Dear Hank & John - 118: Heavy Baby Bib! (w/ Alex Goldman!)

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

What counts as significant change? How do you know who you're supposed to buy presents for? Is it weird to let someone know you're thinking of them? And more! Email us: [e-mail] patreon.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hagen John. Or as I like to call it, Dear Alex and Hank. It's a comedy podcast for two brothers and sometimes a special guest like today, Alice Goldman of Reply All, answer your questions, give you do-be use advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. How are you Alex? I am great. I'm great, thank you for asking.

Yeah, good. So Alex, you do a podcast. It's on the podcast places. All of them. And very popular. And very good and interesting. It's called Reply All. And I really appreciate you hanging out with me here

and dear Hank Adjohn. I assume now that I will have to be a guest on Reply All. We'll talk about my obsession with, I don't know, like early internet animutations. What is it? All you face are belong to us, that stuff, I don't know. What? Yes, yes.

What? Did you ask what an animutation is? Yes. Oh, no. How could I know something about the internet that you don't know? What is it? So you remember they're like these flash animations that were done back in the day,

like very losodium and neocessoriga and. Yes, yeah. Like they did one for yata, you know these things, you know what I'm talking about. So I just, you know, I loved that and I love that those things have had an impact on the modern internet that no one understands. So like the sort of like wave of influence

is so far past being influenced by that. One of the things that's nice about- It's still there. It's still hidden inside of the subculture of the internet. One of the things that's nice about it's still there. It's still hidden inside of the subculture of the internet. One of the things that's nice about the internet that doesn't feel the same way in the larger culture is that the internet is still relatively young enough that you can sort of see the butterfly wings fluttering and watch the massive change that came from that thing. You can trace a lot of things back to their origins

in a very interesting way. That's totally true. Yeah, and makes your podcast very interesting. So I love to watch and see it. If you ever, I would definitely want Neil Sessariga to be part of a story on reply all someday, because he's just had so many different things that are like people know about them,

but they don't know that he's the person that made them. He's like an internet polymath. He has had many lives on the internet. All of them sort of uniquely weird. Every time he does something, I'm just like, this is so creative. Yeah. Like, how do you not run out of these?

Right. Well, I mean, you just gotta just keep making things. I'll tell you about my favorite Nilsis Ariga project after the podcast because it's a little bit blue. So I feel like I can't bring it up right now. But we usually do, we answer questions from our listeners, so we're going to do that. Unless you have a short poem for us. I do have a short poem for you. Oh my gosh, okay. I wanted to throw some shine to a friend of mine. Her name is Marissa Crawford. She's a poet in New York City,

and I have known her since college and her poems are frequently about the sort of weird feelings that people have as teenagers about love and life and friends and So I grabbed one from one of her books and I'm going to read it to you now Okay, it is untitled It goes like this. Carrie used to draw the anarchy symbol everywhere, but Janie said if there was anarchy, that would mean that killers like Charles Manson would be running free to attack and murder our

mothers. There was this thing that happened when Carrie moved away. At first we talked a lot and wrote letters but then missing each other got too hard and we became comfortably numb. We used our lunch money to buy a bag of purple skittles and a bag of checks mix from the vending machine and then saved the rest for if Pink Floyd ever got back together. The end. Oh yeah, that's my kind of Poe of Alex.

It's just, yeah, that didn't turn my brain off. I had this problem where poetry turns my brain off because it's not structured like normal speech, but that worked. Yeah, I have a hard time with poetry too. It's nice that the one friend I have who decided to actually become a poet, writes poetry that actually connects with the way that I experience the world. Yeah, just like narratively, not like, just like functionally. Not any kind of, yeah, not in terms of like the metaphor or the subject matter, but like, I just can't do it.

It's so weird. I, yeah. Just talk like a normal person, poets. I apologize, poets. Talk the way you, whichever way you want to, and I will endeavor to change my brain and not make you change yours. No judgements, poets, you're doing fine. I did, I did remember a moment when I was drawing

an anarchy symbol in high school, and somebody was like, what kind of anarchy do you believe in? And I was like, oh man, that is way above my pay grade. That feels like a very tough question. Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not, I'm not, like I haven't read books by these people. I'm just drawing the anarchy symbol. I believe in the kind of anarchy that lets me draw this cool symbol with impunity. Yeah, I believe in the kind of anarchy where I don't have to like go to school all the time. You know what real anarchy is? Not learning the ins and outs of what anarchy actually is. A plus.

Alright, alright. We got some questions from our listener. I'm going to start with this one from Cameron who asks, dear, Hank and Alex. As a senior in high school, I've been applying to many scholarships and universities, and one consistent thread in application essays is, how have you significantly grown and changed over the last four years? In a time in my life that is incredibly stressful and everybody's changing, what do you think counts as significant change?

Is this change dependent on personality or offense? What would each of you consider significant changes you have undergone in the last four years? Not an African country, just a person, Cameron. So not Cameron. Okay. So I do want to admit that like as a 37 year old person I have not changed as much as I did between the ages of like 14 and 18 but I have changed. I do have I have changed significantly and mostly that has to do with my professional life and also I got a baby.

So I also had a kid. That's probably different from your significant changes. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Oh, yeah, I had a kid. But from 14 to 18, everything changes. Right? Yes. Yeah, be like, I have a bunch of new feelings for people and things. And I mean, I think like that what they're looking for is that you are interacting with the world

in a rich way. And so like, I think that you cannot go wrong on a college admissions essay by saying, I used to think that things were simple and now I see that they are complex. Not only that, but like, between, when I was 14, I was just trying to survive. I didn't have an idea about how the world worked,

or I didn't care to have one, but by the time I was 18, I developed like a value system. Not a coherent one, necessarily, but... Andarchy. My value system was about how cool it was to draw the anarchy symbol. But I do think that you come to understand what it means to be valuable to someone

or to value someone over that period of time. And that's a huge change. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable like that shift. And this happened especially late for me of like accepting that my parents were people and then I needed to treat them like humans. Right, right. Like something as simple as that.

But also like you find that in your periods you find that like you find that other people valuing you and you find the joy in that and like the in the terror of of wondering whether or not that's a real thing or an imagined thing or or not seeing it happen when it is happening because we are so good at ignoring people actually caring about us. people actually caring about us. Yeah, like I think that, I think that, I don't like, no funny answers here. I think that this is legit. Like it's a great thing to always be thinking about is like how am I different now than I was last year? How am I growing and like,

and how am I doing a better job of imagining the world and myself and other people? I have never had that thought. And now I'm wondering how little I've grown over the past 30 plus years. I apologize. Dear Alex and Hank, I recently brought a college friend home for Thanksgiving because he didn't have anywhere else to go. During these three days with my family, he was very rude towards some of my family members

and they all kind of hate him now. Okay. I used to like spending time with him, but now all I can think about is how rude he was to my family. I want to bring it up, but I don't know how. Oh, and I hate confrontation. I kind of just want to stop communication with him all together because I don't even know

if I want to be friends with him anymore. I'm confused what should I do? Not the American Idol Judge, Paula. Wait a second. Paula, do you think that Paula Abdul is just an American Idol judge and that's what she's famous for? Yeah, she's definitely famous for straight up. Or I guess, you know what, she's actually famous for that one

with the animated cat, opposite toites attract. Yeah. Opposites attract. Like that's a fascinating world that I live in now where I realize that some people think that Paula Abdul is just an American Idol judge. Like that's the thing. Because I've never seen that show. And I did not even know that Paula Abdul was an American Idol judge. I just assumed that that's who you mean. I didn't either until I assumed that you knew. And that's why we say- Quick thing, googling! Paula, American Idol, it must be.

Yeah, Paula Abdul. Singer songwriter Paula Abdul married to Brad Beckerben from 1996 to 1998. And Emilio Estevez from 1992 to 1994. You didn't know that? No! Wow. 1996 to 1998 and Emilio Estevez from 1992 to 1994. You didn't know that? No, wow. She married the repo man. Well apparently straight up is actually her biggest hit.

So you were right the first time. That's according to Google anyway. So I know what I would do in this situation. Alex Goldman, do you want to hear my bad strategy for dealing with this? Go for it. So, I do not suggest that you do this. I would write this person an email

and I would be like, here's why the relationship has deteriorated between you and I and I will outline to you in this short, bulleted list, the mistakes that you made. And it will be very awkward, and I would only do it because in my, in my like deep seated heart, I would believe that I was helping them,

but I probably wouldn't actually be. Yeah, that's bad advice, Hank. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Well, I'm glad that we're on the same page that the thing that I would do is not the right thing to do. I can tell you what I would probably do, which is I would probably ghost the person, which is also bad advice.

I mean, is it people get ghosted and for less bad things than being a jerk to your family repeatedly? Right, but I guess the thing in this email that makes me feel like ghosting might be okay is that Paula describes this person as a college friend, not like a close friend, a best friend, the closest she comes is I used to like spending time about. I used to like spending time with him. Right, it does not appear that you, it does not appear that,

like it kind of feels a little bit like, maybe we could take our friendship to the next level and then you found out that you couldn't and that wasn't going to happen. Like not like the next level like we're gonna hook up but like maybe we're gonna go from like acquaintances to good friends by having this like together time at Thanksgiving and that didn't work out and so now you're just acquaintances forever. I will say though that bringing someone home with you for Thanksgiving presupposes a certain amount of closeness, doesn't it? I mean, yes and no. I actually was in a very similar situation to this one time where I ended up going to my friends, like Lake House, because I didn't, like, I was gonna be left at school alone.

And so they like took me to the Lake House and like we, like, held onto his hips while he jet-skied. And that's like physical closeness. And then it was like, we didn't, we did not resonate on a friend level and we never hung out after that. Right. We were like, it just like, I ended up getting dragged along and like spending all this time and being like,

well, that didn't work out. And like, you're into stuff that I'm not into was more what it was. Like, he was like driving 95 miles an hour on the interstate and I was like, slow down. So this is like, I don't want a jet ski anymore. So this is like, when you go on a date, when you go on a couple dates,

and then you're like, let's take a weekend away, and when you actually spend a weekend with the person, you're like, yeah, this is awful. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's okay. Like I do, I do like deep down, I wanna know what was the root of this that maybe this person like was feeling really uncomfortable or judged or was having a real bad day

just because they had to spend Thanksgiving with strangers but also if you don't wanna hang out with them. You don't have to be friends with people you don't wanna be friends with. Right. At the same time, if this person does want to salvage the relationship, I think that they need to say something.

Yeah, you could do that. You could be like, what was up with that? That's very hard. That's exactly what I was going to say. The way you do it is you say, did you notice like maybe that you were being a little rude to my family? And then if they're like, what are you talking about? Be like, well, here are six examples of the, you know, when you threw a turkey leg at my grandmother. Yeah. Maybe you could,

like, why would that have happened? And sometimes people will just say, like, I don't know, I was just really uncomfortable. And like, I liked them, but like, I didn't know how to talk to them, blah, blah, blah. And like, you can come to some kind of understanding. Absolutely. And do go into it with some not harsh, but specific examples, because I often will enter into a conversation where I'm like, you need to stop acting this way and people are like, what do you mean?

And I'm like, I don't know you just do things. And then I don't have any, like I should have had my recorder out and recorded you when you said that mean thing. I don't know, I can't remember now. Right, right. But yeah, if somebody got hit with a turkey leg, you gotta bring that up. Yeah, so our advice I guess is,

ghost them if you don't care. Confirm them if you do. All right, our next question, Austin asks, dear Hank and Alex, I live in Minnesota where we tend to have long, dark winters. I live in Montana, it's the same here. While snow is wonderful and I actually really do like winter, all that darkness can be hard on your mental health.

One of the things I've always found makes me feel better is a crackling fire in a fireplace or a lit candle or two. There's something so cheery about having a little flame flickering inside when it's dark out. Lots of folks in Minnesota are descended from Scandinavian immigrants, and I found a couple of years ago that there's this word in Norwegian and Danish to describe this cozy inside with fire fielding, Higgah, or whatever, however that's pronounced. So here's my question.

Is there a scientific or psychological reason that candles and fires in a fireplace raise our morale? Like the author, not the city, Austin. Was like last year the year of Huga, because I heard about this a lot last year. And I feel like I'm still here. My wife just came home with two different like Huga specific book, like cookbooks.

This is literally the first time I've ever seen this word. So it was it last year was not the year of whatever the hell that word is. Um, yeah, where do you live? Do you live in New York City? I mean, I live in New Jersey. I work in New York City. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, I bet I just feel like like like co-siness is probably not a huge part of the culture of New York where, you know, it gets cold in dreary, but also, like, people are like, I don't know, like, I just don't like picture people in, like, the big city, like, cuddling up and just spending time with their hot chocolate and their cat. You guys got stuff to do. Yeah, that's not a big New York city thing. I did grow up in Michigan. We did have that vibe there.

So. I've been working on a video for a while, so I grew up in Florida and then I moved to Montana. This was pretty big climate difference there. And so I've adjusted very well to like living in a cold place but I just, my assistant moved from Florida to Montana and she's like, I do not understand how you do this. And so I want to like, basically, for her, but also everyone, like, how do you live in

a cold place and pieces of advice? And one of them is like, this, like, I think the word cozy is pretty good at describing this, where you have blankets around and you light a candle if you don't have a fireplace and like, you have, it's dark and you sort of like lean in. What I've heard about, is that it's sort of, I'm sure that I'm pronouncing this so well.

It's sort of that except with friends. So there's sort of a social element to it where it's like everybody gets together and we're all gonna like put on blankets and like chat and have hot drinks. And that's like, that's a lovely thing. Like I do like that. And I don't know if there,

like I'm not gonna say that there's a psychological or a scientific thing here. But what I will say is there are definitely, when you end up in a situation, there are ways to frame it positively and ways to frame it negatively. And I think that if you surround yourselves with ways to frame a situation positively,

even if it's not super positive, like the sun went down and it's 3.30 in the afternoon, that you can find ways to sort of like form that into something that's nice. And that is just based on culture, and it's based on you, and it's based on your brain chemistry, it's based on a lot of things. And like, but just trying to figure out

those puzzle pieces to fit together to make something nice when it wouldn't necessarily be automatically nice. Right. I think it's like, I'm making the thumbs up gesture right now. And I think that co-siness and maybe co-siness with friends are really good ways to do that. I'm of the opinion that the only reasons for winter are sledding and co-siness. Like sledding. And a lot of blankets.

You know how, you know how, like. When was the last time you went sledding, Alex Goldman? Well, I have a two year old, so I dragged him around in a sled last year. My hope is that this year he'll be throttling. I didn't say when was the last time you took someone's sledding. When was the last time you put your butt on a sled

and went down a hill. Because I did this when I was 35 years old and I discovered that my body is different now. That's why I did not feel good the next day, like, hard to get off of the bed. It was actually a couple of years ago. It wasn't that long ago. Yeah, like, yeah. I feel I did not realize that sledding was a physical activity

until I, until I did it as a middle-aged man. I mean, a huge part of it is slamming yourself into the snow as you launch yourself down. Oh, yeah. Just bam, bam, bam, bam. Just, right. I mean, we have pretty intense sledding hills as you might imagine in the show. So it was, yeah, my back hurts just thinking about it. But very fun. I agree. Sledding is a high quality activity. But you know, there's like weighted blankets that are supposed to improve,

like improve your emotional state. There's like sort of, yeah. I mean, that's just what being cozy is, you just toss a bunch of blankets on yourself and then you feel nice and like you're wearing a giant lead baby bib. It's great. That's like, I mean, I remember going and getting X-rays and loving the feeling of them putting those led things on you. So that's a weird thing to that you brought up. But I do, I love it when somebody puts a big,

like, let it baby apron on me. I have to give credit to, there is a Twitter user named Leon, his Twitter handle is L-E-Y-O-N, and he has a tweet in which he is chanting heavy baby bib, and then the dentist comes and puts the lead apron on and he comes down. And the image is so funny. I imagine someone in a dentist office, heavy baby bib, heavy baby bib. So, much respect to Leon. That's good. He's good. I think we answered that one, right?

Yeah, I got as close as I was going to get. My only other hypothesis is that maybe we're like moms and we just like to run around in circles near lights and flames. Chanting, heavy baby bib. All right, here we go. Dear Alex and Hank, I just started college and I've made some new friends, but now I have a problem. Am I supposed to get them Christmas presents? I mean, I've only known them a few months.

So how long are you supposed to be friends with someone before you start buying each other Christmas presents? How do you know who you're supposed to buy presents for? I really need some dubious advice, presents and problems, Laura. I have very strong feelings about this one. Oh, do you? Because I have a suggestion,

but I do not have strong feelings. So hit me with your strong feelings, and then I'll hit you with my suggestion. When I was in college, at my best, I was making minimum wage. Like, I had no money. I had a meal plan, so I wasn't wanting for food.

Pop tarts. But you shouldn't buy anybody Christmas presents when you're in college. If anything, you should like make them Christmas presents. I mean, I'm old enough that when I was in college, it was like mixed CDs and things like that. But no one's gonna get mad if you don't get them a Christmas present. No.

Here is my suggestion. If you feel like maybe there would be like a level of appreciation that would be inferred by other people like, oh, this person is valuing me. If you gave them a present, then give them one of the following items, candy, something from the dollar store. That's it. That's it. That's so big. And like, and like a card that's made out of printer paper where you folded it in half

and you said, Merry Christmas, here's some candy. Because I think that there's like, I think receiving a gift is like, is a separate thing from the gift itself. And so like, it doesn't matter if you spent 25 cents on this gift, the fact that you are just doing it is like A plus. Like, no, here's, yes. Piece of printer paper, Mary Christmas, open it up on the inside, Scotch Tape, is a quarter.

Boom, perfect Christmas presents for your college. Contestually really good. That's actually really good. A quarter is really good. That feels like something that your parents would do. So it feels like if you're homesick, that feels really nice. Yeah, yeah. When I first started dating my wife,

I didn't, I was a terrible gift giver. I was just like, oh, well. And did she reform you? Are you better now? She did. She was like listen uh... you like to get me things that are like expensive electronic and blah blah blah

and she's like i don't really want those there's nothing to them they're just they're like trotchke's that are great and i'm sure very useful but like if you're getting a gift i want you to get me a gift because it's something that you think i will really love so now it's like, you know, like she would value, she had a much better reaction to getting like a plank that she could put a book on in the bathtub than she did to like an iPod. Yeah.

And that is a valuable lesson, I think. I thought about you and not only did I get you this thing, but I also installed it. Look, or had it installed as the case may be. Yeah, I actually got, for Christmas, Katherine's gonna get a thing that I will have installed, and she won't even know that she got this Christmas present until she opens the right door,

and she'd be like, oh, that's convenient. That's nice. That's better than the way it was before. And that's what, you know, your 20th year of being together is like, I noticed that you were annoyed by something and I fixed it. You're less annoyed now. Right.

I was paying attention to you. And that's what we all want. It's just to be valued. Anyway, you are under no obligation to get your friends Christmas presents. No, God no. Like a coloring book and some crayons. Like if you spend more than $5 on anybody's present,

you are actually making the situation worse. Yeah, you're making it worse. Because then they're gonna feel like they need to buy stuff and it gets, yeah, and yeah. You know what would be the best Christmas present? This is something that I would want if I were in college. If you somehow have access to a part of the campus that I am not supposed to be on, take me to that part.

That is a good Christmas present. Take me to the bell tower. If you have access to a lab full of spiders, take me to that to that. Sure, yeah, yeah, show me the weird natural history of museum that's a working museum and not a public one, yes. This next question comes from Don who asks, dear Hank and Alex, my question is simple.

Does any light from other stars reach Earth and remain visible to our eyes on the ground. So, of course, the light is visible to our eyes because we look at them and we see them. But, does it hit the ground? Is my shadow less dark? Because of the light from other suns filling in the darkness. Can I get like a slight three-point lighting setup or like 100,000 million point lighting in this case.

If I simply stand in the correct spot on Earth at the right time of day slash night, I'm not a duck, Don. What do you think? What do you think Alex about stars? You know about this? It's a big thing. Oh man, this is, I'm making a confession.

This is a dear Alex and Hank exclusive. I am so bad at mathematics and astronomy that the only way i made it out of my astronomy class was cheating on one test oh man it's been twenty years i think i i think it's okay i think the statute of limitations is run out i don't think they're going to revoke my diploma,

but I'm very, very bad at science. All right, well, so, Don, the answer to the question is simply that yes, there is starlight, and on a moonless night, if you are in the middle of nowhere and there is no source of light, there is still light because of stars. And there will still, and it will still be like, each individual star is casting its individual shadow, but there will be no shadows because there's a dome of them. And so they're casting in every direction. Which is really cool. And you can detect that light. And there is actually a weird thing where if the universe was infinitely large and infinitely old, there would be so

much star light that would have reached us that the sky would actually just be the color of the sun and the brightness of the sun. The only reason it's dark and black is because even though we think that the universe is likely just sort of an infinite nests of stars, that light hasn't had time to get to us yet. So at some point, if the universe is infinite, there will be no nighttime and no daytime, just sort of this blinding white brightness. Well, to be clear, the universe will never be infinitely old. So that is a supposition of a thing that cannot occur. But yeah, if it was, or if the speed of light

were instantaneous, and all of the light from an infinite field of stars all had already reached us, there is a Minute Physics video about this called Why Is This Guy Dark at Night, which will explain all of that. And it's very good, and it has video parts, and is only three minutes long, even though it's minute physics. It's three minute physics.

Gotcha. Yeah, weird. Starlight is a thing. And in fact, people have even tried to create solar panels that are sensitive enough that they can generate electricity from starlight, which they can do, but it is more like useful for detecting very faint amounts of light than it is for actually producing electricity. It's just sort of a way to say, this is a very sensitive solar panel.

Oh, okay. Well, this is more than I've learned more about astronomy in these last two minutes than I have in many years. So thank you. All right. Dear Alex and Hank, I am an American. I recently moved to Germany and in an attempt to find my bearing in my new city almost everything reminds me of people I knew in the US. Sometimes I'm reminded of old friends or ex-boyfriends I've lost touch with.

Is it ever okay to reach out to someone just to say hi? Is it weird to let someone know you were thinking of them? Or is it nice? I don't know what I want out of the interaction. I think I just want to connect to people. Would everyone be better off if I focused on making new friends? For better or worst as in like, brat worst?

Brot worst. Tessa. Okay, yeah, no, it's normal to reach out to old friends. I don't know about ex-boyfriends because like, I don't know if they're gonna be like, so what does this mean? What does this mean? Does this, what, like there might be some amount of,

I don't know how you left it with them, but yeah, I like it when my old friends reach out to me and they're like, hey, how are you doing now? I'm good, I live in Germany. I, that's a German food and hang out with German people. That's weird. Ha ha ha ha. Ah. I have nothing or nothing. Is that, does anybody think that's weird?

I feel like this question says old friends, but it's more geared toward the exploit friends thing. Like I think that like... Yeah, because it's definitely not weird with old friends. Yeah. But it might be a little weird with exploit friends. Yeah, I think that is a good piece of intuition, Alex. I think that it is only weird.

Okay, this is gonna sound, this is gonna, this is a topology, but I'm gonna say it anyway. It's weird if it's weird. Like if you have a, had a bad parting relationship with that person, then yes, it's super weird. Or, right. Like if you broke up with them and they were like, I would like to keep this going and you were like, no, and then you reach out and you're like, hey, I live in Germany now, how you do? And they're going to be like, okay, well, I got a chance with Tessa now. So let's, let's put up my entire life on hold

and I'm going to move to Germany. But I don't, I mean, I'm friends with X's. It's okay to be friends with X's. And sometimes it's nice to feel like you have an anchor when you are totally unmoored and sort of lost in another country. It feels, it's tough to move to another city, to say nothing of another country. So if it's not weird, I say do it. At the same time, you would be better off if you focused on making new friends, Tessa.

And yet I have no advice for how to make new friends as an American in Germany, because I have not done that. I think that I don't have enough information to totally say, but if you speak German, I would say, if there's, you have a hobby or something and there's like a meetup for it, you should go do that. I loved radio when I was in college. In my first semester of college, I was like lonely and desperate, and I was like, maybe I should drop out and move home

and I cried every day. And one time someone asked me how I was doing at the food co-op and I started to cry because I was doing so badly. Like it was just, I was miserable the whole time and I almost didn't come back. And the semester I returned, I just got involved at the radio station.

I would never radio show, I was just a volunteer there, which meant I would do stuff like cataloging records and things like that. And I met everyone I knew at college through the radio station. It's just go find something that you like to do and go do it. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't talk to your friends back home.

I'm sure that even people who haven't heard from you in a long time care about you and want to hear it from you. But I know what it's like to be in a situation that feels isolating and alone, and I'm sorry Tessa that you're there, and I hope that you're doing okay. Thanks Alex. This next question comes from Tori. Who asks, do you're there and I hope that you're doing okay. Thanks, Alex. This next question comes from Torrey, who asks, do you're Hank and Alex? Why are all of my pencils number two?

What does this mean? Are all of my number one and three pencils languishing in some drawer, lost and alone? Shouldn't all my pencils be number one? Are they not worthy of praise and adoration? Who in the world uses number one and number three pencils? Why are they not allowed to be used on standardized tests? How far does this number system go?

Are there number ten pencils? Is this a Taikon Deroga conspiracy? I hope I'm not the only one confused, looking for my number one pencil, Tori, of the land of Taikon Deroga. Do they have Taikon Deroga pencils in other country or people got to be really confused by that? I don't know. I have no idea. In any case, Taikander Roga is a pencil company in America.

And there's also a place. I assume that Taikander Roga pencils are made in Taikander Roga. Which is a wonderful word. Now that I've said it a bunch of times. Yeah, towns, times. Taikander Roga is a wonderful word, now that I've said it a bunch of towns. Yeah, towns, times. Tykonda Roga is a nice word. There's a place in Los Angeles called Coenga Pass. That's also a word I love saying over and over again.

Coenga, you know, Coenga. Yeah, Coenga. Yeah, I did some research on number three pencils, but before I get there, uh, yeah, that is confusing because they don't show up in normal life. But there is a difference. There is a thing here that is being indicated by the numbers on your pencils, and it is the hardness of their lead, or their graphite. Wait, why do I need to know how hard the lead is? Does that affect how it looks? It does. So the harder the pencil lead, the softer the line.

So a number one pencil has the softest of the leads before it just starts to be crumbly. And that graphite will make a darker line and the pencil will wear more quickly. And number one pencils are used by professionals who are really into their pencils having really dark marks. Number two pencils wear less quickly,

but they still have relatively dark marks, whereas number three and four, and I don't know how high it goes, but those pencils are so hard that they might not be dark enough to make the scantron sheets read the pencil. So, the reason that we use number two pencils is because they show up on scantrons. And less. Yeah, there are good mix between, yeah, those two things. I'm looking, I just googled number eight pencils. Yeah, there are good mix, good mix between, yeah, those two things. I'm looking, I just googled number eight pencils.

And it looks like they exist. Really, I'd like to try a number eight pencil. That sounds like it would be a very, very hard lead. Uh, Faber Castell pencils in 1761, the Graphite Pencil Castell 9,08b. A genuinely classic pencil was launched by Count Alexander von Faber Castell in 1905. Its quality and finally graduated degrees of hardness have made it a firm favorite with artists and illustrators. Its lead fully bonded with wood surrounded, with the wood surrounded, and it's therefore particularly break resistant. And it's available in 16 different degrees of hardness. Nice. It goes from, hmm, this, it now gets confusing to me

because there are letters after it. So there's like a four B for you. You know what those letters are, yeah. Four B for each. Oh my gosh. I mean, people get really into their writing implements. I have had conversations with people that I did not want to be in,

that went on for a very long time about pens. And I was just like, man, my relationship with pens is, they, I take them from hotels. And that's my pens. Yes, me too, me too. I'm like an incessant doodler, but I'm not a good artist. So I don't have like a predilection toward fancy pens.

I just grab one of those. Yeah, that's the thing, that's the thing to notice that a lot of pencils like, you could all, you like an art supply store and there's pencils and every thought you could have about what a pencil might be capable of. They have more thoughts because pencils when they're being used for art are, there's, there are a number of different things that can be done there. Or just why this podcast is brought to you by all of the pencils. It's got a number four B, you want that?

Yes, you want a number 10 A. Yeah, we got that too. Every pencil available, probably at your art store, but definitely in Taikon, D'Aroga, where apparently pencils come from. This podcast is also brought to you by Starlight. It's not just from the sun anymore, and if the universe gets sufficiently old,

it'll be everywhere. It'll be everywhere, and probably all Earth thought, all of the life on Earth will be be fried. The podcast is also brought to you by Jet skiing with a not very close acquaintance. Awkward. This episode is also brought to you by the Heavy Baby Bib. It's so comfortable, just lay down,

we'll place it over you, and then you know, you might get your teeth drilled, you might, you know, sit in front of a crackling fire, who can say? All right, let's do one more question before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I assume that you brought some news from AFC Wimbledon. Oh, yeah, you know it. Okay, good. All right, hit me with that last question.

This says, this is from Paige. It says, hello brothers. I'm going to assume she knew that I was going to be on the show and just thinks of us as having a fraternal relationship. Hello brothers. I have a short range radio device that you can plug into your phone. It's supposed to be used as an alternate if your card doesn't have an ox cord. I've been using it to prank my friends for a few weeks now. This is good.

I've had it play some bits of your podcast, and more recently, I made it play cryptic messages. Um. My friends are super spooked and still totally oblivious. Any ideas for next steps in the prank? Do I play more cryptic messages? Other things? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Oh my god. Oh and sign off. To turn the page. We do name specific sign-offs here at Dear Hank and John if you

hadn't caught on Alex. This is great. This is very good. I think that like I am often iffy on pranks because I think that they can be and still like be careful that you're not freaking your friends out too much. But I like this. I have a similar, I had a long running similar prank where I would, so at my laptop, I named it, you like it asks you to put the name, your name in when you have your laptop.

And I put just a random name in that was not mine, just because I didn't care. And then I found that that meant that when I air dropped people, it came from a name that was not my name. And then I found that a lot of people in my office had their air drop open. So I would just send them weird things and they would accept them. And then I would and then they would be like, who and so finally I let every like it came out that it was me who had been doing it. And I was like, what did you think? And they were like,

I thought honestly that there was a guy who would drive by our office and air drop us files. And I was like, yeah, I guess. Like, air drop you ET in a coat. Yeah, that was just a guy. Like, just back in the early days of Wi-Fi, there used to be people who would drive around neighborhoods and try and hack into other people's Wi-Fi networks.

And they called it war driving. Because it was similar to the way that Matthew Broderick's character in war games would just dial every number until he got, until he connected to someone. And what they were imagining is like someone who is just sort of war driving your office, I imagine someone parked in your parking lot

in the corner just being like, ah, I can't wait to send them a weird image. Yeah, I'm totally gonna get them today. Oh, yeah. So maybe, you can rename your computer and like have a thing that's playing and then have the image show up that's related to it. Later that day and you airdrop them a file

that is related to the weird podcast that you're playing or the weird podcast you're creating from ghosts, weird ghost podcasts, like that. See, I always feel like if you have the opportunity to do this, it shouldn't just be sort of like random bits and pieces of weirdness. Like, I feel like you should come up with a narrative that is plausibly disembodied voices,

this disembodied voices, this disembodied voices coming out of the short range radio, and then play those. Like, come up with some kind of story. Right, well, like, the thing I don't wanna do is have it just be like weird ghosts. So you want, like, I think that it should be, there should be more to it. Like, there should be a person who's stuck

in the radio station or who's become a radio, like a person who's like a transporter accident and the Star Trek and instead, like, they got shocked at the radio station. Like, something funny and cute. That's not just like no screaming or, or, you know, like, this is how I died stuff. This is just how I got converted into a radio broadcast.

This reminds me of in Gremlins too, and one of the Gremlins has turned into electricity. one of the gremlins is turned into electricity. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well, I just forgot about that. Yeah, like that. I'm just gonna forget about that. Ha ha ha ha. I don't know.

Like that. Do that. Except maybe it is a gremlin. Maybe it's, you just start making weird gremliny noises. I, I mean, I kind of want to leave this in your hands. Don't be too mean, but definitely keep it going. Paige, I think that just by virtue of the fact that you came up with this prank in the first place,

first place, I have total faith that you are going to come up with a great, great prank to play on them. Right. So my only contribution is maybe if you can work in airdrops so that it's happening in multiple media simultaneously, they can be like, okay, this is real weird now. This is real weird. It's happening.

If you can figure out how to project something onto the TV, then you get the trifecta. Oh yeah, and it's all happening at once. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha side. Oh yeah, it was all worth it. You got that quarter. All right, Alex news from AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon shot down by the wizardry of Oz. Oh no. That doesn't sound good. Former, former Dolwich Hamlet playmaker nets twice. So far so good. There is a former Dolwich Hamlet midfielder named Erhun Us Tumor, who I assume they call Oz, and he's capable of performing Wizardry. And he proved that it is skill, not size, that wins matches as AFCFC win, then paid the price for early missed chances. So what I've learned about him so far is that he is skillful,

but small. He used to hang out with dough, he used to hang out with something called dough with hamlet and um people call him Oz. He scored a scorching free kick and a very rare error by keeper George Long on Saturday gifted him the ball 30 yards out. So it was two oh against AFC Wimbledon. I'm sorry to say because of how great let me get his name again because of how great air who knows tumor is. I hope I'm pronouncing his name right. Because of how great Air Who Knows tumor is. I hope I'm pronouncing his name right. Seems unlikely, but that is life. That is that is the life of of of A.F. Swimble denues as far as I can tell. Especially British towns, who knows, who

knows. But it sounds like I have seen them lost a game. A.F. Swimble den lost a game toone who used to be part of the Dolwich Hamlet. Yes. I do love the names of towns. There's something weird about it. Like it resonates with my ancestral memory because I am like, I did 23 in me and I'm very British Irish, which is not surprising considering all the people who I know are my family. And yeah, there's like, I like look at the names of the subway stations and I'm like,

this is different because all these words are based on my language. Whereas in America, words are based on like every language. We got like lots of Spanish words and lots of Native American words and lots of, you know, there's some like, we got, you know, York. We got New York happening up there, but like, you know, I grew up in Florida where most of, most of, yeah, is just, yeah. And out here in Montana, like Montana is a Spanish word. But there's something interesting where it's like, that is working with some part of my linguistic brain in a cool way.

Interesting. Yeah, I don't have this feeling at all. I have no religion. You just like the words. It's always, it just feels like it's like a bunch of old English words that are strung together. They're like, done which shop for sure, main on cordon, strin, tin. Yeah. Also, what I'm noticing here is that they're, AFC Wimbledon, I don't know if they some of the seats in the, some of the seats apparently in there,

this might be old news for your listeners. Some of the seats in their arena are named for a company called Chemflow. So you can buy terrorist tickets for the RIGEST stand or the Chemflow end. It seems though you can buy tickets for a certain part of it called Ken.

Yeah, well, I think that they, that different companies sponsor different areas of the stadium and so then you know which area you're buying the ticket in. And I never want to sit in a place called Ken. It does not sound like the place that I would, I, the end I would choose if I had the opportunity. It's cheap though. So the news for people who care about

this, I just looked up the legal on table and IFC Wimbledon is in 20th of 24, which means that they are one spot out of being last or out of being in the relegation zone, I think is what it's called. So they are not, that it is theirs, hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they need to win some football games. As good as I can do in terms of how to analyze. Well, they need to learn that it's skill not size

as the wizardry of Oz taught them. Yes, whoever that person is. The news from Mars, so two pieces of things. One, you may have heard about this weird asteroid that we think was maybe really skinny and long, but that seems very unlikely. So maybe it just had a weird coloration and we could only see the skinny long part of it and the rest of it was very dark, but it was very weird and it was an object

from outside of our solar system and it came flying through our solar system. So first of all, we've ever detected an object from outside of our solar system. And it is of course a thing that happens, but we're getting better at detecting objects like that now because we are kind of on the lookout for meteorites that might hit Earth, doing better job of that,

which is great, good job. How are we able to know that it's from another solar system? So its trajectory is hyperbolic. So almost like all the stuff in our solar system, its trajectory is, it comes like you can see the orbit. And the orbit might not be a circle. In fact, very often there, these huge long looping things

where it comes into the inner solar system and then goes way out, but then eventually it's gonna come back. And this object came in at a speed and a trajectory, so it came in not in the plane of the solar system. So our solar system is like a plate. And it came in from up instead of from the side to side. And then it came in, went extremely fast,

looped around the sun, and then would write back out. So it had way too much kinetic energy for it to have been from here. It was not like, sometimes this will happen when like two objects interact and one grabs a bunch of its kinetic energy through a gravity interaction and then it will get enough energy to slingshot out of the solar system, but this is way too fast for that. So it's definitely from elsewhere. So we won't ever know anything more about this object

because it was going too fast. And we took readings at its closest point and now it's way farther away. And we'll continue getting farther away. But the question is, could we have, like if we had some time in the future, would there have been a possibility to actually chase something like this down and be like, well, we're not going to get a chance to observe another

solar system any time soon because they're, you know, light years away. Could we get to this thing and, and I know this doesn't sound like Mars news yet, but could we get to this thing and thing and study another solar system by studying an object that made its way to us from another solar system? And the answer to that question is with SpaceX's current plan for its big old Mars rocket called the BFR, we could actually get something going fast enough to catch up to not this object because that thing isn't built yet, but to another object like it that happened by. So if we were ready and the BFR was a thing that existed and it was like driving people

from like L.A. to Sydney every afternoon, like Elon Musk seems to think it's possible, we could load one of these things up and get it going fast enough that it would actually be capable of catching up with, like if it existed today, it, we could have launched it and it would have caught up with this object, which I'm not gonna try to pronounce, it's name because it's in Hawaiian and I would be bad at it.

So, so yeah, that, that is an exciting side-effect of building a rocket capable of going to Mars is also you would have a rocket capable of chasing down an object that was flung into our solar system from another solar system, being able to do research on that object and learning about what life or not what life, but what the universe is like very far away and in a very different place. So that's just a maybe, but also a cool. So I'm glad, God, that is pretty cool. Yeah, that is pretty cool.

Glad to know that somebody was thinking about that and ran the numbers. Alex, what are we going to do today? We learned that the greatest gift a person can get is a piece of printer paper, fold it in half with a quarter tape to it. And we learned that if somebody whacked your grandma with a turkey leg, a Thanksgiving, that like you can't ghost them. You can take it, you can just be like, no thanks, that's that.

And we learned that the number two pencil is just one in a long lineage of pencils with various numbers and apparently letters, H and B. Oh, who knows what that's about, at least. And finally, we learned that the opposite of Anarchy is learning what Anarchy actually is. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Oh, you made me cry. Oh, good.

I'm so glad. Alex, thank you so much for joining me. I am a big fan of reply also. It's just an absolute treat to hang out and talk. And thanks for joining me on the Patreon Live stream before this. All the Patreon patrons got, or the ones who were able to show up, got a special treat of Alex Goldman,

a hanging out and talking about net neutrality, and Marshmallows. So if you want to support us, you can do that at patreon.com slash deerhankinjohn. Also if you want to support us, just tell your friends, what a great podcast this is. And also tell them about reply all because it is very good

and let's be honest better than this. Come on, come on. Different. We actually much more work. In honor of being on the show, I actually created a special page called, there's actually three URLs you can go to. It's called, reply.pizza slash. Do your hank.

reply.pizza slash. Do your john. reply.pizza slash. Do your Alex. They all go to the same place though. It's just a page of some of our favorite episodes. If you want to get started with this show. Oh that's so nice. So that's wonderful. So go ahead and check those out. It's I think eight or nine episodes that we really like and listeners really like. So yeah go ahead and check those out. And thanks so much for

having me on the show. I really appreciate it. This podcast is produced by Rosiana Halsey-Rohas and Sheridan Gibson. It's edited by Nicholas Jenkins. Our head of community and communications is Victoria Bonjorno, the theme music you're hearing now and at the beginning is by the great Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. Don't forget to be awesome.