Dear Hank & John - 182: It’s All Hermeneutics to Me

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

Are our voices actually slightly deeper? What's going on with paperclips? How do I keep out the chickens? And more! Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail]. Join us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John! Where's that birthday of your John and Hank? It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. Did you know that Neil Diamond was actually until Sweet Caroline came out called Neil Cole? Yeah, why did he change his name to Neil Diamond Hank? After that song it was so big, I think the pressure really got to him.

It's funny because I don't know of anyone who the pressure got to less than Neil Diamond. He seems to be doing okay. It's not like he retired from public life after the success of Sweet Caroline, like JD Salinger, like he just couldn't bear it, you know? Too much. Yeah. He seems like he's doing okay.

He's just cranking out hits. I mean, I feel like the guys, that guy is just an absolute hit factory. I haven't potted with you in so long that I've forgotten that we had this opening bit where you tell a dumb joke. It's been a long time. I've missed making the podcast with you, not least, because it's really the only time we talked during the week these days, because we're both so busy doing various weird things, many of which I'm contractually obligated not to speak about. Yeah, or like I'm working on a thing that we were just talking about

that I'm very excited about, that it's not like there's a contract, I just don't wanna tell people because of how cool it is, and then they'll be like, oh, it is really cool. And if it doesn't happen. It's one of those things where it's rare. Because it might not happen.

You never know if it's like, if everyone else is gonna be as excited about your YouTube channel idea as you are But I have to say Hank has a lot of YouTube channel ideas and this is by far the best one because right now All I want to do It all I want in the whole world is I want to watch nature at an extremely small scale doing the things that it does with voice over commentary

from a calm, normal person. That's the only thing I want out of the universe. I wanna spend the rest of my life doing that. That is my infinite jest. I just want to be in a calm, quiet room with someone explaining the secrets of the microscopic universe to me. Okay, well that's basically the idea. It's you know, that's basically it. Now you guys know, I hope that it works out. All right, this first question comes from Sam who writes, Dear John and Hank, I share a kitchen with six other graduate students,

none of whom I'm particularly close with, but I do have a nice relationship with all of them. A week or so ago, someone, I don't know who, bought a half gallon of milk, but no one's opened the milk since it was put into our fridge and it expires tomorrow and I ran out of milk this morning and I would really like to eat some cereal. Can I open the unopened half gallon of milk?

It's a lot of milk, and it won't all be consumed before it goes bad, and I don't know who bought it, so I can't ask them. Please help me green eggs and Sam. Well, first of all, John's gonna tell you to put water on your cereal, and you can go ahead and ignore that. Sam per se.

Sam. Sam, listen to me for a second. You can cover your cereal with stuff that literally came out of a cow or you can cover your cereal with good, clean, nutritious tap water. Water that has kept us going as a species for 250,000 years, Sam. Water on cereal is the answer to your question. I don't, so, but Sam, let's live in a hypothetical universe where you think this is a disgusting idea.

I'm not saying it is so weird to be saying people think it's gross, but hypothetical. That would be gross. That would be gross. It's just a way. It's just boring right now. It's just wetting the cereal. I've still not tried it. Maybe I did, I think I did,

when early in the podcast, when this thing first came up, I tried it and I didn't like it. And I don't, but let's just explore the hypothetical. John, is it okay to open an unopened gallon of milk for any purpose, whether it's for cereal or for baking some brownies. If it's about to expire, no one's opened it.

It's been there for a while and you like somebody needs to rescue this milk. I think yes. I think that you need to get closer with your six other graduate student buddies so that you don't have this issue. Yeah, you should have a like a group chat. Have a group chat.

Or, or let me throw this out there, Hank. Try interacting in this space called the kitchen. Have a group chat. They're not all there at the same time. They're very busy graduate students. Some of them are waiting on their spectrometers. Others of them are waiting on their philosophy professors. There's just a great deal of like,

of different lifestyles in this one home. With six other graduate. This is seven graduate students sharing one kitchen. I cannot. I, I had a five person room mate situation once and one kitchen for five people. And I can tell you that mistakes were made. Yeah. And I don't think it's like, I don't think this is a linear thing.

I think adding another person like exponentially makes it worse. So like five, like six is 10 times worse than five. What I would do in real life is I would probably write a very long like four to five thousand word letter that I would post on the door of the refrigerator and it would be titled a manifesto in Re the Milk. And I would write basically a defense of why I'm choosing to open the milk like I'm concerned that this cow's work will be for naught.

Yeah, many, many, we'll know when many animals and people involved in the creation of This cow's work will be for naught Yeah, many many will know when many animals and peas involved in the creation of this good. Yeah, yeah This was not this is not a values neutral thing like we are full. We are graduate students We must explore the nature of of this of this Philosophical conundrum. Yeah, it's a great opportunity to use words like hermeneutics and ontological. Yeah, I mean, I really, I do love hermeneutics work. Mr. Nudix is really great at philosophy. I probably wrote ontological in six or seven

different college papers and I still do not know for sure what it means. Isn't that like the study of the study of studies? It's the study of knowledge, it's knowledge about knowledge and I've certainly had philosophy graduate students explain the word ontological to me on thousands of occasions, but I don't know that I really get it. Well, I definitely don't know anything about Hermann Udick. I, yeah, I mean, I would be hard-pressed to offer you a definition of Hermann Udick's. It's the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible or literary texts.

Yeah, I mean, you'd think that would be one that I know since I was an English and religion major. Again, I'm sure I've used it I also think there should be a better word for that. Why is who is Herman? Why don't yeah, and for instance one word could be interpretation For analysis it's the theory and methodology of interpretation. All right We got a ty, John. This is from Luke who asks,

Dear Hank and John, which side of the paperclip faces the stack of the paper? The small side where the slightly bigger side, I'm using paperclips for the first time as they are mostly irrelevant because it's 2019. And I want to ensure that my paperstacks have the most professional look. No, you're not my father, Luke.

This is a great question that makes me feel super old because I only just now when reading Luke's question realized that like young people must look at paper clips and be like, what is this other than like a convenient way of expressing how much a gram weighs? Right, or like that meme about the Microsoft helper. Clippy. Right, yeah. They probably look at a paper clip and they think, I can't believe they made a real life

version of that stupid Microsoft helper. Why would they do that? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't even have the face on it. Right. It's not even a proper joint. This is a really low quality reproduction of Windows 2000's Microsoft assistant. The answer, I mean, I actually feel pretty strongly about the answer.

And I think that I'm right, but I don't know why that I'm right. The answer is that the longer side of the paper clip is on top. Yep. And I think this is purely aesthetic. I think this is a purely aesthetic choice. I don't think that it affects the ability of the paper clip to clip paper.

I think I have never seen it the other way. And if it was done the other way, I'd be like, that seems wrong. Who did this? Right, I would be like, that seems wrong. Who did this? Right, I would be like, oh, millennials. They don't even know how to aesthetically clip paper. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, it's like what a dumb thing that we all just

internalized together. But I actually, like, I went and looked at stuff I've gotten for my accountant recently, who's the only person in my life who still uses paper clips. And I was like, every single time, the longer side is on the top. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, if you handle, if you clip papers professionally, if that's part of your job, write us, let us know if you feel as there is any actual benefit to clipping the way that we clip, or if this is purely a static. Yeah, I'd be fascinated to know this next question comes from Naseem who writes,

Dear John and Hank, since there's helium in the air, does that mean that our actual voices are really deeper and in our atmosphere, we're just always slightly talking like we took a breath from a helium balloon? Thanks Naseem. There is a question we've ever received, because A, I have no idea what the answer is and B, my immediate assumption was probably. So first, you gotta say, all right, is that in that case, if it's true, is it actually,

like what's the natural state, right? Right. Because like, well no, the natural state is the current state, obviously. But what I'm asking Hank is if I go to one of those fancy oxygen bars in Las Vegas and I have, and I like, you know, drink pure oxygen for four minutes, for $85, and I have, does my voice start to

be deeper just for a few minutes because all that pure oxygen I just had. So the helium and the, well, to be clear, it's not just the helium, it's all of the gases are affecting the density of the air and the density of the air is the thing that matters. So if you do pure oxygen, I don't know whether pure oxygen is heavier than pure nitrogen I should. I bet if I thought about it, oxygen is eight, and nitrogen is six. Well, you gotta realize this isn't just about

the density of helium. Like all gases do this affect the tone of our voice. And so like we are used to hearing our voices at the density of like, you know, the air, like the particles in our air, which is almost entirely nitrogen and oxygen. And so if you breathed in air that was like a heavy, like a heavier gas, all of them are poisonous, unfortunately, so it would be hard to do it. Pure.

Except for the noble gases. Like so, so if you breathed in pure argon, your voice would actually be lower than it is, or pure krypton, which you probably wouldn't wanna do, or pure radon, which my reading of Superman. Actually, I think it'd be fine to breathe in pure krypton, it would just be expensive, but you definitely wouldn't wanna breathe in pure radon which my reading of Superman actually I think it'd be fine to breathe in pure krypton I would just be expensive, but you definitely wouldn't want to breathe in pure radon Because that would give you lots of cancer. Yeah, no, I got it. I can picture it

so The the the mix that we have now is Lightened a little bit by helium and so if the helium was removed I guess our voices would be 0.00. I looked this up 0.524% deeper or divided by the actual amount of helium, deep light and zero voice, heightened zero voice. And it seemed the answer to your question is yes. At least according to Hank's marginally educated guess. I went to several different Wikipedia pages. Hank is scanned for Wikipedia

pages so you can trust him. It's not single source. It's this multiple Wikipedia pages. I've done my lateral reading. I did it while answering the question. I've done my lateral reading. I did it while answering the question. Okay, this next question comes from Caitlin. Caitlin's got a question, dear Hank, John, whenever I write an email on my phone, it has an automatic signature of sent from my phone. Why is it important to everyone that they know

that I sent it from my phone? Squash and Seagulls, Caitlin, sent from my iPhone. Caitlin, you have to imagine the distant, hazy past to understand this. In 2007, it's a world with paper clips. So many people were taking pieces of paper and connecting them to other pieces of paper with paper clips, Caitlin.

Things were just vastly different. But in 2007 and 2008, when people first got iPhones and when you would receive an email inevitably on your desktop or laptop computer that came from an iPhone, the message sent for my iPhone served two purposes. The first purpose was to make sure that everyone understood that the person who'd sent the message was a fancy person, a person who could afford a fancy phone. And the second purpose was to make you want to become a fancy person who can write things

like sent for my iPhone at the bottom of their emails. However, if you're anything like me, you were able to kind of like see the matrix and hack it by just writing a sentence from my iPhone at the bottom of all your emails. And people would be like, gosh, this guy really wrote a long email

considering the poor quality of 2007 iPhone keyboards. But I'd be like, yeah, I did. Yeah, no, I am a very good iPhone-typer. It is one of my many skills that you could find in my resume that you have to get me to mail to you. That's right, unfortunately, I don't have a digital version at the moment. Yeah, it's definitely, it was partially,

it's an advertisement. This is the reason Apple says it's so that people will know, they will excuse you for writing a shorter email or having the typos because it's so that people will know they will excuse you for writing a shorter email or having the typos because it's from a phone. In reality, Apple was like, we can use that excuse and be like, advertise the fact that people are sending emails from phones. Yeah, yeah. It did feel like a miracle though, but like all miracles, it was a miracle that turned out to be more complicated than we initially understood.

All right, this next question comes from Adnan who asks, do you John and Hank, this year I've been going to a private school and so far my experience has been great. The problem is that my brother and his friends have told me you're not acting like you're black and this school has white washed you. What can I do about this? From a rad man, call me Adnan. I guess I might have said your name wrong at the beginning, but thank you for the, what is that called? Is that a nemonic? It's not a nemonic pronunciation guide.

A nemonic device, is that what they are called? I don't know that that is a nemonic. Maybe it is. It sure. It's a harmonutics to me. The d- A- The d-

The d- That, I mean that shirt. I don't know that actually is a pretty good idea for a shirt. It's all her if I'm gonna press that out later in the podcast definitely. Okay well I'm glad that you've got a new new project to work on. Adnan the first thing I'd recommend is that you talk to people who might be in a similar situation. Yeah, you definitely came to the right place. We're experts on this topic.

Well, we're not experts on the topic, but I still think it's important. I would talk to friends you might have at school who are in similar situations. I also, one thing I can do is recommend a couple books. That's usually what I do in my life when people have problems. The hate you give is one book in which the young woman who's at the center of that book is attending a private school and there's a lot of tension and complication between her life at school and her life at home. Another book that tells a story partly from a similar perspective is If You Come Softly

by Jacqueline Woodson, which is also just a beautiful book. I so as they hate you give, you can't go wrong with either of those books. And maybe there might be some clarity for you in reading about people who've been in similar situations, even if they're fictional characters. I know sometimes that works for me. So those were my two pieces of advice. I know sometimes that works for me. So those were my two pieces of advice. Yeah, I think there's also, like, there are people who are, you know, public or semi-public figures who have gone through similar situations. And in a world where, like, not, like,

this isn't that common of an experience, you might find that there is a fair amount of, like, people will be willing to hear you out to help you think through this, who you might otherwise think like, that person isn't gonna talk to me, they have like a hundred thousand followers on Twitter. But like, it's a hard thing to navigate

and it can be very difficult to ask people to be more empathetic to you, but I think that's part of what needs to happen with your friends and with your brother. This next question comes from Emily, who asks, Dear Hank a John, my fiance just accepted a new job in a different state. This is great because it's his dream job.

It's where we've always planned to end up, but now I'm facing the issue of leaving my job. My only problem is that they've already allowed me to work from home during one move, which was very nice with them, so I don't have a good excuse for like moving. I've never had to quit a job before, but now it's time for me to move on and start my long-term career.

Brothers, how do you quit a job? Not very blunt, Emily. I have quit exactly one job, which was also the only job I ever had. At least it wasn't like a temporary summer kind of job. Yeah. And it was really hard. It was a similar situation.

Sarah had gotten into graduate school in New York, which meant that we had to move because we had just gotten engaged. And I knew that it was kind of time to leave book list because I wanted to try to make a go of it as a freelancer to see if I could make a know, make a full-time job out of writing. And it was really, really difficult. That said, if you like your job, and if the people you've worked with at your job have been cool people, they will understand why you're leaving, and that you feel like it's time to move on to something that's going to be a little more career oriented, or more career oriented for you. And it'll be an awkward day, but it's just to move on to something that's gonna be a little more career oriented or more career oriented for you. And it'll be an awkward day, but it's just one day.

Yeah, and in my experience having both quit and also been having the person come into my office and tell me that they're leaving, it's very helpful to know where it's all coming from. And also to know like, okay, so you can speak freely now. Tell me what you liked and didn't like and what you think we could do better. And yeah, that can be a really helpful time if you're interested in letting that support like to have that transitional time be an opportunity

to put all the cards on the table and have everybody coming out learning stuff. have that transitional time be it be an opportunity to put all the cards on the table and you know have everybody coming out learning stuff. Yeah, it's definitely bittersweet but I personally feel happy for people when they leave complexly because they usually leave because they're going on to do things that they want to do, things that they find interesting and you know there's a sadness in that for us for sure but I also you know I want people to be able to grow and Yeah, so it's easy to like make a big deal of these things in your head

I mean, I know that from experience, but I think in reality it will be better than you think it will be All right I think we got a question from Meredith who writes dear John and Hank How does viewership on YouTube compared to TV or Netflix or Hulu or whatever? I only really know how to contextualize view and subscriber accounts within the framework of YouTube. I know ads run for less time and generally produce less revenue, but like why? It's such a weird thing.

It's such a great question though, because the answer to like why is basically because it's always been that way, and also because we don't really know. I mean, so this is a thing that I know too much about. I like, there's a lot of complexity to that question, but like basement information is like, I was shocked when I discovered that like, the most viewed cable news shows

get around 3 million views in episode and of course those are concurrent views those are views as it's happening Which is like it's visited a live stream view if you're gonna talk about it in internet terms and like that's and like It's weird for a live stream to have three million views. But they don't tend to re-broadcast those things. They might take a segment of it and re-upload it to the internet now. But it's really amazing to me at the time. So actually these days they're not counting concurrent views. They're often counting views within 48 hours or views within a week or something, which

is not totally dissimilar to how YouTube views get counted. I think that we don't know a lot about how many people are watching Netflix or Hulu shows. Oh, yeah. That's some total extra. Netflix and Hulu guard that information very gelously. We also don't know that much about how many people are actually watching cable shows because a lot of it is based on estimates, less of an hour than it used to be,

but still a lot of it. And there are a lot more advertisements, per minute of content on television, certainly than there are on YouTube. There's about eight minutes of advertisements for every 22 minutes of content. If you did that on YouTube, nobody would watch your video. No, it's the equipment of catfish.

It's the equipment of catfish. You know, two ads during every vlog, but there's video, it would be ludicrous. Yeah. During a four minute video. Yeah, and the only reason people put up with that is because it increased very slowly over a long period of time and also they're more in a sort of a relaxed state

where the ad breaks comes on and I don't know what people do. I haven't watched TV in 10 years. And then why it's so, it is actually less valuable. It's not just that there's fewer ads. They impact people less when you are watching YouTube. And what that's about is an area of open study and it kind of creeps me out that it is.

And that we have this way of, we have like an entire sort of industry of science devoted to influencing humans with paid time. I don't know, it creeps me out. It's weird. Of course, of course, my business is largely based on advertising. So, I was gonna say, we're not gonna post to it. And not necessarily, necessarily, opposed to it, but it is, like, it is something that like I like to look in the face of it and be like, you are weird. I want to admit that you are weird. Oh yeah, yeah, it's weird.

We've also got a personal project for awesome message from Susan Fish from Vancouver. Thank you to all of the adult Nerdfighters Facebook group for being such a strong community. I've made so many friends and the support and kindness I see in the group every day is awesome. Extra shout out to M.A.K.M.M. Kit, Eileen, and her Mutron of Honor, Jen, Keeley Leo, and the Narwhal. Oh, that makes me so happy. Thank you, Susan.

It's good to know that there are happy productive places on Facebook in my absence. Yeah, sorry we're not around. We don't know how to use that platform. This next question, Cobb's from Andrea who asks, dear hang a John, I bought a house recently, chickens included. That's not how I was born. What a terrible deal.

What a terrible deal. Is there any way, Andrea, can you go back in time That's not how I'll ask for a Sanfria. Is there any way, Andrew, can you go back in time and buy the same house, but sawns and chickens. Yeah, chickens not included. That's how houses work. Okay, Andrea continues. That's lovely most of the time. We got a couch, which is simpler.

The chickens are lovely most of the time. However, if I leave the door open for any period of time, they race inside and poop on the carpet. I can't even leave the door open while getting groceries out of the car. How do I keep out the chickens, pumpkins and penguins, Andrea and chickens? Ah, one, first of all, come on chickens.

Like, be a good, like come in and be like, I'm gonna chill here for a second, not immediately take a dump. I don't agree with you. I do not think the chickens are at fault in this situation. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I think these chickens need a home. Well, I assume they have some place to poop.

Well, I mean, there's free range chickens, and then there's free range chickens, right? Like, I'm all in favor of chickens having a great chicken life, but I don't want them to have access to my house. So you're gonna do one of two things. You're either gonna build a screened in porch that's sort of an air lock between you and the chickens in the house, or you're gonna build a chicken coop

with a lot of room to run, but no access to the house. Right, you could alternatively find a new home for the chickens, seeing as you did not really sign up for this. Right, yeah, these aren't your chickens, deep down, right? Like, these are adopted chickens that came with a house. So I think you could, lots of people love, lots of people love chickens.

And by, let me tell you, all of my flippin' neighbors do. I asked one of my neighbors recently, I was like, listen, I get why you have chickens. Why do you have roosters? They're loud. It's because they get born and you don't want to kill them because it seems quite mean. Oh so loud so loud How does the real estate agent conversation go when they're like congratulations? You the got the house also chicken

Well, I assume that it must have been in the inspection report, right? Like the inspector of the house must have been like, property is in good condition, heads up chickens. I guess. I think that doesn't mean that they're gonna be there still. Well, there are oftentimes lots of things that get taken away. I remember when we bought our first house, Sarah was like, one, the only condition of this sale

is you gotta get rid of that playground. Yeah, you're not one. A huge child-friendly playground in my backyard. And two years later, we were like, well, that actually wouldn't have been so bad. But chickens, I don't know. I love chickens, but yeah, I think you've got to, you've either got to make a good chicken coop situation or you've got to find some kind of protection

because you can't have chicken, I mean, it's stressful to have chickens in the house, I think. Can you train a chicken so that they poop in a litter box like a cat? Because I feel like people have pet chickens. Maybe they wear diapers, chicken diapers. I think I've seen a picture of a chicken and a diaper, Google indoor chicken.

Oh, there's indoor chicken coop. That I'm not interested in. Raising an indoor pet chicken, that's exactly what I want to read about. Thanks, Google, God, what a great service. I recently watched a chicken poop. I was sort of at the hind end of it and it was elevated so that we were roughly at eye level with each other and the chicken pooped. And so most, I've seen lots of bird poop and it's from bird-sized birds. And we forget that chickens

are monster birds, they're huge. Yeah. They're very, very big. And they have correspondingly giant turds. Yeah. And when this poop came out, I was like, that chicken is laying an egg. And then it was a poop. That's how big it was. It was the size, it was as if it was laying an egg.

I was, and then the smell hit me immediately. It is not a good situation. I did not realize how significant a turd that bird makes. Can I read you a paragraph from the article raising an indoor pet chicken? Yeah, please. It's one of the best paragraphs I've ever read in my entire life.

Our indoor pet chicken was unexpected, and I kept her in the house longer than necessary for several reasons that ended up bringing out the protective mama hen in me. I was willing to put up with a house chicken a lot longer than my spouse was, but I was married just a series of compromises. At six months, I started the transition of our pet chicken Charlie to our outdoor chicken coop. Oh my god. As marriage is a series of compromises, let me submit author that the spouse in question made some amazing compromises to get to six months. Yeah, it feels like we worked together on that one.

And I'm glad that we all came out of it understanding the situation. Oh, as marriage is a series of compromises is my new favorite dependent clause. It's all her minutics to me. Hahaha. This next one comes from Emma who asks, Dear Hank and John,

I went to a poetry reading for the first time this week. There was one poem in particular that I found very moving. It was a beautiful and emotional poem about a very heavy subject. Afterward, I wanted to tell the poet that I liked their poem very much, but that did not feel like the right thing to say. The poem was about such a serious topic,

and I could tell that it was very personal and emotional for the poet. So I felt wrong saying that I liked it. What should I say instead to let the poet know that I found their peace to be meaningful? Emma. I'd say I liked it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean people, right, when people know, sometimes say to me about turtles all the way down like that it it was like a, you know, that they liked the book And then they then they get nervous and they say, well, you know, like I I didn't mean that I like like like the the the you know the kid, you know, suffering stuck inside her own hand and I and I always think like, oh, no, but that doesn't mean you don't like the book Like I I'm grateful when people like my

No, but that doesn't mean you don't like the book. I'm grateful when people like my stories and I understand what the stories are about, right? Like I understand that the fault in their stars is sad and when people tell me that it's sad, I'm not surprised. And so I think like the poet probably knows that their work, they know what their work's about. They know that it was a tough read, but you know, you still want to,

it's still really, really nice to hear. Like, that was great. That was really meaningful to me. Anything like that. I think like we process all compliments pretty much identically, which is to say like 90% of them bounce off of us and like 10% make their way in. And I don't think that you can like craft a compliment

that does a better job than that, at least in. And I don't think that you can like, craft a compliment that does a better job than that, at least in my experience. Yeah, I have a hard time complimenting people in situations where they're, like that's my first interaction with them. Like I had a pastry this morning, and I wanted to like, I wanted to tell the person who made the pastry,

like what, the how they had made my day better because it was so good, and I'm so glad that the person who is able to make this Ruggola lives in Mizzula, Montana. But one, I didn't really know how to find them because there were a number of people. Maybe that person wasn't there anymore. And two, like, I was like, ah, this is not normal.

People don't do this. Yeah. Compliments to their chef. Right. It's a little bit, it's a little bit too intense sometimes, right? Like it's a fine line between like, I really like that Ruggola and like,

who made this Ruggola, I must speak to them. And then you look them very deeply in the eyes and you're like, this was a very special Ruggola and it changed my life. And I would buy 500,000 of these Ruggolas except that marriage is a series of compromises and my spouse says that I can't. I mean, Catherine liked it a lot too.

We shared it. It was so good. I'm thinking about it right now and it's distracting. Paka brought you by Black Cat Bakery in Mizzoula, Montana. Oh man, I knew that you were gonna say the name of the place because I want to love anything as much as you love Missoula. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I really like that, that it, like, I keep finding things that I like about this town. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I just need to really quickly answer one question. It comes from Caitlin. She writes, dear John and Hank, whenever I go to the omnipresent 99 cent pizza joints in New York City

They take my dollar in payment without ever offering the penny back. What's happening to all these pennies? Are they just counted as tips? It's actually one dollar pizza and they're just guilty of false advertising any dubious insights I appreciate it slices and cents Caitlin Caitlin Caitlin You are West Not to have to deal with that penny and you should be grateful and you should be glad and that is the end of my answer.

Hank, the last time we potted together, it was very, very long ago. And it was a while. Since we last recorded a podcast together, the most amazing thing has happened. Or should I say? Well, terrifying. The most amazing series of things. I mean, it's just like why create all of this tension? I don't need it. Oh, AFC Wimbledon.

America's favorite third tier soccer team. Absolutely dead in the water two months ago. Uh-huh. Even a month ago. I mean, absolutely, we were not just in last place. We were so far away from being in second to last place that we could win two straight games and still be in last place that we could win two straight games and still be in last place.

It seemed obvious that AFC Wilden was going to be relegated. I visited the stadium to see the FA Cup game against Millwall, which we lost. And of course the mood, I mean, to say that it was dark would be an understatement. Everybody was talking about how, you know, sometimes you just need to get relegated and rebuild and see, you know, what you can make of it. And so on, except, except the next game against Rochdale, they won four to three in miraculous fashion with a 90 fifth minute penalty. Essentially, the last kick of the game, Joe Piggitt secured his hat trick. We won that game four to three. Then we went to Charlton, one of the best teams in the league one.

We lost that game. Then we tied Shrewsbury and Shrewsbury, AFC Wimbledon, have rattled off three straight victories, beating Don Caster, Peterborough, and most recently, South End United. And suddenly, I mean, just a little bit of context, in our first 31 games, we won six. In our most recent seven games we've won five uh... oh my god how what is happening so one thing that's been helpful is that in two of those uh... wins

uh... there were red cards uh... for uh... for our opponents that was useful joe pigett has started scoring quite a lot of goals, which is a wonderful surprise. And AFC Wimbledon, I mean, truly, I had nearly given up hope, and I am known for holding on to hope way too long. Like it's one of my defining character features, but still, I was like, you know, sometimes you get relegated, that's life.

Suddenly, AFC Wimbledon with eight games left to go in the league one season are in 22nd place. Hank still in the relegation zone. No doubt about that. But no longer in last, we haven't not been in last in like six months. Yeah. And so the way that I approach sports, I would rather have no chance than I have slim chance. Oh, I want to have a chance. We're only three points away from being in 20th place, which is the last spot to not be relegated. If you look at the last 20 years of League One history,

52 or 51 points are usually what's necessary to stay up. Right now, AFC Wimbledon after 38 games has 39 points. That means we probably need to win four of our last eight games. Now, that will be difficult. I'll remind you, we've only one 11 games all season, but I mean, the dream is alive. Oh, good. I'm happy for you.

The news from Mars is bad. So that's apparently we need more bad Mars news for you guys, because we can't, oh, I mean, if you could just deliver me with like four to six weeks of really, really bad Mars news, that would be super helpful because of our eight remaining games. Six of them are against teams that are almost as bad as us. Oh, wow, that's great. So that's good news. So the kinds of teams that could get pushed down in the table while you get pushed up.

Exactly. So the kinds of teams that could get pushed down on the table while you get pushed out. Exactly. The kind of teams that are going to be win four games might go down in lieu of us going down. The dream is alive. I suddenly I've cleared my calendar for May 4th in case I need to make a last second trip to the stadium in case we've arched on the line on the last day. Oh God.

I'm sweating just thinking about it. My palms just like my palms just erupted All right, I guess that got left in the podcast since I watched Alex Honnold climb El Capito Without without a rope Also is something that I did not subject myself to. No, thank you. I was watching a YouTube video about that movie and somebody commented that their free solo was watching free solo.

This is the highest risk I allow myself to make. And somebody else commented that they needed one of those chalk bags just to hold their phone. Oh, God. Okay, so the Mars Insight Lander has been on the surface of Mars for a hundred days now. I know that seems amazing, I thought it's been there that long.

Yeah. And the size monitor is in place and operating well, but there is also that little drill gofer thing that was the goal is to like get a heat probe 15 feet below the surface of Mars to study the movement of heat in the interior of the planet, which will tell us lots about what Mars is made of. It got a foot down and it stopped going down.

Oh, no. The way that since this is all just data that we're getting from this thing, we can't observe it directly, this could mean a number of different things. The most likely one is that it hit something hard. It can't go through it. It just got a lucky and landed near a rock. Yeah, hit a rock or like a layer of like, like tightly packed gravel even.

And so it's stopped after four hours and like every subsequent attempt to make it go further has not succeeded. There are a couple of potential plans for what to do about this because it, you know, this is a little bit of information that we got, but like, it would be a huge, like, loss of science to not have this thing keep going.

But what the suggestions are, one, if it's not too big of a rock that it hit, we could just keep hammering on it, and maybe it'll break, maybe it will push it to the side. It could be a pretty big, it could be fairly big rock that we could push to the side. Probably not in like your mind, if I said fairly big rock, not that size,

but as we are guessing at what size rocks are in the like in the regolith there, you know, this like, it would have to be like, you know, about the size of maybe a flash card. You could push that to the side. What, if that doesn't work, or in addition to that, when this thing hammers, there's a recoil, and so like it hits,

and then it bounces up a little bit, what they're thinking about maybe doing is putting, so there's this robotic like crane arm on insight that put these instruments onto the surface, taking the crane arm and putting it, like just push, like putting it on top of this hammer so that when it recoils, it does it, it's not able to recoil, it just goes down.

It's like adding a little extra force by taking this robotic arm and like pushing down on the hammer. Basically, so that is being attempted with a model on Earth right now to try and figure out if that will work or if there's a chance that will break the arm. If you break the arm, that also decreases the ability of insight to do cool stuff. But maybe it's worth it. So it's a bummer and I really hope that they are able to solve this problem, but there was some thought early on that they might actually be able to retract the hammer and move it to a different spot. That was my suggestion. Doesn't look like now that it's as deep as it is that they can still do

that. Oh, so it's like too deep to retract. Yeah. But not deep enough to tell us what the core of Mars is like. Correct. Oh, that's such a bummer. I mean, imagine all of the like work, I don't wanna make it worse, Hank. But I imagine all the work that goes into that moment

and then you just happen to land like seven feet in the wrong place, you know, like it's just dumb luck. It's just a little rock. If you're seven feet over there, you could go all the way to the center of Mars or something, but because of this, like now we can only go a foot deep. And like it's somewhat comforting to know that there's like other good science being done on insight and that it landed safely and that it's gotten a lot of good data already has a two-year-long mission where it will continue collecting data.

But also, the people who are on the seismometer team are different from the people who are on the drill team. Right. And so they're all looking at their colleagues being like, well, I'm glad you're things going well. Oh, yeah, that's always so awkward. Like, I've experienced versions of that, not that exact one. Yeah, but yeah, it's such a bummer when it's like,

oh yeah, no, that's great. Congratulations on your seismometer. That's so wonderful. So happy for you. Here's your seismometer. Oh, good. We also have one response from Nicole and Rebecca to me and Catherine's episode about the

the Gatlinburg Tennessee Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum. Yeah, so we had a question from someone who kept getting novelty salt and pepper shakers Maybe they want them in Gatlinburg probably not But maybe they seem to have plenty already from the picture that we will share on the Patreon. That's a lot of frickin' salt and pepper shakers. Wow. We'll share that on Patreon. Patreon.com slash deer hankajon,

where we are off now to record our hit podcast this weekend, Ryan's. This weekend, Ryan's. You can check it out at patreon.com slash deer hankajon. Thank you all for listening, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Absolutely. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins.

It's produced by Rosie on Halsey, Rojas and Sheridan Gibson. Our head of community and communications is Victoria Bon Giorno. This music that you're hearing 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. It'd be awesome.