Dear Hank & John - 223: All at Once for Everyone

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

What hobbies should I take up while my feet are broken? What would you like to come back as in your next life? Am I "just a teacher"? What is the proper response to a cheese burglar? What should I do about the snoring guy? Is there an American seasoning? How long should you keep Christmas cards? How do you deal with reliving a horrible moment over and over again? Why does my daughter keep asking if I'm hungry? What is proper puzzle protocol? John Green and Hank Green have answers. 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 Jon. Of course I prefer to think of it as Dear Jon and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you a DVD, use advice, and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon, Jon. We're here in Atlanta, Georgia, in an airport hotel before one of our live shows recording our not live show. That's right. we're doing a dear Hank and John in person, which is always our best episodes,

but also full disclosure, sometimes our worst episodes. Yeah, yeah. Atlanta, they make people wear business suits here, but it's so hot, I think it's just unsuitable. No, God. For that. Yeah, it is. By the way, if you can hear airplanes in the background, imagine what it would be like

to sleep here. No, it's fine. It's great. It's great. This is one of the top seven airport hotels in Atlanta. And it's very close to the Circle K, which I just had to jog to to get batteries and a diet doctor pepper from my prima donna brother. For the record, I said, can you get me some kind of diet soda and then list it my favorites

in order, beginning with diet Dr. Pepper and ending finally four minutes later with the new bad diet cherry Pepsi. Call the new bad diet cherry Pepsi. That's what they call it. They used to make Hank and I, you know, I'm a little nostalgic for the old days when my life wasn't made out of dongles, but it used to be that they made this wild cherry diet Pepsi. That was amazing. And now they make a new flavor of wild cherry diet Pepsi that tastes like robotuss. It's called the bad new dietary Pepsi. I wouldn't know, John, because I find all diet drinks to be immoral. Oh, I completely agree.

But absolutely. I have no defense when I go to reckon with St. Peter. Right. He will have many questions for me. Yes. But the one that will end up having me sent to the bad place will be all of the plastic bottles.

I mean, everything involved in the production of Dian soda. Anyway, thanks to our sponsor tonight, Dr. Pepper. Yeah. John, you're really not angling for that Dr. Pepper sponsorship the way that you used to. And the way that I expect you to. You know, as I get older,

I find that I don't really want to be a corporate shield when I grow up. It's good call. I appreciate that. Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners. OK. Beginning with this question from Willi, who writes, on Christmas, I broke both of my feet. Oh, gosh.

Since I had one surgery and have to have at least one more, I'm going to be in a wheelchair for a couple months, and I won't be able to drive. What hobby should I take up to keep from driving myself crazy? It's good, it's good, it's also good to not tell everybody how you broke both your feet on Christmas morning in a definitely hoverboard-related accident.

So true. It's, I mean, there's so many different ways actually. Trampolines, just a new dog underfoot. Christmas morning has topped your time for broken feet. And also for cutting yourself with scissors, trying to get those annoying packages open. I recommend reading, ideally reading my books, but also books by other people, if that's your jam.

I also, it occurred to me while reading this question that almost all of my hobbies are sedentary. So some of my favorite sedentary hobbies include all of my hobbies are sedentary. So some of my favorite sedentary hobbies include all of my work. Yeah, Hank doesn't have any hobbies and he also like doesn't know what a hobby is. This is the thing. I don't, you're not on Twitter

so you don't know about it, but there's a whole, there's a whole conversation going on right now about how he's been robbed of hobbies by the sort of productivity mythology and also by the economic circumstances of the 21st century. Right. Wherever hobby has to become a side hustle.

Right. Mom once said to me, while we were walking through a national park, she said, Hank, why don't you have a draw anymore? And I said, I just found it difficult to monetize. Yeah. As you know, I'm a big fan of unmonetizable hobbies. I think they're, they can be quite good for you. Yeah, as you know, I'm a big fan of unmonetizable hobbies. I think they're, they can be quite good for you.

Look, it looks, some people have to work 80 hours a week and if you have to, you have to. But if you can find time to have hobbies, they're really valuable because they can be a pathway to community and also because they can be a pathway to joy. Right. And you can't have your only identities be the things that you do professionally.

Right, well, I think especially because it becomes very easy to tie the sort of like value of those identities to the amount of money they generate. Yeah. And so if all of your identities are about generating money, then you only have the sort of one way of measuring how much you matter in the world. Oh, and also how much other people matter?

Yeah, so it's kind of distorting your world view about other people, not just about you. Absolutely. And that's part of what disturbs me about that worship of this one measure of success. And it doesn't matter if you've had nine marriages. And you've trampled on a lot of people's lives and you're miserable because you achieved

the only metric that matters according to the marketplace. But that's a bad, bad way to live your life. I know people who've done it that way and it's not good. You can also be a bad person and still feel happy. You can also have trampled on a lot of people and like have all this satisfaction and be like, you know, but I measured my life this way and the society is telling me to measure it that way

and so I feel validated in that. And it doesn't really matter how many people I've paid absolute minimum wage along the way. That's definitely true. Anyway, Lily, sorry about your feet. Podcasts are very good, but obviously you're already a fan of the best one. How could you keep a straight face? How could you even get through that sentence?

There are so many good podcasts. And maybe do some do a lingo. Pick up a language. Listen to the Anthropocene Reviewed. It's also a very good podcast. Thanks. John, do you want to hear another somewhat serious question?

No, I want to move on to something silly and stupid. Okay. Like this one from Betsy. Okay. Dear John and Hank, longtime fan of the pod in your next life, what would you like to come back as? A human, a giant squid, an extraterrestrial, disguised as a human?

Mm. I'd like to come back as a bumblebee, Betsy. Ha-ha-ha-ha. That's nice. Being an insect is nice because it's sort of like, if you don't like it, and it's like two months. It's like two, it's like that job you had after high school.

Yeah, and plus then you've just got insect knocked out, right? Like you take and care of it. So you just, I think different insect lives are very different. Okay. There's a lot of diversity in the, possibly the most of any group of organisms. I mean, insects, there's the tiger beetles.

Tiger beetles can run faster than any animal as compared to their body size. They're just like lightning fat. They look like they take the world on in a very frenetic manner. I may do a bizarre beast on them. They're really wonderful. I like the idea of coming back as a fruit fly

because they're so important to our understanding of the universe. And I would feel like be a research fruit fly specifically. Yeah, I feel like I'd be contributing something. And plus it would only be two weeks. Yeah, I think that the most interesting organism on earth, and I know that this is controversial these days, is humans.

Yeah, pretty cool. Well, we are amazing. Here's the thing though, she said alien in human body. So apparently we can go like universal with this. I don't want to. I would love to, in my my next life be on another planet. Not me. I love earth.

I like earth too, but there's so many planets. I'm not saying Mars. I'm not saying I certainly don't want to come back as some kind of Venus life form. Though I imagine for them, it wouldn't be that bad. But I want to be in another solar system. Nothing saying that my whatever energy can't go everywhere. Like if we're if we're getting into the energy, it's just energy. And by law of averages, you probably will.

So probably most of the organisms probably aren't on Earth. Yeah, I just want to take this opportunity, though, because I know that the supreme being that organizes these things is a listener of the pod. I want to take this opportunity to say that I would like my soul to remain earthbound. Okay. I wish you luck on your travels through the universe. I would like to be Carl. This next question comes from Sam who says, uh, dear Hank Ajahn, I'm a geography teacher at a public high school. I really like being in the classroom because I get to do meaningful work.

And I genuinely feel like, uh, it's helping make the world a better place People always have really high expectations from because I was a really good student And I've had multiple people express disappointment that I'm quote just a teacher Yeah, here's the thing I think it's impossible not to feel the weight of outside expectations Yeah, but the thing you have to remember is that the conscience of the social order to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain is demented. Like there is something wrong with a world that doesn't value teachers and think of teaching as a incredibly important profession, full of meaning and sacrifice and all the things that we want to lift up about the human spirit.

And so the problem is not with you, the problem is with the society that is informing the opinions of the people who are saying those things to you. Yeah, for a long time, there was this thing among people who did what we do, who were internet creators, where there was a, this sort of chip on the shoulder about,

your grandma doesn't care about your job, doesn't think it's real, and you can't explain to them. You have to sort of say, if you write for a blog, you just say you write for a magazine, and that sort of makes them believe that you have a real job. And there's a hurt to that. There's a frustration to that.

And we can't separate our beliefs about these things from other people's beliefs, especially the people that we care about. We should try, we should do our best, and we should we should find our own meaning, but it's always going to be informed by those people. And that's always going to be something that we're working through and frustrated by. So I think it's absolutely real to feel frustrated by this, but the only way we can deal with it, of course, is to understand the true value of our work and to find other people who appreciate that. So, you know, if it's your family, like you don't like get rid of your family over it or anything, but do find the other people who understand the value that you're

producing in the world. Yeah, the version of this in my life is that for a long time, people have asked me when I was going to try to write a real book. You know, people have asked me that in my family, lots of people have asked me that in Q&As. Yeah. And the idea... Some literature job. Yeah, the idea is that writing books for teenagers isn't real writing. Yeah. And I do feel frustrated about that sometimes, and it has gotten to me in the past, but somebody told me something once, another why I write or told me once, that there is also freedom in that.

There's also freedom in not having those people paying attention to your work. Like you get to know that you're doing good work and it's not about them. Yeah, so find the value in what you're doing for those kids and find the value in what you're doing for society in general because what world would we live in? There is no profession in America that adds more to the value of our economy than teachers

because we have nothing without them. I would agree with you Hank, but what about America's podcasters, the real heroes, the true economic engine of America? All right, and this question comes from Brian Emily, who write, dear John and Hank, I'm currently sitting with my sister in one of those little sitting areas of our college, and we were eating lunch together a couple

minutes ago when someone came up to me and used their fingers to take the cheese out of my lunch box. They did not ask or communicate to me at all prior to this theft. My sister and I exchanged horrified looks but didn't say anything and afterwards the burglary just sat down across from her and I. We don't know what to do. Should I give her the rest of my lunch? Is she an elementary school bully? What is happening? We tried to keep this brief, brief, and Emily. All right, so listen up, brief, and Emily, you write. My sister and I exchange horrified looks, but did not say anything,

and afterwards the burglary just sat down across from her and I what you meant to write was from her and me Okay, so now we're correcting the grammar. Yeah of the question before we okay This said no kind of podcast we're suddenly doing send us your questions and we will judge them Yeah, but on their merits, but only on their grammar other than that. I see no problem with this situation merits, but only on their grammar. Other than that, I see no problem with this situation. Just. It's, I mean, I think there's a huge amount of merit to just taking your lunch and putting it down in front of that person and walking away.

Just to say, clearly, you feel entitled to any old thing. I'm trying to, there are not a lot of situations in which this could have happened, right? So like, if this person is a stranger... If they are a true stranger. Then they have some profound lack of understanding of boundaries. Or of like, just culture in general. Like, maybe a very different upbringing. Very different, yes.

Or they think they know you and are petrified to have discovered that you're not who they thought you were. I mean, I've done a version of that a couple times where I tapped somebody on the shoulder and it turned out not to be my friend. Yeah, that happened to me once in college. I started giving Katherine a massage and it turned out it was Justin.

My roommate Justin. That I don't think I've ever done. What I, what I definitely haven't done is put my bare hands into someone else's lunch box and pulled out the cheese. I, and it turned out not to be my bud. No, because I wouldn't do that to my bud. Well, I steal a bud's fry. I'll steal a bud's fry.

No, I do. Okay, I walk and buy a bud. I'll grab it off, I'll grab a fry. Okay, Hank. I do. I walk and buy a bud. I'll grab a bud. I'll grab a fry. Okay. Hank, if you're walking past someone in a cafeteria and you think they are your friend, you would reach from behind them and grab a fry. I think I'd do that like sneak the fry and come around the other side and sit down and

be like, sup, Jay, and then eat the fry. That's a playful, a playful, um, encouraging into a boundary. No, I mean, not, not, not, not for me. Don't do that to me. Ha, ha, ha, ha. This is a surprise. I think your move might be to look at them and say,

I think that's a felony. Ha, ha, ha, ha. There's a whole book about someone moving my cheese, but not into their mouth. Someone moved my cheese into their digestive system, and that is inappropriate. I love that you get to go to college with your sister, though, that's wonderful. Do you really wish you'd go into college with me?

No, not at all. I didn't think so. But I'm glad that Bri and Emily have such a good relationship in a way that we did not. Yeah, fair enough. Do you really wish you'd go to college with me? No! Not at all! I didn't think so. But I'm glad that Bri and Emily have such a good relationship in a way that we did not. Yeah, fair enough. This next question comes from Liz, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm currently traveling in London, and my trip has been great so far.

There's just one problem with college students, so finances necessitate staying in a hostel, and the guy asleep below me is snoring like a bear. Now, I know that social conventions forbid me from throwing something at him, but is there anything else I can do? Lizard dreams interrupted Liz. Cheese. You throw cheese at him, and then you can't complain because it's free cheese.

Yeah. I- Cheese dreams, boy! That's what you say. Oh, that's weird. I have an actual tip, John. Okay. There are white noise apps on phones.

Yeah. Now, you can't turn your white noise app on in the hostel because then people are listening to your white noise and that seems weird. Right. But you can put headphones in with the white noise. And I've been on tour with a bunch of snorey guys and that is the only way I made it through.

I had no other world could end, and I wouldn't know. Well, that's terrifying. I'm not sure that's gonna help. Help our listeners sleep. Well, look, if the world's gonna end, I'd rather not know. I think I would. Yeah.

Well, of course you would. I would want a little warning. Just to get your sort of mental affairs in order. No, just to like make a couple quick calls. Oh, yeah, I don't think there's time for calls. The world's ending. The cell phones are all jammed, the circuits are busy. Well, then I, hmm, yeah.

Well, how, to what extent is it ending? Just sort of like cracks from the center of the earth radiating out onto the core. The whole, the surface is gonna be the inside now, kind of world end. I'm gonna want, if I have warning to get my headphones in so I can listen to work by George Watsky as it happens. Cause I think that, like, I could get myself

in the right head space with the right playlist to just watch the world turn to magma. What's your, what's your apocalypse song? Yeah. Tell us, let us know what your apocalypse songs are, everybody. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's definitely something by the mountain goats. It's probably, it's probably this year. You know, I probably want to be thinking, I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me,

as my last thought. Yeah, and it's like, oh, it's gonna kill me. Yeah, I've always thought that would be a great last thought. You know, I don't think it's going to end this way. First off, I'm very hopeful about the course of our species. We're gonna get it together. We just need to stay together. But if it is going to end, and at some point it will, hopefully in hundreds

of thousands or millions of years, I would like it to end all at once for everyone. I don't want a Kurt Vonnegut cat's cradle situation where there's like 12 people left. Yeah, I mean, well, if the 12 people can make it, but they kind of can't, and that's the thing. What I don't want is to be the last person. Well, good news. That's phenomenally unlikely. The odds are bad. Yeah, very bad. Not only because the odds are bad to start, but also just because you're not the kind of specimen

who's going to make it to the end. I mean, correct. For a number of reasons. Yeah. But mostly a lack of preparation. Well, I mean, I also think like, what's your fire building skill? Right. Not great.

I could work it out. I would say that you're in the bottom 20% of global survival skills. Maybe, yeah. The unfortunate thing, of course, is that it's not going to go that way. It's going to end as T.S. Eliot, so perfectly wrote, not with a bang, but with a

whimper. Yeah. I don't know how we got here. We were answering a question about snoring. Oh, right, because my headphones. White noise. You gotta use the white noise. I've solved your problem, and then we went down a rabbit hole. All right, Hank, this next question comes from Taylor who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was thinking the other day about spices. There's Italian seasoning, Asian seasoning, etc. What is Asian seasoning? I don't think there is Asian seasoning. I don't think there is either. I think you may have made that up.

There's no French seasoning. There's basically just Italian seasoning. Yeah, and Italian seasoning is just a mix of fairly common herbs. I love Italian seasoning was made in America for sure. Not only that, I think a lot of the herbs in Italian seasoning are actually foods from the Americas, so they didn't exist in Italy until like 500 years ago. Yeah. But anyway, Taylor's question is, is there an American seasoning?

And if so, what does it taste like? And the answer, of course course is cool ranch. Yes. Yes, there is it. There is. And it's the thing that they sprinkle on cool ranch Doritos. Yeah, that is our flavor. We made that. That's not the only one, but it is the most us one. Yeah, there's also sour cream and onion. That feels very American, barbecue also. All the things that go on chips. Yeah. All the main chip flavors feel pretty...

Because, why don't they know about us in fried things. Oh, and then you go to Europe or Asia or Africa and they have entirely different chip flavors. Yeah, yeah. And all of their chips taste wrong. Yeah, and Australia, the big one is chicken. Yeah. And I'm like, it's a chip.

You can't say it. It tastes like chicken. No, I don't want it to taste like chicken. There's shrimp ones too. Yeah. And lots of places, and I'm just like, no. No, the bad part of the shrimp is the flavor. Oh, have I ever told you about the art performance

that I went to when Sarah and I first started dating now? So when Sarah and I first started dating she worked in an art gallery and there would be these art performances You know where like artists would would come and they would like interact with the audience and as you can imagine Hank I My favorite wall is the fourth wall. Yeah, I love a fourth wall between a performance and me. Yes, and so a lot of times these artists would like Inside the audience and maybe they would touch you or they'd get right in your face And I like Sarah so much But this performance aren't made me so uncomfortable, but anyway one time there was an artist there

Who was handing out hard candies that were crab flavors. And then what did you have to do with that? Did you go to eat it? He watched me while I put it in my mouth. And you know what it tasted like? Crab. It tasted like crab. Yeah. It tasted like crab, but it was a candy.

But without the butter and good hearts. No, it tasted like the worst parts of the ocean. It tasted like the last thing you taste when you drown in the sea. Which reminds me John, that this podcast is brought to you by the worst parts of the ocean. The worst parts of the ocean,

somehow they got into the crab. They really did though. I'm not a big fan of crab in general. You have to say. I hear that. Today's podcast is also brought to you by your apocalypse song. Your apocalypse song, you know, just have it queued up on Spotify, just get ready.

Just get ready. Keep it ready. This podcast is also brought to you by my brother, John's Earthbound Soul. It is tied with a tether of energy. It cannot escape. It has been asked. We've asked the one who watches over

to not let it go off to another planet where the skies are purple and the trees are red. And everything smells like flowers. Well, everything smells like flowers on Earth too. Sometimes it's a good planet. If we're asking things of the one who watches over all of us, I have some other asks. Hahaha. That's the, yeah, this is my first number oneer.

Yeah, I actually come to think of it. Like, I'd like to table the question of where my soul ends up in my next life and instead just talk about universal healthcare. Radical inequality of opportunity and access to systems of power. Cool, cool, cool. Anyway, today's podcast is also brought to you by cheese. Cheese, don't steal it.

Oh, come over the love of God. Yeah, especially that with someone watching. That's not even stealing, that's bullying. That's good. It's still stealing. It's, yeah, it's still stealing, but it's also bullying. All right, we got another question. This one comes from Justin who writes,

Dear John and Hank, when someone sends me a Christmas card that is just a picture of their family with a holiday-themed border, how long am I obligated to keep the card? And what do I do with it until then, Justin? I mean, you're not obligated to keep it for any amount of time. It is okay, and I do this sometimes, to look at the card, and then look at the back of the

card. John's looking at me like he's upset, and then put it into the recycling. Oh, I was just looking at you like I was upset because I don't think it's necessary to look at the back of the card. Now I only do that for some, honestly. It's like I get them from weird people who like I know peripherally yeah, but the families that are part of my life We we have an area during the Christmas season where we put them yeah

And then after that sometimes they go to the fridge and and they a number of them will hang out all year around until they get replaced Which reminds me that of the time when I was in maybe like a sophomore in college and I went to visit our nanny and pop-all in Birmingham. Yeah, the story. And on the fridge, we're all 13 grandchildren, but not me. You're just like looking, I'm looking somewhere on there. There's Braxton. Yeah. There's Sanders.

Yeah. That's a good girl. Boy, there's like six of Hank. Ha, ha, ha. This next question comes from Catherine who asks to dear Hank and John. I don't know if you all have any experience in this realm, but I just had a bad performance.

My pitch was off. I totally cracked on one of the high notes that I was supposed to belt. Afterward, everyone said I did such a great job. And it just felt like everyone was lying to me to make me feel better, which only made me feel worse. How do you guys deal with your brain, replaying a horrible moment over and over again, and how do you deal with flattery that makes you feel like garbage? And an awkward abundance of Catherine. Well, I have had a similar singing performance. In fact, it's the only kind of singing performance I've ever had.

What do I know about this? Every time I sing on stage, I miss the notes. Oh, sure, yes, but you're not expected to hit them. Yeah. At this point. Right. I mean, I guess I've had a lot of nights like this though where I walked off stage. Yeah, I know. I really shouldn't have said that. I, you know, I'm going to use somebody's feelings or like I really ruin that joke or I really missed an opportunity or in fact almost every night. Yeah. I walk off stage and think like,

oh, I wish I hadn't done that. And I replay it over and over and over again with worry. I think that is normal because you're in a high stress environment. It's also possible that like you felt really pitchy and you weren't as pitchy as you felt. Yeah. Because sometimes I feel like I had a disastrous show and no one noticed. Or people in the audience had a great time because really a lot of their fun is not dependent upon my performance.

Exactly, yeah. Yeah, and I think and always remember that like the things that matter to us, we're going to have moments where we don't get to the point we wanted to get to and that's like that's okay. It's part of having something that matters to you. And having that like sit on you and having you worry about it, that's a symptom of it,

it mattering. And you don't want to eliminate that because the only way to really get rid of that worry is to have it stop mattering. And things mattering is the most important part of being a person. As for how to handle it when you know somebody is telling you that you did great when you know you didn't do great, there's three possibilities here. One is that they didn't notice. Like they really do think you did good because they don't have the same understanding of your craft that you do, where like you don't really understand how much you know about what you're

doing and it can really it can really sound good to an audience of people who are non-musicians when even if it's not like up to your par it could also be that they're just being nice and it's okay to just sort of let this convention be and accept that your your friends and family just want you to feel good about, you know, the thing that you really want to be good at. Now, if you have somebody that you can be really honest with and like sort of talk constructively about your craft with, that's really wonderful and you should do your best to find people like that. But you're sort of like support structure of people who don't have a good understanding of

You know the challenges that go into performance aren't the people you want to look to for that kind of criticism or or Sort of critique. Yeah, exactly. I think it's about the nature of the relationships. So early on in my writing life I had many events that were attended by fewer than five people. And I didn't know how to perform for five people. But it was very helpful to have someone in my life like Sarah, who could like go back to the car with me and be like, yeah, that wasn't great. Here's what you could have done better.

What could you do differently? Right. Having someone in your life who you can trust to be that person is really helpful. All right, we heard another question from Cassie who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know it's natural for children to ask questions, but when I became a parent, I was not prepared to hear the same question repeated over and over again. Oh, God. My almost four year old daughter asks me 10 to 15 times a day if I am hungry. Why?

Is it normal? For the first month or so, I was very patient with it, but it's been like four months of this and I will lose my mind if she keeps it up. How do I coax her out of this phase? I don't know. Cassie. Oh no, I was really hoping you knew because Orn has one right now, which is, what street are we on? Oh, what street is this? Still on street, buddy. This one, and if we don't answer him, he just keeps asking. He gets the different streets are different,

because we've turned him to a new one. He's like, what street is this? We tell him, and then he's like, satisfied, but only for 30 seconds. Yeah, well, I do think, I mean, at least from my own experience, I am not a parenting expert. It's developmentally normal. Both my kids did that. And it was, it was challenging at times. I will say this, it's nice when they're little and they ask you questions that you can answer. And that you know how to answer. Yes, I am.

Instead of when they get older and they ask you questions where you're like, I don't know. I mean, I don't really know what causes wind. Why is there wind? I know why wind works. I know about how wind works, but like you explain it in broad terms and then they ask a specific question

and I'm like, I thought, well, I guess we could call Uncle Hank. Yeah, molecules. Molecules. They get warmer because of the sun and then things happen. Events occur. And so what we tried to do a lot of times was to respond to the question with a question.

You notice somebody says like, well, mommy, are you hungry and you say, do you think I'm hungry? Oh. Yeah, now you're thinking. We're gonna make the kids think. Yeah. Because what this is, I mean, if I'm going off my own self,

is it's one of those sort of like mental ruts that you get stuck in. One of the behaviors that occurs when nothing else is going on, and of course, the quintessential one now is you pick up your phone. And so instead of picking up her phone, your daughter is asking you if you're hungry because nothing else is going on in that moment.

So maybe try and create something else that is going on in that moment, which is hard when you're in the car seat and on a street. And it's like, it's still on a street, buddy. But also hard at any time because my job is not just to entertain a child 24 hours a day. But for several hours a day, absolutely. Parenting is a tremendous and extremely strange adventure. Child brains are super weird and wonderful and terrifying and everything.

All right, John, before we get to the all-important news from Mars on AFC, well, then I have a comment in regards to a previous episode it comes from Morgan Who writes Dear Hank and John. I was listening to a previous episode it comes from Morgan who writes Dear Hank and John. I was listening to a previous episode of the pod in which Hank talked about how when he finishes puzzles he puts them back in the box. Is this something people actually do? I grew up with a sister who was a puzzle enthusiast and every time she finished one she would glue it together with Mod Podge, does the liquid adhesive, maybe they don't have that in other places, and then add them

to a pile of completed puzzles in the basement. Are you saying that isn't proper puzzle protocol? Have I been duped? Yes. Well, there's more than one proper puzzle. You can do puzzle as however you would like to. Yes, but I think that if you do the mod podge,

you end up with a completed jigsaw puzzle that realistically you never look at again. Pretty much, unless. Unless. Yeah. When we were kids, there was a puzzle that we looked at throughout our entire childhood that was the Muppets.

The Muppets. Yeah. That was Mod Podge. Yeah, and it was hung up on the wall. And it was hung up on the wall. And it was hung up on the wall. And that, I think, right. That makes sense. Yeah, get in a frame, display it.

Okay. But I'm a big fan actually of finishing the puzzle. Oh yeah. Looking at the completed puzzle. Thinking I did it. Yep. And then taking apart the puzzle. I love taking apart the puzzle.

So it's my favorite part. Yeah, well, because part of what, for me, the pleasure of a puzzle is the coming together and the doing of the part. The doing of the puzzle. But also, in some ways, the undoing of it because it's an acknowledgement that, like, this is how systems, this is what systems return to.

Right. Yeah. And also that, like, it is so much easier, like, infinitely, immediately easier to destroy than to create. So much easier. Random is every state. Unrandom is one state. It's remarkable sitting here in a hotel room thinking about that this is the one state of not disordered and given time, it will all become complete disorder again. Well, and also to be inside of a human life with consciousness requires...

Consciousness is the ultimate order. It's wild. It requires such a level of order. So do whatever you want to with your puzzles, though. John, what's the news from AFC Wimbledon? Well, AFC Wimbledon played Portsmith. Portsmiths an interesting club. They were in the Premier League within the last, I think, 10 years.

And then they dropped all the way down to League 2, and they almost dropped out of the football League. And in a lot of ways, AFC Wimbledon was an important model for them because it was a very similar situation, although not with the same level of disaster that happened to Wimbledon, where the Portsmouth fans ended up having to buy the club and run the club as a fan community.

And in that process, they were really inspired by Wimbledon. Now they are back up to league One and significantly better than us. They have a good stadium, they have a large fan base and they won the game. So they won two to one. It was an interesting game. We deserved to lose and so it was appropriate that we did. There were moments where we played well, Joe Pickett's sort of really good goal and it was good to see him scoring. The other thing that happened in the game is that Scott Wagstaff returning from injury got a red card in very

weird circumstances. He came on as a substitute in like the 60th minute or so, almost immediately got a yellow card and then just like 15 later, got another yellow card and got sent off and both looked deserved to me. So that was a little frustrating. And in general, like our form has just not been very good. We now have had only one point from our last three games, which is worrisome. And the franchise playing its trade in Milton Keynes has gone above us on one point above us. So we are now teetering on the brink of the relegation zone just one spot away from the relegation zone

with about 21 games left in the league one season. So a long way to go. A long way to go. It's been another difficult season. The truth is it's going to be difficult to be in league one season. So a long way to go. Long way to go. It's been another difficult season. The truth is it's going to be difficult to be in league one until we have a new stadium. And maybe even after that, because it is really, really hard for a club that is the size of Wimbledon that's owned by its fans. And so it doesn't have deep pockets to compete year after year in league one. So hopefully we can find a way, we've found a way every year so far. We'll see. Well, in this week's Mars News,

John, one of the big mysteries in Mars is where all the water went. There's about 10% of what we think Mars used to have left on the planet in the form of mostly water rice on the planet, but there's also some ice crystals in the atmosphere. There's a little bit of water vapor in the atmosphere. And we know that roughly that Mars' water went to space.

So the water gets pushed up in the upper atmosphere somehow, and then it gets decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen then gets blown off into interstellar space by the solar winds. So that's a rough idea. But it seems like it's happening faster than we expected. And the mechanism of that, according to a paper that was just published in science, rough idea, but it seems like it's happening faster than we expected. And the mechanism of that, according to a paper that was just published in science using data from the Xomars trace gas orbiter, which is just up there, designed to detect trace

gases. And what they found is that when we had this planet-wide dust storm, that was big news. I remember. Yes, it was very sad news. We had this planet- my dust storm and that allowed the atmosphere to warm up and as it got closer to the sun and heated up even more, the atmosphere was able to hold more water vapor at higher altitudes and a lot of that water vapor was probably also sucked up by the dust storm and got higher up and that water vapor wasn't able to condense

into droplets so it remained gaseous, and that allowed it to be broken down into hydrogen oxygen and sent off. So the dust storms have, in part, been, seem like they might be part of the process for how the water leaves the planet. And as there were more dust storms, more water left, and more water left, there were more dust storms, that kind of thing. Oh, we have never heard of one of those disturbing meteorological cycles that we can't fix once they start. Yeah. Oh god, that's terrifying. Yeah, we'll be okay. What if 90% of our water flies off?

Well, first of all, that's like a billion-year-long process. Second, we are protected by solar winds by our magnetic field. So one of the main things we have to do is not let the internal dynamo of earth shut down so that we maintain our magnetic field. And that good news is something we have no control over at all. Could it happen? Mm-hmm. Probably not any time soon.

It will eventually happen. Great. But we'll probably be dead by then. I mean, like humans, not just us. Okay. Great. So if the amount of water on Mars is merely going down over time, will it eventually get to zero?

Probably not because Mars is geologically active, so there will be water that gets locked up beneath the planet's surface that has no way of getting out. Okay. Okay. So I don't need to be that worried that we're going to lose all the water before we can get there and drink that sweet, sweet, salty, grossness. No. It probably tastes like crab hard candy. Probably worse, but I don't know. It's that's possible. Wouldn't it kill me? It would definitely kill you.

Good to know. Unless you did a little work on it. Do you have to do some chemistry on it first? Well, I mean, if you put me on Mars tomorrow, I would not be ready to do that. That's why we're keeping you here with your earthbound soul. Ha ha ha ha. Well Hank, thank you for potting with me. It has been a pleasure.

And thanks to everybody for listening. You could submit questions to us at Hankandandjohnatgmail.com. We love your questions. We are very sorry about all the ones that we don't answer. There are so many wonderful questions every week. We don't answer. It's not personal. It's just that we get distracted

talking about the apocalypse. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our producers, our Rosiana Halsey-Rohassen, shared in Gibson, our head of community and communications, is Victoria Von Jornow. of the apocalypse. you