376: Death of the Dad Joke

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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 your questions, give you to be some advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

John, I have a question for you.

Yeah, great.

I love questions.

How much, how much,

how many holes in your Swiss cheese would there have to be before you were like, actually, this is kind of a ripoff?

Well, as it happens, I don't like Swiss cheese because I feel like it's kind of a ripoff.

Is it you're like, that's a lot of air I'm buying?

Yeah.

No, like,

every other cheese has figured this problem out.

Yeah, more cheese for my cheese.

And Swiss cheese is like, what if?

Yeah, they're using it as a selling point.

It's like if I bought a burger and they were like, oh, it's got a bunch of holes in it.

That makes it fancier.

It's a fancy kind of beef you can't get without holes in it.

And I'd be like, yeah, but

Swiss beef.

But I'd be like,

I don't want the holes.

I want a burger.

Yeah.

If I wanted to eat air.

Wait, is this the new thing where you ask me a question and it's not a dad joke?

I'm waiting for the punchline.

But what if there is no punchline?

Maybe this is the new bit.

There's no punchline.

No.

Oh, this is amazing.

I love this.

I'm legitimately because I just had a slice of Swiss cheese and I was like, that's, this was a lot of holes.

Like, that's, there's not a lot of cheese happening right now.

Yeah.

And like, is this a, is this like a diet strategy?

Is it like diet cheese where instead of aspirant, we use

air?

We use air.

No, I don't think that's,

I don't think there's such a thing as diet,

man.

There's a fewer cheese.

Yeah.

Oh, Hank.

I love the way you look at the world.

Just as like just a pure value transaction.

I want more cheese per cheese.

No, you just kind of look at it a little bit askance.

Like the rest of us are looking at it head-on, and you're like a little bit off to the left, so you see things differently.

Or off to the right.

I'm not trying to alienate any of our politically inclined listeners.

We could alienate some of them.

It's fine.

Oh,

well, I've had a great week.

I've got the

depression.

Yeah, I've heard.

And yeah, you know, but they don't know.

And

it's,

I mean, just the worst.

Well, I don't want to say it's the worst.

I'm sure there are worst things in the world, but there's no worse things in my life talking right there.

Yeah.

Where they're like, actually, the bad way I feel isn't that important, is it?

Yeah, I just got it.

Compared to other people's bad.

Yeah, I just got the phone with my psychiatrist, and he was like, it sounds like you're using that as a, as a weapon to attack yourself.

And I was like, I don't really have time for this metaphor crap that you do.

I don't really have time for you to understand what I'm doing better than I understand it myself, sir.

That's right.

Or madam.

That's right.

Yeah, so I apologize in advance if I'm not very funny.

But I'm not very funny right now.

And also, like, I just, I don't, I don't want to go over the top, but I just kind of suck in general.

And I'm,

I actually was thinking that just before the call, I was like, my brother John, he's not very funny and he sucks in general.

Just kind of miserable to be around right now.

Trust me, I have to be around myself 24 hours a day, but it will pass.

It will get better.

This isn't permanent.

I thought I was serious, you guys.

Oh, I didn't think you were serious.

No.

Thank you for clarifying, though, just in case I would have, because it's not out of the question.

It's not out of the question.

But yeah, uh i i feel like a lot of times like when we talk about mental health we only show our scars you know never our open wounds and like sometimes that can make people feel like oh well that guy like is functioning so well despite his mental health problems and i function so poorly i just want everybody to know i'm functioning very poorly you you got on the phone though john which is yeah yeah i loaded up the the document that's got the questions in it i haven't really read them but i'm ready i'm ready for this hour of

fun.

Do you want to have some, do you want to have some fun, John?

Where do they put the holes that they take out of the Swiss cheese?

No, do they just melt it down and make more cheese?

No, that's not how it works.

They don't

carve holes out of it.

You know that.

You know that.

You're just trying to make me laugh.

Forget you.

Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

They feed it to

the pigs.

Dear John and Hank, the other day I was feeling tired, so I lay on the ground with my legs resting upward against a wall.

Uh-huh.

That's nice.

It's a nice feeling.

I remember seeing someone put into this position after they'd fainted, and I believe it was in an attempt to get more oxygen to their brain, which got me to thinking about the role of gravity in our bipedal evolution.

I have four guinea pigs whose bodies are very close to the ground.

Does that mean they have better circulation than I do?

Measuring my BPM, Jen.

Well, you know it means they have easier circulation than you yeah their heart doesn't have to do as much work but i wouldn't say it's necessarily better

yeah yeah because like we evolved to be able to be the way that we are uh for example giraffes are way more like that than we are right so like they're their heads all the way up there and look it's not doing as much as our heads doing uh they do seem to sort of travel at like one tenth brain speed not that they're not smart that they just have they're just smart more slowly than other animals, maybe.

They just move, they're very smart, it turns out.

But like giraffe researchers I have talked to do say.

I'm going to take the under on very smart.

Like I don't think they know how far apart the stars are.

No, okay.

Yeah, they don't, they don't, they, they, I'm not even sure they know about the stars, uh, but they've probably not only that, I don't think I can teach them.

You know, like, I don't think I could say, like, hey, look up there.

You know what that is?

That's a star, bro.

Yeah, but like, as far as things that are important to giraffe, like living, they're pretty good at all that stuff.

And I'm not going to say giraffes are dummies.

I'm just going to say that they're smart more slowly.

Okay, great.

I love that.

Because, and because it's hard to get blood all the way up there, but they do got they do a lot of important work up in the brain.

And they have, uh, you know, as you might expect, gigantic hearts and very thick walled blood vessels.

And like, if you put the heart of a giraffe inside of a guinea pig, it would explode explode the guinea pig because, like, literally,

because that's the, you know, you've got two things needing different things.

I also feel like the heart of a giraffe might be larger than a guinea pig.

So, I feel like that also might result in an explosion.

Yeah.

If you put a heart the size of a guinea pig's heart, but the strength of a giraffe heart inside of a guinea pig, it would explode.

What a bad science that would be.

Like,

you know what I mean?

We finally make a giraffe-powered heart the size of a guinea pig's heart?

Why?

If I read that,

yeah, I'd be like, well, that was just mean and it accomplished very little.

Like it confirmed a very small theory that was put forth on a podcast.

I am now worried about humans much more so than I was before.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, we need to be way less smart.

Way less smart.

We need to think so much less.

I wanted to ask you a question that we got, Hank.

I think it's a really important question.

So I wanted to put it near the beginning of the show.

It's from Dryden.

And he says, Dear John and Hank, I'm a graduate student doing master's studies in theology and philosophy.

Well, that's what they call the

billionaire bundle.

Thank you.

Perfect.

And so much better.

So much better than what I was going to say, the billionaire bundle.

The billionaire bundle.

I'm a graduate student studying theology and philosophy, the billionaire bundle.

A group of classmates and I recently started bonding over a shared interest in anarchism as a political philosophy, and we decided to start a reading and discussion group around the topic, a sort of anarchism club, if you will.

But a problem has emerged, which is that our club hasn't really gotten off the ground because none of us have really taken initiative to take leadership of it, which is a problem that I maybe should have foreseen when I tried to start an anarchism club.

So my question is, how do I take charge and get this anarchism club moving forward without violating the very principle of anarchism itself, not a wet office, dry den?

With humor like that, who wouldn't show up to that, to that?

Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily like violating the spirit of anarchism to put some posters out and call your friends and say anarchism club meets Wednesday at 5 p.m.

Yeah, i don't yeah i mean i don't think that it the idea is that nobody is in charge of anything but like i don't know no bro that is literally the idea

why am i saying bro so much today i don't know what's great i am your bro i know i don't know why i'm saying it though um

maybe it's because i'm wearing a hat sometimes when i wear a hat i feel more like a guy who says the word bro yeah well maybe you just are becoming a guy who says the word bro more.

I used the phrase AF in a text to you earlier, earlier today or yesterday.

I was going to say, I don't think you've texted me today, but you texted me like 300 times yesterday.

And

I was like, I guess that's me now.

It's me.

I just AF.

That's

AF.

I still say as space F,

which is super embarrassing.

Right.

Well, that is more the thing to do for a man of our

generation.

Yeah.

Stature.

So

nobody can be in.

Well, I don't know.

I don't know.

The anarchism club, by definition, cannot have a president.

Okay.

The anarchism club can't have a president.

The anarchism club has to happen somewhat spontaneously, and that happens when there's pizza.

Yeah, that's good.

Exactly.

The anarchism club can have contributors, right?

Right.

So you just contribute a pizza to the lounge, yeah, and you say there's people pizza 5 p.m.

on Wednesdays, um, and you come

to the district symbol because that's easy, it's a circle already.

That's a great point, Hank.

And you could say, Hey, dominoes, can you lay down the

pepperonis in an A with like a long slash in the middle?

And you know what they'll be like?

They'll be like, like the Avengers, yes, like the Avengers

who didn't have a leader.

Maybe the real anarchists were the Avengers all along.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One thing I think when I watch the Avengers movies is, wow, these sure are politically enlightened.

Yeah.

They really.

Look, they do sometimes not like the government and do it their own way, which people do like that storyline.

Yeah.

But also, they

do celebrate one of their greatest members, the arms dealer.

Yeah, so weird.

It is a little weird.

It's a weird mythology.

It is a little weird.

But then again, like,

I don't know, man.

I mean,

nothing makes much sense right now.

Nothing makes sense.

Makes much sense.

Go on to the next one.

The billionaire bundle was an all-time Dear Hank and John joke.

This next question comes from Dom, who asks, Dear Hank and John, how long after landed on Mars do you think it would take to get bored?

bored?

Bore dom.

Great question.

Because, you know how like,

so I have this, I have this theory.

Remember how mom and dad, when they moved to the mountains of rural North Carolina, they had that ridiculously good view of like the mountain range.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they would sit out on the porch and look at the mountains.

Now that view for me never totally got old.

Agreed.

But I also never lived there.

Right.

And so,

and like, after being there for a few days, I would notice that I would have all of the same problems that I had anyway, you know?

Yeah.

Like, but with a beautiful view.

This is my theory of if I moved to the Bahamas or something, like, right, I would still be me, you know, so I would just be like sad on a beach instead of sad

on a river.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's like, there's this study that pops up all the time that like people who live close, closer to the ocean and there's like a gradient, like the closer you get to the ocean the happier you are and I'm like I think the closer you get to the ocean the more money you have

maybe

that seems like a pretty distinct correlation like if you're on the beach right sure no doing okay

I don't know buddy

you you Sierra Leone has an incredibly beautiful beach and

the study was of people in the UK so

the UK yes

there's beaches I've been all over the ocean.

I've been all over that island.

There's Brighton.

There's not a lot of beaches.

I don't know.

I don't know about Brighton.

People in Brighton are happy.

That's the theory?

I don't remember.

I could look it up, but I'm not going to.

It was you.

Now, I don't want to.

Now, I think this is a great correlation versus causation thing, Hank, but I think you're wrong about the correlation.

I think it's that people are happier

in the United Kingdom, the further they get away from Milton Keynes, which as it happens, just is also means that you're closer to the ocean.

Yeah, that's great.

That must be it.

God, I hate Milton Keynes.

It's so weird to me that London is kind of a port city.

Kind of, yeah.

Even though it's like really far inland.

Well, but it's got a big old river.

I mean, that river is

turning.

Yeah, and it's Mississippi style.

Yeah.

Yeah, it comes up, it comes down.

Yeah.

You don't want to drink the water too much.

You don't want to drink the water at all.

Well.

Of the Thames?

Yeah.

Don't do that.

I don't know.

What if you need to go...

What if you're really constipated?

Get a life straw.

Get a life straw.

That's good advice.

Don't drink the water from the Thames.

I was trying to make a joke.

I'm sorry that it didn't come across.

It came across for me.

But we have to fight, John, in order for it to be...

This is what I'm learning from Frankie and Joey of the basement yard.

We gotta fight more.

Yeah, no, we need to be more like the basement yard.

That's all I get that feedback a lot.

People come up to me and they'll say, I like your podcast.

I just wish it was more like the basement yard.

I bet they, I bet, I bet people are listening to this right now and they're like, oh my God, I do love the basement yard.

Well, that's fine, but they don't want us to.

We should trade episodes once.

We should not.

We should not.

Or are we talking about water?

I don't know, man.

I think I would because you were talking about mom's porch.

yeah oh i remember um the point is that no matter where you are you can get bored and if you're on mars i think it would take like i think on the second day

once you're you got a little bored once you got all your stuff there you'd be like you'd be reading a book or something and the internet sucks on mars we know that from the curiosity rover i know exactly how bored i would get if there was tick tock which is not at all yeah but there isn't but there isn't the internet sucks there yeah so if there's no, if I haven't like preloaded my phone with all of TikTok, then I got a problem.

But here's a product idea for you, John.

Sign up, $2 a month.

You get TikTok from 2020.

I like that, actually.

Well, my initial thought was the idea of downloading TikTok is, of course, absurd and hilarious, except it isn't, actually.

You could totally download TikTok.

It's just that you would eventually get to the end of it, which is sort of a lovely, lovely thought.

Like my whole problem with TikTok is that there's no risk of getting to the end of it, right?

It's a infinitely renewable resource.

If I was like, well, there's only so many TikToks left to watch and my for you page is going to get a little bit worse every day because it'll get a little bit further away from what I actually want to see until I've seen the last TikTok.

Then I might be a little more judicious in my TikTok spending.

It's true.

It's true.

But yeah, I think I wouldn't get bored on Mars for a pretty long time.

You got to be inside in the dark a lot.

That's the thing you got to remember about like the moon landings is they were a lot of the time sleeping in their fart bags inside of us.

We got to ask Buzz Aldrin if he got bored on the moon.

You know, I bet Buzz didn't because he wasn't actually there for very long.

But the later missions, they were there for like much longer.

And I bet there were moments where they were like, this is still happening.

Yeah.

Or you just have to remind yourself to be grateful.

You have to be like, oh, right, I'm on the moon.

I am on the moon.

It is.

I am sleeping in a fart pack at a tin can, but also gravity's on the moon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Could be worse.

Yeah.

There's your answer.

There's your answer.

I don't know.

I think

humans are supposed to get bored.

We should be bored more.

And

I've always wanted to write an Anthropocene Reviewed essay about boredom that begins with two words.

Boredom was

as a way of trying to

anthropologically study boredom which was this phenomenon that used to exist and ended like slowly uh beginning around 2010 and then entirely in 2019.

it's pretty weird how boredom uh has fundamentally shifted yeah certainly there is still things like it

this next question isn't really a question it's an order from jordan who says dear john and hank i'm so excited to have you back If you feel like it, I'd like to hear every thought you've had about Taylor Swift during the hiatus.

I think you should devote a whole episode to her, but that's your call, of course.

Love Jordan.

I think that's not, I think that we should not answer this question.

And then next week we should do a Taylor Swift Swiftacular.

Great.

I love that idea.

And share all of our thoughts that we've had about.

Because

I have an hour of thoughts for sure.

Yeah.

And I like, I think that, you know, we don't have a ton of,

I mean, I'm not, I don't think a lot about Taylor Swift's music.

I think a lot about Taylor Swift, the institution.

I think a lot about Taylor Swift music because nothing else ever plays in this house.

All right, Hank, here's another question.

It's from Emily, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I lived with my friend's family for a couple summers a few years ago.

We don't speak anymore, but I still have the key to their house.

What should I do with it?

Make it into a sculpture, mail it back to them with no return address.

Dubious advice appreciated.

Communication is key, Emily.

I think that it's to good to have the key where the key should be.

I think you can mail it back with a return address.

Well, I don't know if I got the feeling that maybe they don't talk like they don't talk.

There was an

eruption.

Oh, okay.

We don't speak anymore.

Yeah, we don't speak anymore is different than we don't talk anymore.

We don't talk anymore as like, oh, you know, like things happen.

If it's we don't talk anymore, then what I would say is like Emily should maybe just use the key to go into the house when she knows that nobody's there and then just like sit on the couch and watch a baseball game.

And then when people come home, be like, hey, it's me, Emily, remember from a couple summers ago?

Don't do that.

My, one of my best friends from high school did that once.

I came home from work one day.

And even though he lived in Georgia and I had no expectation of seeing him, he was sitting on my couch eating raisin bran, watching the Chicago Cubs play on television.

And I was like,

hey, Clem.

That's it.

And he was like, hey, man, how's it going?

And I was like, okay, what?

Which law enforcement agency are you hiding from?

What's going on, man?

And he was like, oh, I don't know.

Like, I was just, I was in Chicago and I heard you lived here.

It's like, well,

I do, fortunately.

Did he have a key?

How did he get in?

Oh, we kept our, it's funny you should ask, Hank.

We kept our,

none of us had a key.

I had a house like that once.

It had a weird door.

It was hard to find.

The door.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we

kept the front window.

We kept the front window open and we came in and out of a very large front window every day.

Oh, that got weirder than I expected it to get.

Yeah.

So that's people are sometimes like, why do people always go in and out of windows in your books?

And I'm always like, well,

about that.

Because it's a

common way to

leave a home.

Okay.

Okay.

That's different from my.

Well, here's what I'll say, Emily.

If you live nearby, it is good to have a just-in-case place

where

that's such bad advice.

That's like

things are really, really falling down around you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like, and you know, you've done a big crime and

you need to hide and you got to go live in the walls of your old house.

Sure.

No, Hank, I 100% agree with you that you need a safe house, right?

Like I assume you have a safe house.

That's what, yeah, it's a just-in-case place.

Safe housing just sounds like such a big thing.

I have a just-in-case place.

It's under the floor of the old office building that my office used to be in, where I know there's a trapdoor where I go and hide if I need to.

That's just a just-in-case place.

First off, don't reveal your just-in-case place.

Second off, you have reached a point in your life where you can buy a proper safe house that you leave empty 99% of the time.

No, they don't know about it.

Who's they?

Them.

How will they know about it?

The records.

No, you buy it under the name of a nonsense corporation called

Gray, Gray, Gray Gank LLC.

No, you got it.

It's called 50 Shades of Gray Investments.

So people are like, I definitely don't want to go there.

Don't go to that one.

You guys.

When your life falls apart, you go to your safe house.

Absolutely.

And it's a tiny little space.

It's a tiny little place in Speedway, Indiana, or something.

You don't have a safe house.

It's a one-bedroom, one-bath house in Speedway or somewhere else.

Yeah.

It's just a case place.

It's just a key that you happen to have.

I can't believe you came up with the billionaire bundle.

It's so funny.

Okay.

Thank you.

Theology and philosophy is the billionaire bundle.

Do you think there's a billionaire on earth who studied theology and philosophy?

Like, I'm sure there are billionaires who studied one or the other.

I bet, but they inherited, you know.

but even no they couldn't have that's a big inheritance it is a big inheritance and also people who inherit that much are better served by not thinking too much so yeah they don't want to be they don't want to be philosophers are you kidding yeah i wouldn't want to be i can barely handle being i can barely handle reading philosophy in in my situation yeah and i'm just a i'm just a guy who's had some success and owns a safe house in speedway indiana

my god i love i love your speedway house uh mine's just a racks, and it's,

you wouldn't believe it, but it is this whole time.

People keep saying, by the way, they're like,

oh, you know,

you can't afford a house these days.

If you're Gen Z, you make X number of dollars this bill.

You can't.

You know, it used to be that you could buy a house for three times your income.

Yeah.

And now a house costs 20 times your income.

Yeah.

And I'm like, y'all need to go to Speedway.

I thought you guys were going to say, y'all need to buy a racks.

Y'all need to start a fast food franchise from the 90s.

Then you'll be able to afford a house.

No problem.

The money will come rolling in.

You'll be swimming in it.

You'll be Scrooge McDucking.

Scrooge McDucken and the roast beef.

This next question comes from Faith.

God, that's gross.

Who has?

I'm making a couple of boiled eggs to put on my ramen instead of frying like I normally do.

And for some reason, it feels like I'm not adding as much food to it as I normally would.

I know it's the same amount of food, but why does it feel like a single boiled egg is less food than a single fried egg?

Pumpkins and Penguins faith.

Cause it is.

What?

Because it is.

No.

Because you fry eggs in butter, my friend.

Well, I mean, and that's going to be like half of the calories of your fried eggs.

It's butter.

It depends.

First off, not everybody does butter, right?

You can do a little bit of fruit.

Well,

you can't fry an egg in nothing.

You can.

You can fry it in Pam and

get a nice little.

It's not a fried egg.

Okay.

What's the first word of the dish called, John?

Fried.

It's a fried egg.

Okay.

You're right.

You can scramble an egg in Pam.

I think that it's not about that.

I don't think it's the amount.

I understand what you mean that you're getting more energy from a fried egg than from a hard-boiled egg.

But what I would say is that I think it's the breadth and width

of

the egg that makes it feel more extensive.

I agree with you.

I agree.

And I feel the same way.

And when I eat a hard-boiled egg, I'm like, that was nothing.

That was not a lot of food.

And it isn't.

It's like 70 calories.

Like, it's not nothing.

But you gotta eat, that's not a meal.

You gotta have like eight of them.

When I eat a hard-boiled egg, my main feeling is like, I can't believe bodybuilders do this regularly.

I love a hard-boiled egg.

I just can't have like more than two.

No, I mean, I'm happy to have one occasionally, but I don't wake up every morning and think, like, God, I really want two hard-boiled eggs to start my day with.

I don't think that's what I really want, but I absolutely think I could do that every day.

Ah, not me.

Fried egg, 135 calories.

Boiled egg, 80 calories.

God, you're really, this is like the 17th time you've mentioned calories today.

It's just.

Because that's what food is.

I know, I know.

It's just.

well,

it's also other things.

It's energy and

there's lots and lots of vitamins.

That is true.

But in terms of like the stuff that makes you feel satiated, calorie is like the amount of energy and the food is a big part of it.

So I think that there actually is that.

But I also think the form factor matters, where you've got like this thing and you slice it and two and you're like, that's not a lot.

And you got this thing that like covers the whole bowl.

It does feel like more food.

Okay, Hank, I think we've answered that question.

So it's time to have a discussion.

Oh, okay.

Should we continue to do the fake sponsorships?

Oh.

Is that a thing of the past?

Do we need to liberate ourselves from the old bits to make way for the new bits?

You know, I think that like those fake sponsorships are funny, but like there's a reality

that once you've done a joke

400 times,

it's not as good anymore.

That's what I'm saying.

Is there like a part of me?

And it's not like, it's not a joke.

It's a chance to make jokes.

But because the chance to make jokes is a joke, the joke that is the chance to make jokes isn't funny anymore.

It's less funny than it could be.

On the jokes that you fit inside of it.

Right.

Exactly.

So often they're not that funny.

Right.

So the format is no longer funny, which means the jokes inside the format have to be extraordinary.

And I'm just going to level with you.

And maybe this is my you know, slightly depressed brain talking, but like, I don't think they've been funny.

I think maybe they haven't, but look, I do like, I do like a callback reference.

Yeah, I do too.

So, that's what I so I, but I did that callback of the billionaire bundle

because I was like, we don't have to do that during a sponsorship necessarily, we can just do it

in a quiet moment, yeah, yeah, and be like,

gosh,

we have a good time here, don't we?

It's our new segment.

It's called We Have a Good Time Here, Don't We?

That reminds me, I used to have a friend, we don't talk anymore, or we don't speak anymore to quote Emily.

I used to have a friend who was who would always say, this is really fun, isn't it?

And I'd be like, well, I mean, it was.

Was until you pointed it out.

Now it's a little weird.

Now we're outside of the moment looking at it.

Yeah, and not only that, like, it's not that fun.

Because if it was that fun, we wouldn't be in a position to say this is really fun.

We would be having the fun,

not looking at the fun from a distance.

This is not why we don't speak anymore.

So we're not doing fake sponsors, but we are doing real sponsors.

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

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But anyway, we've got a Project for Awesome message from Rachel who says, To Rachel, Sarah's, and the other names, be sure to pluralize Rachel's and Sarah's, please.

I assume that was for me, but maybe it was for the world.

At the start of the pandemic, we created a group to help each other out in Animal Crossing.

Three years later, we've grown together, and I consider you to be my closest friends, and I love sharing our passions, clowning, and supporting each other every single day.

I love you all so, so much, and I can't wait to meet up with most of you throughout this year at DFTBA.

That's so lovely, Rachel.

It is lovely.

And so,

so to Rachel's, Sarah's, and the other names everywhere, please feel that love.

Feel that love.

And go Scrooge McDuck and some roast beef.

Ooh, that's so gross.

I'll be honest with you, Hank, I'm a little worried about this Racks commitment.

Like, I don't know how we're going to get to Racks, and it seems like one of the Raxes is closing.

Yeah.

I don't want to get into too dark of a headspace, but like a bunch of ash trees are dying and a racks is closing.

And it just feels like, and also like the rest of the world is in collapse, even outside of the

Raxes and the ash trees, like things are really horrible.

And I'm concerned that we're never going to go to Rax.

Yeah, I think we can make it work if we have to.

Or if we want to, I should say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I want to go to Rax.

It's a Project for Awesome perk.

We promised that we would go to Rax, but we didn't know you were going to get cancer.

Yeah.

Here's the thing, John.

Yeah.

I think this is important.

We have obligated ourselves to go to Rax, and that's one piece of this equation.

Right.

And then there's like the these two brothers want to experience this thing from their youth together thing.

And that also feels a little bit like an obligation.

But there's a third thing, which is that I really,

really

want to eat that sandwich.

You want to eat that?

A lot.

You want to go to racks.

Yeah.

I really want to eat.

Like the guy.

So a couple of nerdfighters posted on the nerdfighter subreddit that they went to the racks that we were planning on going to, and they found that it is pretty close down, but you could still get some things and they showed the sandwiches they got and i had

a big

reaction like a much bigger reaction you felt it in your heart yeah like my heart was like like they use the same foil wrapper things that they did

i saw that just the look of the wrapper i was like oh i need that yeah

Well, I mean, I can go to Racks any day.

Not any day, actually.

I'm pretty busy.

But I can go to Racks a lot of days

because it's only, it's a day trip for me.

Yeah.

I'm two hours from a racks.

I think

just two hours?

You're the issue.

Yeah, I got to get to Indianapolis and then we'll make it happen.

I just think that like I need to make the case to myself and my family that like this is a big deal for me, even though it seems like it shouldn't be.

Well, the other thing, and I don't want to try to really push hard to get you here, but the other thing that's happening, and I keep forgetting about this but it's happening by the time like this podcast is uploaded it will have happened and i'm really hoping this um

i mean it's going to be a lot of work but um it's hopefully it'll also be a little bit of joy is we're getting a puppy yeah

i know i will be excited to see the puppy he's a very special

he's a very special puppy he

he's coming he's coming to our house today or tomorrow and he's a very he's a very sweet well well i don't know him yet, but I have expectations that he's going to be a very sweet little guy.

Yeah.

So he has a name, Annie has, but we haven't met him yet.

But

he has a great name, I think.

I love the name, too.

The lady

who we're getting him from,

when she would have the

FaceTimes with us,

she's a Croatian lady, and she would say,

look at him.

Look at him.

He's just little potato.

He's just tiny potato.

He's just happy potato.

Look at his happy potato face.

And I was like, we went over names for months and months.

And then finally, Alice was like, why don't we just call him potato?

Clearly his name is potato.

He's just little potato.

He's just happy little potato.

Yeah, yeah.

He seems like potato to me.

So I'll be able to report back next week

whether he is actually potato or whether he is

nightmare.

Nightmare potato.

Also a thing that can happen.

Oh, yeah.

All right, Hank.

Well, in lieu of sponsors, I think it might be time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Yes, it is.

What's going on on Mars?

In news from Mars, it's tricky these days to

figure out how to do things

because of how the governments are not working as well as they used to.

For example,

Rosalind Franklin's exo-Mars rover mission was planned to be a joint project between the European Space Agency and Russia's space agency.

They've decided to break off working together for a while.

Yeah.

Europe and Russia.

Yeah, they're not currently speaking, as Emily would say.

So the ESA, ESA, as they call it, I should say, ESA is like, hey, NASA, you want to come over and help out?

And the House is like, no,

we'd rather not

create funding for that.

So we're trying to figure out how to make the Roswin-Franklin River happen.

And I would very much like for it to happen.

And it would be very cool.

And I'm sure that it will one way or another.

But at the moment, it has gotten tossed up into limbo because of the need for funding and that NASA is trying to do its own things.

That's also we're having a hard time getting getting funded by Congress right now.

So

that that's also hanging up

are NASA's own projects, NASA's own Mars projects, like the sample retrieval mission that we talked about recently.

Right, right.

It has kind of been put in limbo by estimates that it's actually going to cost way more than we've said so far it would cost.

Right.

Well, AFC Wimbledon is also super poor, so it can relate to the Rosalind Franklin rover mission.

You know, I bet you could take the money from Rosalind Franklin and forget a great soccer team.

Probably rocket us to the prem in five short years.

Yeah,

that's very true.

That's a great point.

And I don't understand since other...

Other national governments are getting into the business of buying soccer clubs, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, it seems that the United States is maybe missing out on an opportunity to have some real geopolitical impact by purchasing a fourth-tier English soccer team.

So, Wimbledon have been playing terribly in general.

We lost 4-2 to Accrington Stanley.

Accrington Stanley, who are they?

And then we lost 4-1 to Moorcam, which is especially humiliating because their badge, you know, how all the teams have little badges and everything?

Their badge is a dang shrimp.

They're the shrimps.

Oh, they like that, though.

No, no, we don't.

We don't like it when they beat us 4-1.

And

I was really starting to get frustrated.

You know,

we're down there in 11th place in League 2, which isn't the worst, certainly not the worst situation we've ever been in.

Yeah,

but you were recently like second place.

Exactly.

We've just been on a terrible run.

But then we played in the first round of the FA Cup against a team that's actually in the league above us, that's in League One, Cheltenham, which is one of those like, sounds like a

made-up place.

You know, it sounds like a place where like maybe a Thomas Hardy novel is set.

You know, I saw the results of this game and I was like, that team must be at least one league below us.

No, they're, they're, they're a league above us.

Now they aren't terrible in that league, but they're still above us, you know, like theoretically, they're better than every team in league two, or at least they have, you know, whatever.

We beat them so bad.

And I listened to the game on the radio driving back from Columbus, Ohio, where I had a lovely event.

And we just absolutely destroyed them.

James Tilley scored two goals.

Connor Lemonhai Evans scored a goal.

They call him the Lemon.

Ali Elhamedy, of course, got on the score sheet, as he does in pretty much every game that he plays.

And we won five to one.

Weird.

I haven't seen us win a game by four goals

in, I don't know, five years.

So it was pretty great.

It was really fun.

I was alone in the car and I was just like, just banging on the ceiling of the car, just like, let's go.

So excited.

Yeah, just a dominant performance against Cheltenham, which means we go to the second round of the FA Cup.

Now, Hank, you'll remember the FA Cup is this knockout competition where if you make it to the third round, you could play anybody.

You could play Manchester United and you could make millions of dollars playing Manchester United just one game.

So it would be huge.

Guess who we drew in the second round of the FA Cup?

You won't guess.

I don't know the names of many teams.

Was it Manchester United?

They don't play until the third round.

It's fair.

Ramsgate.

Now, Ramsgate, Hanks.

Ramsgate plays in the eighth tier of English football.

They are an amateur team.

They are like what we were when we started, had to restart after Milton Keynes did what Milton Keynes does.

Yeah, so that sounds good.

Ramsgate, I mean, in a way, it's good, but we should not have a problem beating an eighth-tier English soccer team, except.

What?

Well, I just worry.

We can lose to anyone.

We've shown the capacity to lose to the shrimps.

All right.

Well, that would be embarrassing, but

I feel like you want to make sure that you have the chance to make those millions of dollars.

So play a bad team.

There you go.

December 2nd.

That's going to be the absolute key.

Are we going to be good enough

to

just get to that third round and then get an amazing draw like Manchester United away or Chelsea away or Tottenham Hotspur away, something like that?

Where we're at their stadium,

really big stadium.

They sell a lot of tickets.

They sell a ton of beer.

They put it on TV.

Oh, they put it on TV.

Oh, the TV money.

The TV money.

I have a question for you, John.

I loaded up these stats here, the rankings, and it says yesterday, Football League trophy, AFC Wimbledon versus Crystal Palace.

But that doesn't, that doesn't seem like it's actually Crystal Palace because

it says U21 after it, and the shield is blank.

Like they hadn't had the time to upload the shield yet.

Correct.

That's probably not actually Crystal Palace.

That's Crystal Palace's under-21 team.

Oh, okay.

So we play them in

this ridiculous trophy competition that does not matter unless we win it, in which case it's the most important trophy in the history of football.

It's called the Football League trophy.

And everybody

doesn't play their best players.

And it's, yeah.

But anyway, we are going to the second round of that.

We just have secured our spot in the second round.

So at this point.

You know, if we go, I'll say this.

If we make it to like the quarterfinals, suddenly I'll be like, oh, everybody knows the Football League trophy is extremely important and valuable, and everybody says it's prestigious.

But actually, no, it's not.

It's not.

I think it used to be, I can't remember what it used to be called.

Like the Carabao Cup used to be called the Milk Cup, like got milk.

And I think this used to be called the Johnstones Paint Trophy because it was sponsored by a paint company.

So there's your context.

I love that.

Yeah.

I also love a team that's

shrimps, I gotta say.

Well, you're welcome to root for them 44 games a year, but you gotta root for Wimbledon when we play them.

That's the rules.

I can't.

I'm trying to find the shrimp.

Where is their shrimp?

More camp.

I don't know what

means.

You don't know what Morcamb means?

Not Akrington Stanley.

It's Moorcam.

No, no.

Look at it.

It's a gigantic shrimp.

Their whole badge is a shrimp.

There's nothing else dope.

I love that.

I was right.

It's great.

It's so good.

Speaking of which, a bunch of people did not believe us when we said that Joe Lewis rolls his pants, our central defender rolls his pants up real high and has incredible, incredible, incredible thighs.

And so

that's real.

All these people found.

either on patreon or through my twitter found this picture of him celebrating after scoring and like jumping five feet into the air and revealing his magnificent thighs.

And all the replies are hilarious.

They're like, well, I wasn't prepared for that.

You know, you told me that it was going to be like that.

But I still like

that.

Yeah, it's like that.

It really is.

Yeah.

All right, Hank.

Good time here, John.

Yeah, this was a good time.

Remember the time when you talked about your friend who was in your house just randomly?

And also you used to go in through your window all the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

that happened.

I know

those were back in the days when I got denied entrance to Canada for insufficient funds.

Yeah, those times.

Oh, it was good, good.

I would say good days, but actually, no, it was, it was miserable.

Actually, I hated hated it all.

John, thank you for making a podcast with me.

I, I, I feel like you did a good job.

I enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You did good too.

Thanks.

This podcast is produced by Rosiana.

And it's

edited by Tuna.

I'll do it.

This podcast is produced by Rosiana Alice Rojas.

It's edited by Tuna Medish.

Our head of community and communications is Brooke Shotwell.

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

don't forget about your key.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We forget about it.

Don't forget the best.

Good job.

Thanks.

I did it.