Well, hello and Merry Christmas everyone. This is Science Mike.

Mike McCarg is my actual name if you've never heard that.

It always feels weird to introduce myself as Science Mike unless I'm on stage and there's kind of a stick to it, but it may seem strange that I greet you by saying

Merry Christmas when this episode of the program comes out the day after Christmas Day.

So why am I still saying, Merry Christmas, right?

This is when we tear down the decorations. This is when we stop all

the Christmas stuff because we've been hearing Christmas carols since the day after Thanksgiving,

and it's time to move on to the next thing.

And that's how I felt probably most of my life.

I've always been kind of a scrooge about Christmas. And I thought

maybe this week I don't want Greg to have to edit the program around Christmas. I'd rather him have his time off with his family.

So I thought we might just have like a conversation this week, no jingle, no sound effects. no

sound effects just no editing really at all just kind of sharing some of my thoughts around this Christmas. I've been on tour. I've been

going and going and going and going and going and going and

last night I slept in my own bed for the fourth time in a row and that's something I haven't done since September.

So the tour is finally for this year cooled down.

There's no more appearances, no more travel.

And I'm home.

And I've been thinking about Christmas. It snuck up on me. I was traveling so much and as I mentioned just a couple

of minutes ago I've always been kind of a scrooge. When I was a kid I'd love to get presents, sure. But as I got

older it just seemed to be much ado about nothing it seemed to be about shopping

and commercialism I noticed that the first people consistently to honor Christmas

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