Dear Hank & John - 161: Your Dabbing Uncle Hank

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

At what point do I fail? What should I do while I'm waiting to be sawed in half? Should I eat the fungus? And more! Email us: [e-mail] patreon.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Dores, I've heard a think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be a advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John, what starts with E and ends with E but only has one letter. Uh, what? This envelope. Oh God.

I mean, I'm not even, sometimes they make me laugh even as they make me angry, but that one just made me angry. Hank, I do have some good news this week. Uh huh. Not a lot of it, I'm not gonna lie. That's not how it's supposed to work, John. People are getting in the, you can't begrudgingly deliver

the good news every week. You have to be excitedly tell me about good things that happen in the world. Well, Hank, I want, that sounds great. That sounds lovely. I would love to be in a position where I can tell you good news and not have it be begrudging, but unfortunately, that's not possible right now.

So instead, here's the begrudging good news. In just two short weeks, the United States is going to have an election, which is incredibly exciting, no matter what your political persuasion is, because it means that we have a voice in our governance, which puts us at the very far edge of the bell curve in terms of human history. We should be grateful for this and we should be excited about it. I'm fired up about it.

I've looked up my polling place. You can go to vote.org. Make sure you know that you're registered. Know where you're voting. You've got your sample ballots. So you know how to vote on all the like weird down the ballot school board stuff, which is incredibly important. And get ready to vote.

Make a plan to vote. If you're not sure you're going to vote. if you're thinking like I might vote or I might not, right now I want you to find an accountability partner. I want you to text someone you know and care about and say, listen, I'm in a situation where I need an accountability partner and you're going to help me make sure I vote before or on November 6th? Yes, that's the one, John. We're gonna vote, Hank, I'm so excited to vote.

I used to. I heard you voted, I did it, I'm done. Oh, you did? I'm a person who loves waiting until election day. Even though I know there's a small chance that I might die in the interim and therefore not be able to vote. Well, I think technically if you're dead,

you shouldn't vote anyway. Even if you voted absentee, you shouldn't vote anyway. Even if you voted absentee, they shouldn't count it. But I think probably that's a small enough occurrence that it's just in the margin of error. I mean, first off, great job by me getting my own death into the good news of the week. I'm really proud of you, John. I'm in a great headspace. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

All right, John. Do your John and Hank. You didn't highlight this one, John, but I did. Great. So here it is. I'm excited to find out why. If I wanted to write a book about failing to climb Mount Everest, how far would I have to go? Do I need you, even need to get out of my house to say that I failed to climb a mountain? Well, no.

But I think there might be a tension between the book you could write Well, no. But I think there might be a tension between the book you could write and the book that any readers would find interesting. Yeah, I feel like all of us could write a book about thinking to ourselves, maybe I could climb Mount Everest and then being like, nah, that'd be a quick book.

The point though, it's John, the reason I'm interested in this question is like at what point do I fail at doing something? Like the moment I think whether or not I could do it, do I immediately, am I failing until it happens? Like when does the failure occur? And this has presented to me a new worldview

in which failure is a spectrum, which of course it is, but I hadn't ever thought of that. And it's like it's an entirely constructed spectrum. And I am in many ways right now failing to climb Mount Everest, but that's okay, because I don't want to. It sounds miserable. Yeah, I mean, I'm so excited about failing to climb Mount Everest. It might be my greatest success.

I mean, I'm failing to do so many different things right now. And so really it's about what do I value and what am I not accomplishing that I would like to. And if I am failing at a thing, maybe I should look at that thing and say, is that even a worthwhile thing to want to do? I think Hank's working through some pretty deep stuff right now, guys. Thanks. Thanks, anonymous for your question. I think Hank's working through some pretty deep stuff right now guys Thanks, thanks anonymous for your question. I am not sure

Why to do things is next question comes from Rebecca who asked do John and Hank I had the exact same Crisis that Hank is having exactly three years ago and Hank had absolutely no sympathy for me And so I'm gonna have absolutely no sympathy for him. Hank was like, oh god whatever, I mean just stop thinking about it. That's literally what he said. I was like, I don't know why I should be doing any of the things that I'm doing and he said, just stop thinking about it. All right, this next question comes from Rebecca who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm a biology student and I've been growing fungus in a big block of old coffee grounds for four weeks, as you do. My tutors have told us that we are allowed to eat our fungus after we have recorded

our results. This seems like a terrible idea, and yet kind of tempting. No. I was with you until the end of that weird sentence. Should I eat the fungus? No. And then Rebecca signs off, thanks cool. I assume that Rebecca sent the email a little earlier than intended, but maybe that's

just their sign off, in which case I love it. Thanks cool. Thanks cool. Don't eat the fungus and also have a conversation with your tutors about not telling their students to eat like, Rand, do you know what fungus it is? Like, did you implant a specific fungus? That's like a tasty one. Is it like, like, morale mushrooms?

Is it something good? Or is it just, if it's just fuzzy, that could totally give you a disease. Or not. I, we don't know for sure, Rebecca, but I'm also not completely convinced that you're like 23 year old TA nose for sure. Yeah. So I'm going to lean toward not eating the four week old coffee ground fungus. Yeah.

Or alternately. Oh God. You do eat it. You get sick. Mm. lawsuit. Right. Because that tutor is just loaded, you know just like money gushing out of the pockets of a 23 year old biology tutor

That's right. You're just gonna be you're gonna be like Scrooge McDuck swimming in that that TA money all that pocket lint Don't eat the fungus Rebecca. Don't eat the fun. That's not a joke Don't eat the fungus Rebecca. That that part is not a joke. Do make coffee, but with regular new coffee grounds that come out of a bag that you opened recently. John, I just wanna bring up the fact that I have like some really long eyebrow hairs now and I don't know how to deal with it.

I guess I should just cut them, but like what is this thing about getting older where your eyebrows are like, you know, I have an idea. I don't want to have too much of a call back here, but I started experiencing that as well three years ago. And it's actually a pretty straightforward thing. Every time you get your hair cut, you also get your weirdly long eyebrow hairs cut.

And most hairdressers are familiar with, oh yeah. so they're able to do it really, really well. Oh, interesting. This is such a good advice. I had no idea. I figured I was gonna have to do this myself and the mirror and I was gonna mess it up. But man, maybe I should, or or or, alternatively I could just let it go

and be that guy with the giant eyebrows. Cause lots of people choose that route. You wanna know some other things that are gonna happen to you in the next three years? Ah! Ha! Or like, do it with that spoiler. Are you the kind of person who wants to know the age and date of your death,

or are you the kind of person who's just like, no, I'll run with my chances. Oh no, I wanna know everything, John. Oh, okay, then I can tell you a bunch of things that are gonna happen to you in the next two years. One of the things is that you're going to be injured. You're going to notice your body breaking down in weird ways.

And you're going to be reminded of that line from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crackup that begins, of course, all life is a process of breaking down. But in the past, when you've read that line, you've always focused on the stuff that comes after because that's the dramatic stuff. But it turns out that the fact that all life

is a process of breaking down is, in and of itself, a pretty dramatic. Then another thing that's gonna happen is that when you're like 39 and a half and pretty burnt out and overwhelmed and you realize that like your primary responsibilities are to your family and that it's very difficult to balance those responsibilities with the responsibility that you've taken on.

You're going to try to retire. And you're going to call your brother and you're going to say, I, I would like to retire and your brother's going to say, well, no, that's not how it works. And you're going to say, well, but no, I don't understand other people retire and your brother's gonna say, no, I'm sorry, but that's not allowed. So I have an update on the eyebrow hair situation. Okay, great.

So I got a sick of them and I just yanked them out. Bad strategy. Well, I would like to inform you that about half of the eyebrow hair is gray. Well, yeah, of course. So that's also a thing. So I'm just gonna have like, just like all of my gray eyebrow hairs

will grow forever and all my normal, like youthful eyebrow hairs will be short and hiding behind my giant gray eyebrow hairs. Hank, buddy, you're a great person, but you don't have any youthful eyebrow hairs. You have old eyebrow hairs, and you have less old eyebrow hairs. All right, Hank, we have another question.

It's actually two questions. They came in to our email within seconds of each other. The first one came from Isaac, who wrote, dear John and Hank, my bossy 15 yearold sister keeps telling me to stop dabbing. Oh well. But I can't stop dabbing. Oh, I think it's an illness. How do I stop dabbing? Any dubious advice is appreciated. Call me Sir. Isaac. Moments later. Danielle asks, My annoying 13-year-old brother won't stop dabbing. How do I get him to stop dabbing? He is stuck in 2015 and I cannot for the life of me pull him out of the past.

Help! And they do be as advice as appreciated. Don't Dan Whisper or Dan speak. Dan Yell! That's a very good Dan Yell. Here's the thing, Isaac. There's something about dabbing that feels so good. I get it. I totally get it.

I get it because I have an eight year old son and a five year old daughter and they love to dab. They have all of these iterations on the dab. There's the rainbow dab. There's the infinite dab. There's the speed dab where you dab back and forth left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. It all has to stop Isaac.

Okay. Once it's filtered down to the eight year olds and the five year olds, the 13 year olds like yourself need to let it go. That's a great point, John. I do have to say that it is a lucky thing that this is a podcast, because I just dabbed like a thousand times. Are you serious? I just have so many times just now,

in the last 30 seconds of this podcast. My kids asked me to dab. I do it reluctantly, and while I'm dabbing, I feel older than anything else has ever made me feel. I am occasionally asked to dab, and not so much anymore because it is after all 2018. But like on a live stream or something, and I cannot do it with other people looking at me, but I can do it on a podcast.

And I'm doing it right now. Oh, I'm imagining it and it's extremely cringey. Don't put it in your head. I don't want you to think, imagine me dabbing. I'm just, I am and don't, I guess that's part of how, don't think of an elephant. Don't think of Hank dabbing. Don't think of Hank dabbing.

Isaac, it's okay to dab. You gotta dab in the privacy of your own room. There are some things that have to happen alone, especially when you're a young person. Dabbing is one of them. That's right. That's right. And all your dance moves, because this isn't the only dance move you're ever going to have. You got to develop those while watching MTV's The Grind Alone in your room. Like, you're good uncle Hank did. I mean, that's weird. Calling yourself uncle Hank is weird. That's a great old man thing that old men start doing.

We're there like, you know what uncle Hank always says? Uncle Hank always says, dab alone while watching MTV's The Grind. Ha ha ha ha. You know what uncle Hank always says? Uncle Hank always says, don't let your old man eyebrows distract people from your youthful eyebrows.

See, it's a great advice, John. Uncle Hank is full of good ones. You know what Uncle Hank always says? Never put a cuff drop in your eyeball. I got good ones. Lots of good advice. Stuff you should definitely listen to. All right, I have to end this bit immediately.

It's causing me a lot of anxiety. This next question comes from Karen, who writes, dear John and Hank, my brother and I are both in high school and he's like a super nice boy, but I've noticed when he's with his friends, he tries to be more tough. I don't think this is an uncommon occurrence, but I've noticed when he's with his friends, he tries to be more tough. I don't think this is an uncommon occurrence,

but I feel bad that he can't be himself when he's with his friends. I know his grade, and I don't really think switching friends is an option. How can I encourage my brother to be comfortable enough with his friends so he could share his real interests and not be such a jerk?

Sharon is Karen. So Karen, I have a story about this, but it doesn't star like a ninth grader. It stars 37-year-old me. When I first arrived at the set of the movie paper towns, the only person I knew was Nat Wolfe. I knew Nat because he'd been in the fault in our stars movie and we were friends. And so I got to this big hotel suite where everybody was hanging out and there were friends. And so I got to this big hotel suite where everybody was hanging out and there were all these new people I didn't know

and I was super nervous. And when I get nervous, sometimes I revert to like childhood behaviors in really weird ways. And I look back on them and I'm like, oh God, that was so horrible. This is one example of that. So I see all these new people that I don't know. But you know, a couple of them are well known enough

that I know who they are. And I'm super nervous, and I don't know how these people are gonna think of me, and I don't know, I just, I don't know, I'm totally overwhelmed, and I look at Net and he's wearing a leather jacket and somewhat fashionable, like in my opinion, two fashionable shoes, and the first words out of my mouth are, what's up with those shoes?

Wow. And that just looked at me and he said, well, they're the shoes that the costume director got for Q, and also I know what you're doing. Ha ha ha ha ha, oh my God. You can't get called out like that by somebody who's like a decade and a half younger than you. That's hard.

He's a decade and a half younger than me, but like a decade and a half wiser as well. And he explained it to me like I didn't know what I was doing, but that was like sometimes when you're in a room where you only know one person, you make fun of that person as a way of trying to like make the other people in the room like you. And you think that's a good strategy and it makes sense in your head partly because of toxic masculinity and partly because of other reasons. But it's not actually a good strategy and it doesn't actually work. And maybe there is a way to be the nat wolf in this situation with your brother to be like, I think I know what you're doing,

but I'm not convinced that it's effective. Yeah, I mean, I think that we all try on a spet, like at this age, we try on lots of different identities and we see how they fit. And if there's like, if there's a situation where it feels like your brother's being pressured into being a way that he doesn't wanna be, and it's frustrating and difficult and hard,

and that could be something where you're commiserating with him. But also, if he's finding something in that that's appealing, but also it might be reading to a less thoughtful way of viewing the world or a lack of empathy on his part or something that you don't want to see in your brother. Like calling out the identity might be a little bit too much, might be like too much of a threat to him, you know, depending on how his social group is responding to sort of like, how are we going to become men together? And so I think that one thing to remember is like,

make sure that you highlight and like uphold the parts of you know, your brother growing up that you really admire and that you want to admire in him. Like that he's hardworking, that he's caring, that he's helpful and that he's thoughtful. So hopefully you can have some kind of, some kind of like a version of like growing into manhood that is about more than like being a real man or whatever that's supposed to mean.

Just tell him like, I know exactly what you're doing when you try to make fun of my shoes. My shoes are awesome. This next question comes from Larina who asks, Dear Hank and John, a couple of days ago, I received a phone call and was offered a job. This job is to sit at a show in volunteer when asked to get on stage and go inside a magician's box and be sawed in half.

While it's a... That's the great. I don't need any more of the more back stuff. This is wonderful. Congratulations on this job. Was this a cold call? Like, oh. Did you apply for this job or did you just get a phone call

that said, are you looking for a job getting so on in half? Because if it's the latter, I would be highly suspicious of this gig, Lorena. Now, if you're in a situation where you applied to be a magician's assistant, then yes, this is fine. Otherwise, I think that you might be making a terrible mistake. It does, the way the question is phrased,

it does sound like you've got a call from someone who was like, I want to give you 20 bucks to come get saw in a half. I assume that you knew about this beforehand because no person would agree to this, right? Whatever knows, but we are giving you the not dubious advice, do not go and have a stranger saw you in half

just because they called you on the phone. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha But that's such good advice. Lorena, it's so solid. We're really got it. We're hitting that out of the park today, John. It's the kind of thing that you might not otherwise know. Like some things just don't set off your alarm bells, you know? Right. And he says,

Uncle Hank's here for you, Lorena. So, Lorena says it's wonderful news that they're getting a job, but they have some questions and concerns. I have no idea what I'm going to do since I have to sit and watch the same show many, many times. I have no experience in this. Can I bring a book with me?

No. Could I just arrive late to the show every time? No. Should I get my Google Glasses and watch Doctor Who the entire time? Actually, maybe, that's a good one. Do be as advice needed, Pumpkins and Penguins, Lorena. You definitely have to look like a plant, you can't. Like you have to look like a plant.

No, you have to look like you're not a plant. That's what I meant to say. Uncle Hank says, you have to look like a human being, not a plant, not a ficus. You need to look like I'm so excited to see my first ever magic show. Yeah. What an opportunity tonight is. That's what you're getting paid for. And I worry that if you bring the Google Glass, it just makes you, it just adds a level of suspicion just based on the way I feel when I see people wearing Google Glass. It for me, I don't want to generalize, but it does add a level of suspicion just based on the way I feel when I see people wearing Google Glass.

It for me, I don't want to generalize, but it does add a level of suspicion. I feel toward that person. Yeah, just generally in all things. Yeah. So I think what you're going to have to do, Lorena, is what I had to do at the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World for much of my childhood. You're just going to have to pay careful attention to the same thing happening over and over again. And you may discover that on the other side of what will initially be kind

of boring is this weird kind of transcendence. Like watching the Hall of President show 50 times is kind of boring. Watching the Hall of President show 500 times is sort of revelatory. Why did you watch the Hall of President show 500 times? Oh, because you know, you remember how mom had like a permanent lifetime free passes to Disney World. Uh-huh. Because she won a Community Service Award in Orlando. Uh-huh. And remember how I hated Disney World and Hall of Presidents is the only place that's air conditioned and doesn't have a line. Uh-huh, okay.

So, I would just go into the Hall of Presidents and chew tobacco and watch the Hall of Presidents show and then go right back in for eight hours. Oh, that's really good, John. That's wonderful. What a good teen boy thing to do, John. You just really couldn't be bothered to enjoy the happiest place on earth. Oh, I enjoyed it. A great deal because I'm telling you, if you watch the whole of President's show enough, you will find on the other side of it a transcendence the likes of which space mountain cannot provide.

All right. Well, there you have it, from Uncle John's. I'm real, real the doosies of advice. Don't you, don't you tobacco, Lorena. I know that probably goes without saying, but it's one of the great shames of my life. It was really gross. It was such a weird, I remember being at a family wedding and our grandmother, Nanny.

Yeah. I remember Nanny walking up to me and looking at me and just like something shifting in her eyes and her saying, are you dipping? And me being like, yeah. And she just like looked at me for a half a second and turned away. And I was, that was it. That was the end of my relationship with Chewing Tobacco.

Oh God, I wasn't sure how that sentence was the end of my relationship with chewing tobacco. Oh God. I've got a little sense of how that sentence was going to end. No. And then I chose chewing tobacco over my grandmother. Uncle Hank says there's nothing better than a dip. Get your some Uncle Hank's jaw. Oh man, wouldn't that be great Hank? Why don't we sell chewing tobacco at dftba.com? There's so many items that we could sell that we don't. Yeah, it's like we've completely avoided all of the things that cause cancer and are addictive. What are we doing? Yeah, people love that shit.

Ha ha ha ha ha! They can't stop literally! But I think that we definitely answered the question, which is watch the magic show over and over and over again. Learn about this show! Yeah, get into the magic show, especially because you might have a career as a magician's assistant in front of you, or maybe even a career as a magician if you start to figure out how the tricks work. Hopefully you will definitely know how the one trick works.

Hopefully that has been explained to you. Alright, Hank, this next work comes from Maddie who writes, Dear John and Hank, I am a registered absentee voter. Exclamation point. I love your enthusiasm, Maddie. I love the exclamation point. I think it communicates correctly that we should all be psyched about voting. And we should all have plans to vote. And we should all know where our sample ballots and we should all know what our sample ballots look like and where our polling places are vote dot or I'm not gonna stop Hank I'm not gonna stop until actually when I

stop because the election is over I'm just gonna start in for 2019 for your exciting county commissioner races I am currently going to college away from where I live and I'm mailing my ballot back soon. However, as I'm filling out my ballot, I find that there are a ton of local positions and even some state offices that don't have multiple candidates. I find this especially troubling because I don't agree with a lot of these candidates, even worse, there's a state court position where neither of the candidates reflect my views at all.

I can't even find the lesser of two evils. There is usually a lesser of two evils, Maddie. But that's for another time. Can I just leave this part of the ballot blank? Also, there are some local initiatives on the ballot concerning taxes and property. I don't own property there, nor do I pay the taxes that the ballot concerns. Should I not vote for or against these initiatives will not voting for any local elections remove me from the discourse of the town that I am already physically removed from. Actually quite happy, not Maddie. Ah, that's cute.

That's cute. So there's two things in there. One is the thing where I don't know how to vote in this election, just because like I don't, maybe I don't have time to do enough research on all of the the candidates for the courts though I would absolutely encourage you to do that research and there are now far more good resources for doing that than there were even two or four years ago. Yeah, it does not take that long. Yeah, so that is and also the situation where there's only one person like do I have to vote for the one. Like do I have to vote for the one person? You don't have to vote for the one person. And also like that person's going to get elected.

So if you want to just save the time of filling in the bubble, you don't have to vote for that person. Well, not only that, but not voting for that person can communicate something. It can. It communicates to maybe people who are considering running against that person that there might be some support. And so I think that not voting for someone in a uncontested election is a way of communicating your lack of satisfaction with your representation in that particular elected office. As far as whether you should vote on taxes, you don't pay, I think you should, because you're voting about your community.

And it's not if it was going to be a vote that was held only to taxpayers, it would be, but it's not. It's a vote that's held to all members of the community because you together are deciding what kind of community you want to live in. Now, you may not live there right now or may only live there part time,

but it is still your community, both legally and in terms of how you think of it. So I absolutely think that your voice should count. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot, there gotta be voting on lots of things in your life that won't directly affect you. Like, once you are out of school and you don't have kids or your kids are out of school,

you will still be voting on ballot initiatives that have to do with school. And so those will be taxes that you will pay or not pay that will go to resources that ultimately, like you care about, and will affect your community, even though you are not affected by that directly. We are all affected by those things indirectly,

like whether there's a new tax and what that tax supports affects us, even if we don't pay the tax, even if we don't directly use the resource that the tax is paying for. Yeah, getting slightly off topic here, one thing I hear a lot from wealthy people I know whose kids are in private school is that they vote against all funding for public schools because it

doesn't affect them and it just raises their taxes. And that seems to me so astonishingly narrow-minded in the way that we think about how our communities work. Really? And even on a very selfish level, even on a very me-based level, it is good for me to have people in my community get access to better educational opportunities because then they can get better jobs, they can build businesses in my community that I can do business with. That is how we grow as a community. To me, public education is one of the massive earth changing innovations of the last 200

years. So I really think it's important to vote on those issues because other people definitely feel empowered to vote on them even if they don't think they're directly affected by them. As for sure. John, I got another question that comes from Dalton, who asks, dear Hank and John, there's a particular spot on my chin

that I cut almost every time I shave. I've tried going with the grain against the grain perpendicular to the grain, always similar results. I grow a beard and forget about it, but my facial hair is too thin, so it looks awful. I'm 24, so that's not an issue that is likely to get solved with time. Can you help me shave better? Yes, I have seen Roadhouse Dalton. Okay, John, I don't like other than doing what I just did to my eyebrow hairs and just

being like, okay, you guys are like other than doing what I just did to my eyebrow hairs and just being like, okay, you guys are coming out with tweezers. I don't, I don't have much suggestion here. Help, help Dalton. Well, I think the most important thing is actually, A, it's having a good razor blade. Okay. Having a really sharp razor blade, a new razor, B be it's really working whether it's shaving cream or whatever you use to kind of lubricate the surface of your face for shaving, you really got to work that in carefully. I have a spot that I cut probably 60% of the time even doing all of these things because there's just one spot on my face, it's near my chin where, I don't know, if the skin is thinner or what. But I have found that if I really work in the shaving cream

stuff that I use, I use fancy shaving cream stuff, I can really work that in for a while. And then I've got a really nice good razor. I can usually avoid getting cut there. I also, another thing that I've tried to do though is just understand that I can get cut there, and it's not a big deal, it's not the end of the world. Like, I cut myself shaving right before I was on TV

for 60 minutes, and they didn't have like a hair and makeup department to like, fix me up or whatever. So Sarah, use this magical stuff called Makeup on my Cut and it went away. And as a result of that, I realized that there is this thing called makeup that can do a lot of different things to make your face look better. And I've been told not to use it by the social order, but the social order is totally wrong about this.

Which reminds me John that this podcast is brought to you by makeup, which is a thing that you can put on your face to make it look slightly different. Uh, it's available to people of all genders. New product out now, Makeup. And of course, today's podcast is also brought to you by Good Uncle Hank. Good Uncle Hank. Good Uncle Hank. Distributing obvious advice in an old man's voice since earlier today. This fact is also brought to you by Secret Dabbing.

Secret Dabbing! It occurs alone where no one can see you. Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Coffee fungus in the Biology Lab. The Coffee fungus in the Biology Lab, I mean, they say it's edible. Ha! Ha!

All right, I got another question, John. It's from Anya who asks, Dear Angon John, recently I received a letter of recommendation for a thing. The person who wrote it emailed it to me so I could print it out and attach it to my application, which I can then submit. Is it okay for me to read what has been written about me?

Not the Disney Princess, Ania. John, I looked this up, what the rules are. You shouldn't do it. Unless they say, can you read this and tell me what you think? You should, you probably, apparently you shouldn't. Oh, yeah. Which, I've certainly never abided by that rule. Likewise.

So, Anya, as you read the letter of recommendation, just know that it's, you shouldn't be doing that. I had no idea that you weren't supposed to do that. And I have to say, I'm very grateful, obviously, I'm sure that the etiquette is right and I'm being terrible for saying this, but I'm just going to say it. I'm very grateful that I read the letter of recommendation that my professor, Don Rogan, wrote for me for Divinity School because it in like really hard times in my life or really dark times in my life when I felt really sad and felt like I'm worthless

and stupid and I just can get so angry with myself. Sometimes I go back to that letter because it was so kind and generous and it sort of showed the best version of me. And sometimes I need to see that myself. So I mean, I get, I get why you're not supposed to read them. I get how that can maybe be violation of privacy now that I think about it. But boy, am I grateful for that letter. So heck, I got a question for you. And it put me down a very deep rabbit hole that I've only recently emerged from. It's from Laura who writes, dear John and Hank, around got a question for you, and it put me down a very deep rabbit hole that I've only recently emerged from. It's from Laura who writes, dear John and Hank, around eight years ago, my friend, now girlfriend, had a jello pudding cup in her lunch, a common occurrence.

On the lid of the cup, a smiley face in the letter O of the word jello had a speech bubble saying, frown is a four letter word. We could never figure out what this meant, and it's been haunting me for years. Can you weigh this mystery to rest? Rose is a red, I am a nerd. What does Jello mean by frown is a four letter word? John, I mean, this, this isn't something that everybody knows, but just like, so you've got five fingers, right? But you don't actually have four fingers and a thumb. That's the case with W. W isn't technically a letter. It's its own thing. It's a W. So, so, so, Frown has four letters and a W. Yeah. That's right. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The ugly

like says W is not a letter. It's a W. I'm just gonna explain this for any young people who might be listening. That is wrong. All letters are letters. Frown has five letters. So there's actually a whole community on the internet that even eight years later is still furious about this. There's still very upset. And the more I think about it, the more I agree with them. Like I started out thinking like, oh, it's just a dumb thing where they're saying frown is a four-letter word.

So in English colloquially, four-letter words are kind of curse words. Like there's the S word, that's a four-letter word. Like bad words are often called four letter words. And I think the joke is that frowning is bad and you shouldn't do it because Jello should make you happy. And so Jello is here to turn things around, make your frown into a smile, and stop having you say in those four letter words of negativity and obscenity like frown. But it's the stupidest, it's stupid on every level because the one thing it says to people who are frowning, instead of saying like, I'm sorry you're having a difficult day,

it says like, your experience is equivalent to expressing yourself in an obscene way, which is not helpful. Your sadness is an obscenity according to the Jello overlords. Right, exactly. So in addition to the fact that it's like, unhelpful to people who are experiencing frowning, it's also like super difficult to parse.

Like it's a joke. It's a joke that people are still debating eight years later because that's how bad of a joke it was. So I just want to say to the folks at Jello, that was terrible. And if you need advice on how to develop more compelling advertising, you should go to noted brand specialist Hank Green, who is in the process of becoming a national spokesperson for a big, big brand. Yeah, I don't know. Thank God, you're really going to put my weight behind Jello. Honestly, it's just, it's basically sugar water.

I'm not that into that. I will say, John, that we are still talking, we did say Jello a lot. And, and, and also people are still talking about this bad joke. So maybe it worked, like maybe this was the goal the whole time to create a bunch of controversy, have a bunch of forum posts, have people still arguing and thinking about Jello being like, oh God, that frown joke was bad,

but also Jello putting cuffs pretty tasty. But they aren't, that's my counter argument. When was the last time you had Jello? Not recently, but now that I'm thinking about it I kind of want some. So I recently got some Jello for my kids and I was like this is a wonderful dessert that I enjoyed a lot as a kid and my kids ate like one bite of it and they're like what the f*** is this? They don't like Jello? Sorry. That is an example of a four-letter word.

They don't like Jello? Not only did they not like Jello, they were like, how on earth could you have ever enjoyed this? It's like if our parents had served us like sheep and testons and liver, we would have been like, that's weird. Like in the old days, I guess people had to eat all kinds of things, but God, now we can have granola bars.

I mean, people still like, oh man. So like millennials killed a lot of things, but like your kids' generation is deaf, gonna kill Jello, is that what you're telling me? I'm telling you, what comes after millennials? Oh, try millennials? Yeah, try millennials. after millennials? Oh, millennials? Yeah, millennials. By millennials?

No, it's poly. It's the poly millennials. Poly millennials. Poly millennials. Yeah. So the poly millennials who are coming, they're going to destroy everything. They're going to destroy Jello. They're going to destroy meat.

They're going to destroy, based on my children's food preferences, the polyglineals are going to destroy all food categories, except for vegetarian chicken nuggets. I mean, that's good for the chickens anyway. Okay, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, oh my God, the darkness, darkness everywhere. I've got this message to read from Sarah, who writes dear John and Hank,

I recently started college in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I celebrated my 18th birthday this past Thursday. My wonderful parents drove four hours to spend four hours with me and then return. They used to live here and so took me to breakfast at a restaurant they used to frequent called Briggs. I recommend the food and it was overall a very pleasant experience, except that I was forced to eat an entire meal next to a horrifying five-tined fork that was the size of my whole body. I'm looking at a picture of this fork. It is. It's real big.

Very large. Uh-huh. Oh boy. Oh boy. It's upsetting. It is. There's nothing worse than a five-tined fork. I mean, there are things that are worse than a five-time fork to be clear, like poverty, disease burden, et cetera. I attached a few pictures because it's just so horrifying. I had to share it with someone who would understand. My family did not, they just thought I was getting even weirder.

Sarah, no, I wasn't intentionally named after the Terminator Connor. Great name, Sarah. And also, really great picture. We'll post it on the Patreon at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John. All of your five time forks pictures, we received many of them. We found all of them equally disturbing and distressing

and in one case, they made me vomit. That would be this one that is the size of Sarah is like my eyes can't parse it. It just like it doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. I can't count the number of times. It's like they found the way to hack the human brain in that way that the federation was gonna do

to the borg with hue with an impossible geometric shape, but they ended up not doing it because they thought it was immoral, which I still think is a really dubious decision. Hank, that's a really great example of a reference that everybody who listens to this podcast will get, and it will really resonate with them. Alright, John. There's like, literally 1% of our audience was just like, it is like that, and the other

99% were like, I think I've, I think I know what the board is. I think I need a new podcast to listen to. Yeah. Well, there's the Anthropocene Reviewed where I never talk about Star Trek. Yet, you could review Star Trek. That was something that humans created. All right, Hank, it's time for the news from Marcin' AFC Wimbledon.

It's gonna be, it's a darkness. I'll go first. Okay. Wimbledon cannot stop losing. be, it's a darkness. I'll go first. Okay. Wimbledon cannot stop losing. That's true. We cannot stop losing. We lost yesterday to Bristol Rovers, two to nothing, even though we dominated the game.

The problem is that dominating the game doesn't matter when you can't score goals and we cannot score goals. The only time we can score goals is when we're already down by more than one goal. Mm. We haven't scored a goal when not down by more than one goal in like six weeks or something or eight weeks.

The situation is completely out of hand and I am just, oh God. I keep popping up on my little home screen because now Google knows that I care about AFC Wimbledon and it just makes my day worse. I'm like, why am I so stressed out right now? And it's like, oh, it's because I just looked at the AFC Wimbledon score. Me too, I'm also really stressed out about it. There's a lot of talk about Nealard Lee resigning

or Nealard Lee, I don't know. I mean, that's, or him getting fired. It's obviously a very difficult situation. And, you know, I think everybody's dream, Nealardly played for Wimbledon when he was a kid. You know, he's been a huge part of this club's history. And I think everybody's dream was that he would lead the team out when the new Palais and Stadium

was finished and managed the first game there. And that dream now seems in doubt. Also, it has to be said that Wimbledon's league position in league one is very bad. I mean, the only reason, the only reason that we are not in last place is because there are two teams that are just inexcusably bad,

one of which we've already lost to. Actually, no, nowably bad, one of which we've already lost to. Actually, no now that I look both of which we've already lost. Oh my gosh. So it's just, it's a really bad situation, obviously. And sometimes that needs to change in management. Sometimes, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. In the years that I have sponsored AFC Wimbledon, I would say this is the second most difficult period and the first most difficult

period is when they almost got relegated from the football league entirely. And in that case, it was Neil Ardley who came in and really saved them. And on the last day, got a win when we needed one and kept us in the league. How we're going to stay in league one this season, I do not know. But it is still only October and I guess there is still time for things to change. Hank what's the news from Mars? Is it going to cheer me up? No, it isn't because I also get a lot of Mars news now. On my Google homepage because it knows that I'm interested

in Mars. What's the news from Mars? Well, there is good news from Mars. It just isn't good news from Mars' opportunity, Rover. So there was a study recently released in Nature Geoscience suggesting that the water that we have found on Mars might, you know, they did a bunch of math, basically. Let's just say weird math models, they figured out that even though there is not a lot of oxygen

in the Martian atmosphere, it's 0.145% oxygen, and that is a very thin atmosphere, so it's very little oxygen. And oxygen is good for helping complex life evolve. So life's very little oxygen. And oxygen is good for helping complex life evolve. So life can happen without oxygen. In fact, that's how it happened on Earth. But then once oxygen is available, life can use that to do a bunch of good, interesting things with. It can use that to to form more complex structures, basically. And so this new model indicates that the water on Mars, very likely contains more oxygen than we assumed it would, and also enough oxygen that complex single-celled life,

so more complicated single-celled life could happen, but also potentially very simple single-celled life could happen, but also potentially very simple multicellular life could exist with this level of oxygen in dissolved in the water. And that looks like sponges, like that kind of multicellular life, which is right on the edge of where single cells and mult-cells sort of function and like having more specialized tissues, not so much, but definitely having cells working together and forming into a single organism that has lots of different cells. So that oxygen allows for, you know, more chemically interesting stuff to get done.

And so obviously this doesn't mean that life does exist on Mars. It just means that it could, and it could exist in a way that we didn't know about before. So it could be, like we've known for a long time that life on Mars probably isn't going to be crawling around, probably isn't going to have like crawling around, probably isn't gonna have opposable thumbs, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. But this is the first evidence that we've had that based on what we know about the chemistry of the planet and the water that we could have

multicellular life. Right. Based on what we know about the chemistry of Mars and also based on what we know about the chemistry of multicellular life. It just, it's a pretty cool, is a requirement to have a certain amount of oxygen dissolved in water for that to happen and Mars and many places does have enough oxygen for that to happen. And is there anything about the water on Mars that makes multicellular life less likely or impossible?

Well, if we took mult-cellular life from Earth and put it in like an analog Martian water, it would not survive. It's got a lot of harsh chemicals. Percorates are like a kind of ionic compound that is dissolved, and that is actually what allows, like these sort of salts, these salts, are what allows for the water to be liquid on the surface sometimes.

And also for the liquid water that we found substantially more than a kilometer below the surface, that brine allows the water to stay liquid even at lower than freezing temperatures. But that brine also would kill anything from Earth, but we know that evolution does a good job of selecting for things that can live in weird situations. And percorates definitely are a harsh chemical, but maybe if you evolved in that situation, maybe they're just food, or just, you know, just the natural environment, and so it doesn't feel that way. So that's, we actually, the SciShow team got to talk

to some of the scientists who are on this paper, and then they were like, you know, like we don't know how life would evolve to handle a high percorded environment because it's never had to happen on Earth. So, you know, maybe there would be mechanisms that we wouldn't have imagined. But there's no existing earth organism that could survive in what we know about existing

Martian water. Correct. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah. So, if we discover life on Mars, it will be like truly weird to us. It's not like, oh yeah, it's an amoeba. Oh, I mean, like the question is whether it's based on the chemistry of earth life, if it has like DNA and RNA

and it uses like similar protein structures to us, because that wouldn't be something that would happen automatically. That would mean that that life got carried from earth to Mars or life got carried from Mars to earth. And so we're like, share a common ancestor, which is totally possible. But the alternate would be like,

totally, like even in that case, it would be extremely foreign, it would be very weird, it would have gone in completely different paths for a very long time, billions of years. And, but like, if it evolved separately, that would be the biggest story, because that would mean that life is probably fairly common in the universe,

because it happened two times on two planets in one solar system. And then, but it would also give us a chance to learn, I don't know, like truly deeply huge things about chemistry and about ourselves by having some other version of life to compare ourselves to. We have got to get to Mars. Hey, yeah, you're there, you're there with me now.

We need humans on Mars. All right, that would be by far the biggest discovery in the history of science. Yes, correct. 2028, John. We need, no, there's no way we're getting humans on Mars in 2028. But we do, we need humans on Mars.

I'm on board, I don't want to do we need humans on Mars. I'm on board I don't want to be one of the humans, but I'm a hundred percent on board. All right. Well, I'm on board with AFC Wimbledon winning a game as well God, please all right. Well, thank you for potting with me. Hang thanks to everybody for listening again You can go to patreon.com slash dear hankajon if you want to see a really very large five-time fork And thanks to all of our patrons there for helping support the work that we do it complexly if you want to see a really very large five-time twerk. And thanks to all of our patrons there for helping support the work that we do it complexly.

John, before we end the podcast, what is important about Ethan Hawks' birthday? What is important about Ethan Hawks' birthday? It's November 6th, John. Vote! I love it, I love it. Vote, thanks for listening. Our podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosiana Holstrow-Hossson-Chairden Gibson.

Our head of community and communications is Victoria Bonjono. The music that you're listening to 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. Don't forget to be awesome.