Dear Hank & John - 132: Schrödinger's Floor

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

Why do we need constant mental stimuli? How do I clean my room? Can I still be friends with my ex's family? And more! Email us: [e-mail] patreon.com/dearhankandjohn Thank you to Audible for sponsoring this episode! Audible is offering listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership. Go to audible.com/dearhank or audible.com/dearjohn, or text “dearhank" or "dearjohn” to 500-500 to get started today. If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you new news advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, how are you doing? I'm a little tired because I've just returned from London where I was attending an AFC Wimbledon match with 10 donors to the Project for Awesome all of whom or I think all of whom listened to Dear Hank and John so thank you very much

it was a lovely lovely 27 hours in London but I am tired and also I came home like during Daylight Savings Time which compounded the tiredness and also as you know Hank Daylight Savings Time makes me extremely angry because it is the stupidest thing that humans do, which is really saying something.

And so I'm in a bit of a mood. How are you? Good. I never really understood how bad Daylight Savings Time was until I had a baby. I know. It's so bad. Well, it's even worse if you have a four-year-old who goes to school and every morning she's just like, why? Why are we doing this in the dark when I should be asleep?

And I'm like, I am completely sympathetic to your issue. It's Benjamin Franklin. Take out a $100 bill and be like, this guy. Or possibly a 50. I'm not sure. I think it's 100. Aren't they called Benjamins? The Benjamins. Yes, that is what they're called.

And that is for that reason. I don't actually know if it was Benjamin Franklin, but I once heard that it was farmers, but I recently asked a farmer friend of mine, and they were like, no, we hate it. We absolutely hate daylight savings time. It's terrible. It messes everything up, especially because we have to get our kids to school.

It's not like farmers don't have kids. I would like to hear somebody make a compelling argument everything up, especially because we have to get our kids to school. It's not like farmers don't have kids. I would like to hear somebody make a compelling argument in favor of daylight savings. It's the stupidest. It just infuriates me. Now I'm close

to the breaking point, Hank. Let's change topic. Do you want to talk about the elephant in the room? Mostly, I just want to know what you think the elephant in the room is right now. Just in general, at any given moment, I'd like to know which elephant you think is in the room. When you say, do you want to talk about the elephant in the room? My first thought every time is Putin. He's listening right now. He wants to know what we think uh yeah i mean you're kidding but

you're also not kidding what is the elephant in the room our six hour episode of dear hank and john uh yes of course we released a six hour episode of of Dear Hank and John, which included one hour of new content and then five hours of heavily recycled content. I would apologize, but instead, I'm just going to say you're welcome. You're welcome. And so, yeah, I'm not sure. It seems to have happened differently for different podcast players. We don't know what the problem was. Is different lengths, different content.

We don't know what the problem was. Is different lengths, different content. We did nothing different and nothing wrong. And we do not know what happened. If you have some idea what may have happened, please let us know. Obviously, we did something wrong for the record. I don't see it happening to a lot of other podcasts, but we are going to try to make it not happen again. And if this episode is six and a half hours long, then maybe we just need to retire. But in the meantime, Hank, can I read to you a short bit from a longer poem?

Okay, yes, please. So this is a new poem, and it's quite long. And we'll put a link to it on the Patreon at patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John. You don't have to donate or anything to see all the content. You can just go there. It's a poem by Kaveh Akbar, who's one of my very favorite poets. And he lives in Indiana, which I think is just amazing. He's so good for the Indiana art scene.

It's from his poem, Forfeiting My Mystique. And this, I think, is just gorgeous. I wish I was only as cruel as the first time I noticed I was cruel, I wish I was only as cruel as the first time I noticed I was cruel, waving my tiny shadow over a pond to scare the copper minnows. Oh, God. That is good. I like that. I like it when they're real short, too.

I know you do. It's easier to pay attention I wish I was only as cruel as the first time I noticed I was cruel Is just so good God I mean he does that Several times in this poem That level of Shock and wonder And anyway everybody

Should check out Kaveh Akbar He also has a fantastic twitter where he's constantly Retweeting great poems so Yeah he's over at Kaveh Akbar that He also has a fantastic Twitter where he's constantly retweeting great poems. So yeah, he's over at Kaveh Akbar. That's K-A-V-E-H-A-K-B-A-R. Hank, should we answer some questions from our listeners? Yes, John, I think that we should. I think that we should do that.

And I think we should do it well and humorously. You don't seem ready. You seem to be. I'm so ready. This question comes from David, who asked, dear Hank and John, my job involves me staring at the same spot for hours on end on the chance that something of interest will happen in that spot. I'm very curious.

You've made it very vague, but I get it. Naturally, I find myself getting bored pretty quickly, and I need to keep my mind occupied by reading books or listening to podcasts, which I am allowed to do. And then I get home, and I see my cat lying in the same spot for hours, much of the time awake, doing absolutely nothing and seeming content with that. So I'm curious, why do we need constant mental stimuli? Do animals also get bored? Long live the King David.

That is a really interesting question and one I don't live the King David. That is a really interesting question and one that I don't know the answer to. But the first question to examine is what the heck does David do for a living? I've got two theories. Okay. One, he guards the Mona Lisa. Like if you're a regular museum guard, you move from room to room, you move from object to object. But if you're in a museum that has like one painting that is very, very famous, that painting always has like a couple of guards.

So that's theory one. David is in the Mona Lisa guarding business. And then two is that david watches a security camera for a living right potentially watches a security camera i actually my thought was like candy inspector like like there's a there's a conveyor belt and there's just candy bars and you're just making sure that the candy bars look right but in that situation would you really be able to read a book, you know? No, I guess not. I guess not, yeah. I just assumed that reading a book meant listening to one. Mona Lisa guard. That's my theory. Hank, do animals get bored? Animals definitely get bored, yes. And I assume that when animals are sitting there and they look like they're just staring off into the distance and awake and doing nothing that they are doing what we're doing when we do

that which is thinking about stuff yeah i suspect they're thinking like you know what i wish i had a bird that i could eat or like or like uh back when i had a bird how could i have done that better like that one time i actually got one right like i'm just like sort of replaying that which is sort of like what i do with conversations except with bird death yeah when i actually think about my thoughts like when i pause to consider what i'm thinking about in any given moment. It's so astonishingly mundane. Like almost none of my thoughts are thoughts that I would be at all surprised if you told me a cat has.

Yeah. I maybe have one thought that I wouldn't expect a cat to have per day. Yeah, I find it very enjoyable to be like, okay, where am I at now? And how did I get here? And I think that it must be similar for animals where they're just sort of like follow in the train of thought. But that train of thought requires stimuli in order to have things to think about. And so if your cat did nothing ever, then it would not have good things to think about

and it would be bored and it would be cruel. But your cat has had things that happened to it that day, whether they are, you know, considered by you to be of interest um and and it's it's thinking about those things and what happened last week too or something i don't know it's just thinking about stuff it's thinking differently than we think doesn't have words and stuff but it's thinking about stuff yeah and i think and the internal the internal life is is an adventurous one i think that lots of interesting things happen on the inside of people's heads. And cats.

Oh, yeah, you know that great Eudora Welty quote, right? Of course. Yeah, me, I know all the great Eudora Welty quotes. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well, for all serious daring starts from within. Ah, yes. Oh, it's so good. By the way, if you ever want to read a great essay about writing

and reading, Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings is one of my all-time favorites. So if you're looking for something to distract you while you're guarding the Mona Lisa, that is definitely one that I recommend. Alright, this next question comes from Jed, who writes,

Dear John and Hank, I need some advice. I have a very important guest coming over soon, and I need to clean my room in the shortest amount of time possible. However, I haven't successfully cleaned my room in almost five years, and it's very bad. My room is small, it does not have a closet in which to hide things, and the walls are plaster, so I cannot burn it down. Also, based on my limited knowledge of quantum mechanics i currently both do and do not have a floor

okay okay it's under there somewhere schrodinger's floor my question is what is your preferred method of cleaning rooms any dubious advice is appreciated. Return of the Jed. There's so many different schools of thought, but I think that it's nice that you can focus on the one room first. Yes. But the first thing you do, 100%, absolutely, what you need to do first is go to Target or your box store of choice and buy containers

that can fit in places in your room, like under your bed containers, potentially like foot of the bed, trunk-like things. You can get these things fairly inexpensively, whether it's like the plastic, like basically gigantic Tupperwares or like a piece of furniture that might just look like a piece of furniture, but it's hollow, and you can throw stuff that you don't want to throw away into them. Two, get a garbage bag and throw things away. I just cleaned my office because I have a fancy guest coming to my office for an interview soon,

and I needed to make this place look really great, and I did it in about two hours, and I did it largely with the help of a bag of trash bags. Yeah, I think throwing stuff away is key. I just want to point out, though, Hank, that Jed has already done the first and most important part of my strategy for cleaning rooms, which first is to wait five years. Right, and also, before you get started,

ask someone who literally cannot respond to you for at least a week. That is a great strategy as well. I clean rooms very rarely, but when I do, I clean them intensely. So I first try to get all of the clothing that is on the floor off the floor and either into a washing machine or into the pile that says this is going to goodwill or into the pile that says this is

going to be turned into rags for cleaning projects I will never actually undergo. Then the second thing that I try to do is get all of the other stuff off of the floor. I think your container suggestion is a good one, but you don't necessarily have to go to the container store or anything fancy. You can just put stuff in cardboard boxes that you mark with, you know, you just write down what's in it. And then if you don't open that cardboard box for like six months, that tells you that you're good to just throw that box away. It doesn't matter what's in it. You haven't needed it for six months. You'll never need it again. Then the last thing that I do is vacuum because I'm assuming that you have a carpeted room, although you may not know given how you don't even know if you have a floor.

The thing about vacuuming is that even if a room is not perfectly clean, if it has those vacuum marks people think it's clean yeah in fact don't even turn the vacuum on just like run the vacuum over the carpet make the marks right you just need the marks i think actually you do have to have the vacuum on for it to really for those marks to really show but run that vacuum five minutes before this very special guest comes over and they're going to walk into your room and they're going to think oh wow this is a person who values cleanliness and then eventually over time you'll disappoint them they will think this person respects me and my authority. That's right.

It's like rolling out the red carpet, except it's just the vacuum lines. That's right. We rolled out the vacuum lines for you. You know that you are a respected guest. That's right. If any of you ever have me over to your house, I expect vacuum lines everywhere. On the walls. Oh, my gosh, Hank.

I recently was in a house that had fuzzy walls and I could not get over it. What a brilliant idea. Carpeted walls. That's the future. Oh God. I just feel like I understand carpet. I'm surrounded by it right now in my office. It is a good and useful invention, but it does feel like it increases the surface area of my living space by several orders of magnitude.

I probably shouldn't bring this up to the whole world, but the in-betweens of the in-between of the carpet tufts, I'm just like, what's in there? I'm never going to know. There's just no way for me to know because it's too much surface area. This is the thing I know about lungs and intestines, that if you want to hide things and to increase surface area, the material of a carpet is the best way to do it. And that just means so much more space for stuff to live on. I'm not like a germaphobe.

I'm not like freaked out too much by it, but like it does seem to me an impossible substance to live on. I'm not like a germaphobe. I'm not like freaked out too much by it, but like it does seem to me an impossible substance to actually clean. I have to say, I followed a lot of what you were talking about, but I felt like the sudden unexpected arrival of lungs and large intestines was interesting. Basically, your large intestine is a carpet.

It's carpeted. Yeah, there you go. That's all large intestine is a carpet. It's carpeted. Yeah, there you go. That's all I'm going to say. The body's carpet. Our next question comes from Adam, who writes, Dear John and Hank, when we eventually discover life on another planet, but it's not what we would call intelligent, like it's microbial or something, then what?

How do you compute a sum adam that's good adam that's a great name specific sign oh i didn't even get it until you said it out loud adam um i how what what first of all that's extremely exciting second it's probably what will happen right um we're not gonna the earth was yeah the earth was that for like half of the amount of time there has been life on earth so billions of years it was just just microbes and it was a stinky gross sludgy slimy place full of one-celled things and uh and that's if i could go back and look at earth back then, as long as I had, as long as I had, just a carpet, as long as I had an environment suit and a way to get out, yeah, do it. I want to know about that weird old life.

And what we know from fossils is a lot, but it's certainly not anything like what we would know if we were able to examine it directly. And I think that we would do our best to study it in a non-invasive way. I don't think that it would be particularly useful. Maybe it would be. Maybe we'd find a way to dehydrate the whole thing and be like, now you're fuel. But probably not. And the main thing that we would find is the other ways in which life evolves, because we kind of only have the one way that life was created here on Earth, as far as we know. And to have a second data point would be infinitely valuable and fascinating to see the evolutionary history of another ecosystem.

Yeah, I agree. I would prefer any alien life to be single-celled because if it's much more complex than just microbial life, I think it will be more complex than us. And then I think it will treat us the way that we would treat microbial life. Well, here's something to keep in mind, John, that the vast majority of humans are killed by microbes. Oh, believe me, I am aware.

So be worried about microbes. Just because they're little and don't think much of us and don't think at all doesn't mean they won't kill the heck out of our entire species if they get a chance. I am very worried about microbes yes that's my number four worry i would say it's definitely in my top 10 i spend a lot of time worrying about microbes they are everywhere yeah mostly they're just fine um and not doing not doing much but i i i've read a couple of books in which humans and alien ecosystems end up infected. And it's an interesting thought process because, of course, the way that microbes on Earth exist is that they have co-evolved with our immune systems. And so they have to figure out

ways to overcome our immune systems. And most of them can't even start to try to do that, which is why so many microbes are just are sort of a positive part of our bodies. But on another planet, there are sort of two schools of thought. One is that, like, none of these microbes would have any idea how our immune system works, and so they would not be able to hurt us at all. The other is it's so different, it's so deeply, deeply different, that our immune system would have no idea what to do do and the microbe would just consume us like food. Hmm. That's always been how I wanted to go out.

This next question comes from Stephanie who asked, Dear Egg and John, my name is Stephanie and I'm a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The dining halls at my university only allow you to take one piece of fruit or one dessert to go. To help enforce this policy, there are signs posted which say something to the effect of stealing food hurts everyone. Is this true? Does taking snacks to go impact the cost of operations and therefore the cost of attendance at the university? I would imagine that the answer would be yes if the food was going to waste and being taken

in large quantities. But when I take something, it's most likely because I didn't have the time to sit and eat it. However, I don't know if this is for sure the norm. Banana slugs, Stephanie. Do you know why Stephanie signed off banana slugs? Because that's the mascot of the University of Santa Cruz or California at Santa Cruz? That is correct. Yeah. They have an amazing seal for the university. I don't know if this is their official seal,

but it just says UC Santa Cruz. And then there is a banana slug reading a book and the book just says Plato. So I assume that it's, it's a good, it's a good old one. I mean, I assume it's the dialogues, but it's not, it's a good old one i mean i assume it's the dialogues but it's not it's not stated

outright uh i think that this is a dumb rule i don't know so here's my perspective john as with everything in life this as with every dumb rule that i find annoying it exists because someone was doing the wrong thing and they knew it so someone was taken like 80 desserts and taking them back to their room and hoarding them or selling them or selling them or doing something like finding some way to game the system in a way that was like fine we have to start a rule now. Right, right. There was somebody with like essentially an Apple store, but not where they sold IMAX, where they sold actual apples out of their dorm room.

They stole from the cafeteria. And then the government of the school had to be like, oh God, I guess we have to make a rule. But the short answer, Stephanie, is in my opinion, as long as you are violating the letter of this law, but not the spirit of the law, I think it's fine. Because the truth is you pay a lot of money to go to college. And the reason that college is expensive is not because of apples. No, I would not say that it's the apples.

And I would not say that it's whatever the desserts are And I feel a little bit slighted that I don't know what the desserts are I can't really remember what we had at my college cafeteria But I don't think that we had good desserts We did have fruits though and I never ate those Because that's ridiculous Who's eating fruit in college? We did have fruits, though, and I never ate those because that's ridiculous.

Who's eating fruit in college? I would estimate that I ate 500 pounds of Lucky Charms in college. I ate Lucky Charms with every meal. Two fruits, like two whole fruits. No, I mean, I didn't get scurvy because I was eating Lucky Charms, which is fortified with vitamin C. I didn't need to eat fruit. Zero fruits. I probably't need to eat fruit. Yes, zero fruits. I probably had two fruits in college. I would estimate that I hate, I mean, I'm not a person who chooses to eat fruits and

vegetables, just ever. Hard stuff. The question is, do you count the filling in the Pop-Tart? Because in that case, I probably ate a bunch of fruits. Oh, God, I ate a lot of Pop-Tarts in college. I recently had a Pop-Tart, Hank, and I, I probably ate a bunch of fruits. Oh, God, I ate a lot of Pop-Tarts in college. I recently had a Pop-Tart, Hank, and I used to just eat them raw, right? I wouldn't toast them.

I would just eat them. Sure, of course. I recently had a Pop-Tart. When I was finishing Turtles All the Way Down, I spent five days alone. Not recommended. And as part of that, I didn't leave the little building that I was in almost the whole time. And so I had to eat kind of whatever was there. And I ate a Pop-Tart and it was so, and I apologize if in the future Pop-Tart sponsors this podcast, because I will absolutely shill for them. But the Pop-Tart I ate in Michigan while I was finishing Turtles All the Way Down was so bad.

It was so bad that even though there was no other food, I was like, eh, I'll wait till tomorrow to eat. I disagree with you. I still love Pop-Tarts. Oh, God, they're awful. I mean, they taste highly processed. And this is coming from someone I like to eat food in bar form. I almost, I would be very happy to eat exclusively bars for the rest of my life. Zone bars, noted Dear Hank and John sponsor RX bars, which I do genuinely love, power bars. There's a character

in the Douglas Copeland novel, Microsurfsfs who at a certain point in the novel becomes extremely stressed out and closes his door and will only eat food that can be slid under the door. I would do very well only eating food that can be slid under a door because I love a good flat food from garlic naan to zone bars. I like a good flat food. I would be fine with that, but Pop-Tarts are disgusting. I like them. Maybe you didn't have a good flavor. No, I had this strawberry frosted flavor, the kind that I ate all the time in college.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't love the frosted. It's a little bit like if you sugar coated sugar. It seems unnecessary to have turned it all the way into a sweet tart, but I do like the non-frosted strawberries still, and we very occasionally will buy those. But in college, I bought them so regularly that I was in there. And for a year of time

There was a happy face on the side of the pop-tart box Just like our yellow happy face and I had a whole My wall was covered in these yellow happy faces because like I guess I wanted to prove Like the level of enthusiasm I had for pop-tarts I What an aficionado I was, like the level of enthusiasm I had for Pop-Tarts. I love that. That's brilliant. It's like how some people in college have huge collections of beer cans and you're like,

yes, that's very impressive. I see that you've drunk a lot of beers, but it's for Pop-Tarts. While we're on this topic, you know one other thing that hasn't held up for me that I loved in college? Taco Bell. Oh, I, I, wow. I mean, like, I just guess I haven't grown up because I go to Taco Bell like once or twice a week. Really?

Yeah. I mean, I'm lucky if I can eat out at all once or twice a week. That's impressive to me. I don't know that I would call Taco Bell eating out. Oh, I absolutely would. I mean, any place that is not my home where I eat dinner with my children is eating out. Absolutely. Oh, my children, my Oren is never there.

No one. I am always by myself when I go to Taco Bell. Taco Bell is exclusively a I am starving and on the way somewhere food, but I like it. All right. I think it's great. I think it's great, Hank. That reminds me that today's podcast

is brought to you by Taco Bell. Taco Bell. Hank loves it. It's on the way. This podcast is also brought to you by Guarding the Mona Lisa. Your eyeballs are gonna fall out of your head but at least you got this podcast to listen to it's true and of course today's podcast is also brought to you by

banana slugs banana slugs the leading mascot slug in american universities i believe probably the probably the leading slug and this podcast is additionally brought to you by a fruit. The one fruit that you ate while in college. We also have a Project for Awesome message from Rebecca in the UK who says, To all of the wonderful people who spend their lives trying to better educate and inform my generation, thank you. I appreciate it beyond measure. Hank and John, that includes you guys. Without the wonderful things you create

on Vlogbrothers, Crash Course, et cetera, I wouldn't be anywhere near as well informed on current events. That's great. Thank you, Rebecca. And I appreciate you so much for thinking about educators and teachers as a young person, which I did not do enough when I was that age.

No, God, I didn't either. I did not appreciate the gifts that were being given to me. I was that age. No, God, I didn't either. I was so... Did not appreciate the gifts that were being given to me. I was so terrible to my teachers. I've expressed this regret to them each in person, except for the ones who died before I had a chance to. But I...

It's like I thought that teaching me was a privilege. Like... Aren't you lucky that you get to spend 50 minutes every weekday with this jackass? That sounds about right. Yeah, I mean, I wish I could...

Yeah, that's all I could say about my high school self. I'm not proud. This next question comes from Natalie, who writes, Dear John and Hank, yeah, that's all I could say about my high school self. I'm not proud. This next question comes from Natalie, who writes, Dear John and Hank, John, at what point did you know your novel would be translated into different languages? And did you get to choose which languages you want your novels to get translated into? Hank, will An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, which is available for pre-order now and comes out September 25th, be translated into different languages?

Will you keep the same cover for different languages or choose different ones? I have no idea what I can use as a name-specific sign-off. Natalie. This is an interesting question, and it is a world I did not know much about before I became an author. Yeah. No, I had no idea. And even this was all very new to me as I was doing it. I did not understand how this works. And now I do. The first thing, Natalie, is that I don't get to choose what languages my book comes out in. I would like it to come out in all the languages, all of the world's languages. But many languages only, you know, they only publish a certain number of books. Some have quite small publishing industries. And so for years, my books were published in a few countries, some of them successfully, some of them unsuccessfully.

But then when The Fault in Our Stars came out, suddenly my book was in like 50 languages, which was incredibly exciting. And I love having all of those covers. And even though I can't read any of these books, seeing all of them, and I love getting great questions from my translators, and I have built relationships with some of them that are more than a decade old now. So it's a really cool part of publishing. And in some ways, it's my favorite part

because I also don't have to do any work. Well, I didn't even know that you would sort of field questions from translators to be like, yes, and this is what I kind of mean here. Right. Like, obviously, like, you're not going to translate this directly. So like, you're going to have to get at this feeling somehow. Right.

I love those conversations. I also find that my translators are such good readers in general. I think to be a translator, you have to read so carefully and thoughtfully. It's a real, it's a real talent. And the people who are brilliant at it can, in some cases, I think, make your books better. I don't read German or Dutch, but I know from the reviews that my books must be better in German and Dutch than they are in English. And the different covers is also interesting. So there's different publishing companies in different countries.

And each publishing company kind of seems to decide what the cover is going to be. And I sort of got an email that was like, the UK publisher would like to use the same cover as the US publisher. They like that cover. They want to use it. And I was like, that was maybe not going to be the be the thing i guess because sometimes uk covers are different um and so that is the decision of the publisher that they they decide um and the publisher decides like always decides what the cover is authors um oftentimes get no say over what their book cover is i got more say than the average but like ultimately it's not my decision

right it's certainly not your decision when it comes to foreign language covers. But it's also not really your decision usually when it comes to English language covers. Right. Almost all publishing contracts have it written in that the author does not get to decide the cover. Because, well, from the publisher's's perspective authors are often quite bad at that but also it can be a big fight it is often a big fight in publishing hank and i have both been really lucky in that i think we both like uh our covers but that doesn't always happen yeah yeah definitely not and i haven't always i haven't always liked my covers to be honest there's

there's some i think there's's some duds out there. But I like all of them currently. And even the foreign covers that I don't like, I'm always fascinated by. And some of them I love. The Swedish covers of my books. In fact, we'll put a couple of the Swedish covers on the Patreon at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John. The Swedish covers are amazing. The Swedish cover of Turtles All the Way Down might be the greatest single image I have ever seen in my entire life.

I love it. I want it. Like, if I ever get a tattoo, it's just going to be the Swedish cover of Turtles All the Way Down. And getting, like, and the fact that you get different covers for different editions is really exciting to me. Because I, like the the experience of excitement and joy i got when i was like this is the cover of the book i'm gonna get to have that other times not like maybe exactly the same because you know it will be less sort of like the emblematic cover in my life but um i'm gonna get to experience like basically artists

creating art based on a thing that i made which which is, that's great. That's one of the great feelings. And also it was one of the great feelings of being, uh, you know, an internet creator when people make fan art, it's just like so inspiring and, and like humbling to be part of other people's artistic process. Yeah, I totally agree. All right, Hank, we got to answer one more question before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, big, big AFC Wimbledon news this week that I was there to see in real life. Okay, our last question. I'm going to do a serious one, John.

We've got to get some serious ones sometimes. This one's from Veronica. I mean, stop. A little bit more. My boyfriend broke up with me last week. We had spent the better part of a decade together and he saw me go from an insecure high school student all the way to a kick-ass high school teacher. Congrats, Veronica. I get that he doesn't love me anymore and that there's no use forcing anybody to

be with a person they don't want to be with. However, his breakup isn't just about us. His family practically raised me. They asked me to come over for Sunday dinners when he's not there. Is that weird? Can I still be friends with my ex-boyfriend's family? They feel like family to me and I love them dearly. Also, I'm his little sister's godmother, to further complicate the matter. My relationship didn't end in death, Veronica. Yeah.

Veronica, yeah, that's rough, man. That's rough. Yeah. That's hard. Yeah, I think that, like, man. That's rough. Yeah. That's hard. Yeah, I think that like, so you're going to want to ask yourself some questions and you may want to ask your ex some questions. You may want to ask the family some questions.

I think that the main thing, and it doesn't seem like this to me, but the main thing is like, you aren't hanging out with these people because you're trying to rekindle the relationship. You're trying to bring it back. Or you're trying to like,le the relationship you're trying to bring it back or you're trying to like eat like keep yourself in that person's life so maybe they'll see you and and want like you you do want to move on and you don't want this to be a barrier to moving on into other relationships and into it like this new part of your life that's not going

to have this person in it romantically but it does sound like these are people who matter a lot to you um and so as long as that's it's not about that to you and they're not in some way trying to like insert you you back into your ex-boyfriend's life which is a thing that i've seen families do where they're like he made a bad decision so we're going to try to make him undo it as long as they're not trying to do that and you're not trying to do that, and this is about you maintaining relationships external to that, like how you're feeling about your boyfriend, then I think it's okay. It's just something to be conscious of and careful with. Yeah, I think it's hard. And I think you might find yourself needing to take a few steps away

for a while just to understand what the new reality is going to be and get used to this new normal. I remember when my longest term relationship that wasn't with Sarah ended, what was really, really unbearably painful to me was the thought that this family that I had really become a part of, I wasn't going to be a part of anymore. And that was, it was devastating. It was really, really difficult. And I still miss, I still miss that family and think very highly of them and, you know, hold them in my thoughts. But for me, I felt like I couldn't continue that relationship because I didn't want to be, you know, I didn't want to be in the way of their life as a family. But it was really difficult, and I think it varies from case to case,

and I think you've got to, as Hank said, kind of keep in touch with yourself more than anything and understand what you're going through and what you need. All right, John. Hank, one last thing before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Mark wrote in with a very important correction. Dear John and Hank, I was excited to hear my part of the world mentioned when John commented that JohnGreen.com was owned by a realtor in southern Mississippi. I decided I would go to this website, research the realtor, and appeal to him as one South Mississippian to another.

I would request that he, John Green the realtor, consider relinquishing JohnGreen.com to its more appropriate owner, John Green, the author. I'm not sure that I'm actually the more appropriate owner. He is as much a John Green as I am. But anyway, to my surprise and chagrin, John Green, the realtor, is not a South Mississippian, but actually a South Tennessean. Oh, come on, John. I mean, as somebody whose grandmother is from Tennessee, I should have known better. I should have done better. Not since

the disaster of Benjamin Harrison have I so disgraced my family. I apologize. Thank you, Mark, for the correction. And thanks for listening from South Mississippi. Well, what a disaster, John, you big liar. It is, so that's basically very close,

like Memphis is close to North Mississippi? I believe that is correct, but not going to stake my entire future on it. It appears that John Green, the realtor, is representing some very nice homes. Oh, really? Yeah, this one's uh you know in collierville tennessee it's 550 000 um single family home two four bedrooms two baths and that is right on the mississippi tennessee border collierville it is wow yeah yeah yeah i was close. I mean, I do have to say, John, that I don't want to judge John Green by looks. Oh, this is a nice home.

But I might think that he's probably retiring soon. Oh, so I might be able to make a play. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if that guy might not be a realtor in five years. Okay, well, I mean, I don't know. He's got a thing called myjohngreen.com. He's got a lot of stuff going on on his site. I don't want to get in the way of it. It used to have an animated gif of a shamrock slowly rotating, but this website has made some huge progress in the 18 years

that I've been tracking it. The shamrock is still there, though. He's held onto the shamrock. It's still part of the logo. So let me get to the news from AFC Wimbledon, Hank. Before you get to the news from Mars, the news from AFC Wimbledon is great. I went to an AFC Wimbledon game. It was so much fun.

It's always so much fun to be there. I love that community. I am so grateful to them for including us in the life of their football club. It's always so wonderful to be there. If you go to a game and you tell anyone around you that you're a nerdfighter or that you listen to our podcast or anything like that, they will be so welcoming. It's really, really a wonderful experience. If you're in London on a Saturday, I really encourage you to find a way to get to a game. It's just a really special place.

I was there with 10 nerd fighters in Rosianna, and it was pretty tense because AFC Wimbledon are, at this point, I think it's safe to say, in real danger of being relegated, which is terrifying. And it's been a rough season. And we were playing Oxford United, a team that traditionally we have struggled against. However, AFC Wimbledon won that game 2-1. Lyle Taylor, the Messi from Montserrat, the greatest, I would argue, forward in the history of Montserrat's national team scored a penalty.

And then there was a equalizer from Oxford right before halftime. And it looked, it just looked to me like one of those games that was going to end up a draw. But then in a goalmouth scramble, John Meads, the left back, found a way to get the ball in the back of the net and AFC Wimbledon won that game two to one. A huge, huge win. I mean, if we stay up, I think we are going to look back on that win and think, hmm, that might have been the one that did it because we'd be in the relegation zone if we'd lost that game. Instead, we are in 18th place on 41 points. It's going to take 52 points to definitely stay up. So that's 11 points from our last 10 games.

It's going to take maybe only 50 points to stay up if we're lucky, which would be three wins from our last 10 games. So it's still very much, there's still a lot of danger. Let's put it that way. There's still a lot to worry about. But it certainly looks a heck of a lot better than it did five days ago. When you, when that goal was scored, what was it, what was the feeling? What did you, what was it like, John? The moment the second goal was scored, it was a feeling of utter joy and excitement and lots of high-fiving.

And then we settled in for 15 minutes of unmitigated terror. Right. Because it's not like you scored in like minute 90. You're desperately clinging to a lead that you kind of know you sort of have to hold on to not just for the sake of the game but for the for a broader season-long cause and that was very stressful and you could really feel it in the stadium. Like the energy went from like, let's roar this team on to success to let's try to sing, but they're probably going to hear the nerves in our voice. Everybody just be very quiet and cut your beers tightly. Yeah. Yeah. Every time George Long would go to take a goal kick, he would sort of fake jog toward the ball.

And even though I knew he was fake jogging and I knew he was actually walking and trying to kill time as best he could, even then I still found myself saying, take your time, George, take your time, take your time. Slow? Oh, that's an intense 15 minutes, John. Just of like being like, be a slow, do some real slow soccer. Well, I did at one point point out, I mean, it's a small stadium,

so I genuinely believe he could hear everything I was saying. I did at one point say to him, you know, you haven't gotten a yellow card for time wasting yet, which means that in my opinion, you have not yet wasted enough time. Oh, man. Oh, no. Good sportsman like. Very sportsman like. What's the news from Mars?

The news from Mars? I always feel like I'm just over-talking about SpaceX, but Elon Musk is saying that they will have their BFR rocket headed to Mars by 2020. So they'll be testing this thing. They've just started testing this giant, massive rocket, and they'll be testing it in 2019. testing it um in 2019 um and uh and then they will be sending things test missions into orbit around mars by 2020 this is very good news for for our bet for me it's still i would say the outsidist of chances yeah and i don't know what i was thinking. As years continue to pass, I continue to realize I'm a dummy. But they are also looking at using this system to travel on Earth very quickly. Have you heard about this?

Yeah, for the Hyperloop? No, no, that's a different thing. Oh. Oh, this is where you can travel from, like, New York to Sydney, Australia in 14 minutes. Yeah, that thing. Yeah. And so I guess the more we're testing this, the more likely that that will be a thing. I would not travel that way.

I ever, probably. that way. I ever, probably, but it would at least need to have been around and doing the thing for as long as it was before, like, from like the Wright Brothers to the 747 before I signed up. But I encourage other people to enjoy it. It does seem a little bit irresponsibly wasteful to me. But hey, people fly private jets to Australia. And yeah, so it looks like Elon Musk's plan is to be sending a thing into Mars orbit by 2020, which that doesn't seem like outside of possibility, considering that he was able to launch that Tesla Roadster

out beyond the orbit of Mars. Getting it to the orbit of Mars is a much different technological challenge. Like having the amount of energy necessary to get it there is one thing. Having all the technology necessary to aim it in the right ways to basically hit a dart that is, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles away is a different thing. Well, I think you're trying to hit a dart board with a dart. Yeah, you're throwing a dart and you're trying to hit a planet or something. That doesn't seem that hard.

I want to point out one thing, Hank, which is that in the exact same interview where he talked about all of this stuff, Elon Musk also said, and I'm quoting him directly, historically, people have told me my timelines have been optimistic. Yeah. So, I'm not, I feel

really, really good about the chances that this podcast is going to be called Dear John and Hank within a decade. The good news is that I will have held on to Dear Hank and John for a long time. Maybe it was a really savvy move on my part. I also want to self-correct and say

that Mars is millions of miles away, not hundreds of thousands. It is also hundreds of thousands of miles away, but more accurately would be to say millions. And while we're talking about response corrections, here's a response we got. Dear Hank and John, I think the world being your oyster means that the world is the place you live and are created and formed, and that turns you into a dope pearl. You are welcome, says Olivia. Sure, so I guess I am the irritating grain of sand in the world

that the world polishes into something that is a little bit nicer. Or doesn't. I mean, a lot of times it doesn't become a pearl. Or, yeah, I mean, sometimes the oyster just dies. Thanks for podding with me, Hank. It's been a pleasure as always. What did we learn today, John? Well, we learned that sometimes the oyster just dies.

We learned that book translation is complicated, and it is the decision of a company that is in that country, not of the author. Definitely not of the author. We also learned, of course, that Hank still enjoys Pop-Tarts. I do, but my relationship with them is less unhealthy now than it used to be. All right, this podcast is produced by Rosianna Halsrohassen,

shared in Gibson. It's edited by Nicholas Jenkins. Our head of community and communications is Victoria Bongiorno, who also helps to run our Patreon and is going to put up some excellent Swedish covers of John's books on that Patreon that you can see whether or not you're a Patreon supporter.

But we do appreciate our Patreon supporters because they allow us to make this podcast. But also, that money goes toward things like SciShow and Crash Course and all of the cool things that we make at Complexly. So thank you so much for supporting us. And also, if you support us, you're going to get our weekly Very Bad Podcast this week in Ryan's at the $5 podcast support level over at patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John. And, yeah, that's the whole thing. The music that you're hearing right now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.