Dear Hank & John - 22: Post-Menopausal Cousin Marriage

Episode Date: November 3, 2015

How should toilet paper be dispensed? Help! My fingers are glued together! If you hover a helicopter in the same place for 24 hours, why don't you travel around the earth? What food weird combinations do you like? What should I do if a scholarship requires me to read Ayn Rand? AND OTHER QUESTIONS ANSWERED!

Shhh! Whistner Supported. WNYC Studios. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and Jon. Or is that for the good Dear Jon and Hank? It's a comedy podcast about death. Where my brother and I answer questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Hey Jon, how you doing? Uh, and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Hey John, how you doing? Good, actually not. Not good. A couple things. First off, I've had a bad week, just like a difficult personal week health wise. As you know Hank, this is personal, but I have a brain illness called obsessive-compulsive disorder.

And I've been in the process of switching medications, which has not been fun. Also, in possibly even worse news, the Taylor Swift summer that we were blessed with here in Indianapolis has officially ended. There was 48 straight hours of rain, and now it is cold. So the darkness has descended. The sky here in Indianapolis is so close to the ground that I feel like I could reach up and touch it.

And Taylor Swift is well and truly gone. How are you? I'm so sorry to hear that. It is also quite gloomy here. If I looked out the window and didn't know anything about what time it actually was, I would guess that it was about seven o'clock at night. It is in fact noon.

It's just really dark and overcast, and in personal health news, as long as we're going there, I take a medicine that makes my life much, much better, but also makes everything taste bad. It's awful. Yeah, I also am feeling very frustrated with medication side effects at the moment. Yeah, it doesn't do it all the time I'll have I'll go weeks and I'll be like, ah it went away

Yay, and then I'll wake up one morning and I'll be like wow my mouth tastes really bad And I'll brush my teeth and I'll be like wow my toothpaste tastes really bad Then I'll go have breakfast and I'll be like this is there's something wrong with this banana And it turns out that that's just my life for the next few weeks Comedy podcast about two middle aged men and their chronic health problems. Well, you gotta know that life isn't gonna always be milkshakes. I was just talking to my psychiatrist about this very thing, which is that when I was in college, and I first became aware that I was mentally ill, I believed somehow

that this was like a problem of one's teens and early 20s. But it turns out that you are stuck inside of the same brain for your entire life. Anyway, I am doing okay. I am doing much better today than I was on Monday when we were first supposed to record this podcast and I just had to cancel. Can I read you a short poem that will hopefully cheer us both up? Let's do it. All right, it's by E Cummings.

It's called, I thank you God for most this amazing. I thank you God for most this amazing day for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. I who have died and alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday. This is the birthday of life and of love and wings, and of the gay, great happening in limitably earth. How should tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing any lifted from the know of all thing human merely being doubt unimaginable you.

Now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened. E.E. Cummings, a poem from I think the 1940s, but I'm not positive. That was nice. Thanks for that poem, John. Yeah. It's a good one. E-commings, you know, specializes in the poetry of a surprisingly optimistic. That would be my description of E-commings poetry. Well, let's answer a question from Dell who is surprisingly optimistic and says,

dear Hank and John, when I'm seated in any public restroom or private or portable restroom, and I see a toilet paper roll that is set to dispense from the under position. I assume that the toilet paper is coming from toward the wall, out from under. No matter the effort required, I will switch it to the over. It is my obsession with correcting people's obvious oversights and rudeness. Am I a monster? Well, not a monster. Possibly a person who's responding to an obsessive interest with a

compulsive response, but no, not a monster. In fact, Hank, as you may know, one of the longest Wikipedia articles is devoted to the question of whether toilet paper should dispense over the role or under the role from the front of the role or from the back of it. My response to this is this question, which is a big question for sure, but my response to it is, did you know that half a million people are going to die of malaria this year? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha John, but did you know that my dog, if it is, if it is, if it is, if it is set in the

over position, my dog will grab on to that and run out of the bathroom with the toilet paper in her mouth and drag it around the entire house. But if it is in the under position, she isn't able to do that. So you know what that makes me think? That makes me think that the wikipedia article I previously believed to be exhaustive isn't, and that there is this fascinating new data point that needs to be added to that wikipedia article in order for it to be the complete work that it ought to be. So, yeah, I think that I go in the over position.

I am all for the over position because I don't have Hank's dog, but I also respect people who believe in the under position. Yes, well yes, I also am over in upstairs where the dog does not go. So I completely understand. And I am quite confused by people who are in favor of the underposition without the dog in the equation.

It's fine, of course. It's your toilet paper, you can do what you will. If you're in someone else's house, I would ask that you not switch their toilet paper. I agree, I think that we have to respect the sanctity of one another's homes when it comes to our toilet paper in decisions. Hank, I'm wondering if we can move on to a time-sensitive

question. This one is pressing. Unfortunately, this question arrived three and a half weeks ago. 12-year-old ginger writes, dear John and Hank, have you ever accidentally glued your fingers together? And if so, what advice would you offer to a kid who may or may not currently have fingers glued together? Hank, I can't believe that we've waited three weeks and then like a full 10 minutes into

the podcast before getting to this vital question. Poor ginger, at this point, her skin cells have likely merged. Her fingers will be together for the rest of her life. It's exactly what has probably happened, and I apologize deeply. And Ginger is just listening to the podcast, staring at her perpetually bound fingers and thinking, Hank and John, you've let me down. I'm sorry Ginger, the thing to do is put in some rubbing alcohol, but it's too late now.

Your skin cells have merged. You've just got the one finger that's huge. Nail polish remover is also a good one. A different solvent, you know, turpentine, that kind of stuff that takes paint off of walls. That stuff's good for that. And yes, yes, I have. John, have you ever glued your fingers together?

I have, yeah, I used to really like the feeling of the stickiness when I would glue my thumb to my pointer finger, you know, with super glue. For a while there, you can still unstick and restick and unstick and restick and I really like that tactile sensation. But then eventually, you do it one too many times and suddenly you can't unstick it. And I think that maybe is the situation the ginger found herself in. You know, fortunately, I was able to ask someone what I should do and they gave me nail polish,

but that's because I didn't ask my favorite podcasters who clearly did not answer in an appropriate timeframe. We have another question from Amy. I am fascinated by this question, who asked dear Hank and John, if I get an helicopter and hover for 24 hours, would I end up in the same place I started because of the Earth's rotation?

Let's assume, for the plausibility of the question, that I have enough fuel to hover that long, and that I've pointed the helicopter in the right direction to correspond with the Earth's tilt. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha. You wanna take this one, John? Yeah, this seems like a question for me, Amy. Thanks for the thoughtful question.

So, if you get in a helicopter and you hover, do you know by the way that when Hank was a little boy, he called helicopters, helicopters? So, he's going to act like he knows the answer to this question. But, do you trust a man who once called helicopters helicopters anyway? If you get in a helicopter and you hover in the exact same spot for 24 hours You will rotate with the earth So you will still be in the same spot because you will be still in the Earth's atmosphere,

and that is the answer to your question. Yeah. So basically, am I right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You will stay. I mean, it depends, basically, the winds will blow you around. If you try and stay at a point in the atmosphere, the atmosphere does move around, but obviously the atmosphere does not stay in the same place while the earth spins underneath it. The atmosphere moves along with the earth and spins along with the earth.

Everything on the earth, you know, when we are on the earth, we are moving very fast relative to the center of the earth, but we are not moving very fast relative to the surface of the earth. We are not moving at all relative to the surface of the earth because the surface of the earth spins with us. And so when that helicopter takes off, it is also, it is, it is staying at the same speed relative to the surface of the Earth, which means that it, the Earth does not spin underneath it. And also the atmosphere does not spin, or the Earth does not spin underneath the atmosphere. So you end up, you

know, being stuck at a point in the atmosphere. That might get blown around some as wind has happened, but it's certainly not blowing as fast as it would if suddenly the earth was moving in the atmosphere. It wasn't, which would be completely catastrophic and would destroy everything on earth. Yeah, so if we can just back up, I was correct. Yes. I love that feeling. God, that feels good. I'm so good at science. Yeah, I'm really proud. I'm proud of you as well, John.

Here is a question from Megan. She writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a senior in high school who is currently looking for scholarships. I found a scholarship that offers $10,000, but it would require me to read Ein Rand's Atlas Shrugged and write an entire essay

about how much I love the book and the theories behind it. It's an awful, awful thing to have to do, but $10,000 is a lot of money I could use to pay tuition. What should I do? Well, oh my God. I think the, you know, like there's two options here. One is just to consider the world and unfair place

and move on. The other is to read Einr's Atlas Struck, write an amazingly exceptionally good essay about how wonderful it is, get the scholarship, and then as soon as the Czech clears write an amazing essay about how destructive the worldview put forth in Atlas Struck is, and how you got a scholarship that required you to write that, to write the opposite of that, and then post that on Medium where it will get a billion views and you will become semi-famous. Yes, yes, right.

Yes, your Medium story will be entitled, How I Scammed a bunch of Iron Rand fans out of 10,000 bucks. Which is the ultimate, I would argue, like the ultimate use of the Iron Rand fans out of 10,000 bucks. Which is the ultimate, I would argue, like the ultimate use of the Iron Rand for review is to scam Iron Rand fans out of 10,000 bucks who are forcing you to read at Washrug in exchange for a scholarship, which by the way, like in a larger sense, like points to one

of the big problems of objectivism, the fact that we even need $10,000 scholarships because obviously some people have access, some people are able to pay for college and others aren't. I would argue that like in the existence of the scholarship and the fact of the necessity of the scholarship lies much of the problem of the ideas of objectiveism. So I wouldn't point that out in the essay. I would wait and then point it out in your essay about the essay. I'm very excited for this Megan. Congratulations in advance. Can we have a serious talk for a moment? Now that I feel like we've done a good job for Megan, my act, you know, I would be very careful about doing this

because there's, you know, there's a large chance that she won't get the scholarship and that's too bad. But, so maybe don't waste too much time on it, but it would be amazing. However, I will say that I did get a, I did get an ask on my Tumblr that said something to the effect of, you know, you guys pride yourself on being objective, on being open and like imagining others complexly. And yet, the way that you treat Randy and philosophy

and those who adhere to it makes me feel very much like you don't imagine those people complexly and that you were just being mean and closed off from that. Yep. We have another question, Hank, it's from Katrina. Yeah, I guess I hear what they're saying, and I probably am not fair to every strand of Randian philosophy, but I do find the idea that I should be tolerant of intolerance problematic. I just deeply disagree with that world, You know, I might be wrong, and I might even be wrong to characterize it as intolerance, and I'm happy to acknowledge that I might be wrong and that I often am wrong, but I'm still going to like, you know, vociferously stand for what I believe in, you know?

Yeah. All right. I think that is, I think that is, I handled that and probably that person stopped listening to our podcast anyway. Sorry to lose you, person. Well, it's in the past now, Hank. Let's move on to Katrina's question. Who writes, dear John and Hank, knowing that Hank has a love of corn dogs, I thought of him the other day when I came across

a corn dog donut. It was a donut with a D-John glaze, tomato jam and crushed pretzels, topped with a mini corn dog. That sounds disgusting. This got me thinking about weird food combinations that seem off putting it first, but then surprise you with how delicious they are. What weird food combinations do you enjoy?

DFDBA Katrina. Well, just to answer this first, the weirdest food combination that I enjoy is herring with literally anything. Herring with peanut butter, herring with mustard, herring with mayonnaise, herring with literally anything. Herring with peanut butter, herring with mustard, herring with mayonnaise, herring with other herrings, like herring stuffed inside of herring, stuffed inside of herring. There is no variety of herring that I do not enjoy.

What about a herring ducking? It's a herring stuff with a duck, stuff with a chicken. A herring ducking? A her, a herr ducking. So like a bunch of herring stuffed inside of a duck, and then the duck is stuffed inside of a chicken? No, no, no, it's it. It's it.

That sounds delicious. Is there any way I can start? Is there any way I can start with the herring? And just eat all of them. I'd have herring cooked in duck fat. Are you kidding? That sounds amazing. I've never, I don't feel like I've ever had herring.

Oh my God. How do you call yourself a person? What is, what is herring? Is it coming like a can? It does sometimes come in a can. It comes in all kinds of ways. It's a fish. Fish is a small fish.

Small fish, you just eat it. Eyes, bones. Mmm. Yeah, yeah, that's. It's often pickled. I agree that that is, that is just, well that's just a weird food. I love peanut butter. And I guess anything you combine it with is going to be a weird food combination.

I want to say to Katrina. I love peanut butter, And I guess anything you combine it with is gonna be a weird food combination. I wanna say to Katrina. I love peanut butter, jelly, and hair. Oh, I like a peanut butter jelly sandwich with the bread made out of hair. Man, that sounds really awful. You should make a video about this. I wanna see you just eat a bunch of herring combinations.

If that's something you enjoy, that you should just do that on video and get views. Mmm. Sounds delicious. The Herring Challenge. Oh, God. John Green, John Green's Herring Challenge. I want to like do the music for it. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. John Green the Herring Challenge. Heeeet's herrings with everything.

Hey! Uh, do you like any weird food saying? Well, first I want to say that I love the idea of this corn dog donut, the only problem with it being that the corn dog is on top when clearly that the dog should be in the middle. That's how it's a corn dog. It's a dog surrounded by carbs.

And to have put it on top when you could have inserted the dog into the belly of the beast, I'm very upset at that donut shop's lack of ingenuity. But maybe they want to have it right on top there, so people don't accidentally eat it, thinking that it's going to be regular donut, and then encounter meat in the middle, and they say, there's no meat in this. With their meat in their mouth, which happened to me the first time. I gave a friend of mine a corn dog once.

She was like, I've never had a corn dog, once she was like, I've never had a corn dog. And I was like, oh, you have a bite of mine. You can have the first bite. And then she took a bite and she said, they're mean this. I was like, yeah, I mean, I just could have explained the idea to you. But yes, yes, there is.

It is basically just meat, with a little bit of not meat. But you can't see any of the meat and I understand how that could be confusing. Weird food combinations that I greatly enjoy. I like to put anything inside of a tortilla, like pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs inside of a tortilla, or mac and cheese inside of a tortilla.

Basically, I don't know if that's a weird food combination, but that is something that I did a lot as a child. And I was used to put baked beans in my macaroni and cheese, which is very good. I used to put... I really like the idea, Hank, of you opening up an unusual burrito restaurant. I mean,

that sells spaghetti and meatballs burritos, or peanut butter and jelly burritos. You can't say that I have any shortage of ideas. I'm just full of them. Full of amazing ideas. Everybody's gonna go for that grilled mac and cheese burrito. No, but that might be your first truly billion dollar idea. You know, like, I mean, I could see that rivaling Chipotle,

the unusual burrito shop. No, I'm just just kidding our first billion dollar idea was Jurassic Mars that's definitely yet I don't know why we haven't been developing this idea more I someone explained to me why how eight weeks after we invented Jurassic Mars there still isn't a Jurassic Mars movie I don't know I'm very frustrated oh man we should we ask answer another question, Hank? Yeah, let's answer Bridget's question. Okay. Who asked Dear Hank and John?

We're talking about, we were talking about family the other day and I said, relatives to refer to my grandparents as well as my husband. My husband was thrown off because using the term related to, uh, to refer to him sounded like he was my cousin or something. He's not my cousin. So my question is this, should I use the word related when talking about a married couple? And if not, what word would I use?

Is there a word for that? Well, I would argue that family is not just blood. I don't agree with the notion that family is merely blood. I kind of think that you decide your family, and that's one of the things that you commit to when you commit to marriage and one of the things to me that's cool about marriage. So I think that you are related to your husband, although it does sound weird when I say it that way.

Yes, because the word related sounds as if you are, sounds, the meaning of the word, it seems to mean that you are connected to them by blood. But if you look at what the word actually means, as in you have a relationship with them, and thus are related to them by law, then yes, you are related to your husband. Now, Hank, can we get to what I think is at the core of this question, which is, are there any famous people

who were married to their first cousins? Oh, yeah, lots. Oh, yeah, lots. Charles Darwin was married to their first cousins? Oh yeah, lots. Oh yeah, lots. Charles Darwin was married to his first cousin. Charles Darwin, sure. She was great. They had a great marriage. They did. They had a great marriage. You know who else was married to his first cousin?

Albert Einstein. Oh, look at that. Also Saddam Hussein. Oh well, maybe a little less exciting. Also, the son of A.A. Milne, Christopher Robin Milne, who the original Christopher Robin was based on, AA Milne of course wrote Winnie the Pooh. And it was one of the reasons there was a lot of tension

between the author of Winnie the Pooh, and the person that it was ostensibly written about was because AA Milne did not approve of Christopher Robin Milne's marriage to his first cousin. Also Edgar Allen Poe was married to his first cousin, who died, he got married to her when he was 26 and she was 13, that's a decision. And then she died at 24 and inspired

many of his most famous poems. So yeah, it's, you know, you know, I'm not here to judge you. That's all I'm saying. I am actually, I am gonna go ahead and judge Edgar Allen Poe. It's not okay. 26 to marry, to marry your 13 year old cousin. It's just not.

We actually, I'm gonna strip all connection from this story so that people can't track it down. But there is a person who we know, who fell in love with their first cousin, when they were very young, they never made anything of it. They got married to different people, and then were both widowed or widowed or word or whatever. And then when they were in their 80s, got married. That is a thing that happened to a person I know. Yeah, and fascinatingly, in this, in the place where they live, that is not illegal, because the law specifically states that you can't marry your first cousin unless,

unless there's no chance of childbearing, and since they were in their 80s, there wasn't. Indeed. Indeed. All right. Well, I'm glad that this podcast has so far... Uh... What did you say? Today's podcast is brought to you by post-menopausal cousin marriage. Post-menopausal cousin marriage. Legal! In some places.

Today's podcast is brought to you by the sensation of having your fingers sticking together but not quite being stuck together, what a pleasant sensation and yet so dangerous. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Side Effects of Medication. Side Effects of Medication, that unfortunate necessity. Today's podcast is brought to you by the Anne Rand Atlas Strug Scholarship Foundation, doing our best to weed out the people Rand Atlas Schrugg Scholarship Foundation, doing our best to weed out the people who are trying to troll us. I can't even believe that that's a real scholarship.

I can't believe that that's really a thing. I don't, I totally believe it. I believe that 100%. Oh, man. That totally sounds like something a Randian would do. Oh boy. Looking for a new POPI podcast? Dear Hank and John is supported by Dirt Cheap,

a new podcast from neon hum media that digs deep into the dollar bins of used bookstores and your grandmother's storage unit in search of SAS and questionable grammar. Hosts Amanda Meadows and Jeffrey Golden bring these bizarre stories to life each week, chapter by chapter, with a heavy dose of humor and a dash of shot and frida. Each season will explore a discarded pulp novel called from the dustbin of literary history

re-enacting its pages through narration and sound design. In season one, they read the book Murder in the Glass Room, an LA Noir novel that almost became a blockbuster film. Subscribe to follow and solve the murder mystery of season 1 by searching for dirt cheap in Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Hey, what's the answer? A couple more questions before we get to the all-important, stunning news from AFC Wimbledon and then the whatever news from AFC Wimbledon and then

the whatever news from Mars. Alright, we have a question. This one's from Orlando who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm soon going to be moving into a new place with my partner and I wanted to know if you guys had any suggestions for cool pets that would be suitable for a small apartment, assuming the apartment allows pets. We like the idea of having tardigrades, although we don't know how well that would work. I like the idea of having a spiderrades, although we don't know how well that would work. I like the idea of having a spider, but my partner is against that.

Yes, any suggestions are welcome. Tardigrades are a fantastic idea, and you really can't go wrong. The things can live in the vacuum of space, so I don't think you're gonna kill them. Yeah, I mean, tardigrades are one of the very few pets that you're unlikely to kill. My main recommendation would be,

if you want to step up from tardigrade in terms of responsibility, I would recommend a fish. I'm a big fan of just a single, or maybe even like three or four fish in a tank. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's good to have more than one, so they're not lonely. We have a fish tank at the office,

and we, they were all Patreon perks, so people will give us money on Patreon, and we would give them a fish, and name it after them, or name it whatever they wanted us to name it. And there's a fish in the tank named Caliossum sauce, and Caliossum sauce started to eat all the other fish, not like whole whole,

just pecking at the tail until the fish couldn't swim anymore and died, and then it would eat the fish after it fell to the bottom or roast the top. So Caliossum sauce now has her own tank and is all alone in Caitlin Hoffmeister's office. Sorry about that Caliossum sauce, though, that fish is very healthy and doing very well. I mean, it might be because it has eaten the flesh of younger fish. Yes. Yes.

But it is one of the only original fish that is still around from our first round of Patreon fundraising three years ago. No, a year ago. I am reminded, as I so often am during this podcast of the million dialogue between the Athenians and the millions in which the Athenians said, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Ah, Caliossum sauce, clearly the strong. Yes, doing what she will. When Catherine and I first moved in together, we got gerbils.

And the only problem we had with the gerbils was at first, we accidentally got a male and a female, and that turned out whether or not they were first cousins to end in babies. They were not postmenopausal, and we thought that we had two girls, we did not. So we had to take them back and have the pet store, you know, they got free gerbils out of the deal, and we got another pair of gerbils that were indeed different genders. I mean, you don't want them to be different. You want them to be the same. That is what I meant. Yes, correct.

Okay. Good. I just wanted to get further. Yeah. I mean, my, we had a, we had a pet, hamster growing up who are terrible dog red, green, eventually eight. But if I was going to rank my pets according to how much I love them and how effective they would be as pets living in a very small apartment, I think the top five would all be fish. And then the sixth would be the hamster that read green eight. And then the seventh would be a tiny turtle. and then the eighth would be a dog. Yeah, I think that the main things that I would try to avoid are anything that lives longer than 10 years. So birds are just a tremendous amount of responsibility, especially smart birds like parrots or conniers, because they require a lot of stimulation

where they go nuts. And you don't necessarily wanna to sign up for that. You know, Jerwell's Enhamsters live like three years, so they're not too much of a, too much, it's sad, you know? It's sad when they go, but you don't want to go in for too much and fish are the same way where they can live very long, but don't tend to. And reptiles live for a long time, and insects are just, no.

Not, they're not a pet. They're just, it's just weird. No, they're enemies. Just weird. They are not our friends. I love bugs, don't get me wrong. I do think that they are our friends. I love hanging out with and seeing cool bugs,

but I think that they, unless you are like really sort of into the idea of being an insect breeder and like doing that, it's a complicated thing to do, but having a sort of menagerie of insects, if that's the kind of, you know, if you're that kind of dork, yeah, I'm all for it, go for it, nerd, I love you. But I don't know, man, it's just, it's a lot of work, especially carnivorous bugs

because then you have to be having other bugs to feed to the bug and they, smells bad. Yeah, so in summary, we've decided that you should get a fish, Orlando. You should probably get a fish. Congratulations in advance on your new fish. Ha, ha, ha, ha, or multiple fish. Well, Hank, you know what the plural of fish is.

That's true. That's true! God dang it! It's time for the news from Mars and ANC Wimbledon! Hank! Yes. What is the news from Mars? The news from Mars comes to us from just outside of Mars.

The orbit of Mars, in fact, where Phobos, Mars's moon, one of Mars's two moons, is being ripped apart by Mars's gravity. Uh-oh. Phobos is too close to Mars. It is not an unstable orbit. It will eventually crash into the surface of Mars in tens of millions of years. Before that happens, we have now determined Phobos will be ripped to shreds and will fall as a bunch of small rocks. Fobos, it turns out, is a bunch, it's basically a bunch of rubble that has stuck together and has been covered in a layer of like dust and stuff. Just a layer of like, yeah, basically just dust. Small or very small rocks. of like, yeah, basically just dust. Smaller, very small rocks.

And so it looks solid, but it has this like 10 to 100 meter thick layer of dust on top of it, which is quite a lot of dust, but it is not as solid as it looks. And it has these weird stripes on it that we initially assumed were because of some very large impact that created a rippling destruction throughout the entire moon, because these stripes go from the top to the bottom of the moon.

But it turns out that those stripes are, in fact, the weak points in the moon as it is getting stretched out by Mars's gravity as it approaches the planet. And that is the beginning of Phobos being torn to pieces by Mars's gravity, which is kind of terrifying. Yeah, that's horrifying. I'm once again, as I so often find myself feeling, glad that I don't live on Mars.

Yeah, wouldn't it be interesting to like, look at the moon and be like in 10 million years, that thing's going to kill us. Well, I mean, is it definitely going to kill everyone on Mars? Well, no. I mean, you have 10 million years to deal with it. It's just going to inconvenience. So probably if this were happening to our moon, but if it were happening to our moon, if our moon, you know, we've talked about this before, that if our moon oddly enough, that if our moon broke up, it would destroy all life on Earth. If our moon hit

the Earth, it would destroy everything. Yay! Phobos is not as big, but neither is Mars, so I don't actually know what would happen, but I imagine that it would be a very significant catastrophe on the surface of Mars for anyone or anything that was living there. However, he was 10 million years to spare. Chances are you could throw something up there, just a few million ion thrusters or maybe some nuclear warheads and blast it into a stable orbit.

I think that... I think we could do that. I think that that's all terrifying and we should talk about League Two football, the real stuff. All right. Hank, it's been a wonderful week for AFC Wimbledon. They won their second consecutive game again scoring more than two goals.

They beat York City 3-1. Yeah. You'll remember from our last podcast, Hank, the our new striker, Lyle Taylor, the Montserratian international from the island of Montserrat. Uh-huh. Yes.

Well, he, he, as you know, he, you know, like every, every nation has its own team. And then, you know, all the players play for different clubs. Like, Leon on messy, he's Argentinian, but he plays for Barcelona. Well, Lyle Taylor is, is Montserratian, but he plays for AFC Wimbledon. He scored in his only goal for, in his only game for the Montserrat National, or in his first game for the Montserrat National Team. He scored against Curacao.

It was very exciting. And he scored in the game against York City as did Tom Elliott and Audezese. So Tom Elliott's very interesting, interesting kid. He's all 24 now and he's looking very promising, I think. He had a long spell at Cambridge United. He spent about three years there and he's just come over to AFC Wimbledon and he's looking, he's looking right likable.

And Adia Zeez is looking really good too. So we're looking like we have a good, strong attacking game. Like we can finally score some goals. And our back four played much better than at any point in the season. And so suddenly we are in the top half of the table, which is definitely where we want to be. We're 12th right now. We're 12th on 22 points. And we're only amazingly,

we're only three points. We're only one victory away, Hank, from being right there in the playoff picture. Right there in that top seven, where we want to be at the end of the season. So it's definitely good to put together two wins in a row for the first time this season. Definitely exciting stuff.

All right, let's, yeah, keep the string going. Get a turkey. Is that what it's called? Yes, we're going to try for the turkey this weekend or last weekend as you're listening to this. Oh man, it's hard to keep on top of the podcast. It does rather take the heat out of the, out of the, out of, it takes a little bit of the excitement

out knowing that it happened in the past, but happening in my future, Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time, AFC Wimbledon versus Hartlepool. Hartlepool Hank being one of the very few English football lead teams I have seen play in real life. I saw them play Swindon a few years ago. Why don't you just move to the UK? You can watch all the games.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. And I've certainly asked my wife on many occasions, if it would be all right for me to just biolig to football team and live out my dream of owning a minor league professional soccer team in England. And she feels that there are things that we can do that could have a greater impact on our community and that would be better for our family.

I think that she's full of it, but she makes a compelling argument. All right, John. Well, thank you for the news from AFC Wimbledon. I'm proud of your boys. They are right likable, which is Well, thank you for the news from AFC Wimbledon. I'm proud of your boys. They are right likable, which is a thing that you said that I assume you have got from the men and blazers. I don't think so.

I think that comes all the way. I think that's just for me. Okay. I think I invented that myself. What did we learn today, Hank? We learned that corn dog donuts are not corn dog donuts unless the dog is buried inside, not on top. We learn that your spouse is always your relative, but sometimes is really your relative. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha at gmail.com or you can use the hashtag dearhankinjohn on the Twitter's. I'm John Green on Twitter.

Hank is Hank Green and if you want to follow Hank Green on his social media of choice, that's Snapchat. He's Hank GRE. That's correct. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. The music is from Gunnarola at youtube.com slash Gunnarola. Two R's, two L's and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

two R's, two L's, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.