Dear Hank & John - 404: Die on Tuesday

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Is the “Indianapolis Cocktail” actually served in Indianapolis? What do I do with my life? How do I entertain my friend in the hospital? What’s up with the lyrics in "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year?” …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, hello. Hi. Did you hear that the butter substitute companies are just doing really bad right now? No.

Do they have poor margins? They have very bad margins. Oh, okay. That was close. You were. I was on the path. Man, I've been reading this 1,000 page history of the French Revolution. I've been reading it with my ears while I signed my name over and over again. I've never been so anxious. I mean,

it's broadly true and that's saying something because I'm an anxious person, but this history of the French Revolution has really got me stressed out, Hank, because just spoiler alert, I don't know how much you know about the French Revolution. It doesn't go great. It doesn't go great. No, not for really anybody. No, nobody except arguably Napoleon comes out on top in the French Revolution and Napoleon, I mean, dies in exile and everything.

Yeah, long term it didn't work out for him either. No, but he dies in his bed, which is a relatively good outcome. If you're a major French Revolution figure and you die of so-called natural causes, you won the lottery. Huge. Yeah. Yeah. Like Monsieur de Lafayette of the revolutionary set. I think he died of natural causes. Is that a Hamilton quote that I just was receiving?

I think it was a little bit of a Hamilton quote, but no big deal. No big deal, man. Anyway, so I'm stressed out and I'm a little sad. I'm going to be honest with you. I feel sad and worried. I feel worried about the state of affairs on this, our one and only planet. Yeah, it does feel as if we could have done a whole lot of a better job of making things work for people. And that might have made things a little bit better. I just wish we built systems that included more people. Yeah.

This is my major issue with tuberculosis. It's not actually, I don't have any issues with the bacterium. I don't love the bacterium. Well, I mean, if we could just get rid of the bacterium, that would be a huge win. It's just that it's not doing anything it shouldn't do. If we could get rid of the bacterium, it would be obviously a huge win, except we would have

all these other healthcare inequities that would still be really real and that would be driving a huge percentage of human suffering and death. Right. You also can't blame a bacteria for doing what it's doing. Whereas you can blame humans for the things that they build. Not that we didn't have good intentions or that we're inherently evil. I don't buy any of that.

I don't think we're good enough to be good or bad enough to be bad. But I think that we could, and sometimes we do, right? We've built stronger systems that include more people, which is why when the year I graduated from high school, something like 12 million kids under the age of five died and last year fewer than six million did. Like that's because we built better systems. It's not that it's impossible. The reason maternal mortality is down 80% at Koidu Government Hospital in the last seven years is because we built better systems, right? Like

it's not impossible. This stuff isn't impossible. And that's kind of the frustrating part. That's what's so frustrating. Yeah. So, do you want to know Lafayette's full name? Hit me. Marie-Joseph Paul, Yves, Roque, Gilbert, de Motier, de Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette. He got Lafayette in there twice. And there are two times.

And yes, I know that I have good French pronunciation. Thank you. Or as they say in France, merci. Lafayette to the second, to the power of do. I love a good French joke. Barely. When you just say something en français, I laugh. I just, have I ever told you about going up and down?

The joke is that one of the words was in French. Have I ever told you about growing up, going to high school in Alabama, about going to French convention? You went to French convention? Hell yeah, I did. What was it called? I would go to Convention des Français. I think it was called the Estates General. Sorry, I'm reading too much history of the French Revolution.

That's a joke only for French Revolution enthusiasts. Yeah. Yeah, I think the Estates General is how Lavoisier ended up not making out of the French Revolution. It might have been the beginning of the story. It certainly wasn't the end. Anyway, point being, you don't want to live in Paris in 1792 if you like being literally or figuratively attached to your own head. Yeah.

But the French Convention in my childhood, it looms large because everybody had thick Southern accents because we were in Alabama. And my French pronunciation is so terrible that my kids run and cower in fear the moment I start to speak French, French and French. Uh-huh. Yep.

But you should have heard some of these kids. They'd be like, oué la bibliothèque. Yeah. I mean, you also had an American accent. You just had a different American accent. So it doesn't sound quite as ridiculous. Totally. I was equally incomprehensible because my French would be like,

who est la bibliothèque? Yeah. I would just put marbles in my mouth. John, did you know that French fries aren't actually cooked in France? Are they not? No, they're cooked in Greece. Brum-bum.

Yeah. I'll tell you what, I would have loved that. Let me rewrite that joke for you. Okay. Make it funny. Okay. Hey, did you know that French fries aren't actually cooked en France? See? It's funny now.

You just put something in French and it gets funny. If only I could do a Greek accent, which I don't even think I have access to. No, I don't think you have that in the arsenal. Yeah. Certainly you don't have German in the arsenal. We all know that. I'm great at German. Longtime listeners of the pod already know that.

All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Ren who writes, Dear John and Hank, the other day I was looking for a blue carousel cocktail recipe to make a themed cocktail and I came across something called the Indianapolis cocktail. The recipe is listed as one part blue carousel, one part vodka, one part half and half. I found this deeply upsetting. Well, I don't know why. It sounds delicious to me. I'm supposed to mix an orange flavored liquor with half and half? Is this a real thing often served in Indianapolis? Have you had one? 22 years past my naissance, Ren.

No. Nice. No, of course I have never had a cocktail that's one part, first off I've never had a cocktail that's one part blue carousel. I don't even know what that is. I wouldn't be able to pick it out of a lineup despite knowing that it's likely blue.

It's blue, it's the blue one. It's 100% the blue one. I have had blue Carousel. And I think that you should, all of us should go to the bar this week, if we're allowed, and we should order a, and then say the name of your state. Can I get a Montana?

Oh, well this is actually the name of my city. So you'd have to say, can I have the Missoula? Oh, can I get a Missoula? I bet there's a Missoula. Yeah. Until what? Well, I'm gonna ask for an Indianapolis cocktail and I can guarantee you that not a single bartender

in Indianapolis has ever heard of this thing. That sounds so bad. Blue carousel vodka and half and half. I mean, that's a lot of half and half. It's a huge amount of half and half. I bet it's good. Is this a third of the- I bet it's like a milkshake. I'm sure it is like a vodka milkshake, which is a huge percentage of classic cocktails are versions

of a vodka milkshake. They consumed so much half and half back in the old days. Yeah, somebody had to. What were they doing? How they must have just moved constantly in order to stay relatively fit is my my review of the old days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I look at the recipes, they were putting they were putting like lard inside of gelatin. Well, John, being like, here's your meat. I got it. I got the thing is food.

We have so much food now. It's so available. And we've done so much magic to it to make it taste like Cool Ranch Doritos. Yes, that's true. Which they just didn't have back then. And so they had to suffer with half and half, which that was their version of Cool Ranch Doritos.

They were like, oh, it's so creamy. Yes, the Cool Ranch to Indianapolis is, that's what that was. Now an Indianapolis cocktail with one Cool Ranch Dorito in it. That is how you have to serve it. We made a cocktail in in in college that was a grenadine. Yeah. Beer. And then on top of that, it was some kind of sweet liquor, like schnapps or something.

Oh, God, that sounds terrible. Yeah. I don't know why, but I liked it so much. Well, I mean, it just speaks to the fact that your brain wasn't fully developed. That's, I think, a big part of it. Yeah. Or I was like, wow, we made a thing. Yeah. I used to drink the Alabama Slammer, as we called it, which was just Mountain Dew and vodka. I wrote in Looking for Alaska about this most disgusting cocktail of them all, which was just half milk, half vodka that people would put in their court milk bottles as so as to go undetected or relatively undetected by authorities. This was a boarding school. It's

the equivalent of like prison hooch, just milk and vodka and you would just drink it and you'd have to choke it down. So I can only imagine that one part half and half, one part vodka and one part blue carousel also isn't delicious. I'm going to try it. So I think we all know that milk and orange juice is bad because we all tried that as children We're all like well. These are the two main drinks. Let's put them together and see what happens Yeah, I think if you took milk, but but like a like a orange sherbert is good an orange ice cream is good Yeah, that's true. So there's a way to get milk and orange together in a way. That's not bad and I bet

to get milk and orange together in a way that's not bad. And I bet the people who invented the Indianapolis, they really figured out the ratios by having it be exactly one third of each of these things. Can we talk about the pronunciation of Sherbert? I guess. Is it in question? Yeah, yeah, yeah, bro. It's spelled S-H-E-R-B-E-T, as in sherbet.

Wait, there's no R at the end? There's no R in sherbert. That's... It's sherbet. What? What? It's sherbet. It's technically sherbet. I told you. I just googled it!

It comes from the Persian word sherbat. Even the word it came from doesn't have an extra R in it. Well, that doesn't surprise me at all. We're always adding stuff, but we didn't add the thing. Why is it called sherbert if it has no R there? It's originally a fruity, non-alcoholic drink. That's what it's called, right? No, it's called sherbet.

But do other people call it sherbert or is that just me? Do you have rainbow sherbert or do you have rainbow sherbet? You have rainbow sherbet. But do other people call it sherbet or is that just milk? Do you have rainbow sherbet or do you have rainbow sherbet? You have rainbow sherbet. I think you have rainbow sherbet. Yeah. Sherbet. Because sherbet does not sound like an ice cream related phenomenon. Sherbet sounds like the last name of the guy who sells you insurance.

Yeah. Sher you insurance. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, have you gone to see Sherbet about that? Yeah. The pronunciation with the additional R as a second syllable pronounced Sherbert is less commonly used. Less commonly? What happened to me?

In what world? Well, we need to put this in the census this year. I feel like I've never heard sherbet in my life. Maybe I just think they're saying it weird. Is it not sherbet? Wait, hold on. No, it's definitely not sherbet. It's sherbet.

It's sherbet. Well, just because we're in French pronunciation land, it's sherbet. There it is. That's what you needed to do. Sherbet orange. Sherbet orange. Why can I only do it when I'm grumbling? I don't know. Why is that the only way?

Because you're going to the library. Oh, well, we didn't want French listeners anyway. They've all left. Anyway, now that the French people are gone, let's talk trash about them. I think that they came out of it great, you know? Out of the revolution? Eventually. Well, that's a little bit like saying, I mean, yeah, after like 30 years of European wide

war they came out of it okay. Yeah, 30 years isn't that long. That's like only a third of a person's life. Hundreds of thousands of people died. It wasn't a third of those people's lives. It was terrible. It was a catastrophe. So many people were separated from their heads needlessly.

Yeah. Yeah, some good heads got separated from their bodies. Anyway, sherbet. Sherbet. Sherbet. Sherbet. Sherbet. Sherbet.

Sherbet. We're going to have to live in that. I mean, if you work at an ice cream shop, write in, let us know what the situation is. Read the pronunciation at your door. Yeah. Do people say, can I have some orange sherbet? They obviously do. A potent Miriam Webster, I'm the weird one. Let's answer this question from Shay who writes, dear John and Hank, what do I do with my life? Great. Just what I was looking for, Shay, a little more existential uncertainty.

What do you do with your life? I'm a college sophomore and I'm expected to pick a major in a few months. I don't like any of these majors. This is making me crash out. Since this is a podcast for teens and this is a top issue for teens, I couldn't think of a better place to ask. Nothing else to say. Shit. I forgot we were a top podcast for teens. We are. Yeah. People say that about us all the time. It's not just that one article. I hear it a lot. Teens come up to me. The young people of America come up to me and they don't say I love Crash Course. They say, you know what I love?

Dear Hank and John, a comedy podcast for teens. Thank you. It had helped me so much get through AP Chem. I mean, if you think about it, Hank, it's amazing. I wrote one of the best-selling novels for teens of all time. Yeah. Then I made the best podcast for teens of all time. You're the teen whisperer. That's what the New Yorker said uncomfort time. You're the teen whisperer.

That's what the New Yorker said uncomfortably. I did not like that. That was the headline of the New Yorker profile of me. I did not love it. I pulled that one out of the deep recesses. Yeah, I did not love it. I asked the person who wrote the article, are you responsible for that headline?

I don't remember what they said. Anyway, what should Shay do with their life? Look, the world is very interesting, and it can be hard to get into the head space where you accept the interestingness of all of the things, especially when they're all sort of like staring at you in the face equidistantly. They're just all there looking at you and being like,

look at the surface of me and only at the surface of me. I would suggest going to look at, we do have a thing at youtube.com slash study hall called fast guides, which talks about all of the different majors, what you can, that sort of a lot of the main majors, what you can get out of them, what sort of like a future might look like, etc.

My thing that I always want to cultivate and suggest people try to cultivate is like the ability to be interested in a thing. And that can, of course, be very difficult when you're in a sort of non psychologically safe situation, which it kind of feels like you are when you're being forced to pick a major. But I think that trying to be open to that stuff and trying to just be the kind of person who would be into it and trying that identity on for a second can be really valuable. It's been really valuable for me. Hank, I remember when I was a sophomore in college back in the Halcyon days of yore when everything

was done on typewriters or as my daughter recently asked me, did you have telephones in college? Oh, wow. Yes, I had telephones, but it's fair enough question. I mean, I didn't have the internet, which is a bigger deal than telephones. I recently had to explain to someone that I almost burned my dorm room down because of a light bulb and they were like, what happened to the light bulb? And I was like, light bulbs used to be very hot.

Yeah, that's true. Anyway, when I was a sophomore in college, I had to pick a major and I basically had to decide based on what classes I'd already taken and I'd only followed my curiosity and passion up to that point. Oh, yeah. And it turned out that the only things I could be, the only things I could major in were English and religion. Now, you may be in this position and not know it, Shay, in which case the- Look at that. In which case, the answer is just ask your academic advisor what's still available to you and choose from that tiny

list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And do whatever costs the least amount of money. Absolutely. Do your best to not add that fifth year. Do not pay extra. Do not pay extra for a major. I did add a fifth year, but it was only because I got whooping cough.

Is there anything more predictable than me getting whooping cough? Which reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by whooping cough. Whooping cough. Nice. Still there. Still there. Yeah, it's vaccine preventable, but you actually have to get a booster if, and I'll tell you what, it sucks. I lost a whole semester of, I would cough until I vomit. I mean, it's very, but the best part about getting whooping cough was that I became very interesting to the Knox County, Ohio Department of Public Health. Yeah. And I just most of all hang-

Where'd this come from? I just want people to think that I'm special. Yeah. And the Knox County Department of Public Health treated me like I was very special indeed. Yeah. Today's podcast is also of course brought to you by the French language,

la langouage française. Wow. This podcast is also brought to you by the Indianapolis. It's got a lot of half and half. A little too much of an ass. And a Dorito right on the rim. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by John's first novel looking for Alaska. John's first novel looking for Alaska.

Maybe a little too autobiographical in retrospect. Does that guy get whooping cough in that book? No, because he doesn't. There you go. All right. Let's answer this question from Emily, Hank, who writes, Dear John and Hank, one of my closest friends will have to undergo a pretty massive surgery next month and he will be in the hospital for at least a month afterwards.

I was wondering if you have any dubious hospital entertainment advice for me to bring my friend during his recovery period. I plan on buying embarrassing balloons and sneaking in some good snacks, but beyond that, I'm stumped. Cutesy curtsy from Emily. Nice. Magic the Gathering. Oh, I was gonna recommend more mobile games.

Yeah, mobile games are very good, but you can't- You can just like sit there and play together. Yeah, yeah. Like Among Us. Yeah, do Among Us. Yeah, yeah. Like Among Us. Yeah, do Among Us. Like a local game of Among Us. Include the nurses, they're not busy. Yeah, there's, certainly he will be playing

a lot of mobile games regardless. And in that respect, I recommend Marvel Snap, which just never stops. You can, you never stop. It's always, it always gets harder and you can always get through chemo. They got me through chemo and now I am not playing Marvel Snap anymore. No, I mean, we've got so much crap going on. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. Now it's been said the guy who spent six hours this morning signing a piece of paper over, that's one of the things you got going on. signing a piece of paper over the first day. Look, that's one of the things you got going on. You are dedicated to the bit, but also, I don't know, you're dedicated to investing a lot in the written word. You want people to know. I might be reaching the end of this bit. I have to tell you, Hank. You say that every time. I have to tell you. 700,000 signatures in, I'm starting to realize that maybe this isn't the best possible use of a human lifetime. But then I think about how delighted I always was to get signed books. How many are you signing? How great that felt.

Oh, is that like over the course of your career, you mean? Yeah. I signed 150,000 of The Fault in Our Stars. I signed 200,000 of Turtles. I signed 250,000 of The Anthropocene Reviewed and now I've calmed it down to 100,000 of Everything is Tuberculosis. Oh, John. I do want to be a good steward of this book because I think it's important. Oh, that reminds me during this history of the French Revolution, do you know what I learned? I realize that we're ignoring this question, which is a very good question. But one of the things you want to do when your friend is in the hospital is share with them exciting tuberculosis news by reading them out loud.

My new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. Guess what was caused by tuberculosis? Not really, but a little bit. The French Revolution? La Revolution de France. My God. I know. It's so good. It's good when I do it as a full accent, like when I try to actually do the accent, but it's also good when I just do it in American. Both are so good. Anyway, I feel like I've been talking this entire podcast, but it's because you don't have the document,

so you can't actually read the questions. I did just finally get it open. Anyway, right before the fall of the Bastille, which was this big thing, the Bastille prison, which actually had a total of six or seven prisoners, it wasn't quite the – there were a lot of conspiracy theories right before the French Revolution, not to freak you guys out. There's a lot of conspiracy theories, a lot of lack of faith in public declarations and institutions, and instead believing sort of fringe news sources that were just using emerging technologies to reach large audiences. Again, not to freak you out. As a result, people believe that the Bastille prison was full to the brim of political prisoners.

It turns out that just wasn't the case. Anyway, right before that, Louis XVI, the king of France, and his wife Marie Antoinette, who were obviously going through a hard time because some of this revolutionary fervor was also anti-minarchal fervor. Yeah. I understand that. Yep. And his son, at the age of seven, his oldest son who was to become the next King of France died of tuberculosis. And he was devastated. It wasn't like the standard King thing where they're not involved in the raising of their children and so they don't feel that much when they die.

Marie Antoinette and Louis were extremely involved in the raising of this child and were absolutely devastated. They had to leave Versailles. They were so upset and grieve in private. And then while they're grieving in private, all of this revolution stuff is happening. They're completely unprepared for it. They never really recover emotionally

from this devastation. They really spend the next three years, both of them just very sad. Obviously, they're sad about lots of other things too, because their whole lives are falling apart. Yeah. Pretty stressful time with the whole monarchy falling apart thing. Pretty stressful time. Wouldn't recommend being an absolute monarch in 1790 or anytime, really. What a bad gig. No, bad gig. Overrated. Real lucky if you get out, a lot of pressure.

And also, they didn't even have pizzas. No. And so many princes want to become king. What the hell is wrong with you? Don't do that. You've got the good life. Yeah. Why do you want the power?, what the hell is wrong with you? Don't do that. You've got the good life. Yeah. Why do you want the power?

Everyone wants the power. It's so overrated. Very weird. Anyway, tuberculosis, tiny ancillary contributing factor in the French Revolution that I didn't know about. You know what I was- It's not in my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, because I didn't know about it. Didn't know about it.

And because there wouldn't have been room for it. I think tasks are really good. So I don't know if there's like a, back in the day, we used to have a lot of photographs. So this would be a great task is to like, take the box of photos and be like, put these in like order, in some kind of order, like just things to do. Yeah.

Craft projects. You can bring like old old magazines that you buy at an antique store and then like do collage art with them like stuff to do stuff to makes like like use like ways to be useful is really good but also just conversation. Like like like talk about the news of the day, chat, have fun, like your friends the way that you always like your friends, but just to do it in a different room. Yeah, make fun of each other. You know, like don't be afraid to make fun of each other.

When I had meningitis, my best friend Chris burst into the room after I was finally properly hospitalized. The first thing he said to me was, I could never have seen this coming. It's real weird to be John because it's like, what is it like to be a hypochondriac who actually gets weird illnesses all the time? Thank you. It is very strange. That is precisely how Sarah and I have the same doctor and that is precisely how Sarah explained me to our doctor. She said, you need to understand that John has an obsessive fear of illness but does also get sick. I think it's great I made it to 47. If I make it to 77, even better. Let it be known that this is itself a miracle of modern medicine.

I tell you what, it's amazing that you're just a bunch of trillions of cells all working together to be one thing. I've been a little bit down the rabbit hole of the self lately, John. Yeah. And boy. There's not much there when you dig deep. I think there's a lot of different things that actually don't know about each other. Well, yeah, maybe that's a better way of describing it. Tell me more about that.

Well, you'll see my video which comes out today, but we'll have been out for a while when this video, when this comes out, but there's just like, like there's like the different parts of me that control my attention. There's parts that I control and parts that I don't control about that. And I don't think that those two have a good relationship with each other or even know

that they exist. They don't seem to know that they exist. Above that level, I know that they both exist. And then there's the piece of me that's thinking, that's doing the thinking. There's the piece of me that's doing the observing. They seem different. When now that I'm looking at it, like it, and I feel like it's just sort of all tied together by there's like a thinking part that's sort of creating a narrative that ties them

together, but they aren't necessarily that. I think that that's just sort of like a convenient story. And there's also like the body and like the sensations of the body, which also I sort of like tie into that broader idea of the self and then there's all my experiences and memories which I tie into the broader idea of myself. And I just think that they're all different things.

And then I'm just like doing some mental gymnastics to tell a story that they're all one things. And then I'm just doing some mental gymnastics to tell a story that they're all one Hank. Well maybe consciousness is a lie that we whisper to ourselves to stay sane as a great writer once wrote. I think- That was me. You know what I think?

It was me. So I think that- It was me who wrote that. What? It was me. I wrote that. It was you. That you were the great writer. Oh no. The teen, the teen whisperer said that?

Oh no. I don't know if you just heard that, but. I know. Don't worry about it. We're not gonna worry about it. Just don't think about it. It's best not to think about it. Can I tell you what I've started to think about consciousness?

Yeah, sure. So I don't know if this works because consciousness appears to be a little bit of an insolvable problem, but. It's a line that we tell ourselves to go on. Right. Says, thus says the teen whisperer. Please, please, when I say things, always say thus says the teen whisperer. Please walk around like the king's guard and every time I make a proclamation, she'll, those says the teen whisperer.

Yeah. All right, go on. What is, what is consciousness? Well, I just, I don't know that this is what consciousness is, but I think it's a thing. So when, uh, when an organism is, is inside of an environment, it must, uh, get data about that environment and react to it. Whether even if that's like the simplest thing of like swimming toward the light or swimming toward the sugar or whatever that bacteria do. And then we have a much more complicated version of that where we take in information about

our world and then we react to it in very complex ways. But I think that there's a level deeper in organisms that have consciousness where there is an experience of the internal environment of the self. There's experience of the experience. There's like this meta experience thing. And that feels a little bit like what consciousness is. It's like the part of me that is witnessing myself and witnessing like the things going on in the brain.

And that just seems to have been something that evolved because it is like when the self becomes an advanced enough environment, there start to be advantages to witnessing and reacting to that environment, the environment of the internal self. And that, I don't know like how that works. I don't know like what system actually creates that, but it makes sense to me that it

would evolve because the self is an important enough environment that we now inhabit. We inhabit both our world and we inhabit ourselves. Right. Okay. I'm into this, but it doesn't shake my belief that actually consciousness is definitionally beyond the comprehension of consciousness. I don't think so. I think that we'll get there eventually. No, not me, man. You know what I think we're going to find out?

That there's souls exist? That we had souls all along. Well, it would be boring if we agreed about everything. They were made out of electrical impulses, but they were souls. Can they leave the body? Oh, no. Not as such, no. Yes. Can they leave the body? You mean upon death? Is that your question? I mean, anytime. I feel like if it could happen at death, it could happen other times. Yeah. It can't happen on a Wednesday. Everyone knows that. Die on Tuesday says the teen whisperer.

Make sure not to leave this world on a Wednesday. You get to heaven and it's just six-sevenths of people and God's like, yeah, I don't know, man. I made this rule early on. It's just how it got set up. I don't really know. Listen, I didn't even make the rules actually. That's what's so wild is that I constructed a box and I could only interact inside of that box. There's a lot of things outside of the box unfortunately and one of them is Wednesday. Then you'd be like, who made you God? It turns out it was Wednesday. The idea of Wednesday created God, but he couldn't let God see him.

That's right. Just like Moses was afraid to look God in the face, God was afraid to look But he couldn't let God see him. That's right. Just like Moses was afraid to look God in the face, God was afraid to look Wednesday in the face. Die on Tuesday. Great. Now I'm going to die on a Wednesday and everyone's going to be like, oh yeah, poor guy. Last thing he ever wanted. Doesn't get to go to the good place.

I do think that there, as you know, I do think that there is a soul. I don't care if it's a construct. I don't care if we constructed the idea of the soul or if it's really real. I don't make a distinction between those two things because I don't find the question interesting personally. It doesn't affect my theology or anything.

But I don't see how the soul exists independent of the body, which is not to say that it can't, but I just don't see how it could. Okay. Yeah. Does that make sense? Of course it doesn't make sense. We might align pretty tightly then. Yeah. I think in a lot of ways, our ways of thinking align and what's different is our frames. For sure. Yeah.

Speaking of frames, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, let's answer one more question. It's from Sam who writes, Dear John and Hank, the Christmas carol, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, contains the following lyric, There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago. Oh yeah, it does. Ghost stories? Glorious ancient Christmases? What on earth is this referring to?

I think therefore I, Sam. Sam, it turns out that your name specific sign off really got into some of the topics on today's podcast. Indeed, indeed. John. Yeah? Is it just the Christmas Carol? The one with the ghosts and the Scrooge?

I don't think so. I think that ghost stories were a thing around Christmas, which is why Charles Dickens used them. I think ghost stories predate the ghost story that is A Christmas Carol. What is it called? I don't know. The Christmas Carol? Dickens Christmas. How have I forgotten the name of that book? It's called A Christmas Carol. It's A Christmas Carol. That's what got me off. It's not claiming to be The Christmas Carol. It's not. This would be a weird thing for it to do.

Having heard my rant about prepositions, I wonder if it's time for my rant about definite and indefinite articles. No, I don't think it is. I think that instead we should focus on Christmases long, long ago, which I don't think is about ancient Christmases. Do you, Hank? Long, long ago, I think is about Christmases several generations back. Oh, I think it's like Christmases when you were a kid. Oh, I think it's like Christm when you were a kid. Oh, I think it's like Christmas is when my granddad was a kid. Well, what were those Christmases like? Did they get cigarettes when they were seven years old

under the tree? I bet they told ghost stories long, long ago. So whenever this song came out, which was to say it was being sung by a man who was a middle-aged person in the 50s or 60s because that's when all the Christmas songs were written. This person is thinking of Christmas as long ago. Not all of them.

All of them, except for that one. I think Joy to the World, Good King Wenceslas. Okay, those ones don't count. Those aren't Christmas carols. I'm talking about Christmas hits. You're talking about Christmas bangers. Yeah. Well, in that case, some of them were written by Wham in the 70s.

No, that's the only the only outlier. That one and the other one. What about Mariah Carey? That's the other one. It's all outliers. There's outliers in every direction. But the point is, all of them were written in the 50s by middle-aged people. But you can tell by just hearing it in your head that this one was written around them.

It was a 50s, 60s Christmas pop. How old is the Christmas that they're imagining? What? How old is the Christmas they're imagining? The Christmas is from long, long ago. So they're imagining a Christmas that is just before they can remember Christmases. So I'm saying that that person was probably 45 in 1950, and so the Christmas they're imagining is at the turn of the century. It's like 1900 or like 1890. That's when they told ghost

stories, but they don't do it anymore. Okay. I like it. I love this answer. I love the fact that it's speculative, which means that it's going to reach more people and be understood as true by more people than if it were evidence-based. Then I love the answer because it has a kind of internal reason to it, even though it's backed up by no evidence whatsoever. Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you what. I haven't heard anything as compelling since you told me that those New Jersey drones were definitely aliens.

That's not what I said. For clarity, by the time this comes out, everybody's gonna know that the New Jersey drones were a bunch of drones driven around by a bunch of YouTubers. No, they're not. Just YouTubers who figured out how to build a big drone. All right, Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Do you have any news from Mars this week?

I do have news from Mars, John. Perseverance, the rover, landed in a crater. Yeah. It was a crater that, as we have discovered, was an ancient lake bed. It has had big floods happen inside of it. It's got all kinds of weird, obviously sedimentary deposits. It's very exciting. But over the course of its mission, which has been for quite a while now, it has been driving uphill to get to the rim of this crater, which

is called Jezero Crater. And now it is there. It has arrived. It has successfully reached the rim of Jezero crater, which is kind of a wild thing to be able to do because sometimes I kind of picture the craters as having these sort of steep walled cliff faces, but you can actually just drive out of this one on a big dune of sand. And now it's up there and it sent out back some pictures of it looking down into across all of its tracks that it has left on Mars and down into the crater where it was, it landed back years ago. And now it's out and it can sort of like look across the Martian landscape in a

different way. And there, the, the great thing about this, the, the trip up the crater is that it was also a trip through the life of Mars because there's all these different layers of sediment and layers of things going on that you can see in the different deposits at different levels of the crater. But now it's out and I'm not actually sure what they're planning to do from here. I just was excited that it got out. I'm like, ah, that was a long walk. It's got to feel like a huge accomplishment from the perspective of the scientists driving that rover to get out of that crater.

Just get out of that crater. See what's up there. Yeah. I've had a few moments like that in my life where I emerged from the crater and I was like, look at this landscape. This is beautiful. It has driven over 30 kilometers on the surface of Mars. Wow, that's a long way. Yeah. And yet at the same time, it's a tiny portion of Mars. Not a lot of Mars. If you told me that a rover did that in the United States, I wouldn't be that impressed. Yeah. Oh, so it went to Walmart?

Yeah. In America, that'll barely get you to the nearest McDonald's. Certain spots for sure. Well, Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon is also glorious and portends a bright future. AFC Wimbledon defeated Harrogate Town, Harrogate Town, a classic, seemingly made up place. Harrogate Town fell to Wimbledon at Harrogate, 3-0. Josh Kelly scored the opening goal. It was a beautiful deflected shot. Classic League 2. It might have hit seven players on the way into the net. Then John Joe O'Toole, the man so nice they named him twice, rose like a great loaf of sourdough at a corner kick and headed the ball home gloriously. Then Maddie Stevens scored in the 50th minute to seal the 3-0 victory.

It was comprehensive, Hank. That's how I would describe it. Now Wimbledon are in sixth place with 18 games played a little over a third of the way through the season. Wimbledon are in the playoff spots. I have to confess that I have been looking to see when the playoffs will be and if they will interfere with my book tour for everything is tuberculosis. Because if they do, I face a stark choice, which is fly all of the people who bought tickets to London or abandon them. Yeah.

It's going to be a tough one. But yeah, I'm really excited. Wimbledon are doing really well this season. No fear of the bottom of the table, only looking up, only feeling good things. Yeah. Only sensing the brightness of the future. That's not how it's been every year. And start contrast to the way I feel overall. I can't help but notice looking at the League Two table that MK Dons are just below AFC Wimbledon and they have not lost any of the last five games that they have played. They have won all of them. No, they're on a good run. They've got a good new coach who sold his soul to the devil. So,

what are you going to do? But he's performing well. But you know what, Hank, in the end, in the end, it always turns out the same way for the franchise. They've lost to us twice already this season. I look forward to beating them a third time come early next year. Yeah. If we have to face them in the playoffs, which would be an absolute horror, we will do so. Well, and here's what I have to say, John. When you get promoted this season,

you have to get promoted along with Grimsby Town because that's my favorite. Love playing Grimsby Town. Grimsby Town. The Grimmest of the Bees. Grimsley. Yeah. Is that your Grimsby accent?

That's what they talk there. Yeah. Grimsby. Grimsby. Good old Grimsby. Good old Grimsby. It's just a lot of consonants in a row. Yeah. Grimsby would be a great team to get promoted this year. If the four teams that got promoted were Walsall, Portvale, Grimsby, and AFC Wimbledon, I would be very happy because then I'd get to play. Up in League One, we could

have another great series of names and we wouldn't have to deal with Milton Keynes. How glorious would it be to have a season where we don't play them? But we'll see. The season is yet to be decided. That is what makes football so thrilling. It is theater, improvisational theater in which neither the actors nor the audience know what is going to happen. Beautiful, John. Well, thank you for making this podcast with me. And everybody, thank you for sending in your questions about the podcast. Wait, I was opening-

For the podcast, I would say. See, it's very hard. Prepositions are challenging. If you want to send your questions to us, that is hankandjohnatgmail.com. We don't have a podcast without your questions and we very much enjoy them. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Junomedish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosianna Hals-Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debucky Trocker Vardy. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. As they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.