basically. It is not a cookie. It's two soft cakey, brownie cookie things with some fluffy chocolate mousse in between them. My heart is broken. I have almost never been so disappointed in you. What do you do with them?

What do you think it is? A fudge round is a sandwich. In which the two pieces of bread are chocolate cake. And the filling of the sandwich is chocolate frosting. Now there's more details, but it's more of a frosting than an icing. Can I tell you something that Alice said about my mustache after I shaved it, after having it for eight days because of the project for awesome?

Yeah, please. I came in to read her a story, and she said, this is a direct quote, I wrote it to Sarah to make sure I got everything right. And she said, finally, your mustache is gone. Why did you have to have it? And I said, it was for charity to raise money. And Alice said, there's other ways. What?

What does this have to do with fudge rounds? Nothing. I just was transitioning out of fudge rounds into the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon before I go buy a fudge round. Hank. Yes. Yes. Yes. Do you hear the sleigh bells ringing?

Do you hear the reindeer up frattering, singing the songs of angry men like that? It must be that most magical time of the year, the late December run that AFC Wimbledon goes on, it seems like every time we're doing terribly. And then suddenly in December, the players look at each other and they say, you know what we could do? When football games score goal. Oh my god. What if we, what if we try to think where we scored more goals than the other team scored. And then all the players

are like, it's a stark departure from our strategy earlier this season, but it could be good. AFC Wimbledon have now won or tied three consecutive games. We just beat Donkaster this weekend two to one. And like we won the game. Usually when we win a game, I'm like, oh, you know, sometimes you get lucky. We won the game. We had 33% possession, which isn't to ton. No. We had 61% pass accuracy. Again, not a ton. We had far fewer shots on target, but we won the game. We won it two to one. We did, I was a little bit, we did squeak it out a little bit, but we won a football game. And suddenly, AFC Wyndon are three entire points clear of the relegation zone, which is not amazing.

No, that's not a lot. But it's, I mean, it's better than we've been. We're in 19th. There's a team below us that's also not in the relegation zone. You know what I mean? I guess it's been a while since I could say that. A solid team of buffer. Yeah.

Oh, God. Why did you root for the most stressful team? I don't know, but AFC Wilburden is finished within one point, or two points of relegation for like three consecutive years. Yeah, it would be. I remember. So nice, just to finish 14th. So that form is probably this year going to be good enough

to get us safe and another season in league one. I mean, I'm not feeling like overly optimistic, but it's fun for now. Well, in this week's news from Mars, scientists have mapped out the frozen water buried beneath the planet's surface. It's part of a paper published recently in geophysical research letters, and the author has used satellite data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been doing amazing work for a long time, and Mars Odyssey Orbiter based on equipment that are able to detect

water, but also using heat-sensitive instruments. The heat-sensing data uses the fact that ice conducts heat better than the rocks around it. So you can actually figure out where the ice is and how deep it's buried based on the effect it has on temperature measurements. So we've now got an underground map of where water is on Mars. And it was very cool. I read about this. And it was cool that NASA kind of released this publicly so that

everybody in the world can start to think like, okay, well, that makes maybe it means that we should try to have the first Mars people here, or maybe here. Yeah, that's for clarity. That's not something that's like special about NASA. All space agencies do that right now because we kind of imagine this as a human endeavor rather than one that is national pride in it. But yeah.

And I also think it's cool that now we have this new map of Mars, like that is wild if you think about it. It's been a while since we started to have like newly detailed maps of places. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely cool. And there's a lot more solar system to explore. So there's lots of cool things to see coming up. You know, actually, that reminds me, Hank, that next week we're going to do things a little differently. It's the last pod of the 20 teens. And so Hank and I

are going to share with you and each other some of our favorites of this decade. If you want to know any of our particular favorites, you can send me a message on Twitter. If you want to hear about our favorite socks of the decade or our favorite Seltzer Waters or our favorite Star Wars movies. You can go specific, you can go broad, we'll take it on and we'll talk about those things instead of doing advice just to take a look back, talk a little bit about what's happened and where we're at and just appreciate the world a little bit. Yeah, well, thanks for podding with me, Hank.

Hey, thanks. It was a great time. This podcast is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC Studios. It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohassen, Sheridan Gibson, edited by Joseph Tunehmedish, our social media organizer, his Victoria von Jorno, the music you're hearing now, and the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown,

don't forget to be awesome. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪