Dear Hank & John - 191: The Engagement Duck

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

What is the dress code if there is no dress code? Where can I be anxious at work? What should I do with 72 tall vases? How can I avoid having to do dishes? How can I grow my own vegetables if the Sun is in the wrong place? How do I sort out my priorities? How do I tell my girlfriend's mother we aren't ready for a duck? Is there a polite way to ask someone to eat quietly? How and where should I conceal the dream rock? John and Hank have dubious advice! 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 Hank and John. There's up for the think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a cod past. It's a podcast where two brothers and see your questions give you to be a advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. You know, I just went on a trip to California, got back and my luggage was so damaged that I took it to a lawyer to show him and say, well, I want to sue the airline and the lawyer said, I'm afraid you don't have much of a case.

I'll tell you what I liked about that joke. There was a tiny bit of misdirection in the form of California. And so I'm thinking, is it going to be a pun on Big Sur? Is it gonna be about the city of angels? No, that's just an unnecessary detail. Hank, your jokes need more unnecessary details. All right, I'll work on that. Here's what I would have tweeted about this week. I would have tweeted that the great Nicholas Jenkins is editing his last episode of Dear Hank and John.

Oh my God, Nick! The Nick! Y'all haven't heard Nick's name over the last few years as many times as Nick has heard his name. When we say Nick, please cut that. Nick, whatever happens, don't let that get to the radio. Does this thing go out on the radio? Anyway, Nick is a huge part of Deerhank and John.

Thank you so much for doing this with us. Yeah, for building it with us. We are so grateful and we are also so excited that you're going to be still working with Complexly and working on Crash Course and doing all the awesome stuff that you do. And we're excited to have Tuna editing the podcast now. We're gonna have to mentally stop saying Nick and start saying Tuna. Hopefully you, the listener,

won't notice any difference. And if you do notice any difference, bear in mind that it's probably because of confirmation bias rather than because of actual differences. Yeah. I mean, it also just may be that John and I, we're different. We keep growing up. We keep getting older. Every day we're more mature, we're less funny, it's different, it's great. It's so true. Sometimes I watch old vlog videos and I'm like, oh, that guy was hilarious.

Where did that go? Well, he needs to make videos. I wish he made videos. Why did he quit YouTube? Oh, but Nick, seriously, thank you. From day one, Nick has been editing this podcast and he's also been, you know, even before that working on Crash Course.

And so we're just freeing him up to work on more cool projects at Complexly and excited to work with Tuna, who is really fun, and I like working with him on SciShow, already so glad to be yelling at him to take things out of the podcast now. Every reference to Putin, please, Tuna, just as a general rule,

I talk about Vladimir Putin, just cut that immediately. He's tried to hack us before, not a joke. This first question comes from Cassie, who writes, dear John and Hank, during the project for awesome, John did an AMA on Reddit where I asked what my new passion should be, and John suggested vegetable gardening.

I love this idea, but I just moved, and my new apartment is facing north without adequate sunlight for gardening. Is there any way I can work around this to grow my own vegetables? Potatoes and petunias, Cassie. Yeah, Cassie, what you're gonna wanna do is get some grow lights,

which are usually used for the production of one particular agricultural product. That's gonna look suspicious. But they can be used for lots of things. Yeah. I'm not gonna name any names here, Hank, but I have a cousin who in college was living at home over a summer and managed to have a thriving vegetable garden

in their bathtub supported by growlites. That doesn't matter what this cousin was growing. It was a plant and it was, I think, edible? It was happy. Yeah, the happy edible plant. And their parents never even found out until very near the end of summer when the plants in question were huge. So, I think that a good interior grow grow light garden situation is an herb garden. Yes, turns out cabbages take up enormous amounts of space. They do. You're gonna want to grow basil, which is convenient to have. And you take care of your basil and you love your basil

and then you make pesto with your basil. Where you make those tomato slices with cheese and basil things that is the best food. Yeah. What's that called like the best food. Yeah. What's that called? Caprese salad. That sounds right. And then you have your maybe some time,

some parsley sage, rosemary. The whole Simon and Garfunkel song. You got a whole fresh spice thing going on. And fresh spices are super expensive. Every time I buy basil at the store, I'm like, first of all, this is way more than I need. Also, I need to have a talk with the cilantro people about how you package cilantro.

I need like three milligrams of cilantro, and there's no way to buy more than eight pounds. Less than eight pounds, and that's one of the weirdest rants of all the like, impassioned, faux outraged rants that you've gone on in the history of this podcast, that was the worst. If anybody knows a cilantro person, I need to talk to them about the situation.

I'm a cilantro person, actually. I'm currently growing at least 20 cilantro plants, and I can tell you from experience that you do need more cilantro. The issue actually is not with the way the cilantro is being packaged, it's the way you're preparing your food, which is with inadequate cilantro. But Catherine agrees with you. To move back to the question, the big herbs I would try to grow in my north-facing apartment would be, I agree with you Hank, basil, mint. It's impossible to kill.

It's delicious and mint julipsips and you can make mint tea from it and rosemary. Rosemary, you can put it on pretty much anything. Those are just three that I think are big, big winners. And then if you want to grow a cilantro plant just to annoy Hank then that's worth doing too. Welcome to gardening with Hank and John. Alright Hank, let's move on. Alright John, this next question comes from Emily, who asks, dear Hank and John, both my girlfriend and I hate doing dishes, not like sort of find it annoying, but hate it so much that we go to lengths

to clean the entire rest of the house just so the other person feels obligated to do the dishes. Help, and please do not tell me to watch the dishes as we go, Emily. Apparently that's something you've heard before, Emily, apparently that's that that's something you've heard before Emily and I've not taken that advice kindly. That is what I would have said, though. Yeah, the way to minimize the number of dishes you have is to minimize the number of dishes you use and maximize the number of dishes you wash as you go. But that's

obviously not the problem here. The problem here is that Emily needs to figure out a way to either do the dishes or get her girlfriend excited about doing the dishes. So I think that chore compatibility is a huge part of relationship success that no one talks about. It's definitely not on Tinder profiles, but probably should be. Right, I don't mind doing the dishes. People swiping whichever way is the good way It's definitely like not on Tinder profiles, but probably should be. Right.

I don't mind doing the dishes. People swiping whichever way is the good way over and over again. Yeah. The last thing I need to do is marry another person who does the dishes. Yeah. I love that neither of us knows like really which way to swipe with the Tinder, but we try to stay young. I assume that right is the good way. I don't even know if people use Tinder anymore for shirts.

Yeah. Is it still happening? At any rate, it doesn't matter because Emily already has a partner. So yeah, yeah, yeah. This is too far down the road to be helpful to them. Emily, what you've got to do is you've got to train yourself to love washing the dishes. Now, I'll be the first to admit this is not easy, but it is possible.

Here's what I do. Okay, you go. And from Hank, you tell me what you do. I have nice noise canceling headphones and I treat dishes time as John time. John time to listen to podcasts. John time to listen to the new Mountain Goats album, which is about Dungeons and Dragons and is amazing. John time to listen to an audio book. Yeah, I'm doing the dishes. It's a little unpleasant. I don't like touching other people's like masticated food that they spit out

in the case of my children because they decided that like that chicken nugget was somehow inferior to other chicken nuggets. But it's okay because it's John Time. So basically same, except I will say, another strategy. One, save like a podcast that you absolutely love just for dishes and only let yourself listen to it while you're doing dishes and then like you will associate dishes with the thing that you like.

Two, try this out. I'm not going to guarantee it's going to work. Do the dishes together. It'll go twice as fast. You're going to wash. She's going to dry. And then at the end of the process, you will have like done an unpleasant thing together and it will have brought you closer. There is research that shows that couples who do unpleasant tasks

together are happier than those who do unpleasant tasks apart. Wow. I didn't know that. There you go. Get on that Dishes team together. Okay. This next question comes from Jesse who writes, dear John and Hank, how do you stop yourself from doing too much work when your work is something you love? I'm a high school English teacher and I love what I do reading books and being able to talk about what makes them awesome with students and planning what books we will read next year

and how we'll talk about them. But I spend too much time on my work as evidenced by the fact that I moved to a new apartment in September and still haven't alphabetized my bookshelves. It's May. The hard part, though, is that it's hard to tell when I have done enough work, put enough planning into my lessons or enough thought into what my booklists for next year will be, hung up enough posters in my classroom.

So my question is, at what point do you decide enough is enough, turn off the switch and let things be? And more importantly, what should I assign my ninth graders for summer reading? Analysis and anxiety, Jesse. Well, this is really great books. Fairly no, it's called an absolutely remarkable thing. That's funny that you should recommend

an absolutely remarkable thing for summer reading for ninth graders, Hank, because I was thinking that a great choice would be the fault in our stars. Well, that's just cruel. You're doing fine. Am I? I think that book has reached an audience of a size. But has it reached an audience that includes

Jesse's ninth graders? I'm gonna guess, probably not. Yeah. Do you need that next generation? I need it. I need it badly. Hey, so Jesse, I asked this question in the hopes that by asking it, someone could email us the answer

because Hank and I don't know the answer to how do you stop yourself from doing too much work when your work is something that you love. Ultimately, for me, it's not like, because what are you stopping in favor of doing? So for me, it's like conscious prioritization and to say, like, am I prioritizing this task right now because it is something that just feels like

it's sort of the natural thing to keep doing, or is it actually helping, or am I actually enjoying it, or are there other tasks that will be like, sort of better for future me if I prioritize them right now? For me, tasks includes terribly everything, including spending time with my family, talking to my brother about something that isn't work.

Like, I'm sorry for laughing, but we haven't done that in at least seven years. We do, we do, we texted about not work stuff very recently, as weekend even. Briefly, I mean, one sentence from me and one sentence from you, both about our anniversaries. Yeah, bathing, for example, would be a great task that I tend to not prioritize,

but should, because I tend to just be doing the thing that I'm already doing. So it's really about remembering that those other things exist and that they also need to be prioritized. And then if all those things are taken care of, do the thing that you like doing, just because it's work and quotation marks

Doesn't mean that you need to like stop doing it. Yeah, I find it very helpful Never to say I'm too busy to do this or I'm too busy for that right now and instead to say I Don't want to make that a priority because if I say I'm too busy to spend time with my children, what I'm essentially saying is, I don't want to make spending time with my children a priority. And when I understand that, I prioritize my time much more effectively.

And I remember that even if it isn't what pays the bills or what gives me a lot of like outside Affirmation spending time with my children is the number one priority And so if you frame it that way instead of I'm overwhelmed with work And so I can't do x, y, or z or I don't know when to stop working and instead frame it as I need to prioritize what matters to me with my time, that can be helpful, I think, regardless of whether you love your job or hate it. On the summer reading front, I do have a recommendation, Jesse, that isn't a book written by either Green Brother. I recommend having your kids read Parable of the Soar by Octavia Butler. It's harrowing.

It's definitely intense, but it is a book that could change their lives and make them love reading. So that's my recommendation. Great. This next question comes from Niseem, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I just got accepted for a job position in a tech company in a different country, which I know has very hot weather. I asked my boss, what is the company's dress code?

And he said, there is no dress code. Uh, what does that mean? Can I wear a T-shirt in jeans? Do I have to wear a nice shirt? Am I allowed to wear flip-flops or shorts when it's really hot? I would much rather have him tell me what I should wear, but this is apparently not going to happen before I have to pack in need of dubious advice. Pumpkins and penguins, Niseem.

So I think the right call here is to show up at work on day one wearing just underwear. And then kind of work your way up from there. So be like, hey boss, is this, is this the dress code? No? All right, see you tomorrow. And then tomorrow you got to pair shorts on. And you're like, is this the dress code? No. All right. I would there yet. And you put to pair shorts on. And you're like, is this the dress code? No, all right.

Are we there yet? Then you put on a t-shirt and you're like, what about this? And then your boss will probably be like, yeah, that's all right. And you'll be like, great, only took three days. This does annoy me because like what this means, what there is no dress code means is like dress normal,

which is not the same for everyone. Right. Especially if you're moving countries and continents. So it's basically saying like, just have the normal cultural understanding of everybody who is the same for everyone. Right. Especially if you're moving countries and agreements. So it's basically saying like, just have the normal cultural understanding of everybody who is the same, right? Of the general homogeneity of the world, which doesn't exist. Right. So probably what this means is wear a button down shirt and choose and pants, probably.

But yeah, actually, I just had an idea, Hank. Yeah. Instead of starting with underwear, instead of starting with like definitely too little clothes. Well, that's the way to like rub it in the face and say like, this is not an acceptable thing to say in a job interview situation. You did to tell me what the frick I should wear to my job.

I've realized that what you should actually do is start a little bit. Start a little bit. To well-dressed, right? And then it's way easier to work your way down than it is to work your way up. So, or, or, Naseem, I hear that you have expertise in some kind of tech thing by the job

that you have just received. What you're gonna wanna do is hack them and then turn on all their webcams before you move countries and take pictures of them and see what they're wearing. Right. You just gotta hack their security systems or their computers.

Just get some good malware in there. Do some social engineering and problem-solves. Alternately, you could wear a button down shirt, tucked into a pair of khakis and some reasonably nice shoes. And, you know, if that's too much, by midday, maybe you untuck the shirt and roll up the sleeves. But you got to have a bunch, you got to have like a complete three-piece suit that's tear away.

So you could just go, really walking the door and you're like, wrong! You're just in your gym shorts. And then underneath your button down shirt, you have a t-shirt and then underneath your t-shirt you have a tank top and then underneath your tank top you just have kind of like a tube top that bears the midriff because you don't know. Super cash right? Yeah and the same. So basically you're gonna want to wear like nine outfits on top of each other and then just kind of decloat as the day goes. It occurs to me that they probably have pictures of some of their staff on the website.

Look as he went there wearing in the pictures. I mean, that's not nearly as good as hacking all their webcams. All right, this next question comes from Jacob, and it's a big one, Hank. Jacob writes, dear John and Hank, my girlfriend, and I recently found out that her mother plans to give us a live duck as a present when we get engaged. What, why'd you put it on the registry?

That's on you Jacob. If you don't want a duck, don't register at ducks.com for 400 ducks. Both my girlfriend and I agree that we're not ready for a duck and likely won't be by the time we get engaged. I mean of course. I mean, maybe who says I mean, I like that Jacob is open to the idea that they will be ready for a duck someday. Yeah, but they're just not there yet.

How do we tell my girlfriend's mother that we don't want a duck without hurting her feelings or revealing the sources of our information? Oh, yeah, you can't reveal your sources. That's like textbook ethics. Can you imagine like Jacob's girlfriend's dad Calling Jacob's girlfriend and being like so listen You know your mother. She's so wonderful. We all love her very much. You know how she loves her ducks. So, I don't know if I believe it. Why don't you believe it's not possible? I sometimes we get questions that are obvious goofs

and this has to be a goof. There's no way. Where do you live? Like you have in a place where you can have a duck. Where do you keep a duck? You don't keep it inside. It poops to you. I a place where you can have a duck, where do you keep a duck? You don't keep it inside. It poops to you. I mean, maybe you do keep a duck.

Maybe people have like, completely domesticated ducks that like pee in the potty and everything. You guys gotta take it for walks, I guess. Oh God, that would be so cute. Actually taking your duck for a walk. All right, now I'm on board. Maybe, maybe, maybe, here's the solution,

you are ready for a duck. No, you think you're maybe here's the solution, you are ready for a duck. No, you think you're not ready for a duck? You're ready for a duck. Just believe in your relationship, believe in yourself. You're getting engaged. No, that, getting engaged does not mean also acquiring a third member of the family. Hey, what if instead of engagement rings, we had ducks.

Wouldn't the world be a better place? It's actually true. Wouldn't it be amazing you go to a football game and the jumbo tron and then the guy gets on a one knee and just thrusts a duck at a woman? Will you marry me? And this duck's squawking and it's flapping. And then the duck flies around

and the whole stadium's chasing the duck and they're like, we gotta get the duck. And you'd go to the mall and there would be these kiosks where you can buy a duck, but you have to spend like two or three months of your salary on a really, really good duck. So your partner will know that you're serious. Oh, you don't wanna get your partner this duck.

This is like too lit, man, you have a duck. I mean, your partner is gonna live with this duck for the next like 12 years. This duck is gonna remind your partner of you forever. Do you really want to get a substandard duck or do you want the highest quality duck available? Yeah, you got to wear this duck on your hand for years. Jacob, you have to stop this now. This, this is an emergency. I don't want to overstate it. But if this is not a goof, it is a very serious problem. And the way that you address it is the next time you are with your girlfriend's mother,

you and your girlfriend say, to slash in front of the mother, I love your ducks. I'm so glad you have ducks. I'm glad that these ducks bring you joy, but we are young people who are not looking to bring a duck into our lives at this juncture. We wanna be able to travel duck free. We wanna be able to be duck without feeling weird about it.

We wanna be able, this is the life we want for ourselves right now, and we need you to respect that. Yeah, you got it. Maybe you could just say like, oh, we're really looking forward to after we get engaged to doing a bunch of traveling. It's one of the only times in our lives and we're not gonna have a dog or a cat or a duck or a kid.

And he's like, put the duck in there. Like, slip it in. I'm just sneaking it in. Put it third in a list of four. And we could just travel completely without any responsibility. And not have to worry about like, how sitters and like having a duck sitters, et cetera.

Et cetera. And you know what, the mom is probably gonna say, what? She's probably gonna say, oh, don't worry, you can travel with the duck. Oh yeah, they love travel.

Yeah. They love it. They choose it. They choose it. I'm a camper van. You haven't seen your 70, till you've seen your 70 with the duck. You think you've been to Paris, but wait till you go to Paris with a duck.

John, here's our next question. It's from Maggie who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm getting married next year and I wanted to be proactive in planning. So I bought 36 tall vases from DollarTree.com to use this table decorations. This was after my friend who runs a wedding business told me that she had given away her 36 tall vases. Turns out her 36 tall vases were not actually given away and they offered them to me for my wedding.

Dollar Tree doesn't have returns for online orders, so I have 72 tall vases at my disposal. What should I do with them? Vases and virtues, Maggie. Obviously you should turn them into little duck homes. For very small ducks. How big are these vases? There's a link here. Is that going to take me to see what the vase looks like? Or is that going to take us to their wedding? Oh no, it's a wedding registry. We've shown a weakness for registries before.

Yeah, no, that's not happening. And now people are starting to exploit it. Hold on. Let me look at this registry and see if I want to buy anything. I don't like that we've been tricked by our viewers into buying stuff off their wedding registry. On the other hand, there is some excellent stuff here that you do need when you're starting out of life together. Yeah, but you don't need my God.

This is like the difference between this wedding registry and the college registry. Like school registry is so dramatically. So dramatic. The lifestyle inflation that has occurred in the last few years of this person's life. Yeah, the college registry, I would say, if you combine to all of the items together,

they all together cost less than the one kitchen eight mixer on this person's registry. College kids know how to live, man. I will say I have that kitchen eight mixer and it's excellent and we've had it since we got it for our wedding. So, I mean, I'm not gonna buy it for you because I don't have that kind of money, but I will buy your little mixing spoon things.

This bath mat looks real nice. It's like squishy. No, hey, we can't keep doing this because then more people's and as more registries and pretty soon will be bankrupt. John, I have actual advice for Maggie. Great. I have a friend who runs a florist shop and they buy lots of vases all the time and they will actually take vases from people back and they're happy to take those and reuse those

vases. I think they even get a discount on future orders if they do that or they pay them like a dollar per vase or something. So you could come back with your vases. I don't know if your florist will do this, but like generally florists need vases and they're happy to have some. And it's wild because like you get these flowers

and they come in a vase and then just like, oh, like every time I get new flowers, they come in a new and then just like, oh, like every time I get new flowers, they come in a new vase, it's too many vases. So I always bring them back to my forest friend. That's smart. There you go, proper advice. Hank, I can ask a question that I have proper advice for. Oh, okay, go.

This question comes from Maya, who writes to your John and Hank, I tend to be really good at managing my anxiety and dealing with it when it crops up in a situation like a class or a concert or something, but there's one place I don't know what to do when I get anxious work like I could go to the bathroom or something But that feels kind of weird and I definitely don't want to stay in my little cubicle where everyone can see me being anxious Do be as advice is appreciated Maya. So first off Maya if you're concerned about your mental health You should not talk to podcasters. You should talk to a mental health professional

I really encourage you to seek help. We are not psychologists. I'm just gonna share with you something that works for me and that has been shown to work for other people, which is to go into the bathroom at work, turn on the water spout and run cold water over your wrists. It can also work for some people to kind of splash their face with really cold water,

but for me running cold water like over the inside of my wrists really does help and there's some you know quasi-science behind this that I don't understand, but it works for me. And nobody thinks you're weird if you wash your hands, they think you're good, they're happy, they're proud of you. So it doesn't look weird. Also, I would say that 99% of the time, nobody at work will notice that you're anxious because everybody's too self-involved. That was gonna be my advice,

that if you're like in your cubicle being anxious, probably no one will notice. I mean, the extent to which nobody notices what's going on with you is hard to overestimate. Honestly, I think there's a pretty good chance that Naseem is going to walk into work on the first day wearing a tuxedo and everyone's going to be like, kind of seem nice to meet you. Here's your seat. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Sometimes you also don't get a first chance. That's so true.

Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Tuxedo's at work. Tuxedo's at work. People probably won't even know. This podcast is also brought to you by Engagement Ducks. Engagement Ducks. There's the new fans going everywhere. Those are very expensive ducks, but they're worth it to show your love apparently. Hey, I'm just gonna throw this out there as a concept before we move on with the sponsorships. Uh-huh. EngagementDucks.com is available. And I know that we own too many websites. For instance, I know that we are...

What are we gonna do with engagement ducks, John? Hey, we're gonna sell... An engagement ducks and make a mint. No, the whole point is that no one wants a duck. The mom in the situation isn't giving them a duck because like she thinks it's a lovely gift. She has too many ducks. She doesn't want all the ducks she has.

They're not physical ducks, Hank. That would be crazy. They're virtual ducks. I like it. I'm on board. Virtual engagement ducks. They're virtual ducks and all the money goes to partners in health Sierra Leone and you go and you buy

your engagement duck and that's how you know you're really engaged. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Chor compatibility. Chor compatibility, why isn't that on Tinder? Tell me which dishes you like to do so I know whether or not we're a long-term match because that's what I'm looking for on Tinder, I assume.

And this podcast is brought to you by Tuna. Tuna, editing the podcast, and also a fish. Two separate things. Proxy, it's two different sponsors. Oh, okay. You slipped in an extra sponsor. I did, I sneaky. Well, you know, we gotta make a living.

Gotta get that money. We also have a project for awesome message Shred from Amir to Iya, a sob you like him. I just wanted to use this opportunity to have Hank or John tell you something very important I only have 70 words to say it though Well, that seems like a bunch of words sitting here trying to think of the perfect way to tell you what I want It seems far too few words. How can one even begin to describe what I want to say? I want to say I love Amir You only need three words say I want to say I love. Ah, meer.

You only need three words. It's all gonna be okay. You only need three words. It was all gonna be okay. Anyway, we wish you both well. This next question comes from Madeline, who asks, do you rank a John? Is there a polite way to ask someone to eat quietly?

I'm tired of leaving the room every time my roommate's boyfriend decides to have a snack. In two straight lines, Madeline. I wanted to ask this question because maybe it's the politest way I can talk to my brother about the way he eats. I think I eat very quietly. Maybe not super loud, but like, occasionally fairly visibly. Oh yeah, I don't, yeah. No, that is a problem. I agree that that's a good way to bring it up. Like have it come up naturally in conversation

and then be like, I wish that you wouldn't eat with your mouth open or whatever. I also think that sometimes it's helpful to frame this stuff as a kindness that really chewing with your mouth shut is about taking an opportunity to slightly inconvenience yourself so that you can show the people who might be watching you eat some kindness. How do you like ask for that kindness? I think like from a person who is a loud eater. You try to get it to come up in conversation

and then you begin to discuss it, but I actually don't think that's the issue. I think the reason that you find my eating annoying is that almost 100% of the time we're eating together, we are in high stress situations and you already have a base level of frustration. And I think what's really going on here is that this person doesn't love their roommates boyfriend and the boyfriends like constant presence on the couch is a little bit not what I

signed up for on the lease and is a little bit frustrating and therefore slightly loud eating becomes much louder in my ears because I'm so annoyed. That's my guess. So what you gotta do, you know those like sweat bands that you put around your head so that your sweat doesn't get in your eye? Yeah. When the boyfriend starts eating,

just go up to him and put that on except over his mouth. Oh no, what I would do is even more passive aggressive which is that I would take out my noise cancelling headphones and turn them on. Yeah. But look, the long-term solution here is very simple. You've either got to break up this couple

or you've got to get your roommate to move out. And on that front, I have one word of recommendation. Oh. Ducks. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Just start having a lot of ducks in the recommendation. Huh. Ducks. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I love them. Yeah, what am I gonna do? Give them back, that'd be impolite. These are the apartment ducks now. Yeah, I mean, they reside here as much as your boyfriend does. Do they eat too loud for you? I wouldn't know what that's like.

Hank and John giving aggressively passive aggressive advice since 2014. All right, I think we have a question from Peary who writes, do you John and Hank, I just had a dream where I was holding a little piece of rock, and if that rock got exposed to any light, an ancient demon would grow stronger in power. How and where should I seal this piece of rock when I return to the dream so that humanity can sleep safely in my dream for as long as possible?

I mean, I love, I love like interesting plot devices and dreams so much. Yeah. Usually dreams are like the one I had last night where I was sharing a hotel room with my wife, son, and the Macarole brothers, and there was a volcano outside that was slowly like pouring lava into the hotel room and I called the hotel staff and they were like,

no, that's normal, and all the Macaroles were like, why are you so worried about this? Like that's not a good like like, short story to write, but like a rock that when it gets exposed to light, a demon somewhere gets stronger. That's a great story. Like, you are charged with preventing this demon from gaining in strength and have to like prevent photons

from touching something, which is not easy. They're everywhere. That's right. No, this is the beginning of a wonderful epic fantasy novel. Yeah. Whereas all of my dreams are like me eating a banana, worrying about crash course. Yeah.

Yeah. Like most of my dreams are getting up, getting the baby up, shaving, taking a shower. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know there's nothing less interesting than other people's dreams, except for Peeries dreams. But I did recently have a somewhat interesting dream

with Keanu Reeves in it, which is always welcome. Like I always take that as a good omen when Keanu shows up in my dreams. But anyway, in my dream, Keanu and I were at the same party, and he came up to me and he was like, it seems like you've been having a hard time and I was like, oh, I have. Yeah.

And then I woke up and I wondered if you walk up to anyone in the world at any time and you look deeply into their eyes and you say it seems like you've been having a hard time. I wonder if like 99% of people would be like, oh yeah, I have. Actually, thank you so much. Yeah, and then there's like the like one person

of people who are like, no, it's been going good. No, I'm good and I was doing good till you walked up and asked me that weird question. Now I've got to worry. Yeah, wait. It's you. It seems like that. That's how it seems.

Right. It's like when somebody says you look sick and I'm like, well, I feel fine. Am I sick? Oh God, I'm sick. Oh God, it's something's happening. But back to your dream, which was incredible. Hank, what are you doing this situation?

It's not enough to bury it. I think maybe this is what's in the Patrick Rothfuss box in the name of the wind, maybe? But I don't know. The thing about the one ring is you throw it into the river, but it always comes back. You can't get rid of it. It has a mind of its own.

So you have to maybe give this, if it's a narrative, give this rock some agency so that no matter what you do, it will always come back. And that's kind of true on Earth. And the scale of billions of years, like the stuff that goes underground comes back to the top, like they've got old, old rocks with ancient 500 million year old fossils in them, suddenly getting exposed on a, like the side of a river in China. So things never really go away.

So you have to find some way to store something forever, which as we've found with nuclear waste is very hard, and we're bad at it, and aren't, are just doing a terrible, terrible tub. So, no, I don't know what to do. Like, there are things that are opaque. You can wrap it in a bunch of tin foil, probably a good place to start. It's like a bunch, a bunch, a bunch,

and then you've at least got like a manageable thing that you can put into some other object to like bury it or throw it into the deep deep ocean, which is a pretty good place. Yeah, I think the deep deep ocean is the obvious place here. Yeah, and you have to have it be very heavy because like you don't want it to like get ocean

currented away, you have to go straight down. Super heavy, super dense, so it's tinfoil wrapped in like gold wrapped in platinum wrapped in lead. This is the expensive stuff. Probably lead is the one you want to go with just because it's like you want a lot of it and leads cheap. Well, I mean, I'm assuming that if Peer has access to this rock, there's also a level of access

to tremendous amounts of resources, right? Okay. But also who's to say that this demons a bad demon? Oh, great point. What if you drop it to the bottom of the ocean, and then you notice that things start to get worse on earth, and you're like, oh, I forgot about good demons. Or I forgot about how sometimes demons are complicated.

And then you've got to go on a new journey, the journey to the bottom of the ocean. And it turns out that you don't need it to get no light. You need it to get the right amount of light. Right. That's good. Yeah. That's why you write the plotty books.

Like some kind of flashlight that turns on only a little bit every day in a dark room, like the hallway where you go when there's a hurricane. Yeah, that's good. That's good, Hank. That's all good. All right,'s good. That's good, Hank. That's all good. All right. I think we've given you plenty to work with here.

Hank, before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wilden, we need to discuss some issues that came up in previous podcasts. Beginning with the water bed issue, we made fun of water beds. We said, who sleeps on water beds? Joshua writes, dear John and Hank, I suppose you never would have guessed that the owner of New England's largest water bed store is an avid listener to your podcast. After you're up to this week, I'm ready for an all-water bed all the time podcast. You can call it drifting apart with Hank and John. Here's a fun fact. Cows that sleep on water beds have increased milk production. Love the pod, Joshua.

I mean, that's pretty great. Joshua works at the all sleep store if you are in the market for a water bed. Also, Cassidy wrote this. Who the heck put a cow on a water bed and did science? Cassidy wrote, does they dear John and Hick, I just wanted to let you know that my mother and I

both have water beds in 2019. My mother has had a water bed for as long as I can remember, and I've had mine since I was 11. My mom has a king size, which is huge, and I have a full size. They're super nice if you have back problems and very warm on winter nights. So there you go. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. We've also got a science response from Adam, who says deer hank and John. An episode 188, Hank said that there was absolutely no chance

of Earth being ejected from the solar system. That sounds like a great thing to go on with my life believing and not continue saying what Adam said. But he says, I actually just handed in my master's thesis on this exact topic, and I found that if a planet around a host star undergoes a disturbance by way of a passing fly-by,

like if a star passes by, there's a non-zero chance of it being ejected from the system. 6.2% of the computer simulations I ran ended with a planet being ejected from the system. Though the likelihood of escape is dependent on the distance between the host star and the orbiting planet, the survivability of an Earth-like orbit was 98%. I don't subtract them. I add them. Okay. It's a very good name specific sign off, but I think that the good news is that we would see

a star fly by coming a long way away. I assume this is a star fly by. He doesn't actually say that and not a planet fly by, like a rogue planet fly by, which would be more likely, but less likely to be gravitationally significant. All right. There you go. Well, Hank, it's time for the news from AFC Wimbledon.

The season, mercifully over, which means it's the beginning of the silly season, the beginning of trying to sign some new players, trying to deal with the players who have left trying to resign the players who say they might resign, but haven't signed yet. It's also, however, a huge shift in AFC Wimbledon's history, because Simon Bassey has left his role as the first team coach after 17 years with AFC Wimbledon. Played for the old Wimbledon as a boy. It didn't work out. He became a cab driver. And then when Wimbledon reformed, he showed up to those tryouts at the public park on Wimbledon common. He got a place in the team. He was in the team for a few seasons. Never scored a goal. It took a penalty in his last game and skyd it, but he became a club legend for his commitment to

the club. He would drive the cab all day and still find time to help coach the team up through the ranks when we were a non league side and then into league two and then into league one. He is just an extraordinary person and a real hero of mine. And he'll be desperately desperately missed at AFC Wimbledon. And, you know, people talk about club legends all the time, but Simon Bassie is a proper legend for Wimbledon. And they often sing his name at games. And I know that they will continue to do so. Well, certainly miss him and I wish him the best in whatever comes next for him.

Well, John and news from Mars, the 2020 rover is getting really ready to start doing its thing to get on the way to Mars. And that means a few things. They're doing a lot of final tests. They're testing the actual entry system that has the heat shields and the rockets and all that stuff. But also, it means that they're getting ready to get all the instruments done to put on the rover. And that means that they're inviting the public to submit names to fly aboard the rover. So they have some little chips that they do electron stenciling onto and they have very,

very small names. And you can put your name inside the Mars 2020 rover and it will go to Mars and be on Mars. And you also get a little boarding pass that says here's your boarding pass from Mars 2020 in a launch site, Cape Canaveral, a rival site, Jezero Crater, Mars, Atlas, V541 rocket. And so you're gonna get 313 million miles

that you can use to trade in for theoretically something. I've just got one for Orrin, so his name's gonna be on Mars when the Mars 2020 Rover lands in 2021. How much are they? They're free, what? How do I sign up? You gotta go.nasa.gov slash Mars 2020 pass.

And you can be one of the, I think already like 750,000 people who have signed up to put their name on Mars. Ah, that is so cool. I'm doing that for Henry and Alice. Nice. Amazing. The country's most represented are the United States,

India and Turkey. I got to tell you, India has almost as many names submitted to go to Mars as the US, which I love. That's great. One of the things I love about space travel is that it's one of the goals that brings us together as a species. We need more of those goals.

We need more goals that are about us that don't require or create a them. And the good news is that thanks to climate change, we've got one. That's, yeah, yeah, woo, yay, climate change. Thanks for giving us that. I just looked up my previous sporting passes and in 2015, I submitted my own name

and it is currently on Mars. But now I have a baby, so he gets to go. No, that's great, that's great. That's great. I hope that he never actually goes to Mars because I don't want to stress out about my nephew being on another planet, but that would be so stressful. Oh my God, no. Yeah, I mean, I could barely handle it when they go to North Carolina.

Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. It's a pleasure as always. Thanks to everybody for your questions. Sorry for all the wonderful questions we don't get to, but you for potting with me. It's a pleasure, as always. Thanks to everybody for your questions. Sorry for all the wonderful questions we don't get to, but you can email us at Hank and John at gmail.com. We really love reading your questions. This podcast is produced by Rosiana Halsey, Rojas and Sheridan Gibson. It's edited by Joseph Tuna, Mettish, our head of community and communications, this Victoria

von Jornow, the music that you're hearing now, and the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola. And as they say on our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.