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Or is that preferred to think of it dear John and Hank? It's about Captain Two Brothers. Answer questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, hello.
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. I was on the path. Man, I've been reading this thousand page history of the French Revolution while I've been reading it with my years while I signed my name over and over again. And 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 make. No, not really anybody. No, nobody except arguably Napoleon comes out on top in the French Revolution and Napoleon, I mean, you know, dies in exile. But he dies in his workout for him either.
Nobody 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. Yeah. Yeah.
Like Michoud 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 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. It's, I don't love the bacterium. Well, not a fan.
If we could just get rid of the bacterium, that would be a huge win. It's just that, except 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 health care inequities that would still be really real and that would be driving a huge percentage of human suffering and death. Right.
And you can kind of 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, not that we didn't have good intentions or that, like we're inherently evil and I don't buy any of that. Like 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? Like 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% of the government hospital in the last seven years is because we built better systems, right? Like it's not impossible. This stuff isn't impossible. That's the, 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, Eve's, Roak, Gilbert, Demotee, Delafayette, Marquis, Delafayette. He got Lafayette in there twice. And yes, I know that I have good French pronunciation. Thank you.
Whereas they say in France, Merci. Lafayette to the second, to the power of Duke. And I love a good French joke. Barely.
When you just say something on front and say I laugh. I just never told you about one of the words was in French. I've 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? Convency on different day? I think it was called the estates general.
Sorry, I read too much history of French Revolution. That's a joke only for French Revolution enthusiasts. Yeah. Yeah, that's how I think the estates generalist, how La Voisier 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 like my French pronunciation is so terrible that my kids like run and cower and fear the moment I start to speak France, French and French. But you should have heard some of these kids. They'd be like, whoa, la bibliotec.
Yeah. I mean, you also had an American accent. You just had a different American accent. So totally, I was equally incomprehensible because my French would be like, whoa, la bibliotec.
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.
But don't book. I'll tell you what, I would have loved it. Let me rewrite that joke for you. It'll be made it funny.
Hey, did you know that French fries aren't actually cooked? Oh, frongs. See, it's funny now. You just put something in French.
It's funny. 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. Certainly you don't have German in the arsenal.
Do we all know that? Great. That was the part already know that. All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners beginning with this one from Ren who writes, dear John Hanks, 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 nason's Ren. Oh, nice.
No, of course I have never had a cocktail that's one part. First of all, 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 the blue one. It's a hundred percent 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 my fan?
Well, this is actually the name of my city. So you'd have to say I have the mazoo. I bet there's a mazoo. I'm gonna tell you.
Well, I'm gonna ask for an Indianapolis content one. I can guarantee you that not a single bartender at Indianapolis has ever heard of this thing. That sounds so bad. One carousel vodka and half and half.
I mean, that's a lot of half and half. It's huge about half and half. I bet it's good. I guess 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. So they consumed so much half and half back in the old days. Yeah, somebody had to. What were they doing?
They must have just moved constantly in order to stay relatively fit is my review. Yeah. Yeah. When I look at the rest of these.
They were putting they were putting like lard inside of gelatin. Well, John being like, as your meat, I got it. I got it. The thing is food.
We have so much food now. It's still available. And we've got 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. I think. And so they had to suffer with half and half, which that was their version of cool ranch. They were like, oh, it's so creamy.
Yeah, if the cool ranch to Indianapolis is that's that's the that's what that was. Now, now an Indianapolis cocktail with one cool ranch Doritos. You have to serve it. I said they would have to serve it.
I said they would have to serve it. In college that was grenadine beer. And then on top of that, it was some kind of like 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, that just speaks to the fact that your brain wasn't fully developed. I think a big part of it. Yeah.
Or I was like, wow, we made a thing. Yeah, I used to drink the Alabama or slammer as we called it, which was just Mountain Dew and vodka. And I wrote in looking for Alaska about this sort of most disgusting cocktail of them all, which was just half milk half vodka that people would put in their court milk bottles, so as to go undetected or relatively undetected by authorities, this was a boarding school. It's the equivalent of like prison hooch, just just milk and vodka and you would just drink it and you 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 gonna try it. So I think we all know that milk and orange juice is bad because we all try that as children. We're like, well, these are the two main drinks.
Let's put them together and see what happens. But I think if you took milk, but like a orange sherbet 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 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 sherbet? I guess. Is there 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 orange sherbet.
That's what's sherbet. What? What? Is it sherbet?
It's actually sherbet. What? Yes. I told you.
I just googled it. It comes from the Persian word sherbet. Well, I'm just even even the word it came from doesn't have an extra orange. Well, that doesn't surprise me at all.
We're always adding stuff. But we didn't add the thing. Why is it called sherbet? 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 what other people call it sherbet?
Is that just me? Do you have rainbow sherbet or do you have rainbow sherbet? You have rainbow sherbet. Like you have rainbow sherbet.
Yeah, sherbet. Because sherbet sherbet does not sound like an ice cream related phenomenon. Sherbet sounds like the last name of the guy who sells you insurance. You know?
Yeah, like I've been sure about that. Yeah, pronunciation with the additional R is a second syllable pronounced sherbet is less commonly used. Less commonly. What happened to me?
In what world? 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 I'm saying it.
Is it not sherbet? Wait, hold on. No, it's not sherbet. It's sherbet.
It's sherbet. Well, I just because we're in French pronunciation land, it's sherbet. Do the French. That's what you needed to do.
Shébé oron. Shébé oron. Why can I only do it when I'm like grumbling? I don't know.
Shébé oron. Oh, well, you know, 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 say.
Yeah, after like 30 years of European wide war, they came out of people. 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 it. Anyway, sherbet. Sherbet.
Sherbet. Sherbet. Sherbet. Sherbet.
We're gonna have to live in that one. I mean, if you work at Ice Cream Shop, right 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. According to Miriam Webster, I'm the weird one. That's the answer to this question from Shébé who writes, Dear John and Hank, what do I do with my life?
Great. Just what I was looking for, a little more existential uncertainty. Wait, two 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, Shébé.
I forgot we were on 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 helped me so much get through APM.
I mean, if you think about it, Hank, it's kind of amazing. I wrote one of the best-selling novels for teens of all time. And then I made the best podcast for teens of all time. You're the teen whisperer.
That's what the New Yorker said. Uncomfortable. I did not like that. That was the headline of the New Yorker profile with me.
I did not love it. I told that one out of the deep recesses. 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 what should she do with their life? Look, the world is very interesting and it can be hard to get into the headspace where you accept the interestingness of all of the things, especially when they're all staring at you in the face equidistently. It is 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 the different majors, what you can do with a lot of the main majors, what you can get out of them, what future might look like, etc. My thing that I always want to cultivate and suggest people try to cultivate is the ability to be interested in a thing. That can of course be very difficult when you're in a sort of non-psychologically safe situation, which just 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. I remember when I was a sophomore in college, back in the Halcyon days of you, when everything was done on typewriters or as my daughter recently asked me, did you have telephones in college? Yes, I had telephones, but it's fair enough question. I mean, I didn't have the internet, but I recently had to explain to someone that I almost burned my dorm room down because of the 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.
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, Che. 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. 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, but the best part about getting whooping cough was that I became very interesting to the Knox County Ohio Department of Public Health. Yeah, we're just most of all, where this comes 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 La Guales Fransé. Wow.
This podcast is also brought to you by the Indianapolis. It's got a lot of half an ass. And a burrito 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.
So there you go. Oh, this episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me. And that is what Shopify makes it easier.
When you start with Shopify, the tools to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one. You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business. And this is important because you also have to like look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing.
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You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. One thing I love about Summer is how easy everything feels.
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Let's answer this question from Emily Hank. You're right. Dear John and Hank, one of my closest friends will have to undergo a pretty massive surgery next month and he'll 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 with Beyond That I'm Stumped. Cute Certie for Emily. Nice. Magic the gathering.
Oh, I was going to 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.
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 never stop.
It's always it always gets harder and you can all give chemo. They got me through chemo and now I am not playing Marvel Snap anymore. No, I mean, we got so much crap going on. It's ridiculous.
Yeah, now it's been the guy who spent six hours this morning signing a piece of paper over book. That's one of the things you got going on. You you are dedicated to the bit, but also I don't know you're like dedicated to investing a lot in the written word, you know, you might be reaching the end of this bit. I have to tell you Hank, you said that every time I have to tell 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 out of my frame. How are you framing? 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 Review. And now I've calmed it down to 100,000 of everything is tuberculosis.
Oh, John, I, you. But yeah, 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?
And I realized 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 excitement tuberculosis 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 Francez. Oh 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 documents.
So you can't actually read the questions. I did just finally get it open. So anyway, right before the fall of the Bastille, which is this big thing, you know, like the Bastille Prison, which actually had a total of like six or seven prisoners. It wasn't quite the...
There were a lot of conspiracy theories right before the French Revolution, not for 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 our audiences. Again, not to freak you out. And as a result, people believe that the Bastille Prison was like full to the brim of political prisoners.
It turns out that just wasn't the case. Anyway, right before that, Louis the 16th, 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-monarch cool fervor. You can understand that. And his son, who at the age of seven, his oldest son, 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. And they really spend the next three years, both of them just very sad. And obviously, they're sad about lots of other things too, because they're alive and falling apart. Pretty stressful time with the whole monarchy falling apart.
Pretty stressful time. Wouldn't recommend being an absolute monarch in 1790 or anytime. Really bad gig. No, bad gig.
Over real lucky to get out. What a pressure. And also, they didn't even have like pizzas. No.
And so many princes want to become King. What the hell is wrong with you? 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'm not in my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, because I didn't know it.
No, 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 make like useful, like ways to be useful is really good. But also just conversation.
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 you're afraid to make fun of each other.
When I had met in Jaines, my best friend Chris burst into the room after I was finally like properly hospitalized. And 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 it is very strange. And that is precisely how Sarah and I have the same doctor and that is precisely how Sarah explained me to our doctors. Yeah, 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, but I 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 a little bit down the rabbit hole of the self lately, John.
Yeah. And boy, there's not much there when you dig deep. It's a lot. 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 to be out for a while in this video when this comes out. But there's just 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. Like above that level, I know that they both exist.
But then there's like, and then there's like that 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 now that I'm looking at it. And I feel like it's all tied together by there's a thinking part that's creating a narrative that ties them together, but they aren't necessarily that. I think that that's just a convenient story.
And there's also the body and the sensations of the body, which also I 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 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 has a great writer once wrote. I think, you know what I think, so I think that what? It was me. It was you.
You were the great writer. The team. The team was full of said that. Oh, no.
I don't know if you just heard that by now. Don't worry about it. Right. 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 unsolvable problem. But it's a line that we tell ourselves to go on. Right.
That says the teen whisper. And please, please, when I say things, always say this is the team whisper, please like walk around, like the like the Kingsguard and every time I make a proclamation, she'll know says the teen whisper. 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 an organism exists inside of an environment, it must get data about that environment and react to it, whether that's like the simplest thing of like swimming toward the light or swimming toward the sugar or whatever that bacteria do. And then like we have a much more complicated version of that where like 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 work in something that evolved because it is like when the self becomes an advanced enough environment, there be 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 what system actually creates that, but it makes sense to me that it would evolve. Because this is an important enough environment that we now inhabit. We inhabit both like our world and we inhabit ourselves.
Right. I, 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.
But no, not me, man. I think, you know what I think we're going to find out that there's souls all along. Well, you know, we'd 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 mean, like, I feel like if we could have an a death, I could have another time. 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, sevens of people.
And God's like, yeah, I don't know, man. I just got set up. I don't really know. Listen, I didn't even make the rules, actually.
That's what's so wild. Yeah, is that I constructed a box and I could only I could only interact inside of that box. Yeah. And there's a lot of things outside of the box, unfortunately, and one of them is Wednesday.
And then you'd be like, who made you God? And 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 out 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 you ever wanted. Good place. I do think that there as you know, I do think that there's a soul. I don't care if it's a construct.
Like, 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 like affect my theology or anything. But I don't think that 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. I mean, that's probably the most important thing. 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-Inport News from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, let's answer one more question. It's from Sam who writes, you're 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.
Ghost stories. Ghost stories. 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? It's called Christmas Carol. It's Christmas Carol.
That's what got me. That's what got me off. It's not claiming to be the Christmas Carol. It's not.
This is probably a weird thing we're going to do. Having heard my rant about propositions, I wonder if it's time for my rant about definite and indefinite articles, but 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. You, Hank?
Long, long ago, I think is about Christmases many, like several generations back. Oh, I think it's like Christmases when you were a kid. Oh, I think it's like Christmas when my granddad was a kid. 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 on the go. 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 of this, all the Christmas songs were written. This person is taking a Christmas song on all of them.
Except for that one. I think Joy to the World, Good King wins. Those are 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 the only outlier that one in the other one.
What about Mariah? Yeah, that's the other one. It's all 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 listening, like just hearing it in your head that this one was written around them. It was a 50s, 60s, Christmas box. So what how old is the Christmas that they're imagining?
What? How old is the Christmas they're imagining the 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 19, 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. And then I love 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 going to 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, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AMC 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 a 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. It's called Jezero Crater. Now it is there. It has arrived.
It has successfully reached the rim of Jezero Crater, which is a wild thing to be able to do because sometimes I picture the craters having these steep walled cliff faces. You can actually just drive out of this one on a big dune of sand. Now it's up there and it sent out back some pictures of it looking down into, across all of its tracks that it is left on Mars and down into the crater where it landed back years ago. Now it's out.
It can look across the marshall landscape in a different way. And the great thing about this 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 was excited that they got out. My God, it 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. See what's up there.
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 Sunflower. Wow, that's a long way.
And yet at the same time, it's a tiny portion of Mars. Not a lot of Mars. You told me that a rover did that in the United States. I wouldn't be that impressed.
Oh, so like it went to Walmart. 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 pretends a bright future.
AFC Wimbledon defeated Harrogate Town. Harrogate Town, a classic, classic seemingly made up place. Harrogate Town fell to Wimbledon at Harrogate. Three nil.
Josh Kelly scored the opening goal. It was a beautiful deflected shot. Classic League too. It might have hit seven players on the way into the net.
And 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. And then Maddie Stevens scored in the 50th minute to seal the three nil victory.
It was comprehensive. Hank, that's how I would describe it. And 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.
And 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, only sensing the brightness of the future. It's not how it's been over here. It's not every year as to the way I feel overall.
I can't have a notice looking at the Leakthrough table that M.K. Don's are just below AFCU and they have not lost any of the last five games that they have played. No, they're on a good run. They've got a good new coach and who sold the 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. 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 Grimmsby Town because that's my favorite.
Love playing Grimmsby Town. Love the Grimmsby of the bees. Grimmsby. Is that your Grimmsby accent?
That's why they talk there. Grimmsby. It's just a lot of confidence in a row. Yeah, Grimmsby would be a great team to get promoted this year.
If the four teams that got promoted were Wal-Sall, Port Vale, Grimmsby, and AFC Wimbledon, I would be very happy because then I get to play, you know, 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. But wait, I was thinking...
For the podcast, I would say... Very hard. Prepositions are challenging. If you want to see your questions to us, that is Hank and John at gmail.com.
We don't have a podcast without your questions and we very much enjoy them. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhausen's mixed by Joseph D'Ametta Shreken. Nick Asian Square in Inner is Brook Shotwell, produced by Rosie Anna Haus. Rojas and Hannah West.
Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is the bookie trucker party. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola. That's like, stay in our hometown.
Don't forget to be awesome.