Dear Hank & John - 187: The Uncle Mike Way of Life

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

How do I fairly distribute my hugs? Could black holes suck up the Earth? How do I change the way I walk? How can I support my stressed-out dad? What's the best way to receive negative performance reviews? What do I do if I vomit at work? Why don't ants die when they fall from heights? Who should play me in the movie of my life? John and Hank have (dubious) answers! The poem John mentions at the beginning of the episode is "The Palace" by Kaveh Akbar, found here. 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. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Haken John. George, I prefer to think of it dear John and Haken. It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your question, give you to be a advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, of all the inventions that I've seen, the dry erase board has to be the most remarkable. I mean, it is remarkable and that makes the joke acceptable to me. You know what I would have tweeted about this week? What? I would have tweeted about this Kava Akbar poem, The Palace, which was published in the

New Yorker. It's one of the longest poems I think the New Yorker has ever published. It is incredible. I know that here at Dear Hank and John, we like a good short poem. This is a longer poem, but oh my goodness. It is incredible. I've been rereading it for a week. Let me just read you one line from it, Hank, toward the end of the poem. Art is where what we survive survives. Oh my God. Oh, Hank, we have got to get to this question from Jay.

It's the most important question we received this week. Jay writes, hello, Hank and John, thank you for your work. I would like some advice. My father has a high stress job How can I help him relax at home, enjoy life more and stay positive and a hopeful man? How can you be supportive even though you can't fix life's problems? I'd appreciate your thoughts in this matter J Well some some day I will have a son and I hope that he thinks of me that way. Exactly.

I mean, no, I already have a son. Someday I'll have a son who will be capable of like having thoughts and writing emails. That's what I meant. Because my first thought hank was that like, Jay's dead is probably like the chief of staff in the White House. That's a stressful job. Oh, that does look like a very high stress job, yes. You know?

Unpunally high stress, yeah. Like you've got a fairly, I think it's safe to say, unpredictable boss. And then you've got a lot of people working for you. There's a bad combo. Jay, is your dad Bob Eiger? Is it the head of Disney? Is Bob Eiger the head of Disney?

Is that what I'm thinking of? I think so. Yeah, or is your dad like Elon Musk because that seems stressful right now? Not any particular one job that he has just the job of being Elon Musk. Yeah. Does sound like it maybe has some some unnecessary Some necessary and some unnecessary stresses that seem to have come along with it. Not that we never subject ourselves to stress, John We do do that.

We do that. I do that to myself. I create stresses on my already stressful life. Why do I do this? Why does J.S. Dad do it? I don't know. I think that's really the question though. Like some of us seem to pursue stress.

And when we don't have a lot of it, and I would include both of us in this category, you'd find a new thing to stress you out. Yeah, yeah. I don't know that we're getting to Jay's question, but we are getting to my question, which is John, how do I stop this? How do I make decisions in my life that lead to me fulfilling the responsibilities I currently have signed up for? Yeah.

And not adding new ones. Like wanting to start a boba tea place from a zoolomontana. Please God, don't start a boba tea place in a zoolomontana. I looked into it, John, and it looks like a terrible idea, but I'm still very excited about it. Can't you just pay a full time employee to make you boba tea every morning and have

essentially the same experience? It would be cheaper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would be only a modest monthly loss versus a large monthly loss. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe there is there is there a lot? Jay, does your dad run a boba-doodle franchise? Because it sounds stressful, surprisingly difficult, and not super rewarding. Yes. And yeah, and despite the fact that you'd think that it would be all fun in games, John, just all those tapioca pearls and bursting balls.

And like, but no, turns out, what do we wish Jay would do for us if Jay was our child? I kind of wish that Jay would do for us if Jay was our child? I kind of wish that Jay would sit me down and say, Dad, I want you to have a long, hard think about how much of this you need to do and how much of this is kind of optional. It's like that conversation I had with my uncle Mike

one time, you know, Uncle Mike John. I love Uncle Mike. Where we were happened to have turned around on the beach at the same time and then we were walking next to each other and I was like, this is going to be the longest I will have ever spent with Uncle Mike. Won't it be? And then I said to him to try and open up the conversation so that it wouldn't be awkward and silent. I said, I've been having a lot of difficulty trying to balance between life and business and my family and the responsibilities of work.

And he was like, that is the greatest struggle of a man's life. And that is all we said together for the whole walk. And I was like, is he gonna say more than that? And no, but it was a little validating. Uncle Mike was like, yes, that is hard. Yeah, maybe that's all your dad needs, Jay, is the Uncle Mike treatment. I have been in several meetings with Uncle Mike where Uncle Mike walks in, I would say like, this is how our family works by the way, we have meetings.

20 minutes late to the meeting, and leaves two minutes later, but what a valuable two minutes. Also, another thing about Uncle Mike, yeah, yeah, I don't know how deep we want to get into Uncle Mike's stories, but he is an amazing, amazing man, and one time he was in Chicago, when I was living in Chicago, and he said, would you like to go out to dinner?

And I said, of course, it'd be great to go out to dinner. And everything that Uncle Mike said at dinner was beautiful and thoughtful and very carefully expressed. And also, I would estimate that in the hour and a half that we spent together, he said 12 words to me It's a different style of communication than we use he is he is a man of few well chosen words And we are men of tons of words Hey, can I subscribe to me monkey at a typewriter theory of creation, which

is that if you just make enough stuff, some of it will accidentally be good. Yeah, if you just say enough things, some of them will end up on those court websites, which of course is the point of being a person. All right, let's move on. This next question comes from Adrian, who asks, Steerhankajan. What's the best way to handle receiving negative performance reviews at work? In my office, we get yearly reviews from multiple people we work with, and while most of my reviews were positive, oh, what about reviews was fairly negative, and I feel like

it was undeserved, but I also recognize that no one wants to hear negative things about themselves, so I'm not exactly impart one wants to hear negative things about themselves, so I'm not exactly impartial here. Feedback and failure, Adrian. Oh boy, I think that like, one, at least you know it's honest. I always feel like, is this a me thing or is this a everybody thing? Whenever somebody says something nice about me,

I'm like, you're a liar. Right. And when somebody says something mean, I'm like, well, at least I know they're not, they're not just making me feel good about myself yeah I remember every negative thing that anyone has ever said to me in person and no no compliments I remember once this person walked up to me and said did you write looking for Alaska and I said yes and they said I really liked the first half of that book,

but I thought the second half was terrible. Oh my God. And I was like, thanks. I really liked the first half of your compliment. I thought the second half was terrible. Yeah, the first half of your comment was excellent. I felt that the second half needs some work. Here's some ways that you can improve it. Don't say it out loud. That would be the number one thing.

Just say, I really liked the first half of your book and then walk away. Leave me wondering. Yeah. That's always good. You have to keep your audience wanting more. So only ever deliver half a compliment. I will say this about getting negative feedback though. It's painful, but you learn a lot from it. So there are some criticisms of my books that I just think are wrong for lack of a better term.

Or they just don't interest me as criticisms. But there are other ones where I'm like, oh man, yeah, I should learn from this. And so I find it more helpful in some ways than positive feedback, but it certainly isn't helpful in the moment. No, it's definitely always very hard. And also sometimes like, you don't know what to do with that information. It's like, this is the thing that you're not good at and it is like, is it because I'm not good at that? Or is it because I need to work harder at it?

Right, a lot of times it doesn't feel actionable. Right, I think that it's important to recognize that sometimes negative feedback isn't good. Oh yeah, no, sometimes it's inaccurate. Like yes, teenagers don't talk like that. That's just not an interesting criticism. I could go on if you'd like. I got that one a lot with my book too,

and I was like, she's 23. Well, I think the larger thing is that it's a novel. And like, there seems to be a debate over what novels should do. And I am happy to participate in that debate and grateful for the fact that I get to participate in it, but I think I'm right. Like, obviously, I am aware of how people talk

and I have made the choice that I've made. And that may be the case for you at work, Adrian, or it may be that there are things that you can actually learn from. Like, for instance uh I can't actually think of any criticisms of my work that I agree with Oh I can think of lots of mine. No I can't do actually the biggest the biggest one that I think is very true is that I just cannot write a plot to save my life.

It's like a form of color blindness or something. Like I look at a story and I just don't, it just isn't there for me. It sounds nice honestly. The hard part for me is having the plot all like line up and work. Yeah, no, that is definitely the hard part. That's why I just ignore it. I think we just take different approaches to that big problem. Like you're like, oh, I have to work really hard

to make this plot work. And I'm like, ah, I mean, let's just not have it resolved. Anyway, Adrian, I'm sure you write great plots. This next question comes from Em, who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm at a training at work and I'm hiding in the bathroom because I just vomited in the meaty groom. What do I do?

Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Em, I once was working at a nonprofit and I was just licking envelopes and stuff and stuff and stuff on the floor, literally on the floor. And I started to bleed out my face as he sometimes do when you moved from Florida to Montana a couple months ago. And I bled on the envelopes that I was supposed

to be stuffing. And I like, and I didn't know where the nearest bathroom was because I was very new to this place. I didn't know where the bathroom was. So I literally ran out of the building and went to a coffee shop to like clean my blood off of me. And then I was like, I have to go back there now where my blood is on the ground and I disappeared. And I assumed that someone would have noticed

the bloody envelopes by the time I got back. And then I got back to the nonprofit and indeed my bloody envelopes had been discovered. And I said, I had a nose bleed and they're like, oh, and then we reprinted the envelopes and I kept stuffing them. Yeah, I'm gonna argue that that's not a perfect analog to barfing in the middle of a meeting. Oh, was there currently where there are people in the meeting?

Oh, in that case, you just go into someone else's office and you say, somebody puked in the meeting room. No, no, no. No, it's a character building moment. And like, okay, there's two things that is too potential outcomes. You're gonna tell them that you puked in the meeting room. Yeah. There's two things that can happen.

One, everybody can be like, wow, that M, she really handled herself well in a stressful situation. Two, you become puke M, and that's what they call you forever. Yeah. So you just gotta have to be okay with one of those two outcomes. Yeah, I've had some similar experiences,

not at work, but elsewhere. And in my experience, it is best to own up to things quickly and you're like oh I mean at least I made it to the trash can. Well unless you didn't. I hope you made it to the trash can. Sometimes it is very unexpected. This is a huge surprise to me and this is it continues to be the case. I am a 38 year old man. You would think that I would know when I was gonna

puke. Yeah. And yet I will be like my stomach hurts a little bit. Yeah. And then and then I stand up and then I vomit and I'm like just communicate that with me. Let me know. Yeah, let's have a conversation here between the gut and the brain. You would think. Yeah. We are married, we are stuck together.

This is the only partnership we get to have. My brain and my body, we can never find a different partner and we need to talk about this stuff. I mean, not yet, right? But like, we don't know for sure that that's always gonna be the case. Yeah, I guess that's true. Oh man, if you could not have one bodily function,

just like eliminate one bodily function, which would it be? For the rest of my life. Yeah, without consequences. Yeah. Sweat, sweating. Oh, wow, sweat. I wasn't expecting that answer.

Did you not read turtles all the way down? Did you not read turtles all the way down? To me, sweating is a constant reminder, my body is colonized by bacteria that, and the way that I smell is not actually the way that I smell. It's the way that the bacteria colonizing me smell, and I just, I don't, I don't love sweating. Oh, God, there should have been a content warning before that.

Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about that. Yeah, I think I get rid of pooping. I mean, yeah, I would 100% that. Yeah, I think I get rid of pooping. I mean, yeah, I would I would 100% get rid of get rid of smell smell. I mean, this is the most ridiculously hypothetical conversation we've ever had like there is no it's not relevant because it's not like that of the things that might happen in the future that's not one of them right where like no no no no no science is able to turn off your body. Yeah, I don't know. It's not one of them, right? Where like, no, no, no, no. Science is able to turn off your body.

Yeah, I don't know. It's not impossible. And I'm sorry you barked at work. Everything's gonna be fine, but not in the short run. And also actually not in the really long run. So, but in the middle run, in the middle run, things are gonna be fine. And things are gonna be fine.

Oldton, like right now, you did puke in the office, and in the future you will be dead, but in the medium turn things will be okay. Yeah, like six months from now looks great. This next question comes from Clara who asks, dear Hank and John, often when I meet my friends or say goodbye, I hug them. But sometimes there are other people

that I'm saying hi and bye to, who are acquaintances, not friends friends who I wouldn't normally hug, and they're standing next to all the rest of the people. This situation ends up with me either hugging someone even though I don't really want to, and neither of us seem to enjoy it, or me hugging everyone else and then kind of waving to one or two people. And if I don't hug that first and I feel really rude, like I'm saying, everybody else here is my friend, but not you! Any dubious advice is welcome. Lots of love, Clara. This is what handshakes are for, I think, in like the old days, but I feel like we've lost that.

Yeah, but the problem is that if you hug a bunch of people, if you're like hugging four people in online, and then you get to the fifth person and you're like, nope. I mean, there is a problem there. It's almost like you have to find some way of saying bye to the two groups of people separately. Right. You got to say you have to separate them out. It seems like it's going to require a lot of like, politicking. Right.

Basically, you're just like, you're in the game of Thrones now. But I think that there's a way to do it. I feel like you should carry a dry race board with you and just be like, look, here is the list of the 30 people I hug. And as you can see, you're not on this list in time you may be. I hope I enjoyed meeting you.

And I of course hope that you make it onto this list. But like for you to get on, someone has to be kicked off. So, it's a big decision for me, and I'm just not there. It's best I find to explain these awkward three-second moments with like an eight-minute talk. So, in the past, when people would come after me at Target or something

and they would say, can I hug you, I would be like, no, and let me tell you why. And then like seven minutes later, they would be like, okay, well, I mean, geez, I just wanted to get some bananas in yogurt here at Target. And now I've got, and now I'm at a lecture. This reminds me of a situation when you are leaving a social engagement, and two people are leaving at the same time and you say goodbye to each other and then you realize that you're parked in the same parking garage.

Yes. So you're like, oh crap. Now we have to walk together after having said goodbye. Or being in a grocery store and saying, hi and having a conversation and saying, bye. And then it's like, oh, shh, I'm gonna see you eight more times. This is not a big grocery store. Right, that's the feeling that Uncle Mike had

when you turned around on the beach at the same time. Yeah, it was like, oh, it's definitely the feeling I had. I was like, oh God, I'm gonna be walking with Uncle Mike. I love to, I love to be with Uncle Mike because he never says anything that isn't great. But yeah, or necessary. Like, yeah, you don't fill up the time. Yeah, yeah, and I don't yeah I just need to like get rid of my impulse to always be talking right which is Exactly how I solve all of these situations which is adding words and being like oh well look at look like we're going to the same parking garage

I guess we'll talk some more. How's the fam? Why do you think that one scissor is called a scissor? Is that just a knife? Over the weekend I was at a party, and my best friend Marina came up to me, and she said the funniest thing just happened, and I said, what was it? And she said, someone walked up to me and said,

John Green is so friendly. And I laughed out loud because I assumed that she was kidding, but it turns out that you hugged her when she said hello because you thought she was someone else. That's no man. I could different people like our social norms are so I could different people like oh man our our social norms are so I like they're all they're all goose up and messed around and I don't know what to do with it anymore. I prefer Hugging someone I've seen like five or six times actually to shaking hands shaking hands is so filthy They like the right bacterial exchange is so horrifying. But you think about it touching the, like someone's back,

like their clothed back is not that bad in the scheme of things, compared to the horror of hand shakes. And by the way, I shake hands. I don't make a big deal out of it, but I'm just telling you what I'm thinking when I'm shaking your hand. It's thinking about the sweat, all the sweat, and all of the organisms that subsist on the sweat.

We got to move on. This next question comes from Kevin who writes, do you try to hang suddenly black holes or all the rage? Super suddenly. And I'm learning a little bit about them from news shows and they seem kind of scary. If black holes basically suck up everything around them, could they potentially suck up the earth at some point? And how would we stop that? I've got good news and bad news, Kevin. The bad news is that we are not going to stop our species going extinct. The good news is that there is no way we'll make it until like an astronomical phenomenon kills us. Well, yeah, not certainly not that one. We could potentially like the triggering event could be an astronomical phenomenon. Farm were likely to be based

in our own solar system, whether that's an asteroid or a solar flare, or some such thing like that. And far more likely still to be based in human behavior. Yeah, for clarity, the most likely situation is that we do it to our own dang selves. The, yeah, so black holes, you, I feel like you've been misinformed by the news. Don't, I mean, they don't really suck stuff up.

They are, they are a thing that you can orbit just like anything else. Like the sun, for example, is a giant gravity well, we don't fall into it and we never will. It will eventually expand and encompass us by which I mean our planet, not us. We will not be around by then. We'll be going. Yeah, it, not least because a number of other changes will have occurred in the solar system that will have killed us first if we haven't killed ourselves. And also because our species has been around for 250,000 years of which only the last 2,000 have been where we were really the

dominant species on the planet. And we and we're talking about like hundreds of millions of years from now. There is no way. I mean, who looks at like the current human landscape and thinks, oh, we're definitely in the first one-tenth of one percent of this experience. Black holes are the, think of them as sucking because a photon that is emitted by the object,

there's a solid object in there, that is emitted by the solid object inside of the black hole, cannot escape the black hole. But things that are outside of the black hole don't get sucked in unless they're already on a collision course with the black hole in one way or another, just like things that are around the sun, don't get sucked into the sun. So we're not in danger of being eaten by a black hole. We are in danger of being eaten by our own hubris. Yeah, so Kevin, your existential angst is very well placed,

but it's not gonna be black holes. It's gonna be us. Which reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by human extinction, human extinction. I am very concerned about it and I feel like we aren't talking about it enough. I feel like it comes up fairly often. This podcast is also brought to you by The Sweat. The Sweat. It's food for things that live on you. Oh God. This podcast is also brought to you by our Uncle Mike.

Our Uncle Mike. He doesn't feel the need to fill the silence. And this podcast is also brought to you by Bloody Onvoloops. Bloody Onvoloops at the Wildland Center for the Prevention of Roads in 2005. You worked for a center for the Prevention of Roads? Yeah, like logging roads. Okay, that kind of roads is a bit of a weird name for an organization. We also have a project for awesome message to read from Nancy to Daniel.

I'm so happy that listening to and talking about this podcast is something we do together. Also, depending on when this message is read on the pod, I'm so proud of you for maybe having started medical school. Love you. Good luck, Daniel. I hope that you've maybe started medical school. And if not, I hope you're not like devastated by that project for awesome message.

This next question comes from Elliot, who asks, dear Hank and John, I've been informed by my sister that I walk too loudly and my parents agreed. My sister just said, I've been dealing with this my entire life. I'm 23. How do I change the way I walk?

I've been half stomping around, half tiptoeing, and it's not fun. Cheers, Elliot. We've all known you, Elliot. I had an upstairs neighbor named Dana, who had boots and never took them off, and she was not a big person, but she sure didn't sound that way.

I'm actually married to an Elliot. I remember when Sarah and I first started dating, I would hear her walking toward my apartment, like half a block before she arrived. Hahaha. Some people are just heavy steppers, Elliot. And instead of trying to change your walk, I encourage you to tell your family,

I am a heavy stepper. It's who I am. I can't look, my foot hits the ground and that is the noise that happens. Like I can't fix it. Recently, my personal trainer, Laura, said to me, John, you need to land more softly. And I was like, listen, I jump and then I fall out of the sky for inches. and I land, and that is it. I don't have, I'm not gonna learn how to jump softly. I'm 41 years old, Elliot, you're a heavy walker, you're a good person, and it's just everybody has a thing,

and that's your thing, and it's no big deal. People in security are designing software systems that can identify people by their gate, by the way that they walk. This, like to me, that says, this isn't like a thing that I do. It's as big a part of me as like my face or my brain. Like this is who I am. It's me.

Homeland, the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that this is just who I am. That's what you should say, Elliot. All right, Johnny, here's another question. It's from Eric, who asks, Dear Hankajan, why is it that when I brush an ant off my table or my leg, they fall to the floor and then just keep moving? That would be like someone pushing me off a building and then me just carrying on with my day unfazed. Why don't ants die from falling from heights? Name specific sign-offs are hard when your name is so gen-eric.

Oh, that's good. That's very good. I mean, it worked hard for it. That's for sure. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't easy, but you got there. And so there's a bunch of things that are going on here. First of all, if you brush it, uh, uh, ant off your desk, it's not like falling off a building. It's because gravity happens on meters per second basis, it would be like you falling off your desk. One, which for clarity would actually hurt you more than I hurts an ant. Yes. Because you are much heavier than an ant, ants have very low mass when compared to their surface area. So yes, an ant could, however, also fall from a building and be just fine, which is amazing.

Because they float, basically. They're like a feather. Yeah, they're just soft landers. They're like, they're not like Elliot, they're not heavy walkers. Have you ever had an aunt roommate though? That's a heavy walker. Oh my God, six legs. And they hit the ground like constantly.

And have very low terminal velocity. There you go. You got there. That's where we're at. Yeah. All right, we have another question. This one comes from McKenna who writes, hello, John and Hank, but mostly John.

It's my kind of question. Recently I was hanging out with some friends and I was asked who I would have play me in a movie about my life. I didn't know what to say. Do I pick a celebrity I admire so that I can meet them or do I pick someone that looks like me? Since John is a well-known casting director,

I thought he would be the right expert to consult. McKenna. I think you have to pick somebody who looks a little like you or it's weird. Like I think if I were to say, you know, I'd love for Julia Roberts to play me in the movie adaptation of my life, people would be like, I don't I don't see. I'd be like, oh, she seems like a cool person and I'd like to meet her and people would be like, well that's not how movies work. I used to not have an answer for this question because I used to think that nobody looked like me

and now I realize that actually everyone looks like you. Yeah, if they just put on 30 pounds, like a lot of actors would look like me. Like Christian Bale could get there very quickly. But the person I would wanna play me in a movie, Hank, is definitely no question Mark Duplass, who does look like a kind of hotter version of me, but also like a funnier, more charming version of me.

And I feel like he could crush it in the role of me. Unfortunately, my life is not nearly interesting enough to be biopic. Like if I made one conclusion from watching that Queen movie, it's that I ain't pretty mercury. Yeah, you watch a good biopic and you're like, oh, these famous people are very weird. Yeah, like, oh my gosh, they did so many things. And also, there's no, we will rock you moment in my career.

You know, like there's no like moment that it all builds to, and there's 90,000 people like screaming things. Yeah, just, instead it's just like, and then he sat in the basement some more. I was thinking Jason Ralph from the magician. So I feel like we got a similar vibe going on. I feel like we put some glasses on that guy, cut his hair. He'd look a lot like me.

Yeah, yeah, that would work. But this is an answering the question at all. Now we've just grabbed it and said, hey, actually, we would like, we would like to answer this question for ourselves. Can we make this about us somehow? We're not doing this the way Uncle Mike would want, John. It's true. Uncle Mike would never have answered that question that way. He would have just said, I think you find the right person. We used to do a podcast with Uncle Mike. Oh my God. What an amazing special guest.

He would never do it, but he would be amazing. He just has no tolerance for, I, I, I, he would find this completely un-listenable. I mean, he, like there's a small chance one of our cousins was like, hey, Uncle Mike, you're in the podcast this week. And then he tried to listen to it and he was just like, oh God, no, no, no.

Definitely not that. Hank, before we get to the all important news from was just like, oh God, no, no, no. Definitely not that. Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I just want to acknowledge the 50,000 emails that we got asking us questions from the past. People asking us questions from moments in history. One for instance, from Tathonus who wrote, dear John and Hank, I'm writing to you from the land of Troy. I've been a Trojan soldier for many a year, and we've been waging war with the Greeks for 20 years. However, they seem to have left, and we have won,

to congratulate us. LAUGHTER The army seems to have left behind a large wooden horse outside the gates of our city as a parting victory gift. Should we take it into the city? Some of the said there might be something fishy, but it's a beautiful horse. We won! We won exclamation point to bonus. Look, we can't interfere with the timeline here. So, like, I appreciate that you're a listener

and everything, but I'm just gonna have to tell you to take the horse into your beautiful city. Yeah, let that horse in. We can't risk it to Thonus. Like there's a few things that I'd be willing to risk the timeline for, but that ain't one of them. Yeah. Also, we've got some update tank, Asia,

who you'll remember, Broke a lamp while pet sitting. Oh, yes. And spilled red wine. Uh-huh. Asia wrote to say that everything worked out just fine with the Broke and a lamp while pet sitting and spilled red wine. Asia wrote to say that everything worked out just fine with the broken lamp incident as she is currently pet sitting for the same people again.

And they've also booked her for next month. Nice. Congratulations on your booming pet sitting career, but also in its PS. This time, they did not leave me a bottle of red wine to enjoy. Oh, you've betrayed their trust and you've lost your wine access. Indeed.

Ada has written, say, Dear Hengenjohn in 2016, episode 69, a Trinity University alum wrote into the pod seeking advice about an ad she was in for said university. The ad in question, she was told to wear a clown costume from the theater production she was in, but was, in fact, the only person wearing a crazy costume. At the time, a life-sized version of that ad had been up in Terminal B of the San Antonio Airport for over three years. Now, it's sadly happily is not there anymore. Is it the end of an era? As of 2019, the ad has finally been replaced with one celebrating the university's 150th anniversary just wanted to let everybody know The situation has finally been resolved. Okay. That's like the longest callback we've ever had

So thank you Ada very much We're letting us know about the situation read the weird clown ad I mean that's still one of my all-time favorite questions It's so freaking weird. It's so freaking weird. It's a classic. All right, I think it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll start. The news from AFC Wimbledon, it's mixed.

I guess AFC Wimbledon went one nil up in a vital, and it must be said, winnable game against Bristol Rovers. A game that if we had won, we would have moved out of the dreaded relegation zone, but alas, we ended up giving up a, what was a really impressive goal from Bristol Rovers in the 78th minute? And as a result, Wimbledon now are on 45 points with three games remaining.

We currently are in the last, like we are currently in 21st place, which is the first team to get relegated or the last team to get relegated, depending on how you think of it. But the critical thing is moving from 21st place, which would result in us spending next season in the fourth tier of English football to 20th place, which would result in another season of third tier English football. Well, I watched the highlights from that game and it was close, hard fought and it seemed like you guys can do it. It seems like you guys can do it.

Yeah, we definitely need to win one of our last three games and we might need to win one and draw one. I... this is torture. I mean, it's... this is brutal. I'm not having any fun, to be honest with you. Yeah. I watch the games now. At times, I watch the games literally... like, while my hands are covering my eyes because it's so unbearable. Even talking about it is super stressful. I just, I desperately, and I know all the other teams have supporters that feel this way

too, but like, Wimbledon needs to stay up, they deserve to stay up, and I just desperately want to get enough points to put somebody else in 21st. I just loaded up the league table on here in 22nd. Oh crap! What happened? Oh, no. But you've played fewer games than all the people around you. Yeah, but we needed one of the teams that won to not have won.

Yeah, South and United. Yeah, South and Dwan, and that was bad for you, huh? They needed, yeah, they needed to lose. That was the, they were, they were the team. We were kind of counting on finishing above them. I don't know, Hank. I mean, yeah, based on the results that you've just informed me of,

I now think that we have to at least win one and draw one. Maybe win two. Oh, God, all right, let's move on. What's the news from Mars? The news from Mars is also weird and mixed, so we've talked a good bit here about methane on Mars. And this sort of like, it's doing, it's playing with us. I don't know what's happening.

Like, suddenly, like, one day there's methane on Mars the next day there isn't, like, seemingly literally. Like, we are starting to think that one of the things that could be happening is that methane is produced on Mars and it is also consumed very quickly by some process. So instead of it like ending up inside of the atmosphere and then just like blowing around until it gets like off-gast into space,

like the way you would think of it happening, like through geological processes, that would take thousands of years. And it seems like it appears and vanishes very quickly. So we have no idea how this could be happening. It's very strange. The bleeding explanation is that like something about our measurements are wrong. So we've heard me even quite recently on this podcast saying that there's definitely sometimes methane in the atmosphere of Mars, but it seems to vary seasonally.

Now it's like, actually, maybe there isn't, because the exo-Mars mission has taken readings that show none, nothing, zero parts per billion in the atmosphere, and whereas other missions have definitely, I like, been able to find a substantial amount, including curiosity rover. And that's over a long period of time with different observations of the same area of the planet showing methane and now showing that throughout the whole planet there isn't any detectable.

So it's very strange and this like the question of methane on Mars has become a big, hairy, weird one that is one of the most exciting things in planetary science right now. So we don't know where it might be coming from, we don't know where it might be going, and that is why the sort of leading theory is that maybe something is just wrong with our measurements. Or there are martians,

or there are martians that are eating the methane. That are eating the methane. Yes, that is another option. Doesn't that possible? Yeah! I don't know. Like, yeah, I don't know how life would work on another planet. I love that we are now getting enough information

from Mars for there to be some proper mysteries. I don't know if you're joking about that, but- No, I'm serious. Oh, that's always been the case. Every time you get more- Well, I guess maybe I'm more into these kinds of mysteries than the old mysteries, which I found sort of boring. John, thank you for potting with me.

It's been a lovely time and I'm so sorry that AFC will make it so exciting for all of us, but so anxious making for you. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosiana Halsey-Rouhoss and Sheridan Gibson. Our head of community and communications is Victoria Bon Giorno. If you want to email us, you can do that with all your questions at Hank and John at gmail.com. The music that you're hearing right now is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say,

in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.