Dear Hank & John - 138: Snappy the T. rex

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

Do dead bodies get sunburned? How do you science a baby? Who were the first fans? And more! Take our survey! Your feedback helps us out a lot: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/dhjsurvey2018 Email us: [e-mail] patreon.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. That was low energy. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. The war is I've heard a think of it dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast in which two brothers answer your questions, give me a deep advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon, John Green. How are you doing? I mean no John, what is the elephant in the room?

All right, are you ready? Three, two, one, manhole. The golden state killer. So my elephant in the room is manhole. Hank, in last week's pod, you suggested that a really excellent name for a pet would be manhole. I put you under a lot of pressure to come up with 20 good pet names in 20 seconds and you came up with seven and I thought

you were gonna crush it but then you came up with manhole which was pretty disappointing except that several people were inspired to name their own pets manhole including Abby who wrote in Dear John and Hank I'd like to introduce you to Manhole or Mani for short and adorable little kitten. She also signed off, she's not too shh. Abby, really good name specific sign off. Abby also Jack wrote in to introduce us to his fish, Manhole and Anna went so far as to rename her 15 year old cat who had previously been named Casper,

which is a perfectly reasonable cat name, but is now named Manhole, which I'm sure your 15-year-old cat will be very grateful for. Anna, I'm sure that that's gonna be a highlight just being suddenly renamed in the last presumably few years of your life. Yeah, and like the golden, the twilight years of your cat's life is just like, wait, what?

It's always been my hope to retire and be renamed Manhole. Well, you know, John, you could do that right now. You could just be done and all you're gonna do is podcast with me and that's it. And I would be like, welcome to Dear Hank and Manhole. I would not be done just for the record.

My retirement does not involve podcasting with you every week. Well, then do not retire. Hank, why is the golden state killer the elephant in the room? I don't listen to many true crime podcasts or consume much true crime content. I don't really like it.

It gives me the PBGBs, but I do follow a number of people on Twitter who are super into true crime, including people who are kind of into it professionally and do that for a living. And the Golden State Killer, the guy who killed a bunch of people more than a decade ago,

I don't know how many more than a decade ago. It was like 40 years ago. And as a result of Michelle McNamara's and her colleagues' work, at least in part, the Golden State Killer has been arrested just this morning as we're recording this. He is a 72 year old man today, but more than 40 years ago he began attacking women and has been responsible

for several murders and many more assaults and has been captured today. It is an incredible story that this 40-year search for a criminal has finally come to an end. So congratulations to everybody who's worked so hard on that to all the law enforcement people involved on closing that case and that very dark chapter in California history. Hank. And John, thank you for knowing a lot more

about my elephant than I did. I just, it's just trending on Twitter and that's all I knew. Oh, yeah. I have, you know, I haven't been on Twitter today. How's it been? I figured out how to tweet nothing. Oh, well that, that is a huge development. John, how are things going?

You ever think good over the John Green World? Yes, I'm just back from London, where I spent a few days with my son in London. It was his first international trip since we lived for a few months in Amsterdam when he was one and we had a great time. We had a really, really lovely time together and he got to have a really special visit to AFC Wimbledon,

which is something that he's been looking forward to for a long time as a member of the Don's Junior Trust, which any child can join. It's only like $25 a year. It's so great to be a co-owner of this wonderful community-owned fan-based club, and Henri had a really wonderful special day. He got to meet a bunch of the players. They signed a ball for him. It was really, really wonderful. But we'll get to meet a bunch of the players. They signed a ball for him. It was really, really wonderful. But we'll get to all of that during the news from AFC Wimbledon. Hank, we need to get speaking of true crime to our first question. Oh. This question comes from Herbie who asks,

dear John and Hank, do dead bodies get sunburn? Not planning anything. Herbie. Thank you for the clarification, Herbie. Yeah. Otherwise, we would have thought that you were planning anything. Just kidding, Herbie. Thank you for the clarification, Herbie. Yeah, otherwise we would have thought that you were planning anything. Just kidding, Herbie, that's what people who are planning things say. They say they're not planning anything. John, you might be surprised to learn

that I did a bunch of research on whether the dead bodies get sunburned. I didn't have to do research on it because I was just in the British Museum where I saw a heavily sunburned dead body just sitting there in the middle of the museum and they were like, look at this mummy. He dried out in the sun and we know how he died and I was trying to shield Henry from it but Henry was like, oh wow that is amazing.

And good. And Henry was like, he died of a shoulder wound. He got stabbed by a long knife. And I was like, great, I'm glad that we know this much about this 8,000 year old man. And I'm sure that he would be absolutely delighted to find himself dried and sunburned in the British Museum. Can dead bodies get sunburned, Hank? They can get damaged by the sun, but a sunburn is a pretty specific set of

things that happen, and it is not just the damage that is done. In fact, basically what happens is your cells get damaged by the sun, and then your body has a reaction and inflames that area to do the repair work. And a lot of times that is actually the thing that is causing discomfort is the inflammation of the repair rather than the damage itself. But the damage itself also can cause a lot of problems and depending on how severe it is. So yeah, the cells can get damaged and they can get damaged whether or not they are alive. And I actually, interestingly, cells continue to do some metabolizing stuff

after what we would consider the death. So the individual cells will continue to be alive even after the person is dead. And so you could still get some of that inflammation. You could get some of that even some you could get some of that, even some melanin production. So you would get a very, maybe even tiny amount of tanning that would happen after the body died, but only for a very short amount of time.

Well, I am glad that I know that I feel that my life has been enriched almost as much as if I had learned how to tweet nothing. Life has been enriched almost as much as if I had learned how to tweet nothing. I got to keep working on tweeting nothing, John. But, I mean, wouldn't it be amazing if we all just started tweeting nothing? Wouldn't it be? It's just like suddenly my timeline was just like for an entire day, nothing. And then, tweeting, but there was nothing in the tweets.

Maybe we could expand it to a holiday. We should make that happen. Are we powerful enough to create a day on which people just tweet nothing? How powerful are we? Are we there yet? Because that's really the goal. First off, we're on the other side of the mountain.

So when you say, are we there yet, it implies that we're about to become more famous. When in fact, we will just become slowly less and less powerful over the next several decades, which I would argue is welcome news. The people who have replaced us are far better on every level. Secondly, no, we are not even close to powerful enough to have a sight-wide day of tweeting nothing, no. And then just everybody responds to each other with nothing and then like there's more nothing

and everybody likes each other's tweets and retweets nothing, I don't know, John. See the thing we are, we're not getting more popular. Fewer people are knowing who we are, agreed. But what if we're getting more influential because the people people are knowing who we are, agreed. But what if we're getting more influential because the people who do know who we are are getting really good jobs in like managing social media celebrity accounts? You think the person who's tweeting for Kanye right now is a nerd fighter. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, whoever's tweeting for Kanye,

just a quick word of advice, stop. Tweet nothing. Tweet nothing. And maybe, in fact, that's good advice for all of us. I find myself less and less interested in Twitter. My interest in Twitter is limited almost exclusively to your podcast, Aletus. Well, it is probably the best way to consume Twitter.

It only takes an hour of your life every week, and you don't have to be on Twitter. Yeah, it's been great so far. I've really enjoyed it. Hank, wanna ask another question. This question comes from Sarah who asks, Dear Hank and John, I've heard that newborns think that their mother's body

is just part of their own body. How do we know what babies think? How do you science a baby? Ksera Sarah. I don't know that we know that much about what babies think Sarah, but we know that even like four-year-olds still sort of think of their mothers as an extension of their bodies. Here's a really weird thing, John. I realized, you know, a few months into my child being born.

And like, when he came, when he was like a suddenly new person in the world, it was like, yes, this was created entirely by Catherine. This was a construction completely of things that Catherine did, which is remarkable. But then he's gotten like doubled in size. He's starting to do things in smile and interact and still though, he's still entirely Catherine because at that point, he'd only ever had breast milk in his whole life. This baby is an entire, so in a way, yes, they maybe do they think that they're part of their mother's body, I'm taking that question

and I'm discarding it for a second to say they are. Like physically, everything that was him up to like eight months old, maybe not that long. I don't know when he had his first banana, like his first piece of bacon or whatever, but for a long time, there was this human that was entirely constructed out of things Catherine had eaten. Right, it is weird.

No, the more you think about babies, the weirder they get. The more you think about human life in general, the weirder it gets. Or just life in general. The thing about babies is like, it's the most natural thing. Like of course, like there is no biology. There are no humans without babies. That's the whole point is to reproduce.

That's how biology works. Well, it's not the whole point. Sorry. I don't need to say that in terms of the whole point of life. It's certainly not the whole point of life. But it is in terms of evolution, in terms of how the physical constraints of life, but it is like, like, in terms of evolution, in terms of how, like, the sort of physical constraints of biology, it does not function without reproduction, but it seems, like, the weirdest thing, despite it being, like, literally the only necessary part of life.

Right. If you were trying to explain reproduction to an alien planet that didn't have life the way that we have it, they would be like, What? Why? How? Why do you have, why do the babies come out of the parents? Why, wait, why do they have to eat part of the parent's body to survive? That's terrible. It's like there's a great, very short science fiction story that I'm going to butcher in the way of these things that talks about trying to introduce humans to an alien, like bureaucracy, like explaining what kind of organism they are, And the bureaucrat is explaining to their boss that humans are essential species

that is entirely made out of meat. Yeah, I've heard this story. And the boss is like, what? Like even their thinking parts. Yeah, meat. They're all meat. No, we're just a bunch of collections of meat really deep down. That's all we are. So yes.

Yeah, there's a YouTube video of it, which is what I've seen. It's called, they're made out of meat. And they're like sitting in a, like a diner, like a roadside diner. And the guys like, what? They're made of meat. Yeah.

So there you go. It's not just that babies think of their mothers as an extension of their body. In a way, we're all extensions of each other's bodies. And we're all made of it. That is actually where I intended to go from the beginning with this question. That we are.

We think that we're separate organisms, but oh, we are not. No, it's the more you think about it, the grosser and weirder it gets. Let's move on to another question. Are you two upset, John? Oh, I just, I really like the idea, as you know, Hank, of being a sovereign being

separate from other beings. That has its own independent existence and life. And I just can't be that because I am super saturated with bacteria and then also made out of meat that is made out of other people. Anyway, this next question comes from Alice, who writes, dear John and Hank, I was just listening to your most recent episode

and really enjoyed the discussion about dates of book releases and how John was denied the ability to choose his own release date because all books come out on Tuesday. So I wanted to let you in on a not-so-secret secret. James Patterson is the only author whose books come out on a day other than Tuesday. All of his books come out on Monday instead. I'm a cataloging librarian who processes all of the new books that our library purchases. So I see many new release books, DVDs, etc. They all come out on Tuesday except for James Patterson. Just James Patterson. So all John has to do is become James Patterson and then he can choose whichever day of the week he wants to publish his books on like Wonderland Alice.

Is it possible? Yeah. That James Patterson all powerful force in the world could make all of Twitter tweet nothing for a day. Because clearly, he has some power that we do not have. Can I tell you a joke that my Uncle Bill, I guess also your Uncle Bill told me that I just found absolutely hilarious? Yeah, you should have said my Uncle Bill so we could continue the conspiracy theory that we're not actually related. Right, so your Uncle Bill told me this joke, I found it very enjoyable. because like this John Grisham calls up James Patterson one afternoon and James Patterson's wife answers. And John Grisham says, is James there?

And Patterson's wife says, oh, he is, but I'm afraid he's working on a book. Would it be OK if he called you back? And John Grisham says, all hold. Because it only takes James Patterson like 10 minutes John Grisham says, I'll hold. Because it only takes James Patterson like 10 minutes to write a book. Yeah, he must be, it's probably, you know, on average halfway through, so it'll be five minutes, right? Right. So James Patterson gets to publish his books on Monday because he's James Patterson and like two thirds of the overall sales of books.

The come out. Not sales, just the total books that hit the shelves. Are James Patterson books? At any given moment, half of Barnes and Noble is James Patterson and the other half is the rest of us. So I just wanted to let you know about that, Hank, in case you want to change the release date of your forthcoming novel and absolutely remarkable thing, which is currently scheduled to come out on a Tuesday, but maybe you need to call them and ask for the Patterson treatment. Well, it is.

Monday is the day to do it, because when I was thinking about this, when I was relisting to our podcast, which I don't usually do, but I did with the last podcast, it was really good. I enjoyed it. We did a good job. And I'm thinking about this that like, okay, you can't come out on Wednesday because they're gonna open the box early, but you could come out on Monday because they'll open the box.

And if they don't, if they forget, then well, it's a daily. And everybody's in there being like, you would be able to open the James Patterson box. And yeah, and you're getting, it's more good publicity for you because people are tweeting about it. Well, there you go, Hank. I mean, you certainly can't come out on Wednesday. That's just ludicrous. You've just had the revelation that James Patterson

had 25 years ago, and that is the sole reason that he has become the most successful author in the United States. There must be like a bulwark against the second author being added to the Monday list, because it would ruin everything. And suddenly it'd be like, well, I'm a Tuesday author, so I'm not a big deal.

But like if it's just James Patterson, you know that, like, well, I'm not James Patterson. But if it's like five people, you're like, well, why am I not one of those five people, publisher, and then you're writing it into your contract and you're feeling hurt when your book comes out on Tuesday, you're not a real author, you're a Tuesday author. All of this reminds me of how much publishing

and so much of life in adulthood is identical to middle school. Yeah, I'm a Tuesday author, John, and I'm happy. Just like I was happy to be a complete social outcast in middle school, that's a lie. It was miserable. Oh, it was terrible. I mean, I felt terrible for you, but I felt worse for myself when it was

happening to me. All right, John. This question is very peripheral, real, real related. It's from Emily, who asks Dear Hank, John. Due to the soon, due to the upcoming release of Avengers Infinity War, and the press tour that's happening, I've started to ask myself about fame. What exactly is the reason I want to watch every interview with Benadryl Kumbh Kukumper Patch? I did not notice that the first of her other question, so it's a bit of a surprise. Benadryl Kukumper Patch, I understand that it's my personal reaction to fame is very subjective and based on my interests. If I met a famous soccer player, I'd be like, wow, that's a famous person, but I wouldn't freak out.

Why do we respond to the construct of quote unquote, fame like this? And when did it start? Who are the first fans? That's a fascinating question. Looking forward to learning more and Hank's novel, an absolutely remarkable thing. It's available at September 25th, and you can get it for pre-order now, signed on books of million, Barnes and Noble on Amazon.com, DFTBA, Emily. uh... available said tb 25th and you get a pre-order now signed on books a million barn's a noble and amazon dot com dftba maly also signed copies will be available at your local independent bookstore mly but to get to your question

i think fame is really weird and i think the way that we worship it is really weird and i'm saying this genuinely i have never read as convincing or compelling a portrayal of fame and the ways that it can be both addictive and corrosive as Hank's novel. It is so smart in the way it writes about that stuff, in the way that it looks at it through the lens of this young woman who becomes

initially somewhat famous and then wildly famous as a result of her discovering these carls, or I guess just one of the carls. But the thing that gets me about Hank's book that I keep coming back to, and I mean, I first read it like six months ago and the reason I can't stop thinking about it is because this young woman can't stop making compromises with herself to continue to become more famous even though she recognizes pretty early on that she doesn't actually want to become more famous. And that really resonates with me,

not only because my personal experience, but also because of the people I've had around me who were far more famous than I was, and seeing the difficulties that they went through. I just think it's a brilliant book. I really do. I'm really excited for people to read it, because of that.

That was very kind, John. We'll just take that and put that whole thing on the back cover of the book and everybody will be very happy of available September 25th. I've been thinking a lot about specifically, so there's this sort of out-of-vogue idea in psychiatry and psychology that there are these fundamental fears and there's only three of them, and I can't remember all three of them at the moment, but one of them is the fear of being negatively judged. And I think that we are all very driven by other people's opinions of us, and it's very hard once you start to have

like a lot of people having opinions about you. It's almost that the quantity of opinions is superior to the quality of whatever opinion is happening to be had. So a lot of people would almost rather have people think things about them at all, than to have people think positive things about them. And that's not like, that's not, I think actually that irrational of a response because we like our society values influence like our society values power. And I think that just like our brains value power

because ultimately you wanna be in a place where you can say, okay, September 25th is no tweet day. I just like- I don't want to be in that place. I have to say, I don't buy that because I genuinely don't want to have that power. But I think that power should be vested in one person. I think that power should be vested in institutions. And I think the worship of individuals and individual power is a big part of the problem that we find ourselves in.

But I think that it's the simple way to imagine things, and so when you don't have a lot of direct experience with it, which most people don't, I think that it is very common for people to feel like, oh, that's very appealing, that's very exciting, and imagine what it would be like to be Kim Kardashian. And I think that that sort of bears out in the popularity of Kim Kardashian.

Like people are excited about her because of her influence and sort of like imagining that in a sort of hashtag goals kind of way. But I don't think Kim Kardashian actually has that much power, right? There's this Run the Jewels lyric that goes, like, who really runs this? Like, who really runs that man that says he runs this? And to me, that's the truth that beneath the individuals who feel that they are

wielding power or who we feel are wielding power is a much larger power system that we don't look at very carefully because we're so concerned with the individuals rather than with the system that produces them and pushes them in this way that direction. Yeah, like literally no one is powerful enough to create no tweet day. No one can do that.

And like that in itself, it sort of says something very interesting about how we imagine power and how we imagine power acting upon us. That like in some ways, there is a force, but that force is not controlled by any individual and any like even close to any individual. And so all of these all societal changes have to happen slowly because there is no one who is making these decisions consciously Emily's question. I am curious who were the first fans John who were the for like was it like you?

Clidities Who's you clidities I made it up. I was trying to come up with a playwright. Oh, that's good. Yeah, early playwrights had fans. I think that we don't know, because I think that way we have of giving power and influence to individuals, even though in many ways, those individuals are only expressing the whims of much larger forces that are bigger than any of us. I think that goes all the way back. I larger forces that are bigger than any of us.

I think that goes all the way back. I think that goes back to the earliest human communities. It's just that those early human communities were a few dozen or a few hundred people big. And so it wasn't as widespread. There wasn't global fame until, you know, I don't know, the 18th or 19th century. We got another question, John, that I really think we need to focus on here. It's from Mara, who asks, Dear Hank and John, my boyfriend's mom and stepdad recently bought a home

and have subsequently acquired 500 bottles of the previous owner's homemade wine. Apparently they tried a bottle, and the wine wasn't very, I'm just gonna stop reading this question right now, you gotta throw that wine away, you might die, you might kill somebody if you sell it on Craigslist, you got 499 bottles of poison. Yeah, first off, how bold a person do you have to be to open up someone else's homemade wine? Like, do you know what happened to that person? Do you know how you came to own this property?

Is it possible that you came to own this property because they died of homemade wine poisoning? Yeah. Or they had to flee the country because their homemade wine killed someone or they killed someone and put them in the homemade wine. There are so many terrifying possibilities. Get rid of that homemade wine. I don't know if you know this, but I made homemade wine once.

Oh, I bet, I bet you did. With Sarah and I lived in New York, we spent an exorbitant amount of money on a homemade wine kit. And I'm not sure what I thought was gonna happen because I should have known. This is such a beautiful picture. You and Sarah, like your tidy apartment in New York

just being like, we're gonna be, be, the, the, the winter, that's totally what we were thinking. 600 square feet and ready for commercial wine production. And, you know, I made like one five gallon jug of wine and it was so incredibly bad. And I just remember thinking to myself,

I spent $400 on this one incredibly bad five-gallon bucket of wine. I will never, ever engage in any kind of, and how was it? Gardening or horticulture ever again. It was so bad. I mean, it tasted enough like grape juice because it was the alcohol content was way lower than it should have been. It tasted enough like grape juice that I did eventually work my way

through the entire five gallons, but only because I knew that it had cost me $400. Well, I'm saying, you know, five gallons of wine is a lot. My experience with homemade wine is that people bring it over to your house. And then you say to yourself, I wish I was drinking real wine, even $3 wine. Now, of course, I don't want to hurt the feelings of all the hardcore homemade wine people out there. I'm sure that your homemade wine is great, but do not bring it to my house.

Yeah, I don't trust you. Let's be honest. I don't trust you to create something that I enjoy, the flavor of it. I don't trust you not to kill me. John, I have an important update. I said, Vinter, when I was talking about someone who makes wine, it is in fact, Vintner. And I would like you to know, and I typed in Vinter into the Google, the first thing that came up,

it says, now, Vinter, the coldest of the four seasons. Pfft! No way! It does, I think it's a different language maybe. No way. That's what it says, vinter, the coldest of the four seasons on Wictionary. The vinter. The vinter.

It does. It's Danish. Hank. Yeah, I've been a Danish speaker this whole time. It's the Danish Norwegian and Swedish word for winter. So, yeah, I've been a Danish speaker this whole time. It's the Danish Norwegian and Swedish word for winter. So there you go. All right, Hank, let's get to this question from Carly who writes, dear John and Hank, my friends, Snapchat and Drive. They snap themselves talking into the camera, singing to the radio, or they just snap a video of the dashboard

because they like the song and the radio. Obviously, this is dangerous, but I haven't managed to convince anyone that they're doing anything wrong. Driving feels safe even though it is the most dangerous thing people do every day. How do I get through to my friends before they kill us all? Wonder wall and wrecks, Carly. Carly, there need to be more people in the world like you who are afraid of the things that we should be afraid of and not afraid of the things that we shouldn't be afraid of like shark attacks or whatever. I have vlogged while driving, I feel terrible about it. I feel like I made a terrible, terrible example that other people might have followed and thereby endangered their lives. their lives, it's not a funny business. It is so incredibly serious.

One of the very few ways in which life is getting worse for humans in 2018 is that the number of motor vehicle accidents leading to serious injury and death in the United States is not dropping. Even though our cars are getting safer and the reason it's not dropping is because of distracted driving. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's a way to do it

in a way that isn't super confrontational and doesn't drive people to defensiveness, where they get even more tied into their bad way of behaving. If there's some kind of, basically, meme that you can create among your friends, that you are the person who cares about this, If there's some kind of, like, basically meme that you can create among your friends, that, like, you are the person who cares about this, and you're gonna give them a hard time

about it every single time, and that's because you love them. If there's, like, you're just gonna, you basically, you draw, like, a tyrannosaurus Rex, and he's called, he's called, snappy, the don't snap while you're driving T-Rex. And you take a picture and send that to them every time and you say, every time you get a snappy,

I'm not talking to you for a day. There's no more snap chatting. And I was suing by the fact that you're using Snapchat, that you are under the age of 25. And so everyone you're snap chatting with is fairly new to the whole driving thing. And that is when a lot of accidents happen. When people is fairly new to the whole driving thing. And that is when a lot of accidents happen. When people are fairly new to the driving thing, you start to think that you're pretty good

at it, but it turns out that you haven't experienced a lot of the things that you might experience, the sort of outside edge cases of traffic, unfortunateness. And then people end up hurt. And it's very bad. And like a legitimate cause of a tremendous amount of tragedy and pain in the world. And so I think that like if you can put together a good ol' snappy T-Rex, don't snap all your driving

T-Rex picture, please do that. Do I have the power to do that at least, John? Probably, although I think that your understanding of both teen culture and meme culture are pretty weak. But I like the idea of snappy the T-Rex. It doesn't seem at all like a cringy thing invented by a 38 year old. To keep the young people from distracted driving.

It doesn't seem like that at all. It seems like people are totally gonna respond to that. They're gonna be like, oh wow. I gotta snappy the T-Rex. I'm in big trouble. Ha ha ha ha ha. John, this is how it happens. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha idea which speaks to the fact that I'm even older than a Hank. And I guess there is an off chance that you are yourself our age, Carly, in which case

your friends have two problems. One, they shouldn't be Snapchatting. That is for young people. And two, they shouldn't be driving while distracted. But anyway, all of that reminds me, Hank, that today's podcast is brought to you by our number one most important sponsor, snappy the T-Rex, snappy the T-Rex, reminding you not to snap while driving,

is snap the right verb for snap chatting. I don't even know. Yes, not to snap while driving since 2018. And, uh, FireGest was also brought to you by James Patterson's tweet nothing day. James Patterson's working together with social media celebrities across the world, including the Nerdfighter who runs Kanye West's Twitter account,

to create a day in which no one tweets anything, but you do tweet something, it's just nothing's in the tweets. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by 499 bottles of probably poison is homemade wine, not for sale. And and finally this podcast is made out of newborn babies They're made out of mom All right, you didn't say sponsored by you said that this podcast was made out of newborn babies Whatever I like it. I think it's weird You're pretty sleep deprived because you have a young child so it's kind of true and I like it

We also have a project for awesome message. Alex donated to the project for awesome so that we would read this message to Tommy. You are an amazing person and your friends and family know it. They all love you. I love you. Never forget that. There is a small chance that I mispronounced Tommy

in which case some of the, like, movingness of that message would get lost. So in case it's, I'm just gonna hope that it's Tommy. Good job, John. Also, John, we are putting together a Dear Hank and John survey. There's a link to it in the show notes. If you like Dear Hank and John, we are putting together a Dear Hankajon survey. There's a link to it in the show notes. If you like Dear Hankajon, we want to learn a little bit more about you and also what you'd like us to do on the podcast and the other things that you might be into.

So if you could go to the show notes, and I don't really know how show notes work, but whatever app you're using, there's probably a thing there and there will be a link there. And you can use that. It's surveymonkey.com slash r slash dhj survey 2018. It's super easy to remember URL. This is not like one of those annoying surveys that other podcasts make you take where they only ask questions about how to market more effectively to you.

This is a survey where we ask questions about how to market more effectively to you. This is a survey where we ask questions about how to market more effectively to you and also other things. Yes. So please take the survey if you have a chance. It is really, really helpful for us to understand who you are and what stuff you're into, what you like about the pod, what you don't like, what you'd like to see more of unless of that sort of thing. Okay, John, this next question comes from Mark,

who asks, dear Hank and John, so what do you do when you're mad crushing on somebody who lives a long way away? Is it better to be honest, stay as friendly correspondence, or just wean, is it better to be honest? Stay as friendly correspondence, or just wean off communication to save yourself some heartache. P and P mark. What's P and P, Pratt and Pregidus?

I assume so, but it could also be proctor and proctor, a new and exciting new multi-national corporation. It could refer to one of the world's largest golf cart dealerships, PNP golf carts. It could refer to PNP home services. Oh wait, Urban Dictionary. P and P means party and play, which is about sex, stuff, and meth. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Why did you trick us Mark? The rest of your question was pretty normal and then you made us say a meth thing. God is if we weren't already old enough, Hank, after inventing snappy anti-distracted driving T-Rex. Good Lord.

Okay. Oh, I mean, I think that in general, when the love compounds start flowing in our brains and we start to feel really attached and just that's a lovely feeling, but I think that our brains can start doing a lot of tricks to make us think that a thing is possible and it may not be possible.

I don't know, I feel bad about saying this, but it starts doing all kinds of weird gymnastics. And like your brain turns into like, like spinny flippy Simone Biles trying to convince you how do you're gonna make this work. I disagree with everything that you just said, except for the fact that Simone Biles is really good at flipping, which she is fantastic at. She's an amazing, amazing athlete, but the rest of that, what you said I completely disagree with. It is totally

possible to have a fulfilling, long-distance relationship, and if that relationship doesn't end in- But this person doesn't have a relationship yet. This person, he's just crushing on somebody who's a long way away right So I'm saying to if you want to tell the person that you want to be in a long distance relationship with them tell them that and see how it goes And if it doesn't work out then so whatever such is life But if it does work out that's great I know that I'm a big defender of long distance relationships because I had a really fulfilling one when I was in college But I don't think there's anything wrong with them.

So that's my advice, Mark. Just communicate. That's really good. Communicate is good. 99% of these questions could be answered with the word communicate followed by an exclamation point. That's a good shirt. We should make that shirt.

The other 1% of questions can be answered, of course, with snappy to T-Rex. This next question comes from Fras. Who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm currently sitting in the middle seat of an airplane using my 15 minutes of free plane Wi-Fi to ask you an incredibly pressing question. Shortly after takeoff, the people on either side of me fell asleep

wasting both the view and the clear access to the bathroom for the foreseeable future. The attendance have just started serving the food. And my question is, can I take the subpar food that was meant for them? Thanks, Fras. No, don't take strangers food from them. They could wake up at any moment.

No, we're gonna have to disagree again, I see. Are you, you're gonna steal a stranger's food? But John, I'll tell you. You didn't even buy their house and inherit it. I'll tell you a story. About five days ago, I was flying on a plane with my son, Tulundin, and they wake you up, even though I didn't really sleep that well,

because I was on a plane with my son. They wake you up and they give you breakfast, right? But Henry didn't want to wake up, which credit to him, he trying to get a full-night sleep on the six hour red eye flight And so it was like this. I don't I don't even know how you say this right is it like a sire a sire a Kai, you know those things. Oh, the little berries. Yeah, I don't know how to say that. Yeah, those like berry bowls. It was one of those one of those bowls and I ate it. It didn't even, he wasn't awake.

It doesn't, he doesn't care. He doesn't know his son. This is a person you have a relationship with. You steal his food all that I steal his food. Yeah, I guess it's a little bit different. We know each other. It's a little bit different, but I don't think it's that different.

If the person, look, if the food's just sitting there, just eat it real quick. Ah! You're in the middle seat, you're suffering, you're going through a hard time. I guess you're suffering. Yeah, well, it depends, if it's like a biscoff cracker,

or like a bag of pretzels, maybe, but if it's like a tray with dinner on it, you can't start picking off their tray. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Bag of pretzels. And I feel like an assi or a chai or whatever that is, one of those bowls. That's sort of an in-between place.

Well, you can take the whole bowl and it's like, oh, they just gave me two. They didn't give you one. I got three of them and you two didn't get any. I don't know what happened. That's what I actually did. I stacked the bowls so that he'd never notice. Ha ha ha ha.

Till he listens to the pod, that is. All right, Hank, we need to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What is the news from Mars this week? You know how Mars has two real good moons? Yes, top notch moons. You know, Phobos and Demos are Mars's two good old moons. They're smaller than our moon.

They're sort of lumpy and potato-y because they're not big enough to form themselves into spheres when they were forming. And there's a lot of question about how they formed. And some people think that they were just captured asteroids because they look like asteroids. They're the size of some asteroids and the shape of asteroids.

But to be clear, we will know this for sure in like 2029, but I think the Japanese space agency is sending a mission to one of those two moons, I couldn't tell you which one, taking a sample and sending it back. It's a lot easier to send back a sample from Fobos or Demos because they're so light that the return trip is actually pretty easy

because you don't have to escape a gravity well, really. And yeah, so they're gonna, like we'll be able to analyze a piece of one of these moons, which will tell us basically everything we ever wanted to know. So, but at the moment, it remains a mystery, but there probably aren't captured asteroids, which was our theory for a long time,

because they both are in, they rotate around Mars right at Mars's equator, which would be a really weird coincidence if they were captured asteroids. They also rotate in a way that would be, it would be very strange for them to be in such, such like non-eliptical orbits, their orbits are pretty circular,

if they were captured asteroids. And also, there have been some computer models that say, like if this thing, if you capture these moons that way, they would be ripped apart by the title forces of being captured in Mars's gravity. So the new theory was that Mars was hit just like Earth was, and early in the solar systems formation by a giant impactor of some kind,

and that threw off some stuff around Mars that eventually coalesced into these moons. And that impactor was pretty big in our former models, but a new paper just came out and it says that that impactor probably didn't have to be nearly as big as we thought it had to be in order for it to throw up the amount of stuff that ended up in Phobos and Demos. So there's a new study basically that says, yes, it's likely and very probable that it was, that these moons were caused by an object, not even that big of an object, certainly big,

and like global scale catastrophe, but not like the object that hit us that formed our moon. And it was like less than 1% of the mass of Mars that was able to create these moons. But we won't know that for sure until hopefully the late 2020s, early 2030s, when we start to analyze some actual pieces of these Martian moons. Whenever I think about the fact that our moon and potentially these two moons as well were formed by asteroids that led to a huge chunk of the planet entering the orbit of the planet. Yeah. I am reminded of how stupidly unlikely life as we know it is.

Well, that may be true, it may not be. I don't know. Obviously, we've only got a sample size of one right now in terms of planets that have life on them, but I think there's a lot to be said for the possibility that life could be not as rare as we think. But it's not that I think life is very early. It was very early in the solar system that this happened. And basically, Earth was hit by basically a planet,

like another planet hit us. Right. And that's like, I mean, like what if, like the thing I think about is like all the different ways that dice could have rolled, and we could have ended up with very easily two planets, very close to each other, both with a lot of water,

both with a lot of good gases that would be conducive to life. And we could have ended up in a solar system where life happened twice in a very big way the way that it happened on Earth. And that would have been a very different trajectory. When we were, early when we first were trying to figure out Mars and we were getting telescopes, they could see it pretty well. We were starting to think like,

there's probably life on that planet, but it turned out when we went, there was not. But what if we had gone and there was? Right. That would have been so deeply different to future for humanity. It would have been, but in a way, we experienced that in the Colombian exchange because there were two

worlds that had very, that had a few connecting points obviously over the course of the last two hundred and fifty thousand years, but that were pretty separate for a lot of human history. And then we discovered that there was essentially, you know, a second half of the world, whether that second half was, you know, Afro-Eurasia or the Americas, depending on your, depending, of course, on where you were when it happened. But yeah, I mean, I think it would be very weird if there were a second planet full of life.

And to be clear, I don't think that life is likely to be rare in the universe. I just think the universe is so big. Yeah. It's so weird and big. The more... It's so weird. And so weird and big and we're made out of meat.

But a weapon of these meat sticks that we call humans took the field for AFC Wimbledon on Saturday. How's that for a transition? Did you just say meat sticks? Yeah, that's basically what we are. Just sort of stick-shaped. I was pretty sure I do what your phrase of the week was, but now I'm feeling like meat sticks. We'll see.

Now, like, now you've made it, you've made it more complicated for me. So Henry and I went to see the AFC Wimbledon game against Oldham. We had a really wonderful time. It was a really special day for both of us. And he had such a great time. And I can't recommend going and seeing a Wimbledon game highly enough to people who are even a little bit interested in it. But this was a very important game because we are now down to the last few games of the season and it is tight, tight, tight at the bottom. In the end, it was a two-two draw for Wimbledon. Two good goals, one scored by John Meads, one in which John Meads assisted Joe Piggitt, who put the ball away

very nicely in the back of the net. But unfortunately, Wimbledon gave up two goals, gave up a lead twice. The second goal was scored in the 73rd minute. It was pretty frustrating, but a point is a point, and right now, a point is not a bad result. Three points would be better. As I've said repeatedly on this podcast, every year for the last 20 years, 52 points has been enough to stay up in league one. We have 50 points with three games remaining. So we should only need by historical standards, two points to stay up from the next three games.

However, it's looking like this season might be the season where you need more than 52 points for the first time in two decades. than 52 points for the first time in two decades. In which case, we would need probably to win one of our last three games and potentially win one and draw one. It's just so tight at the bottom right now. One development over the last seven days is that the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes has functionally been relegated from League One and will spend next season in the fourth tier of English football. Wow, and happened. It happened. So now it's just a matter of

Wimbledon finding a way to stay up and maybe we'll never have to play those guys ever again. That would be a good outcome. But yeah, we've got to win one of our last three games. The last game of the season is against Barry, who are already relegated. And so that should be a winnable game, but you never want it to come down to the last game because all kinds of weird things can happen when people are under unspeakable pressure.

I mean, you know, it's just, it's stressful, Hank. I wake up in every morning, the first thing I do is look at the League One table and try to figure out all the ways that things could go. But at this point, we just need to play out the last couple games. Well, I mean, the good thing was, I was paying attention to this,

that like, nobody in the bottom of the table won their game. Yeah. And so that helps. And it's like, and that you drew is good. Yep. Yeah. So that helps. It does. And that you drew is good. Yep. Yep. I mean, it's possible that 50 points, the number of points we have now will be enough, although I suspect not. I suspect we need... Let's just get a win this weekend against Donkaster and just calm down. I mean, this has been the most stressful 43 game stretch that I certainly I've had as a sponsor and supporter of AFC Wimbledon.

So I am, let's just get those three points. Let's get the points. All right, John, what is my, was my phrase of the week? Is it bag of pretzels? Nope, it was not bag of pretzels. What was it? Simone Biles. Oh God, of course It's a little bit of an unusual phrase the week suggested by Kimberley from the project for Ross And thank you Kimberler for for Simone Biles. Well, that's a great phrase a week suggestion Kimberley Congratulations. I worked it out. I made a week's suggestion, Kimberly. Congratulations.

I worked it out. I made it happen. John, I think yours was a cyborg. You're right. That's what it was. Yes! Oh, man, I made up that whole story about stealing my son's food.

I didn't know how else to work it in. That was suggested by an anonymous project for Awesome Donor. So thank you, anonymous, for donating to the project for awesome. And I mean, let's face it, I'm always bad at the phrase of the week, but especially when it's a word I don't know how to pronounce. I also had meat sticks and shark attacks as my alts. Yeah, I mean, meat sticks, I was trying to throw that in there at the last second as a curve ball, but you recognized it for exactly what it was. All right, John,

what do we learn today? Well, we learned that if you come into 499 bottles of homemade wine, you need to dispose of them immediately. You learned that snappy the T-Rex can protect you from the actual proper danger that you face daily. And we learned that James Patterson gets to publish on Mondays. And we're all made out of meat! Thank you for listening to this week's podcast. Thanks to Hank for potting with me. And thanks to everybody who supports our podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash deer,

Hank and John, we really appreciate it. We use that money to fund Crash Course and SciShow and the art assignment and the other stuff we do here it's complexly so thank you and we're gonna go record now our podcast for patreon supporters this week in rions the worst eight minutes of your week we should talk it up for john catherna listens to it and she says it's good. Well, I like to lower people's expectations instead of raising them. Hank, that's probably the right call.

Will you read the credits? Yeah, if you want to email us your questions, please do that. That's how we make the podcast happen. It's dear Hank and nope. It's Hank and John at gmail.com. No dear. And John and I are John Green and Hank Green on Twitter,

but less and less so. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosie on a House of Real House and shared in Gibson, our head of community and communications, is Victoria Bon Giorno. The music that you're hearing now and at the beginning of the episode

and during this weekend, Ryan's is by the great Gunnarola and as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.