Dear Hank & John - 137: Manhole & Me

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

Why am I in Seattle? Why are bricks stacked that way in walls? Is nihilism hilarious? And more! Email us: [e-mail] patreon.com/dearhankandjohn

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC [♪ [♪ [♪ OUTRO [♪ OUT So confused! Oh yeah, how would they cope? Probably, probably our listening numbers would plummet as people would be rocked to their cords by the fact that I was doing the intro. All right, do it. Hank. Or as I like to call it and is actually living in the podcast to your Hank and John. It's a comedy podcast about death in which two brothers answer your questions, provide you with dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from Mars and da da da da da! AFC Wimbledon. Hank usually in the podcast, this is where I would ask you how you're doing, but instead

we are introducing a new segment in our podcast that we're both very excited about called the elephant in the room Every week Hank and I are gonna count to three and say what we think the elephant in the room is here We go Hank one two three James Madison James Patterson the author no, No, I said James Madison. James Madison, who is an author of the Federalist Papers. Last week, I said it was James Monroe. And 500 more people wrote in about this

than listen to the podcast. There was a campaign. The whole James Madison subreddit got involved. There was a change.org petition petition it was really extreme situation i am deeply deeply sorry for saying that james Monroe wrote some of the federalist papers it is one of the most embarrassing mistakes of my entire career right up there with saying that Benjamin Harrison was not an interesting president when we all know he was the most interesting important president of all american history

hank why is michael co Cohen the elephant in the room this week? I don't know. He's on, like, it's just a lot of people are talking about him on Twitter. Oh, yeah, he seems to be, he seems to be the elephant in the Twitter room. He's definitely a highly tweeted figure at the moment. He also has a Twitter, although, I mean, if I were his lawyer, I would really recommend that he stop using it. It seems like, it seems like, necessarily, it seems like a lot of the people involved in this don't really love taking legal advice, including the lawyers. Yeah, increasingly Hank, I really only have one piece of advice for the president, for his lawyer, for all of our listeners.

Stop tweeting. Oh yeah. I would love to take that advice, and I won't. John, do we have any questions for our listeners this week? Ha ha ha ha. His first question comes from Isaac who writes, dear John and Hank, one of my most prized possessions

is the signed by Hank Periodic Table that I got as a suburb of the word. Suburbable was a company we started that was eventually merged with Patreon. I'm currently having a party and someone pointed out to me that the table is now out of date as many of the elements have since been named. The idea that you're emailing us during your party? Yeah, I presume so. Wait, do the party!

No, we've got a lot of emails this week from people who are currently doing things. That may be the theme of the week. Anyway, the idea that my favorite wall decoration is now inaccurate causes me minor and persistent psychic discomfort. It can't be that persistent because you're currently at the party where this cut pointed out. So it can't have been going on that long. Possible solutions to this problem include reversing the naming decisions of the IUPAC to match my poster. I think we've found the solution.

Isaac, there it is. I'll just write a letter. Alternately reprinting the poster or stickers to add new and future elements. Any dubious advice would be appreciated, Isaac. Actually, Isaac, we already reprinted the poster with the new elements. We did that with Cathakhafe.

We put it together. We thought about doing stickers, but it turned out that it was surprisingly weirdly hard to do sticker replacements for it. So we didn't do that. Though I still like the idea of doing a sticker pack of the elements that they created because it's real good. So Isaac, what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to sign one of those I'm going to send it to you. Oh, that's very nice to you Hank. I thought you were going to be like Isaac. What I would encourage you to do is buy a new one. Yeah, now I'm going to, here's what's going to happen Isaac. Just give us your bank account number, your social security and your mother's maiden name and we'll make sure that everything's taken care of. Oh, you'll get a poster all right. Isaac, you're going to be buying

a poster for the like every week for the rest of your life. It's just, it's happened now. No, I'll get in touch with you. This offer does not necessarily extend to all people who have a poster that is incomplete because it was correct at the time of printing, but I do feel like since there has been this

persistent psychic discomfort that has lasted as far as I can tell, through some period of a party, I do wanna reach out to Isaac and make that right. This next question is about ASC Wimbledon, John, and it comes from Corane. Oh, right. Who asks, do you're Hank and John,

but I assume mostly John, I'm currently at an ASC Wimbledon game. This people are at things, waiting outside for the doors to open, and I'm currently at an AFC Wimbledon game. This people are at things. Waiting outside for the doors to open and I'm extremely anxious. I'm a 20 year old girl and everyone here seems to be adult men. It's probably because a guy asked me a question and when he heard my American accent, he gave me a weird but negative look. And now I feel like I should go.

My question is, how do you make yourself feel comfortable at a place where you feel you don't belong? Too stressed to feel blessed? Colleen! Well, anytime you're doing something for the first time, it's going to be weird, especially if you're entering into a culture that you don't necessarily know well. There are a lot of women at AFC Wimbledon Games, but if you are in certain parts of the stadium, it can feel pretty male-heavy. And I'm sorry that you felt anxious.

I hope that you ended up going to the game anyway. Based on when you sent this question, I believe that you were at the game against Fleetwood, which AFC Wimbleed and Lost. So I'm sorry about that, but look, they've lost a lot of games this season, Colleen. So I hope that's a comfort to you. I, in general, Hank, when I am in Colleen's situation, I do exactly what Colleen did, which

is I look at my phone and I try to think of something to do with it. That's pretty much it. I think that it's important to recognize that this isn't a thing that isn't real. Obviously, it only exists in our minds, it only exists in culture, but culture in our minds are very real things. In our daily lives, we generally end up in places where we feel very comfortable, and that is very nice. It's a really great position to be in, and then when you are in a place where you don't feel like you're part of the culture and you feel a little bit like am I observing? Am I intruding? Do I belong here? Do these people

think that I'm just watching them because I think they're weird? How do I, how do I even interact in this social space? I don't understand any of the norms and that like having those experiences can be at least a piece of information for you to help understand when other people are in situations like that in areas where you are comfortable. So that is a thing that happens to a lot of people. It happens to all of us sometimes, but I think that I, for one, am very lucky to not have that experience very often, but I think that a lot of people have it all the time. And I know that like there are a lot of refugees who live in Mizzoula who have been recently resettled. And I just

think about that all the time with those families, how they are constantly in a situation where they don't really understand the norms, don't really understand the language in a lot of the cases. But even if they do, just like how does all of this work and what am I supposed to be doing and how do I interact with this culture as a constant stress and so that's Weirdly your experience that aFC Wimbledon game may give you some insight into other people's experiences I do hope that once you got into the game My experience anyway is that once you get into the game and you're sitting in the stadium I know it was stressful walking in my hope is that once you got into your seat

You had a really good time, despite AFC Wimbledon losing and you were able to enjoy the really high quality third tier English football. And that it was fun. Please follow up and let me know how it went. And don't go to a game for the rest of the season because you might be bad luck. All right, this next question comes from Christina who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a teacher and I was ordering books from my classroom while also pre-ordering Hank's new book, an absolutely remarkable thing which comes out September 25th.

Christina, you're crushing it with your question already. One of the books from my classroom was also a pre-order and I noticed that it is set to be released on the same day as Hank's book. This made me wonder, is that just a strange coincidence or is there an ideal day for books to be released each year that publishers shoot for? Also, I ordered all the books through Amazon Smile with the Foundation to Degrees World Sucks, my chosen charity.

Thank you for that Christina, who signs off, para a key a considerar, que este estado as de chegar, which I'm sure is totally well pronounced Portuguese on my part. Do you know what that sign-off means? It says right here. It says, stop here and consider that you will reach this state to. So this chapel of bones where that quote comes from is a chapel that is actually made out

of human bones in Portugal. Our parents visited there because of course when mom was in Portugal she wanted to see the chapel of bones. She's, you know, I come by it honestly. And the translation that my mother gave me to this quote that has really stuck in my head so much that it was in the first three drafts of turtles all the way down was here are the bones that wait for your bones. Oh, that's not, I mean, from the little that I know of Portuguese, that's nothing like what that says. Yeah, but I mean, I'm sure mom, yeah, mom arted it up.

Of course she did. Who can play Mer? Who can Blamer? Who can Blamer? Here, hello, I am a bone and I await your bones. I mean, I think that is such a beautiful quote, especially now that I think that mom came up with it. It's so, I love that quote. These are the bones that wait for your bones.

Like I just, I really did, like I tried to like, horn it in to turtles all the way down. And finally, Julie was like, this just has nothing to do with the book. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. They're young people, and they're all healthy. They're fine. Anyway, my new book, these are the bones

that wait for your bones will be out in 2021. Ha-ha know, September is a good time for books to come out because it gives them some time to be thought and talked about before people buy each other books for Christmas. I think that's what's up. That is correct. Also, for some reason, there is a day of the week on which books come out that day of the week is Tuesday, and it's very unusual for a book not to come out on a Tuesday, and so books tend to get congregated because there are only so many Tuesdays,

especially there are only so many Tuesdays in the fall, and because of plurality of bookbying happens in the last two months of the year, it makes sense to have your book be kind of in the cultural conversation during that period. Interesting. I, John, since you're now like a big, super fancy cool author and you're a big deal

and all of that, I agree. How about what if the next time when you're book, the bones waiting for your bones, body, boy, it comes out, you say you're publisher, all right, now I know this is gonna sound crazy. I know this is gonna sound weird. I know this is gonna upset you. Yeah, but let's do it on a Wednesday.

Yeah, no, I tried that. It turtles all the way down. I said, I don't wanna publish it on October 10th. I think that's a weird day. I wanna publish it on October 12th, on Thursday. And Julie said, no. And I said, why not? It's the stupidest rule.

And she was like, no, because if we say we're going to publish it on October 12th, everybody's going to open the boxes on Tuesday because that's when they open the boxes. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. So there you go. I have tried it and I failed. And I feel like my star is not rising.

So I had my shot and I took it and it didn't work. It's great. This next question comes from Diana, who writes, do you, John and Hank, why are bricks stacked in walls the way they are? Why are they staggered? I always assumed it was a structural thing, but the walls at my college just have bricks all lined up. So what gives? We're all gonna die, Anna.

That's a really good name. Exactly. Thank God. John, it is so much more structurally sound to line the bricks to stagger the bricks. That's why bricks are always staggered. There's different staggerings that are sometimes used. But occasionally, during the 60s to the 80s, people were like, you know, it would be cool since we don't actually need these bricks for structural reasons.

We make them all lined up. So these bricks are not structural bricks. They are a facade. A facade. And if they aren't, then there's something else going on. Because when you line them all up, like the mortar is the only thing holding them together and these stacks and mortar, the mortar is less sturdy

than the brick. So yeah, it's a facade and it's just to look good but it looks worse. I don't know if it looks worse, but it does look weird. So I recently, for reasons I can't even begin to get into, found myself in a situation where I had to destroy a small brick structure so that I could use those bricks to line a path that I cleared through my backyard because I've been spending a lot of time outside as a therapy strategy.

Anyway, the one thing that I learned is that it is definitely way better to stagger bricks. I'm not a mason, but it's almost impossible to take even like a hundred twenty-year-old building. It's hard to take apart with staggered bricks. Yeah, no. I mean, there's a reason why bricks work and why all brick buildings look the same ish. In fact, you don't even need a mortar, for a long, if you want your building to be up for a long time, of course you wanna have mortar and even things out, but you can lay bricks together and just do it,

and they will stay that way for an awful long time. Really? Well, I mean, if you come at it from the top and push down from the top, yeah, but that will knock the wall down, but like they hold themselves in place. I don't know that I trust Hank's expertise on bricks, but I mean, what do I know? I'm somebody who thought James Monroe wrote some of the Federalist papers. Yeah, no, I'm an expert on everything, John. All you gotta do is say it loud enough. That's... Oh, man. That's a really good summary of the patriarchy.

This next question comes from Natalie, who asks, do you hank a John? Since humans can be allergic to dogs, cats, horses, etc. Can dogs, cats, horses, etc. also be allergic to humans? What happens if you adopt a kitten and find out that it's allergic to you? Serious to be a advice needed here, believe me, Natalie.

No. No, that's a Russian reversal on a level I have never gotten my head around before. I am blown away by that. What can animals be allergic to humans? Yeah, they can, John. Really? Yeah, animals can have all of the same allergies that,

uh, and more that people have. Um, it is unusual for humans to be allergic to humans. Though I think that that also can happen. It can be a fairly dangerous condition. Uh, but my cat is allergic to pollen and like, when the spring comes around, which is happening right now, she starts to like cough and it's sad But yeah a very rarely dogs and cats have been found to be allergic to human dander and in fact also dogs have been found to be allergic to cat

Dander and cats allergic to dog dander So yes, it's a thing that can happen it tends to happen a lot less frequently and dogs and cats than than humans And I think that your your guesses as good as mine as to why that is my guess that can happen. It tends to happen a lot less frequently in dogs and cats than humans. And I think that your guesses as good as mine as to why that is. My guess is because humans are just bad at being organisms. We've taken it too much into our own hands. Right. That's so true. I was trying to explain to Alice recently that humans are animals. I was trying to explain to Alice recently that humans are animals and she just will not buy it. She's not having it.

It's the dumbest idea she's ever heard of. She's like, she keeps being like, you're kidding, you're being silly. And I'm like, no, we are humans are animals, Alice. Stop being silly, Dad. And I'm like, no, we are humans are animals, Alice. Stop being silly, Dad. And I'm like, no, I promise, I'm not kidding. Humans are animals. And she's like, we don't have hair.

You gotta show her a hippo. I'm sorry, back up. How would you like a hippo make Alice believe that humans are animals? Because they don't have hair. What are you talking about? Right, but I mean, I don't think- They're taking care of it.

I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think-

I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- I don't think- Mr. Hipopotamus. Ha ha ha. Okay, maybe start with the chimpanzee. I was, that might be a better case to make.

Like Alice, look at this chimpanzee. Do you see any relationship between that and yourself? Rather than Alice, as you can see from this hipopotamus, you are clearly an animal. Ha ha ha ha. I mean, I thought I was going for her argument that we don't have fur, and so neither do hippos. Alright, Hank, this next question comes from Dylan.

It's a somewhat serious one. He writes, Dear John and Hank, my long-term girlfriend recently broke up with me, and after having something of a nervous breakdown, I found myself flying from my small liberal arts college in Ohio. I wonder if Dylan went to... I wonder if Dylan goes to my college, to Seattle, Washington, for the weekend. This would not be so weird, except that I have never been to Seattle, have no friends

or family in Seattle and was not aware of having had any particularly strong inclination to visit Seattle before the breakup. Now I found myself living in a hostel with two very friendly Australian snowboarders and a dog named Snappy, but I still don't know why I'm here. Any insight would be helpful. Neglected to bring a raincoat, Dylan. Oh gosh, Dylan. Yeah, I think that you may have made a perfectly rational decision, honestly. Sometimes you just need to pick up and look at the world from a new place.

And don't stay in Seattle forever. Go back to college. But yeah, have a fresh perspective for a moment. Yeah, I think what you're trying to do here, Dylan, is called the geographical cure. And it never works. But that hasn't stopped me from trying it over and over and over again. So I think it's great. Try the geographical cure. It's good for you. I remember after my big college breakup, Hank, I drove to Baltimore and I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art and I stood in front of all of these impressionist paintings at the Baltimore Museum of Art and just wept. And I'm sure everybody thought I was so weird

and then I got back in my car and I drove back to college. I was going for about a day and a half, just walking around Baltimore, feeling extremely lonely. And it sort of helped to just be in a completely new, different, weird, dislocated place that somehow reflected the sense of dislocation that I felt inside of me.

It probably cost like 150 bucks in total, but cheaper than therapy. Yeah, I don't have any data on whether or not this actually can help deal with grief, but I do see a lot of people doing it, and I think that as long as it does not become sort of like a long-term, it's like a skate, like trying to ignore the fact that anything ever happened and try and reboot everything, I can't. It's not going to hurt to try and be like, okay, let's just, let's go get a

fresh, let's go hang out with a dog named Scppier, chappy or flappy, whatever it was. Those are all great dog names. I think we might have just discovered Hank's secret superpower. What? Give me 20 good dog names right now, go. Notebook, Jennifer, pants, Alvin,

Tamborine, Love it. Candle, Manhole. Nope, you there, we got there, nope, okay. So it turns out it was looking really good for a minute, but it turns out Hank does not have a secret superpower that allows him to name dogs. Somebody sent me a picture of your dog, Manhole.

You got to have to be in your house. If you get a new pet, you name it by Manhole. I'll send you a free poster. That is by far the worst dog name. And like everything before that album is a great dog name. Pants is a great dog name. You were on such a roll. Even candle is a great dog name because it doesn't make any sense.

I love it. But then, I mean, you just went in the worst possible direction. Oh, man. It's bad. That may be a very nervous, John. I started to get like sweaty. I got the meat sweats. I was like, oh gosh. I'm- That made me- That made me very nervous, John. I started to get like sweaty. I got the meat sweat. So I was like, oh gosh, I'm being put on the spot.

I don't know why. What a dumb thing to get nervous about. Oh, man. Woof! Today's podcast is brought to you by Manholes. Manholes saving the world from sewage one large steel cylinder at a time. It's more of a disc, but okay. Good point, it's definitely not a cylinder.

I mean, I guess it's just an extremely narrow. It's a very thin cylinder, yeah. It's a very thin cylinder. I'm standing by my reach. You know what? Forget it. James Monroe did write the Federalist papers, and I'm not backing down.

If I've learned anything from this president, it's to stick with your guns. And you don't need to use mortar to build a brick house. It's a conspiracy. This podcast is also brought to you by very thin cylinders. Like coins and symbols. God, what else? Of course. I love the idea of when you're like, hey, how would you like to pay for this with dollar

bills or with those extremely thin cylinders? What are they called? What are they called? Oh, man. And of course, today's podcast is also brought to you by the IUPAC, the IUPAC. It's time to re-rename those elements. Or just no, we don't want them at all anymore. We printed a periodic table so many times, you can't just throw new elements at us.

And finally, this podcast is brought to you by nervously looking at your phone when you're in a situation where you do not feel comfortable. Thank goodness that we have that now, instead of like smoking a cigarette or just staring blankly at the sky like we used to have to We also have a project for awesome donor Sarah from St. Cloud Minnesota who wanted us to read this message to Jeanette Jeanette, I'm so happy you've become a nerd fighter and I can share my excitement for all things nerdfighter with you I didn't get to choose you being my sister, but you're my best friend, and I would choose you to be my sister every day.

Oh my God, I'm gonna cry. I even forgive you for screaming and nearly giving me a heart attack when we saw the turtles all the way down to her bus in St. Paul, which John kind of knows is not Minneapolis, DFTBA. Yes, sir, if I've learned anything in the last six months, it's that St. Paul is not Minneapolis, and James Monroe did not write any federalist papers.

God, I'm glad you're word and stuff, John. Just moving through the world, making sure you know things about things. Oh, man. I mean, I You just you love that moment at the beginning of an event in a room full of people where you can say like, hello, Minneapolis, and it's just met by absolute silence. Because people from St. Paul, Minnesota, are extremely polite, and then a pause, and then one person saying, St. Paul. This next question comes from Kenya, who asks, dear Hank and John, if I fill a pool with water,

how long would it take for the pool to be made entirely of new water molecules assuming that I am adding new water when the pool gets low from evaporation? I asked my boyfriend and he told me that this wouldn't ever happen or be measurable because of the rate at which water molecules move, but I don't like that answer. Please help Kenya. I like it.

I like when you don't like an answer, you're just like, I'm gonna appeal to a higher authority, these podcast guys. Right, who are experts in water evaporation? So it's a smart podcast to reach out to too. You don't wanna go to your local water evaporation podcast. You need to go to something broader. Yeah.

My assumption, Hank, is that, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that if you're feeling the, I would say never. It definitely is not never. So in the long, long term, if you're feeling from a, like just eventually what will happen, and I'm talking about, you know, on geological scales here, is that as the water evaporates, it will leave behind minerals, like all the ions and stuff that are dissolved in the water, it's gonna leave that behind and it's gonna start coating the side of the pool,

until finally, eventually, you're long dead by this point, but the pool is just full of salts, of just like magnesium and fluoride and sodium chloride and all this stuff. So yeah, you're gonna end up with that, with that, you're just a pool full of chalky powders, crystal and somethings. But before that happens,

before, significantly before that happens, the last molecule that was originally in the pool will evaporate and that is a thing that you can only determine statistically. And you will never actually know when that happens. Also, this would be, this would change dramatically based on where this woman pool is, what the temperature is, what the ambient humidity is. So if, like, obviously, if it's like a pool in Arizona where it's very dry and hot,

it would have much faster than if it was in like Seattle, where it's cold and wet. So, yeah, that is the answer to your question. We don't know, but eventually there would be no original water molecules left, and eventually it would be so full of ionic salts that you wouldn't be able to put any new water in. Well, that's kind of mind-blowing. Speaking of that, Hank, have you ever been to the Bonnival salt flats in northwestern Utah? No. speaking of that Hank, have you ever been to the Bonnival Salt Flats in Northwestern Utah? No. It is a subject of the next episode of my podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and I was there a couple weeks ago, and it is astonishing. It's otherworldly part of the big scene on the white planet in the last Jedi who was filmed there, and you can really feel it.

It looks and feels nothing like Earth to me. It was so surreal to be surrounded by that much salty ground that was once 500 feet under salty water. Weird and cool. I would love to check out. It's worth the trip. Plus, nearby is West Windover, Nevada, which has a number of excellent casinos.

Well, you know me, I hate that a lot. Oh, I know, it's so, I really wish that we could share the incredible pleasure of three-card poker at a casino, but we're just never going to be able to. No, it will be you enjoying yourself and me feeling as if my very, uh, the structure of my identity is being torn apart tiny piece by tiny, like every card that comes down is just another piece of just straight anxiety trigger. I went to a casino with Hank once in Las Vegas and he played a game called

Casino War that might have the worst odds of any table game. Yeah, it's basically you draw a card and the dealer draws a card and whoever's card is higher wins the money except like there's a lot of ways that the dealer is advantaged. But Hank won on his only bet and then he looked at me and he was like, I think that's, I'm good. That's how I feel about, like, in general, I feel like the point of Casinos is not to win money,

but to win at all. And so if I'm up, I'm like, why would I keep doing this? I beat the casino. I made 50 cents. Yeah, I mean, that is not my world view. It's just, oh God, I do not like gambling. Oh, I mean, I think the mayor of West window for Nevada came up to me at the end of my stay and said, sir, you're welcome here any time.

Oh, no, oh God. Not really, but it was like that. He could have. Oh God. This next question comes from Eastern, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I have a problem. Until recently, I thought I had a normal name. Problem is, I realized that my name is cursed. About a month ago, I was writing my name,

and it seemed strange as I looked at it in detail. My full name is Eastern Gunner Lane. But when you say it, it sounds like I'm telling somebody directions. Like, go East on Gunner Lane. All of my friends have now realized this and can't stop nagging me about it. How should I deal with it? Should I embrace it and be proud of it or change it like the Emma situation? Do you be as advice is requested, as always, I was almost named Weston, Eastern.

Wow. It would have been exactly the same problem. I just don't think Easton sounds like East on. No, yeah, I think that, I think this is fine. I actually had a friend who was in the very similar situation, who has raised her whole life, had no idea that her name was Amanda Lynn, like Amanda Lynn. The instrument.

And she went, found this out in high school. Like, somebody was like, oh, like, that's clever. And she went to her parents and she was like, did you do this on purpose? And they were like, yeah. And she did, she went through 16 years of her life, not knowing that. They did do it on purpose.

Yeah, they did it on purpose. I don't think that Easton's parents necessarily did. No, Easton, in this situation, I would just say to my friends like I'm sorry But my name doesn't sound anything like East on Gunner Lane. My name is Easton Lane and yeah, just let it go Definitely do not change your name. Love your name. I love having a name. It's a little bit different And even if it is a little bit of a pun, that's okay It's it's okay for your your name to also have this alternate identity as a fun little dad joke. Yeah, and Eastern, it's so nice to have a Googleable name that only belongs to you, the way

that Hank Green does, and John Green doesn't. Yeah, yeah. For John Green, my parents really figured out that that was the wrong call. Well, they couldn't have foreseen Google, of course, to be fair to them. If only they had foreseen Google, given you a more Googleable name, and also invested $1,000 in the company in the first year. That would have all been good for us. Yeah, no, then we would have been lucky.

Yeah. But as it is, Hank, oh, how we've suffered. Hahaha. Hahaha. We're in no position to complain. Oh, yeah. All right, Hank, let's answer one more question before we get to the all important news from Mars and incredible, shocking, overwhelming, tear jerking news from AFC Wimbledon. The question comes from Jamie who writes, dear John and Hank, occasionally on the pod,

John will say something extremely bleak like that he has abandoned optimism and though it sounds earnest and sad and serious to me, Hank will be laughing the whole time. I don't generally have problems interpreting tones. So what's going on here? Is it an impossibly dry joke? Is Hank laughing at John's pain?

Does Hank laugh to stay long? Disting of nihilism? I am an anguish over this. Jamie. The last one. to stave off the sting of nihilism. I'm an English over this. Jamie. The last one. The last one. I am laughing as partially a defense mechanism,

and partially because I want it to sound like John's making a joke, because I don't want people to be sucked into his whole of nihilism. I want to have there be laughter, the soundtrack of laughter, to make it seem as if it isn't all terrible and you should and the abandoned mitrovomnism is in fact just so so little joke John's making when in fact I don't think it is. On some level it isn't extremely dry joke because I really do believe as one of my core like really my only core belief, the only thing that I'm,

I think I'm sure of is that hope is correct and that hope is true and that hope is the way to approach consciousness and life and everything else. And so I am on some level kidding whenever I say like, oh, I'm abandoning optimism because of this or that. That said, like it is true that I'm always, and I think lots of people, like lots of people, I'm always battling against nihilism. I'm always trying to lean against it.

I always feel it closing in on me. And so I think part of why Hank laughs, honestly, is that he's been hearing me say this and struggle with it since he was like three. I just should write some short stories about young John. Oh, please God don't. Please don't. I mean, if you want to really mess up our relationship, that would be a great way to do it.

OK, I'll think about it. Hank, what's the news from Mars? Or should we get straight to the incredible news from AFC Wimbledon? Let's do the news from Mars first since it's as exciting, maybe. So SpaceX is working on its gigantic rocket, the BFR, stands for Big Falcon Rocket. Probably might stand for something else depending on who you ask. And the big Falcon is going to be capable of getting to Mars.

It's going to be one of the biggest rockets ever developed. It is a massive, cool thing. And they have figured out probably where they're going to be making it. So you need a lot of space to make a big rocket. But you also need to be able to move it to where it's going to end up being. So sometimes that means you assemble it like very close by and then you basically have a vehicle that it's only job is to move this one rocket. And then sometimes it means that you want to make it somewhere where there's easy access to a port where you can put it on a boat,

and you can take it anywhere, like any of a number of places. And that is the way that SpaceX wants to do it so that they can launch from multiple locations, potentially, you know, like in the SpaceX's like long-term vision from dozens of places all over the world, they want to be manufacturing this thing

at the port of Los Angeles, which is kind of a nuts decision to me, and of course lots of decisions that SpaceX has made have seemed nuts to me, but turned out to be good decisions. But because it takes a lot of space to make a rocket, a big rocket, and usually you would want to do that where land is cheap. And the port of LA is not a place where land is cheap. So they're gonna be leasing land at the port, assembling the rocket there.

And of course that's nice for the employees who can then live in a city instead of in the middle of nowhere. But, you know, Mayor Garcetti just announced that this was happening in his state of the city speech, that they're leasing part of the port of LA to SpaceX to assemble the BFR. And that'll mean maybe faster production, faster moving the rocket from the place

where it gets made to the place where it's gonna launch from. And that's exciting. And I think the kind of aggressive decision that the person who wants to get to Mars before 2028 would make. It does feel to you like there is any real possibility that this BFR will be sending anything to Mars before 2028. Yeah, no, actually, it seems very likely to me that either the BFR or a Falcon Heavy

will be taking a payload to Mars before 2028. That payload will not include humans. We got across our fingers that Elon's doing his thing and Boeing's doing its thing and all, and NASA's doing its thing, all and NASA's doing its thing but you know how it is. I mean I know what our podcast is going to be called in 2028. That's what I know. The news from AFC Wimbledon Hank, oh my gosh. So as we're recording this, it's three days after AFC Wimbledon's game against Wal-Sol. It was a game, it wasn't a game that Wimbledon had to win exactly,

but it was a game that if Wimbledon didn't win, it became difficult to see how we were not gonna get relegated. It would have put a lot of pressure on us, and at half time we were down to Nill, and I will remind you that Wimbledon has not come from behind this season. A loud hard stop. So it looked very bad at half time. I stopped watching the broadcast on my I follow app and started listening to radio, WDOM, because I literally could no longer bear to look directly at the thing. And what happened in the second half is that Lyle Taylor won a penalty and then kicked the penalty,

which was saved, but Joe Piggitt managed to get the ball in the back of the net on the rebound. And then it was 2-1 and then Lyle Taylor scored a fantastic half-valley off of a very long kick from our goalkeeper George Long. and then it was 2-2. And this is a critical moment, Hank. It's 2-2 in this game. Wimbledon have just come from behind, from 2-0 down, to tie the game 2-2, and they're celebrating. All the players are celebrating except for Captain Barry Fuller. You can go and watch the highlights on YouTube and see what I'm talking about. The captain of the club, Barry Fuller, while everyone else is celebrating, he picks up the ball and starts running back

to the center of the pitch. As if to say, like, that's great that we came from 2-0 down to tie 2-2, but what we need to do is win this game. And it looked like Wimbledon weren't gonna win. And then in the 95th minute, in the last minute of stoppage time, Lyle Taylor was taken down in the box by a wall saw player That meant that there was a penalty kick Dean Parrot who was injured for much of the season stepped up to take the penalty kick absolutely

Snookered the ball into the top left corner. It was a heck of a penalty I mean Chris chrishatoaldo doesn't kick penalties that well. Under a huge amount of pressure, last kick of the game, AFC Wimbledon come from 2-0 down to win 3-2. And that takes them from 46 points to 49 points, three points away from what has every year for the last 20 years been enough points to stay in league one. Unfortunately, because of the how tight the table is, it's possible that this year 52 points won't be enough.

So AFC Wimbledon have four games left in their season. They need to win at least one of those games or get three draws, probably to stay up, but they may need even more than that. So huge end of the season coming up, but that win against Walsall. I mean, if we stay up this season, we're going to look back at that moment as the moment that made it possible. I wept. I could not control my emotions after that comeback. It's just been such a difficult season and we've been down in those relegation spots

or near them for almost the entire season and to get that win when it was most critical, it just felt amazing. Yeah, well, that's great news. And I'm very excited for you guys to stay up in league one. I hope that that happens. Is that the kind of thing that if it happens, it'll be easier next year? Is it easier second year than first year?

Well, it'll be the third year next year if we stay up. Uh, well, no, it doesn't. Yeah, yeah. The playoff final was two years ago. It, I agree. It's gone so fast, Hank. I feel the same way. But yeah, it'll be our third season in League One. It doesn't get easier. It's the short answer. I mean,

we'll continue to do our best. Hopefully, there will be a little bit more resources that we had a nice third round FA Cup tie at Wembley against Tottenham, which hopefully, you know, will be enough of a payday, that there's going to be a little bit more money in the budget next season, but there's already a lot of pretty, it's pretty clear that Lyle Taylor is going to move to a team in the second tier of English football next season. And that, I mean, where do the goals come from? Yeah.

Because they've all come from Lyle. So of course, you can't tell a player, not to move up a league when he has the opportunity to do so. So I mean, what Wildtaylor said last week really stuck with me, he said, this team isn't going to go down not on my watch. And he clearly understands that his Wimbledon time is, is coming to an end, but he wants to make sure that Wimbledon doesn't go down on his watch. And I, I really appreciate that. So it's exciting. It's terrifying. I have to say, Hank, I really appreciated your tweets,

the fact that you, you've been following the, the last few games of the season has meant a lot to me. And, and I know lots of people out there in Nerdfighter are falling along too. So thank you. And hopefully we're going to scrape out enough points to stay in League 1. All right, John. It is time. I think to determine if we can determine each other's phrases of the week.

Great. I didn't use mine. But I used it last week. So, and we talked about it extensively. And so you should totally be able to get it. Is it the DC universe? Nope, it's not the DC character universe. It was the bees knees.

Oh, weird. Okay. That's what it was though. I'm sorry, I forgot to use it. I'm so bad at the phrase the way I lose the phrase the we have to use. I'm a reminder halfway through. I want to apologize to all my friends and family and also to James Monroe and James Madison. John you just talked about the frickin bees knees of penalty kicks. You could have said it. I know, I just got so caught up in talking about the game. Anyway, I wanna say thank you to Christina Menesza for giving me that phrase of the week

that I used last week but failed to use this week. I have no idea what your phrase of the week was. Oh god, John, you're so bad at this. You didn't even pay attention. Okay, Hank, it took me a second, but I do definitely have a guess. Okay. I think it is one a second, but I do definitely have a guess. Okay. I think it is one of the pet names that you suggested, and I think it is manhole.

No, but you're very close. Very close. You're very close. It was in that section of the podcast. After I had to list all of the pets, people will have identified this because it's a ridiculous phrase that was extremely hard to incorporate. I said that I got sweaty and I referred to that as having the meat sweats. It's funny because when you said that, I thought I've never heard Hank say the meat sweats before,

but I totally know what he's talking about. So yeah, whatever. I let that slide by. Let me submit by the way that it is far weird. You thought that an acceptable pet name was manhole and it is that you said the neat sweats. Yeah, no, I think that I think that was a really good guess, John. And thank you to Brian Thompson for submitting the neat sweats. I'm so glad that I was able to slip it in. You're a great work Brian and great work Hank. Thank you for potting with me, Hank. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're off to record our hit podcast on Patreon.

This week in Ryan's, which you can get at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John, but don't worry, you can donate without getting our terrible this week in Ryan's podcast as well. Ha ha ha. Yeah. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosiana Hallsborough, Hassan Sheridan, Gibson, our head of community

and communications, is Victoria Bonjorno. The music that you're hearing right now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola and as they say in our hometown! Don't forget to be awesome. you