404: Die on Tuesday

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 for two brothers.

Answer questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the week's 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.

I was close.

I was on the path.

Man, I've been reading this thousand-page history of the French Revolution.

I've been reading it with my ears while I sign 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 uh 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 great no not for really anybody

no nobody except arguably napoleon comes out on top in the french revolution and napoleon

i mean you know dies in exile yeah but it doesn'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.

He, he, I think he, 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.

I've, uh, 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

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'm not a fan.

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 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 also just 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.

And 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?

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 6 million did.

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, Eves, Roque, Gilbert, De Mautier, De Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette.

He got Lafayette in there twice.

And yes, I know that I have good French pronunciation.

Thank you.

Or as they say in France, merci.

Lafayette to the second power to the power of due.

I love a good French joke.

Barely.

When you just say something en français, I laugh.

Have I ever told you about?

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 going to French convention?

You went to a French convention?

Hell yeah, I did.

What was it called?

You would go to Convention des Francais?

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 the French.

The French Revolution

enthusiasts.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's how, 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 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, you know, and like.

My French pronunciation is so terrible that my kids like run and cower in fear the moment I start to speak France, French and French.

Uh-huh.

Yep.

Blaine, you should have heard some of these kids.

They'd be like, ooe la bibliothèque.

Yeah.

I mean, you also had an American accent.

You just had a different American accent.

So it doesn't sound like

I was equally incomprehensible because my French would be like, ooe la bibliothèque.

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.

B'don bonk.

I'll tell you what, I would have loved it.

Let me rewrite that joke for you.

Okay.

You can 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.

If only I could do a Greek accent, which I don't even think I have accent in French.

No,

I don't think you have that in the arsenal.

Certainly, you don't have German in the arsenal.

We all know that.

Great in Germany.

German listeners in the pod already know that.

All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Wren, 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 this name of your state.

Can I get a Montana?

Well, this is actually the name of my city.

So you'd have to say, can I have the Missoula?

Can I get a Missoula?

I bet there's a Missoula.

Well, I'm going to 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.

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?

They must have just moved constantly in order to stay relatively fit is my review of the old days.

When I work at their restaurants,

they were putting like lard inside of gelatin.

Well, John.

And being like, here's your meat.

The thing is,

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.

I think.

And so they had to suffer with half and half, which that was their version of Cool Ranch Toritz.

They were like, oh, it's so creamy.

Yes, the Cool Ranch to Indianapolis is,

that's the, that's what that was.

Now, now an Indianapolis cocktail with one Cool Ranch Dorito in it.

That is how you have to serve it.

We made a cocktail 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.

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.

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 at 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.

But I think if you took milk, but 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 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, yeah, bro.

It's spelled S-H-E-R-B-E-T, as in Cherbet.

Wait, there's no R at the end?

There's no R in Sherbert.

That's...

It's Sherbet.

What?

It is.

It's Sherbet.

It's definitely Sherbet.

What?

I told you.

I just Googled it.

It comes from the Persian word sherbat.

Well, I don't know.

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.

It's originally a fruity, non-alcoholic drink.

That's what it's called, right?

No, it's called Sherbet.

But

do other people.

Do you have rainbow?

Or is that just me?

Do you have rainbow sherbert or do you have rainbow sherbet?

You have rainbow sherbet.

I think you have rainbow sherbert.

Yeah,

sherbert.

Because sherbet

does not sound like an ice cream-related phenomenon.

Sherbit sounds like the last name of the guy who sells you insurance.

You know?

Yeah.

Like, have you started to see Sherbit about that?

Yeah.

The pronunciation with the additional R as a second syllable pronounced Sherbet is less commonly used.

Less commonly used.

What happened to me?

In what world?

We need to put this in the census this year.

I feel like I've never heard Sherbit in my life.

Maybe I just think you'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 Cherbet.

There it is.

That's what you needed to do.

Sherbet orange.

Sherbet orange.

Why can I only do it when I'm like grumbling?

I don't know.

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 saying, I mean, yeah, after like 30 years of European-wide war, they came out of it.

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 heads.

Oh, anyway, sherbet.

Sherbet.

Sherbit.

Sherbet.

Sherbit, Sherbit, Sherbit.

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.

According to Merriam-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, Shay.

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 helped me so much get through AP Chem.

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 uncomfortably.

I did not like that.

That was the headline of the New Yorker profile of me, and I did not love it.

I pulled 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 Shay 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 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, yeah the 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 try like want to cultivate and suggest people try to cultivate is like the ability to be interested in a thing

and uh that can of course be very difficult when you're in a sort of uh non-psychologically safe situation which it kind of feels like you are when you're being forced to pick a major but um i think that trying to be open to 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 a fair enough question.

I mean, I didn't have the internet, which I was recently dealt with

to someone that when I 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.

They did.

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.

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 then 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, 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,

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 Language Francais.

Wow.

This podcast is also brought to you by the Indianapolis.

It's got a lot of half 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.

So there you go.

This episode of Dear Hank John is brought to you by Factor.

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Oh, 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 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 recommend Marvel Snap, which just never stops.

You never stop.

It's always, it always gets harder.

And you can always.

They got you 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.

No, it's been.

The guy who spent six hours this morning signing a piece of paper over.

That's one of the things you got going on.

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 want to be able to do that.

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 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.

Ooh, John.

But yeah, I mean, 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 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 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 Révolution de Française.

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 question.

I did just finally get it open.

So anyway,

right before the fall of the Bastille, which was this big thing, you know, like the

Bastille prison, which actually had a total of like six or seven prisoners,

it wasn't, it wasn't quite the.

There were a lot of conspiracy theories right before the French Revolution, not to freak you guys out.

There was a lot of conspiracy theories, a lot of like lack of faith in like public, 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.

And

as a result, you know,

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 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-monarcho fervor.

You understand that.

Yep.

And

his son, who 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 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 like three years, both of them, just very sad.

And like, obviously, they're sad about lots of other things too, because their

lives are falling apart.

Yeah.

Huh?

Pretty stressful time with the whole monarchy falling apart.

Pretty stressful time.

Yeah.

Wouldn't recommend being an absolute monarch in 1790 or any time, really.

A lot of bad gig.

No.

Bad gig.

Over, real lucky.

Real lucky to get out.

And a lot of, a lot of, 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?

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 mean?

It's not in my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, because I didn't know about it 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, like take the box of photos and be like, put these in like order, in some kind of order, like, just things to do.

Um, 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, like use, like ways to be useful is really good, but also just conversation.

Um,

like, like, like talk about the news of the day, chat, um,

have fun, like your friends the way that you always like your friends, 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 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 it like to be a hypochondriac who actually gets weird illnesses all the time?

Thank you.

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 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.

But

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 like 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 will have been out for a while when

this comes out.

But

there's just 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.

Like they, they, they don't seem to know that they exist.

Like the met the like above that level, I know that they both exist.

But then there's like, but like, and then there's like the piece of me that's thinking, like that's doing the thinking.

There's the piece of me that's doing the observing.

They seem different now that I'm like looking at it.

Like it, 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 good convenient story.

And there's also like the body and this and like the sensations of the body, which also I sort of 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.

Yeah.

And then I'm just like 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

here's it.

You know what I think?

So I think that

what?

It was me.

It was you.

That you were the great writer.

The team whisperer said that.

Oh, no.

I don't know if you just heard that.

I know.

Don't worry about it.

We're not going to talk about it.

Just worry about it.

It's best not to talk about it.

Can I tell you what I've started to think about consciousness?

Yeah, sure.

So I I don't know if this works because consciousness appears to be a little bit of an unsolvable problem.

It's a line that we tell ourselves to go on.

Yeah.

Right.

Says, thus says the teen whisperer.

And

please, please, when I say things, always say thus says the teen whisperer.

Please like walk around like

the like the king's guard.

And every time I make a proclamation, shout thus 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

an organism exists inside of an environment, it must 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 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 an 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 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.

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,

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.

Oh.

Not as such, no.

Yes.

Can they leave the body?

You mean upon death?

Is that your question?

I mean anytime.

I mean, it can, like, 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 it.

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.

Yeah.

Is that I constructed a box and 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 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.

He died.

Poor guy.

The last thing he ever wanted.

He's at the 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.

Well, I mean, that in that way, then I guess

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 following lyric.

There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.

Oh, yeah, 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?

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 is, that 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.

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, do 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 Christmases 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 let's just 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 had all the Christmas songs were written.

This person is thinking of Christmases long, long ago.

Not all of them, but yeah, all of them, except for that one.

I think Joy to the World, Good King Wincelot.

Okay, those ones don't count.

Those aren't, those aren't Christmas.

those are christmas carols i'm talking about christmas hits oh

you're you're talking about christmas bangers yeah

well in that case some of them were written by wham in the 70s no that that that's the only the only outlier that one and the other one what what about mariah kids that one 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 could tell by listening like just hearing it it in your head that this one was written around then.

It was a 50s, 60s Christmas pop.

So how old is the Christmas that they're imagining?

What?

How old is the Christmas they're imagining?

The Christmas.

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.

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 gonna know that the new jersey drones were a bunch of drones driven around by a bunch of youtubers

no they're not just you 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 lakebed.

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

the great thing about this, the trip up the crater is that it was sort of also a trip through the life of Mars because there's all these different layers of sediment and layers of like things going on that was,

you can sort of see in the 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.

My God, 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.

Let's 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.

Yeah.

This is beautiful.

It has driven over 30 kilometers on the surface.

Wow.

That's a long way.

And yet at the same time, it's a tiny portion of Mars.

Not enough.

Like, if you told me that a rover did that in the United States, I wouldn't be that impressed.

Yeah.

Like, oh, so like it went to Walmart,

right?

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,

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 two.

It might have hit seven players on the way into the net.

And then Jon 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 3-0 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

stark contrast to the way I feel overall.

So

I can't help but notice looking at the league two table that the MK Dons are just below AFC Wimbledon 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

who, you know, 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.

And

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.

Love Grimsby Town.

Love the grimmest of the bees.

Grimsby.

Yeah.

Is that your Grimsby accent?

That's when they talk there.

Yeah.

Grimsback.

Good old Grimsback.

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, Port Vale, Grimsby, and AFC Wimbledon, I would be very happy because then I'd 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.

Wait, I I was

going to be a little bit more.

See, it's very hard.

Prepositions are challenging.

If you want to send your questions to us, that is hankandjohn at gmail.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 Tunametish.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rojas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Debucky Trapervarti.

The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola, as they say in our hometown.

Don't forget to be awesome.