Dear Hank & John - 228: You Say Banana, I Say Banana (w/ Rosianna Halse Rojas!)

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

How do I cope with my unrequited love for Timothée Chalamet? Why have I started exclusively reading non-fiction? How can I both support and express concern for my mom's world-class Candy Crush skills? What's the expiration date on a frozen turkey? How can I tell if my fiancée thinks my grandma starred in The Sound of Music? How do I keep a journal? How do I entertain myself without looking at a screen? How do I feel better about accidentally growing the wrong plants? 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 John. Or as I, but think of it, De Rosiana and John. Yeah, today Hank is, I don't actually know what Hank is doing, but he's not available. So I'm joined by Rosiana Hals Rojas, my longtime producing partner and friend. And we are here to answer your questions, provide you with dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. But based on Rosiana and I's interest, mostly AFC Wimbledon. It's strong bias towards Wimbledon. I feel like Rosiana and I have been to a lot more AFC Wimbledon games than we have been to Mars missions. I've never been to Mars

even once. Nor have I. Nor in fact have any, have any humans. And nor will they before 2028, at which point this podcast will be renamed dear John and Hank. It will be the greatest day of my life. We should definitely have a party. It can be Mars themed. We should.

We should have. I should arrange to have the next NerdCon Nerdfighteria, a Mars themed party to celebrate the renaming of the podcast. I actually kind of love that idea and we can get Mars, the chocolate people to provide lots of stickers. Yes. That's a great idea and we desperately will need sponsors. Because we all can be in, you know, astronaut outfits.

It's flawless. It's a flawless situation. I in, you know, astronaut outfits, it's flawless. It's a flawless situation. I love that you call them astronaut outfits. What do you call them spacesuits? I call them spacesuits, but I think astronaut outfits is far superior. I don't think British people call them astronaut outfits. It's just me.

It reminds me of something wonderful that happened to me recently. We were all trying to decide what movie to watch and everybody was throwing out ideas as we were scrolling through the list of available movies. And as we scrolled past Cloudy with a chance of meatballs too, Alice screamed out that one, that one, Italian man throwing things. No. Okay, that was like, that is a much, much better title for her cloudy with a chance of meatballs too.

Oh my god, I'm so excited for when Alice is old enough to read your books and can just name all of them. Even the podcast, like she can name every episode of Deadhank and John if she wants. Oh, she really, she should name everything. She's an incredible talent. I told her that like I feel like she can have any job that she wants but the most likely job she's gonna have is Namer of paint colors. Oh that's brilliant. Because she'd be great at it. Has

she had any trial runs with different colors? Well then she feels like all this pressure. Yeah. So when I show is she's like I don't I don't perform under pressure. I only I only deliver when you least expect it. Right she doesn't love a planned audience. She likes an audience under her control. Yes. Which is fair enough. Yeah, she likes to announce when the performance

will be occurring rather than scheduling it long in advance. I like that. That's kind of going to be my social media approach. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha All right, unless you have a terrible dad joke, I think we can jump right in. You know what I do. Oh, okay, what is it? I'm worried you might have heard it. Why would Prometheus make a good postman? Why?

Because it's a job with a lot of delivering. That's a great joke. It's a little nerdy. That was actually sent in to the email by Sydney. He says that you might like another Greek related great joke. It's a little nerdy. That was actually sent into the email by Sydney. He says that you might like another Greek-related dad joke. I do. I very much enjoyed it. It turns out that my wheelhouse is just like ancient Greek dad jokes.

Perfect. You heard it, people. Send them in. All right. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. The first question comes from Gina who writes, dear Hank and John, but mostly John. I have fallen in absolute love with Timothy Shalameh. Wait, why mostly John? Just because I am also a little bit in love

with Timothy Shalameh? I think that's the assumption. Okay, fair enough. What the heck am I supposed to do? All I can do is stare at beautiful photos of him and pretend like he loves me back. I just want to hold his hand for one minute. How do I cope?

Gina. What I feel like you didn't capture is that this email is written entirely in all caps. It is. It is an all-caps email. But I appreciate you not shouting at the listeners. Yeah. I mean, I used to write Daniel Radcliffe letters every single week. He was my era's Timothy Salome.

I would update him about my day, and if anyone asked me whether I had a boyfriend, I'd say it's Daniel, you don't know him. He goes to another school. Of course. Exactly. In Scotland, you won't have heard of it. Yeah, he's in Scotland. You're a muggle. That's like the British version of saying that your girlfriend is Canadian. Was that the fake that the fake boyfriend? Fake girlfriend? I had a fake girlfriend. I mean, I should probably shouldn't confess this.

But when I was in middle school, I had a fake girlfriend in Canada. And I didn't even know that it was a trope. Like, I didn't realize that I wasn't the first person to come up with this idea. And like, I saw one of the first like teen movies I saw featured a joke about a guy who had a fake girlfriend in Canada and I was sweating bullets. You're like, I get to find out. But of course they already knew. That's so funny.

I love it. So I used to think like, oh, we should try to imagine people complexly even celebrities, even the celebrities we admire or look up to or have crushes on. And now I, this is where I'm at right now. I feel like it's okay to have a huge crush on Timothy Shalamet as long as you understand. And this is really important. You don't actually know him. Yeah. And part of the reason he's so great is that you don't actually know him. Yeah. And part of the reason he's so great is that you don't actually know him. Like, I'm sure he's an amazing person in real life.

Like, every interview I've listened to is an indication that he is a great guy. But part of what makes our celebrity crushes straight forward and uncomplicated is that we don't have to think of them as people in the same way that we have to think of like the Yahoo who has the locker next to us as a person. That Yahoo always being next to us. I think that's a really good point. The singer Mitsky spoke when her most recent album came out and spoke a lot about how she's very aware that people are seeing her as a symbol and that there's like some play with that. There's, you know, a level

of agents you see, she can still find in that what makes it scary and what makes it threatening sometimes is when there's like a perceived ownership or entitlement taken from that symbol. Right, which I'm not, I'm not getting that vibe from Gina at all. No, no, totally. And so I'm like, there's nothing wrong with that symbolism and that kind of fun and fantasy with it and like that idea of this gorgeous young actor with floppy hair, falling in love with you and an ex-chalance, chowls a collection. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

And I think it brings it. I can't tell if you're talking about Timothy Chalemy or if you're still talking about Daniel Radquist. Definitely talking about Timothy Chalemy. I don't feel like Daniel Radcliffe had a great trial as a collection. That's true. But I might be wrong. That isn't his strength even now I would argue. Yeah, I haven't really looked to his trials as lately. We sort of, you know, we ended things.

Do you feel like you've parted ways in terms of having like a proper crush on Daniel Radcliffe? Yeah, I think they have a one I was about 15 because then I discovered Brandon Flowers. Right. And that's just lasted. Yeah, so Gina, I think you're okay. I mean, it's probably not gonna happen with you and Timothy, but the arc of history is long, and it's probably not gonna happen. And the way you cope is you write fanfiction.

If you're not already writing fanfiction, you've got to write some fanfiction. Yeah, but I mean, if I could offer you one piece of advice, Gina, it's make sure that you really anonymize that user name. Yes, because you might think you're always going to remember your log into that website, but I promise you you won't. Hypothetically speaking. So I've had to figure out how to delete that stuff when you don't remember your log in and you don't use that email anymore Just hypothetically could happen to somebody definitely hasn't happened to anybody we know

So you mean we want another question. Oh, yeah, okay And so our next question comes from zev who says dear brothers green I've been looking at the books I bought in the past couple of years and there's almost no fiction books anymore Am I getting old? What's happening? Howling like Zev. You are probably getting old. I have a little bit of this problem. I read a lot more nonfiction than I used to. I used to think nonfiction was just a complete waste of time.

And I read quite a bit of it now. Yeah, I do too. I've put really into memoirs kind of accidentally. I just keep buying things that turn out to be memoirs or borrowing things from the library that turn out to be memoirs. And things from the library that turn out to be memoirs. And I noticed that when I try and come up with books for life's library or book club,

they often tend to be memoirs or essay collections. Yeah, I love an essay collection. Like I love reading Annie Dillard essays or Joan Diddy in essays or right now I'm reading a book of essays by Vivian Gornick. Oh, I know that name, but I don't know. She's had like a 60 year career as a memoirist Right now I'm reading a book of essays by Vivian Gornick. I know that name, but I don't know. She's had like a 60 year career as a memoirist and essayist,

and she just, there's nobody who writes sentences like her. It's just a pure joy to read. She's a lifelong New Yorker, and you feel it. Wow, 60 years, that's amazing. I might be exaggerating. 500 years, that's incredible. No, yes, she started working in 1969. Wow. That's a. I might be exaggerating. 500 years, that's incredible. No, yes, she started working in 1969. Wow.

That's a long time. That is a long time. One I really loved last year was the Lonely City by Olivia Lang, which is all about New York as well. And oh, there's this book that is really big in the UK that I think only just came out in the US called Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton. And that's very much about like being in your 20s in London, having grown up kind of on the outskirts of London. I was like, did you write this book for me?

And then Trick Mirror, which I read at the very beginning of this year by Geo Tolentino, which I thought was fantastic. It's like the best essay collection about the internet that I've read. It's not just about the internet, it's all about lots of different kinds of self-delusion, but it's fantastic, fantastic writing. So I think part of it is that we're in this great moment of nonfiction right now in general, too, like it's not just that it's kind of happening out of nowhere. There are all these fantastic essayists and memoir writers. Yeah.

So instead of answering your questions, we've just recommended a number of nonfiction books to you. That's a good point. I also think it's just, I think it's fine to go through phases as a reader. Yeah. Like I try not to judge myself too much when it comes to my reading. I want to be reading stuff that interests me and challenges me

and pushes me in new directions and expands my understanding of the universe. And sometimes that's fiction and sometimes it's not. I will say that when I'm in a period where I haven't read a fiction book that I loved in a long time, I like to reread something that I know I love. Like I like to reread Sula, or I'll reread Gatsby, and then I'll be like, oh, I like this stuff. And then I'll start to think like, oh, is there a writer who was writing at the same time as Fitzgerald who I've never read, and turns out that I'd never read

a Don Pal Novel, and so now I'm reading a Don Pal Novel, and then from there I go on to another novel. And so I can, I find that I can kind of break those reading cycles by going back to an old favorite. Yeah, I find that too. There are books on my shelf that are just, I reread every year, even though I have lots of exciting new books to read, just because I want to get back into that reading cycle.

And also, because I just want to read something familiar and comforting. The other thing I was thinking is that when I was younger, I used to like read encyclopedias and stuff and find out new facts. Now we have Wikipedia and we have all of this information that's very accessible and I still will spend an unimaginable amount of time reading Wikipedia articles. But I feel non-fiction sometimes can give you that same feeling too of when you're little, stepping through the encyclopedia, learning about the world. Yeah.

So that's kind of to me, Peel. Yeah, I love falling way down a rabbit hole. Yeah, I got really excited when I saw that you signed up to J Stor. Oh, yeah. I miss that so much from university, like having access to all these amazing old journals and stuff. Yeah, I'm reading a lot of J Stor. I can't stop myself. We know how to have fun.

Yeah. All right, Ros read a lot of J store. I can't stop myself. We know how to have fun. Yeah All right, Riziana, we got another question. This one comes from Rachel who writes dear John and Hank I just found out that my mother is currently in seventh place in the world for highest score in candy crush Apparently she's just been playing whenever she's stressed, which must be a lot. How do I simultaneously celebrate this achievement, express concern for her health and inform her that nobody plays candy crush anymore? Oh.

First off, my mom still plays candy crush. So I didn't even know that candy crush was over. Seven's plays in the world. I'm stuck there. Like you spread that sentence aloud and my brain just stopped there. That's unbelievable. Candy Crush has 1.2 million ratings in the Apple Store.

A lot of people still play it. And your mother is seventh overall. Because basically in the ruler of that country, the Candy Crush country. I feel like instead of expressing concern you should maybe say mom I think that you might have a career you don't know about yeah, cuz like become her manager take this moment Yeah, get her on twitch. Oh, yeah become a like dance mom for your mom I like dance mom for your mom. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, she's your child actor and your her mother. I love it. This is an opportunity. Brand her, brand her. The 7th best Tetris player in the world, like classic Tetris player, as you know, Rosiana I am a massive, massive fan of classic 1989 competitive Nest Tetris. I'm a what? Well, so is my brother because it is really affected his YouTube recommendations

There's a whole world out there Rachel not just of people who play these puzzle games at an extremely high level But if nerds like me who watch other people play these games at an extremely high level. And honestly, I kind of want to see gameplay of how your mom approaches Candy Crush because she must be very, very good. I've never played Candy Crush. I'm not totally sure what it involves. I'm other than seeing people play it on the tube and thinking, you know, I'm not really sure what you're doing, but it looks great.

Yeah, it's Tetris' ask in this sense that you're trying to line things up and make them disappear. Okay. So there's a speed element to it as well. I'll confess that I'm not totally sure. Well, that's why Rachel's mom needs to start her Twitch. Yeah, I look forward to becoming a Twitch supporter

of Rachel's Bombs new Candy Crush channel. Definitely tell her how you'll throw her a party if she gets to first place. Yeah. Like give her more pressure. Right. Final on. Yeah. Just say, Mom, you're only playing when you're stressed.

Well, we need to increase your stress levels because you're only seventh and you could be great, Mom. It could be really great. Do you want to be a contender? Are you serious about this? Do you wake up in the morning hungry for Candy Crush start a mom? And if not, how do we get there?

Cause I'm gonna take us there. Great. I think we've cracked it. Properly good advice. I think we've answered that question. All right. The next question comes from David. Dehangan John, four years ago,

I received a free turkey for Thanksgiving from my workplace. Because I was a poor college student, I went to my parents' house for the meal and didn't touch it, thinking, I'll just make that in a few weeks when I need a lunch. I am now 27, and the turkey is still in my freezer. What do I do with this beast? And also the subject line of that email was called turkey. I mean, David, this is not a difficult question to answer. So that's good.

It's time to part with the turkey. And I don't mean part with it by cooking it. If it's been in the freezer for four years, it's not going to be great. It's going to be fine, right? No. I didn't eat meat, so I didn't really know. So David, because you obviously don't have access to internet search engine, I went ahead and did just a real basic level of research on this for you.

And the answer is that at least according to the Butterball Turkey talk line, which is a real thing, You can call Butterball. Featured in the West Wing. Yep. And Rosiana only knows about it because it's been in an episode of the West Wing. You can call Butterball and get your Turkey advice. As long as it's kept in the freezer unopened and the freezer has been freezing in an uninterrupted

fashion for two to three years. Oh, no. You have just exited the Butterball Turkey window. Now, look, a real turkey suffered and died for this moment, David. I don't want to make you feel too bad, but that turkey had a soul in a family. So what I would recommend is that you cook the turkey and then you feed it to coyotes. They'll eat anything or raccoons. Raccoons will eat anything too. You could have a funeral for the turkey. That's good. Imagine how you would want to be

a woken up of being cryogenically frozen and that right a list of all the things you'd want to do before realizing that actually, quite genetically freezing, someone doesn't really want. As indeed, it did not work for this turkey. Yeah, and you give that gift to the turkey. You give them the exit that they so deserve. That's a great idea. All right, we got to have the question, Rosie. And this one comes from Audrey who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm getting married at the end of this month. And I think my fiance still thinks my grandma starred in the 1965 classic The Sound of Music. How do I see if you still believe this without sounding suspicious? Wishing

I was holidaying in Rome, Audrey. I love the lack of context. The lack of context makes me delighted. Yeah, so are we to assume that Audrey once said as a trick, my grandma starred. First off, there's only one starring role in the sound of music. So are we to believe that Audrey told her fiance, my grandma is julie andruz? Oh, did she tell her fiance, my grandma is Christopher Blumma? Oh, which is, yeah, an even bigger twist. Yeah. So there's that possibility. Alternately, Audrey said early on in dating,

funny you should mention that because my grandma was in the sound of music and it was a trick, but like, the trick like never quite got delivered on. This is something Sarah and I did early in our relationship that we actually had to stop doing because it became so serious where we would try to trick each other about facts that weren't true, both about our own personal lives

but also about like broader geopolitical stuff, you know? While you were getting to know each other? Yeah, it was while we were dating, but even early in our marriage, we were still doing it where we would, like, one of us would try to convince the other They were all so stupid that like the world's leading port for Cruise ships is actually in Morocco And then the other person would be like that doesn't make any sense what really? And you'd be like yeah, and then you'd have to wait like 10 minutes and

then you would say, trick. Oh, so while you when you've already moved on to something new. Yes, it was only once the person believed you that you would announce trick. I love that. That's great. That's so great. The reason we had to stop doing it. It was, yeah, it was, it was a really fun, it was a great game. And Audrey, obviously, is, has enjoyed it as has enjoyed it as much as we did. The reason we had to stop doing it is because we stopped trusting each other about facts. So you had to stop because it was causing you like a breakdown in the marriage.

Yeah, it was like basic communication was impossible. It was a communication issue. What had started out as like a fun trick had become like a breakdown in communications. I love it. The thing that I find intriguing about this also is that on the old dating apps, they now have a lot of like things

to try and convey personality. So that it's not just like pictures that you're judging on, which just adds a whole lot of complicated layers. Wait, like what else is there? So basically you have all of these questions that you're given a list to choose from and you can pick three when you're profile and one app started doing this hinge

and then now all of the other apps are doing it as well because they all just copy each other. But one of the trademark ones is two truths in a lie. So I'm wondering if maybe this was a two truth and a lie situation where clearly that was never resolved or maybe the fiance was unsuccessful at guessing, but Audrey still wanted to date them anyway. Wait, I got a rollback a little bit here. So you're telling me that now when you're online dating, in addition to like having to like

carefully choose your pictures, you have to carefully choose two truths and to lie about you with the hopes that it will like get someone's attention enough that they'll guess which one is the lie and then now you're in conversation and then you fall in love. Yeah, but you also have to do in a way that makes it seem like you haven't spent much time setting up your profile and you're like casual about it, but also really funny. Super, right. Yeah. Just naturally incredibly funny, so it's not a lot of work

for you to be charming because you are inherently so charismatic. Yeah, but then you also don't want to set the bar too high for your banter in case you can't live up to it in person. It's a real joy. Oh, that is fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, that first off, that sounds super difficult and challenging, but... Well, you know, of all the struggles in the world, that could be worse.

Yeah, I mean, I, of course, that's always true. I can still... It's a good fight. I've never found that particularly convincing when people are like, you know, my problems could be much worse than I'm like, yeah, but you don't have those problems. You have these problems, which are also serious.

I just, the thing about it is I feel like, in speaking of trick, I feel like I've been tricked by these dating apps to care. When really we all know that it's just like a massive data generation experiment so that they have behavioral data about how we like to date. Like it's not actually to help me meet someone. Ooh, that is dark, I didn't know that. Yeah.

I mean, I really, I missed the golden age of online dating in a big way. It's so, the thing is like being good at dating is not the same thing as being good at being in a long-term relationship. That's why I try and tell all my dates. It's just like a, it's a weird way. And of course, like not all dating is oriented around finding a long-term relationship, but like it is a weird way to try to do that. Like it seems like a really inefficient system for doing that.

Not that I know a more efficient system and obviously like all the other systems that we've we've tried throughout the millennia have have been troubling in their own ways. I don't want to like imply otherwise. But yeah, it just it just seems very hard. And Andre, I think if you did a two truths and a lie thing, you should just maybe go with it. Yeah, I think commit to it. I think pick someone who is it? Is it Julie Andrews? Is it Greta? Greta? Greta? I can't remember the name of the children.

I don't either. Pick one of them. Yeah, just do Julie Andrews and just be like, yeah, she can't come to the wedding. It's the weirdest thing She has another engagement Maybe she can come to the wedding and Julie Andrews is down, you know Like maybe Julie Andrews is ready to be your grandma and like and she'll she'll do this for you Like maybe you should email her and say like hey, this is weird, but can you do me a solid? I bet she do it. She's a very nice person. It's good to start a marriage off on a really deep lie.

I like it. I feel like that's the strongest foundation. The next question comes from Hannah. He says, do you hang in John? Do you journal? I have been a huge fan of journaling for years, but I never seem to make it more than a couple weeks before forgetting to write. I thought of using a Google Doc to journal since typing is so much easier, but I love the idea of having a handwritten account of my life. How do I increase the amount of

journaling I do? Is using a Google Doc journal cheating? Is my life even interesting enough to write down? Hannah Banana V5O Fanna, Hannah. Wait. Do you all have that? Do you know that song? I feel like I know it from maybe the babes. So it's a club, but I just realized it did make me say banana. Which is not how I say banana. Oh yeah, it tricks you into being an American. I was tricked. Well, though, I don't know that you say banana. Do you?

I say banana. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you do. Oh, wow, that's so weird. If I can flatten out a vowel, I will. Banana. Banana. Anyway. I love out a vowel, I will. Banana. Banana. I love hearing British people with American accents. It's so, I don't know how to say this politely. It's so offensive.

It hurts my feeling so much that that is what you think I sound like. I just, when I was just on this Disney World trip with my friends, one of my friends is from a... a Gusta Georgia. And when she really loves something, she just gets so sad. And she's lived in LA for a long time. And she gets so sad that when she loves something, and then what she says is, I love it. I just, yeah. I just, yeah.

I love it so much. Makes me so happy yeah I mean again though hearing you say that that's how we sound it's tough it's tough to it's tough to hear it out loud. Oh yeah because Americans never do English accent. No I know I mean my brother has the best English accent in the family and his is so bad. Even after all that practice. Yeah, you would think that he'd be good after having faked an English accent for an entire year.

Hey, do you journal? I do journal. Yeah, journal most days. I always say that the best way to increase the amount of journaling you do is to make it part of your routine as with any kind of writing. Like find a time of day that is like your most creative output kind of time. It makes that your your journal time. For me, it's basically the mornings or there's certain days of the week where like I'll routinely have like half an hour

in a coffee shop or something and I use that time. But yeah, I journal for like 21 years now. Wow. Which is alarming. There's a great book that Rosiana gave me called On-Go-Aggness about the end of a diary, right? Yeah, I love that book. And it's such a beautiful book. It didn't make me want a journal though. I don't journal. I mean, this is bad.

And this is something I don't like about myself. But I almost never write except for an audience. Like I don't know how to write for myself. Like I don't even really know what that would mean. For me, writing is a way of trying to hash out or trying to think through something or understand something, but I wanna do that with a reader in mind. Right.

It feels like a two-way street. That's just always how I've conceived of it. However, in the last couple months, I have started gratitude journaling with Kurtz Gazatz gratitude journal, and it is amazing. It's game-changing for me. It has really reshaped pathways in my brain just in a few months. So I do it at the end of the day. And what I found, I did it for like a month, and then I moved the gratitude journal away from my bedside table onto a different table, and I immediately stopped. That's so interesting. Because it wasn't like

physically in my way at the end of the day. And so I moved it back, and then I started again, because now it was physically there, and I was like, oh, I should do this, because at first it does feel like a chore a little bit, and I feel like a lot of people feel that way about journaling like, oh, it's just another thing. Right. But as with exercise, as with lots of other things,

once you get in the habit of it, you feel the rewards of it, you just don't feel the rewards of it necessarily immediately, which is what makes it hard to do. So yeah, I've found it to be really helpful as far as whether or not a Google doc is cheating. No, it's not cheating. If anything, it's better because then it's backed up

to the cloud and plus Google knows how you're feeling. Google always knows how you're feeling but now they have evidence. Right. Yeah, to be fair, you're writing a journal every day through your Google searches. It's just only Google keeps it. I think that that's a really good point though about not knowing what to write and also actually about having it nearby. I take the tube like two or three times every day here, the metro system here in the UK, and I found that if I don't have my book physically in my hand, like if I don't walk to the tube station holding my book, I will just

go on my phone. So now I like have my book out and I put my phone at the bottom of my backpack and so the two things I'm holding my hand at my book and my oyster card. So it's like about having those things around that you want to increase the habits. I think also in the question of like handwriting as well, like that, I think that's probably part of what helps it feel personal for me because I do handwrite my journals. And also because like I learn a lot about myself from looking back at my handwriting like, if I'm really stressed out, it will be very small. Or if I'm kind of in a hurry, it will be diagonal.

So that becomes a tell. And I wonder if part of that feeling of writing for other people comes from writing on a laptop? Maybe. Because I used to have like a live journal and stuff too. And that always was writing for other people. Right, yeah, I don't write by hand. But even when I did, like I did in college and even then

it's almost like I can't hash anything out that's meaningful for me unless I'm imagining somebody on the other side of it. I don't think that's a bad thing though. I think it's just a different way of doing it. I also think that like it's tricky isn't it? That's just like lots of different levels of it because something I really admire about you is how quickly you share things, like you share your work when it's like, I'm horrible at sharing my writing, but you're very good at sharing it and getting that feedback back. So it's just lots of different ways to do things.

Ben writes, hi there, Hank and John. My therapist asked me the other day, when was the last time you spent more than 15 minutes away from a screen, and I didn't have an answer. Oh God. Oh boy. I've been running into the anxiety of what do I do when I'm not looking at my phone or a computer or a TV.

So before we go on with the question, Ben, I just want to say that for me, for my experience, my experience, obviously not universal. This is just my experience. It was one of those things where the phone was the solution to my problem of wanting to be distracted, of wanting something to do, but it was also the cause of the anxiety that was making me need something to do. That was my experience. Can relate. The phone caused the problem that it solved so often technology is in the

business of solving a problem that it actually also caused. So Ben goes on to write, I've been running in the anxiety of what do I do and I'm not looking at a phone or a computer or a TV. The obvious solution seems to be put those things away, but then what I could read and that's all I've got. Oh, man. I feel like a lot of this is kind of similar to the journaling thing. A lot of this has to be you helping yourself by suggesting activities to yourself in terms of leaving them out and around you and easy to do.

Like I recently have started leaving out watercolors or leaving out paper because I need those cues to go and do something. Because the default has become my phone. My hand reaches for it before I even know I'm reaching for it. Me too. This is still an ongoing problem in my life. And when I'm reading, I will start to feel an itch

after 10 or 15 minutes, an itch in my brain that says like, you haven't checked your email. Yeah. And that is something that our brains have been trained to do. And so, yes, you can read, but there's also a lot of other things that you can do. And by the way, Ben, I hope you do read. Specifically, I hope you read my books.

And my brother's book, an absolutely remarkable thing. And all the books available from Life's Library come every six weeks. Yeah, go to LifeSliveryBookClub.com and check out the opportunities to read books there as well. But there are also other things that you can do that are not about distraction or engaging with other people's voices.

Like for instance, you can go on a walk or going outside can be really revelatory. So that's my advice. Go on a walk, go on a walk every day. It's so funny when I was younger, it used to really resent my parents taking me for walks. And now, there's such a key part of my day. And sometimes I've literally forgotten my phone.

And that's such a relief as well. Like there's an anxiety initially but then it becomes relief and I think a lot of breaking that habit of like checking and just like that check check check check check your phone is pushing yourself just a little longer between checking every time. Yeah so I don't want to sound like a complete technophobe, but I also think a lot of these tools are really new and we don't know how to use them effectively yet. And we also don't have good strategies for regulating their use either personally

or in a more community sense. And that's something that we have to be conscious of. Also, just making plans with friends, that's there's no replacement for that. Yeah. All right, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I think it's vitally important to ask this question

from Kimberly who writes, dear John and Hank, over the summer, I planted a variety of seeds in a vegetable planter, including beans, this being my first vegetable planner, you can imagine my excitement when my beans began to grow and boy did they grow. So I spent the last six months cultivating my bean plant and eagerly awaiting the spring and my harvest of beans. However, I recently discovered

that my beans were not beans. They were weeds. I was walking around at my school's campus and I noticed some clovers that looked suspiciously like my beans. And then I discovered that in fact they were my beans. I finally ended up looking up what a bean bush looks like only to discover that what was growing in my planter was clover. How do I deal with the disappointment of putting time and effort and hopes and dreams into weeds? Oh, it's crushing, it's so crushing.

And the thing is like. This is like the grandest metaphor for something. I just have it quite worked out what it is yet. Yeah, so here's some maybe good news, and you should be careful here, and bear in mind that this is not a botany podcast. A lot of clover is edible. Like clover itself is edible.

I don't know if the plant that you are growing is actual Clover. I have had boiled Clover before and it's not great, but it's not bad. But it's not beans. It's not as good as like a really good baked bean, but you can eat Clover. So that's a good optimistic first step.

I think it's possible that what you're correct that it's not beans, but you're also wrong that it's clover. And I think it might, I think it might be peas. I think you might have a pea plant and you're good. And so like you're going to go all the way around the circle. Things are better than expected. Exactly. It turns out that you have something

that's even better than beans. Also, the other thing that I'm thinking as I read this is like, why are we so down on weeds? Yeah. Weeds are often beautiful, and they're beautiful to trick you into keeping them there and not ripping them up so that they can survive. Yeah.

They're fine. Well, especially weeds like clover that aren't a problem. I didn't actually know that clover is a weed. It's not a weed in England, which is, I think, gets nicely at the problem, right? Oh, sorry. With a lot of plants, the idea of weed is a construct. Like when it comes to American lawns, it's also supposed to be this one kind of plants, the idea of weed is a construct. Like when it comes to American lawns, it's also supposed to be this one kind of grass,

which just makes no sense on any level. And if clover grows in your lawn, who cares? We're all gonna be dead. Yeah, that's how it always felt when people would get angry at me for blowing on dandelion heads. No, no, no, no. Having them go into the air, liberating the dandelion,

contributing to the circle of life. No, that. We're all gonna die. No, no. It's not the dandelion. That is totally different. That is completely different from having, I might have 15,000 dandelions in my garden.

Like, would you like more? I think that my garden is, no. The thing that my garden is best at growing by far is dandelions. And I know I'm gonna get a ton of people writing in saying that dandelions are edible and that I should make dandelion wine and love. No, I don't, I don't want to. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, blah, no, I don't, I don't want to.

The dandelion lobby is notorious. Oh, people love, my kids love to blow on dandelion seeds and then I get a lot of dandelions. It's such effective design. They're like, here's this interactive weed. Yeah. Please, please help. I don't think it did know about humans,

but it is really well-suited to the Anthropocene. A bit of a couple of gorillas have done their part. Yeah, that's probably true. That's probably true. Rosiana, do you have any news from the cold dead rock that is Mars? Because if not, I actually do have a bit of Mars news. I have some Mars news. I can't tell you that I completely understand this Mars news, but I'm going to tell you it anyway. I never understand what Hank says. Okay, so here, as I understand it, is the news.

Traditionally, at recent scientific tradition, people have believed that Mars, the planet, grew rapidly in two to four million years after the solar system started to form. But there's a study now published in Science Advances, that hot hot journal, and the study was led by Dr. Simone Marchi of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. And it has suggested that Mars actually formed more gradually than expected, and that it accumulated mass over a period of 20 million years, which is quite few more than 2 to 4 million, by pulling particles into its gravitational fields.

And apparently, this is important because knowing more about how and when Mars was formed will help unlock other mysteries, including the planet's temperature and how the atmosphere changed during its evolution. So this is a big deal for science, if true. Big news, if true. That's pretty exciting. I also recently saw that there may sometimes be some saltwater on the surface of Mars. It would be extremely, extremely salty.

Pools, short-lived pools of brine is the phrase that I saw, which, by the way, short-lived pools of brine would be a pretty good name for an album. I also think like from a geological perspective, it might be how earth thinks of us. I also think it'd be a good for a gravestone. Yeah, right. This particular short lived pool of brine was born on such and such. Oh, it's so dark. I mean, the more I think about myself, the more I think like, I am ultimately just a short

lived pool of, okay, we're going. We've gone too deep. We've gone to the place. We've got time to go to AF to Wilton. So Rosie, as you know, Wimbledon fans have started a bond, the Plow Lane Bond to help pay for the stadium costs so they don't have to borrow all of the money from a bank. They can borrow the money essentially from themselves and then get a small return on that investment over time.

The Plow Lane Bond has now raised over four million pounds. Oh, wow. Which is incredible. And so it takes, I think, a half way there to what we still need to raise to pay for the full finish of the stadium. Would you say that we're living on a prayer? Yes, I would say that we are halfway there. Whoa, oh that we're living on a prize? Yes, I would say that we are halfway there. Whoa, whoa, we're living on a prayer.

And I watched Wimbledon's midweek game against Ipswich Town. He is. It was a nil nil draw. And let me tell you, that's a great result on every level. I mean, our new goalkeeper, Joe Joe Day had the day of his life. I mean, it was incredible. So I'll take a nail-nil draw in that situation. We only had 36% of the possession.

Oh, wow. But it's a point. We looked pretty good. We looked, we looked like a team that's too good to go down, which is my hope. And the other thing is that that may well be the last night game that AFC Wimbledon plays at Kingsmadow. Why is that? Because the hope is Wimbledon will be at Plow Lane next season. Oh wow. So there aren't any more night games on their schedule. That's right. That's exciting. So maybe the last time we play

Under the flood lights at Kingsman or who knows There's still a long way to go with the stadium. It does get dark pretty early here And it does get dark at 3 p.m So who knows they might have to turn on the flood lights for a 3 p.m. game Well, I'm very glad that we got that no little draw and I continue to be anxious until the end of the season Yeah, I mean one point closer to safety, but God, there's still a long way to go. Yeah. Well, Rosiana, thank you for potting with me.

It's always a pleasure. If you enjoyed Rosiana and me podcasting together, you'll love the Life's Library podcast, which comes free with a Life's Library subscription at LifeSlibraryBookCub.com. All the proceeds from that go to charity, and we love making LifeSlibrary. It's such a joy to be able to read in community with so many of you. Thank you to all of you who are members,

and if you're interested, you can check it out at LifeSlibraryBookCub.com. It's so much fun. It's one of my favorite projects that we've ever worked on together, so I'm not saying a lot. Yeah, I know we've been really lucky to be able to work on cool stuff, but this is one

of my favorites. So, please check it out at lifeslurrybookclub.com. Thank you again for listening. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish. It's produced by Rosiana Halzroha and shared in Gibson. The music that you're listening to right now and at the beginning of the pod is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in in our hometown don't forget to be awesome.