Dear Hank & John - 213: Baddy One Shoe

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Why don't we sink in sand? How do I not freak out about all the time I'm wasting? Do naughty people only wear one shoe? Why do microwaves rotate food? Am I up or down for whatever? My boyfriend doesn't know who Elon Musk is? What would happen if we immediately halted single-use plastics? John Green and Hank Green answer your questions! 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 Subscribe to the Nerdfighteria newsletter! https://nerdfighteria.com/nerdfighteria-newsletter

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John! Doors I prefer to think of it be your John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, bring you dubious advice and all of the week's news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, as you know, our production company Complexly is trying out a bunch of new shows this week. Yeah. We're working on another one right now.

It's all about the different systems that you need to fly a plane. We're filming the pilot right now. It's not. Hey, before we get to questions, I'm not even responding to the joke, but before we get to questions from our listeners, one of the things this podcast has become is our weekly opportunity to talk to each other because. Yeah, hi, how are you? I'm fine.

Busy. It's been a little bit. You have a mustache right now. Things have been a little bit busy at the moment. We're working on a lot of parallel tracks. Hank and I, I think, are happiest when we're collaborating on projects, but right now it's a lot of Hank working on some projects and me working on others

because there's just a lot going on. So, Hank, I have to tell you this on like a personal level and I hope that it's a good story for our listeners. But last night, a pretty weird thing happened to me. Okay. Is it exciting? In a manner of speaking, I had a stressful weekend. You know, a lot of work on this new Partners in Health project. Also, Pete's office is coming up.

The Let It Snow Netflix movie is coming out soon. There's just a bunch of things happening. So I was working late on Sunday night and I got to the point which rarely happens to me where I was answering emails and I started to like make mistakes. You know, like I started to just have like errors in the email like like pasting the wrong link or whatever. And I was like, okay, this is it, this is ridiculous. I need to go to bed. I'm gonna get eight hours of sleep. It's gonna be magical. I lay down, I was gonna get eight hours of sleep.

I went to sleep, I was in the deepest sleep of my life. And at one 15 in the morning, there was a huge explosion from the master bathroom. I don't know how it's to describe it. It was like the largest Lego sculpture ever created, all fell apart all at once. Was there actually a Lego sculpture in there? Well, that was my first thought. My first thought was, why is Henry playing with a very large Lego sculpture at one 15 in the morning? I jump out of bed, I scream, like, bloody murder, I I open the door and I don't know how it's to describe this,

except to say that the glass of our shower had exploded into like 150,000 pieces. Yeah, yeah, that's how they do it now for safety. It had exploded all at once. It was such an unbelievable scene that my first thought was, well, I guess somebody shot up our bathroom. That's weird.

So weird place to aim. And so then all night long, my dreams were all about like, why did people shoot our bathroom? So mean. Did you do anything to do just see it and then go back to sleep? You're like, I don't have time for this right now.

Yeah, so I will use a different bathroom. The main thing I did was I held Sarah by the shoulders and I said Sarah, we're both really tired and this is a very strange experience. So I just want to confirm two things. One, that it happened. And two, that there's not some larger thing that we're missing, right?

Like, we just need to make sure is there water pouring out of things? Right. You know? Yeah. Like, like, is there a reason this happened that now requires further attention? Or do we just go to sleep with a bunch of glass all over the place? Yeah, and the answer was number two. Yeah, that's great.

I'm glad. I'm super happy. We went to sleep with a bunch of glass over the place. And in the morning, when I woke up, I rolled over and Sarah was reading about this on the internet and she said, this is surprisingly common. Okay, so if you're out there and one night, your glass shower explodes. Just know that it's totally normal. It's... Ha ha ha. Wait, here, here's what happened.

We decided that shower curtains were too grody and wrinkly and just not pretty enough. So we installed these big beautiful plates of safety glass that occasionally explode. It's just... And everybody on the internet is like, uh, at 1.15 in the morning, my glass shower exploded, and then all these other people were probably like,

Oh yeah, happened to me in 2014. Yep, that's a thing. That's totally a thing. You got to have to get a new one. Anyway, we're going back to, uh, we're going back to shower curtains at the greenhouse. This first question comes from Aaron who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was recently watching the new Aladdin movie and was wondering how the characters walk on giant hills

of sand in the desert without sinking. Does it have to do with weight? Like if a mouse or an elephant walked in the desert, would either sink? Thanks, Aaron. So several different things are going on here. The first is like the actual, the big thing, which is that when you compress sand,

it kind of like finds ways to form little crystals and like actually solidify a little bit. Friction happens and all the sand turns into like a sort of hard thing underneath you. If like you were your weight but didn't have any size, you would fall into the sand. I don't know how you would be your weight without having size, but that would happen. If. I don't know how you would be or wait without having size,

but that would happen. If you were just standing on two needles, the needles would go pretty far down. But interestingly, we are also less dense than sand. So there's a thing that you can do. You can blow air through sand and get rid of all the gaps between the sand and have the sand kind of not touch itself.

Mark Rubber did a video where he made a big big thing where you could get into like a sand bath basically. But one of the cool things about the sand bath is that you still kind of float in it because sand is made of rocks and rocks are heavier than like the water that we are mostly made of. Like and in a quick sand situation, you would actually find that you don't sink in quick sand. Eventually you start to float in it, though that your head can be pretty close to the area where it's covered in sand, so it can still be quite scary,

and then also it's hard to get out, and that can be a problem. So don't play around with quicksand kids. Quicksand is real. I had always been told that quicksand was just a fake thing that I didn't need to worry about. Do I need to reintroduce quicksand to my list of potential causes of death? No, because you would never, you, John Green, would never need to reintroduce Quixand to my list of potential causes of death?

No, because you would never, you, John Green, would never go to a place that has Quixand. Great. They are really good boys. It's not like the Fire Swomp where it's like dry sand. Quixand is wet. And so you, John Green, would have to be walking around in a very wet muddy place, which I just don't see happening. Very unlikely. The other thing is that it can be pretty hard

to get stuck in quick sand. It's just very hard to get out once you do. So if you work hard and you're like, this is fun, I'm having a joke. And then you're like, ankle or like knee deep. It's like, actually, this has now solidified around my legs. And I do not know how to get out and you have to call the emergency services.

It's gotta be a fun call for EMT, you know? Like a lot of the job probably isn't that great, but when you get the quick sand call, you're like, oh, this is gonna be fun. Oh yeah, I gotta go dig some idiot kid out of the, out of the tide flat again. Hank, I have a semi related question for you, which is, you know how our dad, like, mushed dogs and snowshoed

and hiked to the Appalachian Trail and whatever? Yeah. Have you ever put on a pair of snowshoes? Yes, I actually have one time, I live in Montana. So I have also put on a pair of snowshoes. It is shockingly hard to snow shoe. Yeah, well, the only thing that is harder is just walking through the snow.

Exactly, it's like 3% easier than just going up to your knees and snow. And actually, this is also true of sand. So like fine sand or just running on sand is harder than walking or running on a hard surface. And there are animals that are well adapted to the desert, like camels, for example, actually have big, furry, splaid out feet so that they don't sink down as much

because it's more efficient for them to walk then. They have sand shoes. They have sand shoes. No, it's adorable. Animals are so adorable. Why are we making them all extinct? Except chickens. They're doing great. There are so many, there are more chickens than people by a wide margin.

It's going to, you know, after, after humans go extinct, chickens are going to have like an amazing 80 years. Right. Right. Right. Right before everything. Where like the number of chickens just absolutely explodes and they're the dominant species on the planet. And then coyotes are going gonna have an amazing like 10,000 years. This next question comes from Nikki who asks, dear Hank and John, this is less a question and more a plea for help.

I apologize that I said it was a question. I recently found out that if you brush your teeth for the recommended two minutes twice a day, you spend over a day per year brushing your teeth 24 hours and 20 minutes per year to be precise. Oh, that was your first mistake is being precise about this. I know that brushing my teeth is important, so I'm going to keep doing it. But now I'm thinking of all the time that I spend doing unnecessary stuff like going

on social media and watching TV. I'm kind of freaking out about all the time that I'm wasting. How do I stop freaking out? How do I work out what things I should keep doing? Nicky. So Hank, you made a recent video about TikTok and social media platforms and how people are using their connectivity time and their entertainment time and how your connectivity time and your entertainment time are sort of merging.

In a way they've always been merged, I thought this is a great video, by the way. Thank you. In a way they've always been merged because, thought this is a great video, by the way. Thank you. In a way they've always been merged because a lot of times our happy entertainment time is also our time of social connection. But if most of us look at the screen time app on our phones, we will find that the amount of time that we are spending on our phones is a pretty significant time of the amount of time

we're awake. In a lot of people's cases, it's most of the time that they're awake. And I'm super aware that I'm an old man who yells at clouds and that there have always been old men yelling at clouds. But Nikki, I'm psyched that the reason you're worried about this is because of your toothbrush time, not because of like your TikTok time. Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. John, do you think this is a question about death? Ultimately, like, first we have to like say, okay, what is, what is wasting time? And second, like, what is time? And then it's like, oh, this is, this is actually about like, this is my one beautiful existence. And like over the course of my life,

I will spend years of my life watching television, years of my life pooping, years of my life, like on Twitter. How okay is that? Am I okay with it? And also, like, is it better to think about this or to not think about it, to just, like, enjoy life as it comes? Because one thing that I really want to get away from is the idea that time is wasted when you are not producing something.

Or that your own happiness and satisfaction and connection all counts as a product. My joy is something that I make. And the joy that I provide to other people is something that I make. And that's not wasted just because it's not like turning into economic productivity or something. Yeah, absolutely.

But also I do think that there might be some value in asking yourself, what do I wanna do while I'm here? Like what do I wanna do with my time? And part of the answer for that should, I think, be, I want to distract myself from the pain of meaninglessness. Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Or, like, you know, you find meaning in your favorite television shows.

Like, yeah. Right. Like, I watched the Tetris World Championships over the weekend, Hank, on Twitch. And I watched it with my kids. We had a great time. We had different people we were rooting for. I was devastated when my Tetris player lost. They were delighted when there's won the championship.

Was that wasted time? Yeah, I mean, it was wasted in the sense that I didn't make any money, but it was amazing time with my kids like laughing and gasping and just having a great time. That is in a waste. Now, I think it is a waste a lot of the time when I do that stuff alone, and it leaves me feeling like less connected to other people and less connected to myself

and to the world around me. Like that, maybe isn't a good use of time. That said, the core question, brushing your teeth is an amazing investment. It's just, it's an amazing investment in quality of life down the road. As is like all the time that I spend making dinner or something. Absolutely. The one thing, and Hank, I'm not here to criticize you, but if there were one way that I, if I were you, I might just slightly rearrange the, uh, my day is that I, uh, and it's just me, I wouldn't spend 19 hours a day on Twitter.

But like, I'm just there to try and make the other people on Twitter feel better. Oh, yeah. That's a great. Because I know how, I know how rough it is out there. I'm just trying to help. Yeah. Hank, our next question comes from Sof who writes, dear John and Hank, why is the saying goody two shoes?

Do naughty people only wear one shoe? Not very sophisticated, Sof. Yeah, you don't know about that? No, what is the edible? I have no idea of the etymology of that phrase. And I've used it my whole life without ever thinking twice about it. And I guess we should say for people who don't speak English as their first language or maybe in other countries, I don't know that it isn't a phrase.

But goody-touchu means like a person who's so good and follows all the rules that it's kind of annoying. Right, right, right. You're a little goody-touchu. so good and follows all the rules that it's kind of annoying. Right, right, right. You're a little goody-touchy. So the weird thing about, so first, the weird thing about this is that we're saying it, we have no idea what it means,

and that it makes no sense. We've all got two shoes, we all want to be good people. And so the fact that you're a good person with two shoes should not be a negative. Right, yeah, it's used to make fun of people, but now that I've thought about the phrase, like, I want to be a goody-to-shoes.

Yeah. No. Like, I would like to, I would, I don't want to be a bady-to-shoes. And I'm even more than that. Don't want to be a bady-one shoe. Yeah. Or a bady-no-shoes. It's like, I think it maybe speaks to how in middle school it's sort of good to be bad. I'm just changing my Twitter profile to Hank Batti, one shoe screen. No, keep it p-i-h.org slash Hank and John, not that I've gone on Twitter lately. Hank, what is the etymology of this phrase? So there was a story, it was written by an anonymous person, I think at the 1700s, it was called Goody Two Shoes, it was about, I think, I can orphan child who only had one shoe

and then she got another shoe and then she was enthusiastic about the fact that she had two shoes and told lots of people about it. And the story was kind of about like, this is a person who really appreciates what they have, even though what they have is kind of what everyone else has. And the story had a very happy ending. And then people needed a word for people who were too good and so they like took this thing that never in the story was a negative thing. Like, goody-two shoes, the character in the story was never like too good or was never portrayed

as like annoying, but somehow it got taken from like that character in the story to being this other thing in the story to being this other thing in the way that language doesn't make any sense. And I love that. I love that too. English in particular makes no sense. No, yeah, we're not trying to make sense.

Like in German, when they want to talk about the kinds of food that you eat when you're sad, they have a word for that and the word is grief-bacon. Like German words make perfect sense. Yeah, and we're like, goody two shoes. You know, good people with two shoes. It's bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad.

You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are bad. You are handkerchiefs. Why do microwaves rotate the food when I use them? Remember that you are going to die, Anna. Thanks, Anna. No, it's Diana. Oh, that's great. That's like a, it's like a memento-mori stuffed inside of your own name. Yeah, name specific, sign off, and do your handkerchiefs, specific joke. There are areas in the microwave that receive more energy, and that is a quirk of the physics of microwaves.

And so you want your food to rotate in and out of those areas or only one area of the food will get hot. It would be better if the food both rotated and actually moved, but that would be more expensive and difficult to have a mechanism of the debt, and that mechanism would be more expensive and difficult to have a mechanism of that, and that mechanism would be more likely to break. That's a very easy answer. I have a follow-up question, which is, why don't I ever remember when reheating soup to

put something on top of the soup so it doesn't explode everywhere? You just got to be like my friend who has this greasy, terrible piece of wax paper that they use and keep it next to the microwave and use the same one every time. No, no, no. You know, no. I don't like that at all.

I would rather clean out my microwave after every reading. You're really doing a great job with the physics questions, with the sand, and the microwave. I have a physics question for you. Okay. Why did my bathroom glass wall blow up last night? I really don't know. Was there a significant temperature change? There was.

And one thing we read on the internet is that sometimes Was there a significant temperature change? There was. And one thing we read on the internet is that sometimes when there are significant temperature changes, the glass doors in your house blow up. So I wish somebody had given me a quick heads up on that one maybe before we had it installed. All right, Hank, we have another question. This one's from Malia, who writes, dear John and Hank, if a friend asks me to hang out, but I don't care what activity we do, is the proper response,

I'm down for whatever, or I'm up for whatever, directionally confused Malia. So here's the situation in the great words of brass construction. John. Uh-huh. Hey, well, leave your troubles behind. This is what we say to you.

Get up, get on down, gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up, get on down, gotta, gotta get up to get down. So you have to be up for whatever in order to be down for whatever. Apparently, according to brass construction, you cannot be down unless you have gotten up for whatever. I feel like it's, I'm up for whatever. So I actually agree with brass construction. It's so far as I think the initial response

is I'm up for whatever. But then if somebody replies with three options, maybe at that point you say, I'm up for whatever. But then if somebody replies with three options, maybe at that point you say, I'm down for whatever. I also feel like to be completely frank with you. Why is that right? I don't understand. That seems very right. I also think to be completely frank with you, there's something just slightly romantic about I'm down for whatever, whereas I'm up for whatever is completely platonic. I'm so glad that we have made it this hard to speak this language. This is a terrible language, and it's just occurring to me.

Then I know we have Shakespeare and whatever, whatever. But it's the spelling, it's ludicrous. Even ludicrous is ludicrous to spell. That is essentially what the success of the hip hop star ludicrous's name is based on. That ludicrous as a word is spelled incorrectly. He can do it better. I can do this better, he thought to himself.

And by the way, he can. The way that he spells ludicrous do it better. I can do this better. He thought to himself. And, and he, by the way, he can. Like the way that he spells ludicrous is much better. He was correct. Yeah. But, so, let me, let me pause it, that I am up for whatever. Yeah. Is just sort of is like saying, I am, I'm happy to do on activity, whereas I am down for whatever means I will do anything. Right. I am up for whatever is like, I don't care if we go bowling or if we like throw axes.

I'm down for whatever is like, if this ends in a criminal enterprise, that's fine by me. Yeah, it's like the chaotic good of I would like to hang out. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Ludacris. That's right, Hank. I'm going back a little bit. Just be clear.

The artist, not the word. This podcast is also brought to you by the glass door industry and stalling very small detonators inside of their doors since 2010. I'm sure that the glass door industry is full of good people. I always feel like I need to defend everyone everywhere. Worried about hurting the feelings of people who are doing that good work. But also this podcast is brought to you by Sand Shoes.

Sand Shoes already on camels. And also this podcast is brought to you by Badi One Shoe. Badi One Shoe, he's real trouble. But he's cool, you know, he's down for whatever. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ideas from Jim who says million dollar idea drive through bathrooms. It's a very bad idea, Jim. What? Look, we go to rest stops all of the time. Yeah.

And you park your car, you get out of the car, and you go to this public place with all of these people. And there's like people trying to distract you with snacks or interpretive materials, but the place where you are, sometimes there's people like giving away free coffee that definitely have some kind of ulterior motives so you don't pay attention to them. What if you didn't have to get out of your car?

I'm with you until the last like seven words. Well, okay, here's what I know. I can go to a drive-through restaurant and get food through the window. Right. Why can't I do that, but for bathrooming? A few reasons. The big one is that in most cars,

it is difficult either to stand up or to squat out the window. Anyone who has ever attempted to moon their friends in high school. No, no, you're imagining it wrong. OK. The million dollar idea isn't the building that receives your bathroom materials.

OK. It's the area of your car that becomes a place where bathroom materials can go without you having to get up. I'm already sitting down, which is what I'm doing most of the time when I'm in the bathroom anyway. Just open up a little hole in the bottom of the car, but you have to drive to a plate.

You can't just do it on the road. You have to drive to a place and park in an area and then they enclose you so you're like private. And then I hate this. I hate everything about it, and I can't. I can no longer pretend that I like this idea. I apologize.

Look, this tweet has zero likes and zero retweets. No one else liked it either. I just, I thought it would be a worthwhile discussion and look, sometimes you're wrong. It's important to recognize that you could be wrong about stuff. I mean, I almost want to try to find a better million dollar idea and redo the bit. No.

No, that's the one I'd chose and we're sticking with it. Okay. Jonesy says that his million dollar idea is pumpkin spiced white claw. No, that is a million dollar idea. That's got to be worse than drive through bathroom, John. No, pumpkin spiced white claw is a proper million dollar idea. Now, like, how could you have picked drive through bathrooms when pumpkin spice white claw was sitting there waiting for you? Because I'm just tired of getting out of my car. There's so much time wasted and

energy. And I am tired of not drinking pumpkin spice white claw. So tired of having to, having to, rather key out my car window. Like white claw is so overwhelmingly and obviously Zima that I don't know how to hit. No, it's not. Zima was sweet. White claw doesn't have any sugar.

It's, it's culturally Zima, but it's not flavorly Zima. I quite like white claw and I think it's just sweet enough, but we can move on. In fact, we must. It is going on way too long. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimble then, I want to answer a couple more questions.

For instance, this one comes from Abby who writes, dear John and Hank, my boyfriend doesn't know who Elon Musk is. It's not really a question, but it is weird. It's a little weird at this point. I think a more important question is does your boyfriend know who Leon Musk is? Right, because there must be one or two people out there who do know who Leon Musk is,

but don't know who Elon Musk is, in which case, Leon Muses' career as an Earth-only advocate seems very weird. For those who haven't listened to every single episode of this magical podcast, I once created a character named Leon Mus who argues for an Earth-only existence for humans, at least until 2028, because Hank and I have a long

standing bet that if there are no humans on Mars on January 1, 2028, I get to rename this podcast, Dear John and Hank. Yeah, and look, it's going to happen. I understand that my chances are slim, but... What? Slim? Yeah, well, you never know. I understand that my chances are slim, but. What? Slim? Yeah, well, you never know. I never know.

I know. Okay. Well, you never know. It is a 2028 long way from now. It's eight years. You know what's happened in the last eight years, John? Yes. No new internet startups.

None. No new social media companies at all. We have reached monopoly. The entire forest floor has been shaded out and no new progress can be made. So we have to get off this planet. Look, yes, it is true that there have been no big internet startups in the last eight years, Hank, but as a counter argument, what about we work? I'm here all week guys.

Oh gosh, yeah, that's that one's for all the people who read the business section of an article. Oh, but that includes John and me. So that's what happens. And like honestly, John, I appreciate Leon's efforts on behalf of the Earth. It's a great place. This question comes from Heather who asks,

Dear Hengen-John, single-use plastics, particularly plastic bottles, are such an environmental disaster. What do you suppose would be the effects if we passed some form of legislation that would immediately halt the production of these types of materials? Unum, Teram, heather.

I think that means one earth, which is the actual and definite number of earths. Also, it's not a bad motto for earth. Just a gentle reminder, there's just the one. Yep, we only get to do one experiment at a time on this baby. So this is an interesting question because it gets at how do we make big social change? And sometimes we make those big changes through policy decisions made by governments.

And sometimes we make those decisions through a mix of policy decisions and social pressure. Like the most obvious example of that is that for a long time, it was seen as completely impossible to reduce the number of people who smoked because smoking was so cool and what were you gonna do? Right? Like, just look at him.

He just looked so cool. Like, Hank and I grew up in the 90s and I grew up smoking cigarettes and I was like, what am I going to do? It's so cool. I want to be cool like the other cool kids who smoke. And then through a like huge social movement, which was led partly by really effective advertising and partly by dramatically raising the prices of cigarettes and using the new tax revenue to fund anti-smoking

and smoking cessation campaigns. The number of people who smoke cigarettes has declined really dramatically. Now there is a new nicotine-based issue that's very serious in terms of public health. But the success of reducing the number of people who smoke is one of like the great public health success stories in rich countries in the last 20 years.

And I think that the best way to get people to stop using plastic bottles is to make people feel horrified by the notion of drinking water, or for that matter, any other form of like sweetened water by the notion of drinking water, or for that matter any other form of like sweetened water from a plastic bottle. And in fact, I'm already starting to feel social pressure about single use plastics,

which is a good sign. I need to feel more social pressure. I need more shaming. But there's a third thing here that I think is really important, which is that you also need some kind of alternative to the bad thing. Like you can't turn off coal-fired power plants without turning on something that will continue to power my computer.

Like I need it to make a podcast, and I'm super excited about creating those alternatives both as a society and maybe as an individual human, as I explore my soda syrup business, which will allow you to have sugary beverages at home without buying plastic bottles every three minutes. I do think that's a good idea, as I've told you before, but I just want to say for the record that we have an existing alternative to bottled water for most people in most places, most of the time. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

It's not true everywhere. In Sierra Leone, for instance, bottled water is critical to health in a lot of cases. But in the United States, in most places, most of the time, we have an amazing alternative to bottled water that just doesn't have enough marketing support behind it. Yeah, it's called tap water. for those who never never turned on your taps. It's amazing. What an accomplishment. And maybe the greatest thing human beings ever did was make clean water available in their houses all the time. I can't believe the blizzard that is happening outside of my house right now. Okay, because there is a blizzard outside of Hank's house, we need to get to

the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon before Hank gets snowed in inside of his garage and is unable to make the seven step walk to his home without acquiring snowshoes, which he doesn't have all start the news from AFC Wimbledon. It's not great. It was frustrating and I thought we could have maybe not lost it, but we did against Bert another team that isn't very good. And we're currently in 21st place, which is still in the relegation zone, but it's at the top of the relegation zone, which is better than where we've been in the past. And we're only one point behind the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keane's meaning that our upcoming game against them has even more import than it usually would. Yes. I hate that. That makes me very nervous. Yeah. I mean, we've got some games before then,

but it's impossible not to kind of circle that day on the calendar. Yeah. So our next games are against Lincoln City, who like us are not great. And then we've got the FA Cup, which, nah, I think that I mean, you know, if we make a run, that'd be great. But I just want to finish 20th and league one and have one more season in the third tier of English football and move into our new stadium in the third tier of English football and move into our new stadium in the third tier. That is the dream. It's not currently happening,

but the arc of history is long and it bends toward Wimbledon. Hank, what is the news from Mars? The news from Mars is also bad. So last week, we were talking about how great it was that they'd figured out how to put a little extra pressure on the heat probe that's going into the surface of Mars, finally started digging itself down in after months of not doing anything.

Yes. I was so excited. And then we don't even really, like this is very new. We don't have any data as to why this is that probe started to leap out of its hole. Oh, no. As if it encountered something scary down there that it doesn't want to see. Oh God. And much faster than it was driving itself down,

it has, it is yanking itself up. What? So, yeah, I don't know, John, I don't, like this thing works by like slowly lifting a weight and then dropping it. And I don't understand how that could result in the probe moving up. It is now halfway out of the hole.

So the terrible thing is that they were letting it go down and they were like, okay, well, it's working. And so they were like, okay, we'll send a message out so that it'll hammer itself down a bunch. And then they got the pictures back and it's like, what, what, what, what happened? Who said this was okay?

So it is leapt out of the hole. It's like now, you know, halfway unburied. It's a long thing. It's a pretty long thingy. So it's like, but it's like half of it's out of the ground now. Whereas before it was, it had at least gotten its whole self into the ground. So it's very bad news. He probe experiment, which is designed to sort of like map out what the interior of Mars looks like by measuring how heat is flowing around the planet may just not happen, which has always been, you know, a possibility ever since it first didn't start it to not work early in the mission,

but then it seemed like it was going to, but now it seems like it again might not. But I don't know, I'm not a NASA engineer, so maybe they're working on something and I've figured out they haven't even released a statement about this yet really, because they don't really know why it's happened, except that the regolith on Mars is really weird, and they don't quite get it,

which is, I guess, data we're learning. So I am also not a scientist, and I don't want to pretend to be, but I do have a theory about this, which is that while AFC Wimbledon were on a three game win streak, the probe was working great, then AFC Wimbledon lost to Burton. I mean, obviously it could just be correlation,

but it smells like causation to me. Right, what we need is for NASA to give AFC Wimbledon a lot of money. I love everything about what you just said. And I feel like there has never been a better time for NASA to become really superstitious. Yeah. Well, we'll see, Hank, because I suspect that AFC Wimbledon are going to go on another win streak at some point. And if that is correlated with good news on Mars, I am going to become a true believer in the Wimbledon Mars connection.

Maybe 2028 is the year that humans go to Mars and Wimbledon goes to the premiere week. We shall see. Boom! Let's do it. Hank, thank you for bonding with me. It is always a pleasure. Thanks to everybody for listening. I'm gonna post a picture of my exploded door

at the Patreon Patreon.com flesh, dear Hank and John, if you're curious to see that, you don't need to donate to see the picture. It's astonishing. I can't wait to see it. It just makes no sense. Anyway, Hank's gonna do the rest of the credits. This podcast is produced by Rosiana Halls-Rawson, shared in Gibson,

it's edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our head of community and communications is Victoria Bon-Jorneau. It is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC Studios and the 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. our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.