Hey, it's Zach.

Working on this show has been one of the greatest joys of my life.

Over the past three years, we've done 120 episodes.

We've written almost 500,000 words of scripts and have interviewed more than 300 people,

dinosaur fossil hunters, laundromat owners, school bus drivers,

and toothpaste engineers. We've reached millions of listeners on six continents,

still waiting on Antarctica, by the way, and I really hope our work has taught you some new

things about the world. But starting in the new year, we're going on an indefinite hiatus.

You'll still be able to listen to all of our old episodes, and we'll still be replaying

the show here in the feed, starting very soon.

In the meantime, you can keep up with what I'm doing at Z-Crockett.com.

That's Z as in Zebra, C-R-O-C-K-E-T-T-T-com.

All right, thanks for all the support, and I hope to be back soon with more. It was a day in the winter of 1991.

Dean Lyons was working construction, and it was no fun.

I'm framing houses. I was probably making seven,

eight bucks an hour, maybe. The guy walked across the street, and he's like, hey, I need you to

use your ladder and pull the lights off my roof. I jumped down and helped him do it, and then he handed me

a $20 bill. It took me literally 10 minutes, and I was like, well, I just made $20 in 10 minutes.

And that's really interesting because I'm slaving all day to make 50 bucks.

A couple years later, Dean was pre-med, but the thought of Christmas lights still danced in his

head. I'd taken all the med classes, studied for the MCAT, the whole thing.

And I said, yeah, I'm starting a Christmas lighting company.

...