Dear Hank & John - 243: Either 8½ or 68 Million

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

How do I help my mom manage her depression? How do I address a professor who signs their emails with initials? What size boot is Italy? What is the most seen you've ever felt by a piece of fiction? What's the best song to secretly learn on guitar? Has being writers affected your view of authorial intent? How do I learn to love opera for the music instead of the attention? What does stadium size have to do with football quality? Hank Green and John 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 If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

We are recording this a week from when you hear it, which is always the case for Dear Hank and John. That seems especially important to note right now as things are bad in America right now. And we're in the midst of dual crises of COVID-19 and also pushing back against the violence that has been done and is being done to Black people by institutional forces. And so we don't know what the world looks like right now, but we are hoping very much when you hear this that it looks better, but obviously worried that it does not.

Yeah, and one more thing I want to say about this, Hank, is that I often feel like the political and social and historical context that white people bring to this crisis is inadequate. And that's true for me, certainly. And it's also true for many people I know. One example of this among many is that most white people have never even heard of the red summer of 1919 when state-sanctioned violence against Black people and protests against it occurred alongside a global disease pandemic. And so when a story is in the news, it's really relatively easy to pay attention to it. It's easy to make statements about it and statements

in support of protesters. And I think that's very important. But I also think it's important to pay sustained ongoing attention because long-term problems demand long-term solutions. They demand that we make changes within ourselves and within our systems, not just over one day, but over an entire lifetime and over many human lifetimes. And that's the commitment that we need to make to each other and especially to people who have been disenfranchised and oppressed by the systems of power in the United States. And that is the work of a lifetime, but let it be the work of our lifetimes. Yeah.

Okay, here's the podcast. This first question is from Anonymous who asks, dear Hank and John, my mom has depression. It's bad at the moment and she needs support. It's the first time I'm supporting her with something rather than her supporting me through stuff. I'm not sure how to phrase a question on this,

but I could do with some general advice, Anonymous. First of all, this is lovely to understand and to be in those moments and those transitions where it goes from an entirely one-way relationship to being a kind of adult relationship where you need each other and you know that you are needed. And so that it's a big step and to be aware of it is the first important thing. Yeah. I mean, I can only speak from my own experience of living with depression, but in depressive instances in my life, a lot of the support that I've benefited from, I mean, first off, I've benefited from somebody asking me how I'm doing

that day, that minute, and not judging my answer, not judging me for being in pain. I think it's important to understand that depression, while it can look like just malaise, is often accompanied by very intense psychic pain that's very, very difficult to manage. And that's part of why, or at least in my case, part of why I tend to retreat from the world when it's happening. I think one of the things that I've found most helpful is when someone will help me navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracies that it is necessary to navigate in order to get good and consistent care. out where the place is and figure out which pharmacy is which and when are generic. So all these questions. And if you can just have somebody who's there with you, somebody you can trust so that you know that the advice that they're giving you at least comes from a place of love, even

if it doesn't always make sense to you. comes from a place of love, even if it doesn't always make sense to you, I find that really helpful. Because it is overwhelming to try to get help, especially because when you're really depressed, or again, when I am, I feel like it won't matter. I feel like help doesn't matter. Like, it's not going to work. And I believe that as firmly as I believe anything else. It seems as true to me as any other truth. Now, the actual truth is that it will help or that it may help. And that over time, trying a bunch of different treatment strategies, eventually, it's very likely, very probable that something will help and that I will recover. But I don't feel that way. And so having someone

in my life who can consistently say, and for me, it's Sarah, having someone in my life who can consistently say, we're going to get through this, like not you're going to get through this, but we're going to get through this. And I'm going to, I'm going to take you to the doctor and I'm going to follow up about the prescriptions and I'm going to help you remember that it's twice a day after morning and after dinner. And that stuff really helps me. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think that like knowing that you're a part of something, um, you know, you're part of this family unit, a part of a community, whatever that, whatever that the unit of that is. Um, and so that's really about like showing up and being there.

And, you know, if you can, in a way, be needed in simple ways, and also if you can show them that you need them in simple ways. And, you know, it might be like, hey, can you help me with this task I want to do? Like I want to write letters. And so can you help me with this task I wanna do? Like I wanna write letters. And so can you help me write some letters to people? Cause I wanna do this craft activity or this experiment or something to involve them with that. I find that a big path forward for me is just conversation if you can get to that point.

And it's not like a cure-all. It's not like it makes it better immediately, but in that moment, it can be better. And that can show that there might be a better somewhere down the line. Yeah. Recently, Sarah, a few weeks ago, Sarah was like, do you want to play tennis? And I was like, do you mean, do I want to get in a car and go to a park and play tennis? No, of course I don't want to play tennis. And she was like, we're going to go play tennis. And honestly, like I didn't feel better afterwards, but I did feel better while playing tennis. Like, yeah. And that's something, you know? And so, yeah, you just have to look for

those moments and understand that slowly you'll string together more of them. Yeah. You just have to look for those moments and understand that slowly you'll string together more of them. Yeah. This morning, you know, I, I, you know, I think I've been operating with something of a, you know, diminished capacity, diminished emotional feelings right now. And this morning I, you know, I worked out a little bit, um, and I didn't want to, and I hated the whole time getting ready to, and then I did it and I felt better while I was doing it. And then immediately afterward, the world came crashing back down and I felt bad again. But I didn't feel worse. I just felt bad again. And there was that period in there when I didn't feel bad because I was concentrating on my body, which is a thing that I do need to take care of no matter what. You know, I've been having

a few different body problems recently and don't need to get into details. But to, you know, like to know that I, and in part that's because I haven't, I've been too, you know, stressed out and busy trying to sort of like adapt my life to new circumstances and my business to new circumstances to take care of it. And so I, you know, knowing that there are things that I can spend time on that are positive, even if I don't want to do them and having the people in my life to get me to do them is really valuable. Yeah. This question comes from OF who writes, Dear John and Hank, i just listened to your episode where you discussed when it's okay to call a professor by their first name and i agree with your conclusion but you left out something important what happens when a professor signs

an email with their initials what and why is that hank uh-huh i have a confession to make, which is that for many years, I signed emails with my initials. I know why I did this. I did it to seem... We have a report from the inside. Here's the report from the inside. I did it to seem formal and to seem fancy, but also to seem busy and dashed off like, oh. Yeah, I don't have time to write a whole name right now. J-O-H-N. Yeah.

That's huge. Why not write J-M-G, which saves me one entire keystroke. And you put the middle initial in. Of course I put the middle initial in. Wow. Oh gosh, that is. So flash forward about six months after I start doing this, my wonderful late great friend, Amy Cross Rosenthal, publishes a book in which she writes about how in her experience, people are just a little bit self-important when they start signing off their emails with their initials. God, this is amazing. And I was like, oh man, I really feel seen, not in the good way, but in the helpful way.

And that was the last day that I signed my emails with my initials. the last day that I signed my emails with my initials. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to have a way to communicate with your friends. That is really, it's, it is the, that is the ultimate subtweet. Just like, so like in print forever. Well, yeah.

And I don't, I don't know for sure that she was referencing me, but. Oh, I do. Yeah, yeah. And I don't- Congress now. I don't know for sure that she was referencing me, but- Oh, I do. Yeah, exactly. Because it was also in that period of my life where I also fancied myself very busy. And so she was calling me out for something that I was guilty of, but she was doing it in a lovely and funny and kindhearted way. And my life is better for it absolutely yes you were told you were told that there was something in your teeth but um through through space and time yeah and uh in a loving way yeah so don't sign your initials i mean unless you love

your initials i don't know but just know that it's going to sound self-important to some people especially with the middle initial i often don't use my name at all um and i feel that this uh that this is a uh i don't know this is a bit much yeah and a bit of a signal of my i'm so busy i can't even write my name yeah so something else i've noticed, while we're criticizing you is that sometimes you sign with just H, which is actually the worst. I do do that. I do do that. So just so you know, and I'm not saying that I read this question so that I could tell you that story about Amy so that I could offer you this advice. Right, because I didn't even consider that you were pointing this at me because to me, a single initial is completely different from initials.

It is completely different in that it's worse. If you just sign H, what that says to me is, I am so busy. I am on a totally different level from you busyness-wise. I can't write a second letter in my name. That's how busy I am. That's how important I am.'s how important i am i'm h important i'm the only h you know you know who this h is well the other strange thing about it

is that like if you want to know who the email is from it's not like i've i'm like actually helping you know where the email is coming from right you are i i think i assume aware yeah so what i'm recommending hank is that you sign your emails, bestwishes, comma, return Hank. Just Hank, not Hank Green? Or even just return Hank. I think you write Hank Green if you're writing to someone you don't know well,

and I think you write Hank if you're writing to me. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, I will take this advice under advisement, and I'm sure we'll retain it for at least a week before I forget. Yeah, well, wait till I publish my new book. Then you'll change for good. John, just so you know, my neighbor is mowing his lawn. So that's happening, and it's the situation that we live in. Lou asks, Dear Hank and John, it is well situation that we live in uh lou asks dear hank

and john it is well known that the country of italy is shaped like a boot so recently i was wondering what shoe size it would be if it was a real boot unfortunately i couldn't find the answer on the internet that is shocking to me yeah i wear size six shoes lou that i cannot believe that we don't know what size boot italy is That is unacceptable. So we know the approximate size of the boot. Do we? Yeah. Well, okay. So Hank, we know, I think the approximate size of the shoe in question. Okay. Because if you look at the, if you look at a map of Italy, there's a heel to the boot and that heel is i think the giveaway because we don't know how far up the boot goes right it could be knee length it could go all

the way up to your thighs sure sure yeah the i mean the shoe size isn't about where it goes it's about right it's about it's about the foot part yeah and my argument is that that's about a four inch heel i don't think it's like an eight-inch heel because there's not like a huge platform to the foot part of the foot. So I would argue that's a four-inch heel, in which case, by my rough calculations, that is an American size eight and a half shoe.

No, John, I think you're deeply misunderstanding both how heels work and how shoe sizes work. I'm not misunderstanding how either. I'm about to, I am ready to die on this hill. What, wait. What we have to know

is how big the boot is. What do you mean we have to know how big the boot is? We have to know how far it is from the toe to the heel. That's the size of the shoe yes but we can't yeah i i i realized that heck it's it's from it's the size of the shoe isn't from where the toe to the to the the heel meaning the the spiked heel it's to where the

humans heal like if there was a giant who put on italy yes how big would that giant's feet be it would not be size eight and a half. He'd fall right over. No. So what you need is the distance from Bari to Reggio Calabria. No, no, no, no. You've completely misunderstood. First off, Italy, Hank, and I know this is going to come as a surprise to you, is not

actually a boot. Okay? This is the question, John. Yes. Read me the question, John. Yes. Read me the question again, because I am 100% correct. I'm about to get in a fight. Well, there's a lot of tension in the room. I was wondering what shoe size Italy would be if it were a real boot.

Yes. Is what Lou asks. Right. So if there was a boot that was the size of Italy, what size would it be? Okay. So I think we have a different understanding of the phrase real boot. Yeah, no, a real boot, the size of Italy with a 440 kilometer heel to toe distance. heel to toe distance. Okay, that is your understanding of the phrase real boot.

My understanding of the phrase real boot is a boot that exists, i.e. a real, if you will, boot. In any case, I've figured it out. And the boot, the size of Italy would be size around 17 million. Okay. Roughly. Between 10 and 20 million would be the size but if that's if that's a four inch heel italy's about at eight and a half okay i like i like that we had two different approaches and we both came to very clear

definite definitions but i do need lou to email us back and ask which one is right is this did you want to know the size of italy or is or or if you wore a boot yeah yeah that was shaped like italy right no it's a great question hank because like which one is is more relevant how to make a 17 million inch long shoe? We spent like a half an episode figuring out how to put googly eyes on the moon. Well, first off, you spent half an episode figuring out how to put googly eyes on the moon. And I asked some questions.

This next question comes from Haley, who asks, Dear Hank and John, after watching Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women multiple times, I have come to the conclusion that it is the most seen I have ever felt by a work of fiction. So I was wondering that it is the most seen I have ever felt by a work of fiction. So I was wondering,

what is the most seen you have ever felt by a work of fiction? Like the comet, depending on who's pronouncing it, Haley, I assume, and not Hallie, because you didn't really give us

a pronunciation guide there. Yeah, everybody, I've heard it both ways. Well, he also spelled it all three ways throughout his lifetime and other people spelled it all three ways throughout his lifetime, and other people spelled it all three ways, implying that while Edmund Haley was walking around trying to figure out magnetism on Earth,

he himself was not sure of his own surname. Which, to me, gets to how weird the 17th century was. Well, also how weird it is now that everything's so standardized that you have to spell your name the same way every time. Yeah. I don't. Sometimes I just write H. Okay, but to the question, Hank, what is the most scene you have ever felt by a work of fiction? And I should say, I think Rosianna feels the same way about little women i also really liked little women but of course i didn't have that feeling of of being on the inside of it um i don't know if this is an appropriate answer but katherine uh

was reading me the uh qualities of an enneagram three last night um and i i know that like myers-briggs and enneagrams and those sorts of things are um you know loosely dot dot dot limited yeah limited that's good they're limited but um but as katherine sort of went down the attributes of of like enneagram threes at their best and enneagram threes at their worst and Enneagram 3s at their worst and talking about how you can be really effective and efficient, but you can also put work first and be a little bit narcissistic. And I was like, okay, stop.

I need you to stop. I need you to stop reading about it. I need you to stop telling me about Enneagram 3s. So I felt deeply seen. And also there were a number of times where it was like suggestions for Enneagram threes. You need to recognize that your feelings are as or more important than your accomplishments. And I was like, ha!

They are though. What? And then I cried. Oh, that's good. I'm glad that you're crying. I mean, I'm not glad, but I think it's appropriate that you're crying. I've also, yeah. For me, it's probably the movie Rushmore.

You know, I went to a boarding school. I was a screw up. I was a screwed up kid. I made a lot of bad choices and benefited from a lot of luck, but more importantly, from a lot of structural privileges. And I thought that movie captured some of the best and the worst of my high school self. That's good. I have completely lost touch with my high school self. It's either that or Looking for Alaska, the Looking for Alaska TV show. i felt pretty i don't know if that's fair pretty i feel pretty seen by my own work well that that one really particular it was someone else's work about my work and somehow

in making it they made it uh much more reflective of god it's so weird of of what my life was like you know what what my not just not just the character pudge who you know probably isn't the character i most closely identify with in some ways but but not in every way but just there was something about it that felt very much like alabama in those years oh it's so mean, I only went to Springs like two or three times, but like it's uncanny. It feels like they didn't like rebuild the campus. They rebuilt the feel, you know, like it just feels like it. Yes, it was hard. It was hard to be there because I have never had an experience like that before where I felt

inside of the past. Yeah. This next question comes from Malcolm who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a high school senior in quarantine and I spend the vast majority of my time in my basement by myself. My deceased grandfather's guitar has been down here untouched for years and I was inspired by a previous episode of your podcast. I think it's the episode of the podcast where the person was secretly learning to play the fiddle.

Yeah. I was inspired by a previous episode of your podcast to secretly learn guitar using my grandfather's old acoustic. I now know the D, A, and E chords so far. What song should I play for my family to let them know that I have surprisingly learned to play the guitar? It has to be something that they would all recognize. Secrets and string instruments, Malcolm. And it has to be something

you can play with just the D, A, and the E. I feel like Malcolm can maybe learn two more chords if necessary. Well, if you learn two more chords, then you're basically got it all wrapped up. Oh, wow. If you can add the c and the g which are admittedly harder than all of those ones that you've learned so far to your repertoire um you probably gonna have to learn enough eventually uh but that and that's that's a sort of another level of hard above above g and c but if you add g and c on there you can basically do anything so let's just assume and if you got a capoo, let's just assume we can play anything. So I'm just going to go ahead and say, think about things by that Icelandic group that

should have won Eurovision this year, but didn't because Eurovision didn't happen. Because that's a really sweet and fun song. I feel like not all of Malcolm's family is going to pre-know the song that should have won Eurovision this year, except that Eurovision was canceled. Now, I happen to know it because you've watched the YouTube video so many times that it's my number one recommended video every time I log onto YouTube. I was thinking something a little more classic, like, for instance, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On. That's perfect, John. You really hit the nail right on the head there. That's what the family wants to hear.

Or If You Seek Amy by Britney Spears. That's actually a really, really fun song to play on the guitar not that i know because i play it on the guitar all the time but it is really fun so uh if you want to my my under my experience of learning instruments is that um is that the you have to find good fun songs to play and then you get better because it's fun to learn um so i do want to recommend that one to you it might not be appropriate for your whole family. I have an actual recommendation. In fact, I have what I believe to be

the only actual recommendation, which is that you play Smash Mouth's All Star. Oh, of course. Oh, God. That's the only song I know all the lyrics of. Yeah. I mean, you're going to have to learn C and G and A minor. But look, A minor is super easy.

You basically already know it because you know E. And G and C, you're going to have to get at some point anyway. But the nice thing about All Star is that the chord progression does not change through the whole song. It is the same in the chorus. It's the same in the verses. You just do the same thing over and over again and you good. Okay, Hank, this next question, let's answer this authorial intent question. This next question comes from Maxine who asks, Dear Hank and John, Has being writers affected your opinion of authorial intent in any way? Do you two see

eye to eye on the subject or do you have different opinions? Not particularly mad, Maxime. I think we do have somewhat differing opinions, John. Somewhat, although I have moderated my opinion in the last few years. So when I was in high school, I thought that authorial intent was extremely important and that when my English teachers were slaughtering these books by making us hyperanalyze them, they were dishonoring the authors who didn't intend any of this stuff anyway. And so what does it matter, you know, that the green light across the bay represents who's he what, or that the white whale represents the terrifying blank whiteness of of nature's indifference to human endeavors etc that was my like number one pretty fairly standard

pretentious high school student thing and then as often happens to me hank. I staked out the most radical opposite position I possibly could. You know, I went from like, I tweet 400 times a day to Twitter is bad for the social order and I will never use it again, except one day I might break, go on sports Twitter for 12 hours and then quit again. So I adopted the belief, and very loudly, I might add, that books belong to their readers and that authorial intent is completely irrelevant. It does not matter whether Herman Melville intended Moby Dick, although he obviously did. It doesn't matter if Herman Melville intended Moby Dick to be a metaphor for nature's indifference to us. That's what Moby Dick is. And that what makes a book good is its readers. And I still largely believe that.

I still believe that readers reading a book generously can make it better. And I also believe, for the record, that readers reading a book ungenerously can keep the book from becoming the best or most useful version of itself. So I don't want to say that readers aren't important, but I now think that the author, especially now, especially in the 21st century, the author's in the book whether you want to be or not. And this is something I didn't understand for a long time. And my books changed when I began to understand it. And I think the first time that you see me understanding it at all is in The Fault in Our Stars, where there's a character who's a writer. And I was aware by that point that people

were reading my biography into my novels, which was something that like in my early books I couldn't have imagined because how are people going to know my biography? Right. And then in Turtles All the Way Down, that went yet another step further where like the author is, you know, in some ways like, you know, can be constructed as a few of the different characters in the book. And yeah, so I think authorial intent is not totally irrelevant. It is still a little uncomfortable for me. And I'm not here to tell anybody else what to do, but it's still a little uncomfortable for me when I hear writers make big pronouncements about their books that are outside the text. Like I do not feel comfortable commenting in an authoritative way on anything outside the text. Right. I feel the same way. And it's very interesting. It is very similar to writing

a song where I don't, it's a very big deal to change the lyrics to a song after it's on an album or has been released in some way and i think it's very interesting when artists do that like when i go to a live show and i like and they say different lyrics than the ones that are on the album i think like that's like a very intentional and sort of big decision whereas changing the lyric before it gets recorded is like you do that constantly like that's that's like an everyday occurrence as you're recording an album, like you're still working on the songs basically up until they're recorded.

Very much the same with a book and then like the text is locked and you theoretically will never change anything in the book again and almost like can't because you want everyone to be talking about the same text. But there are some things in my work that I do know and have known the whole time that I think are interesting to have an answer to

when someone asks, what is that? Why wasn't that discussed? Or what are those people actually thinking about in that moment? But you didn't put it in the book. And, like, I didn't put it in intentionally because, like, during the book experience, it's important. But you do feel like you know. You know the truth of what. And you feel like you can answer. Yeah. It's very weird. It was very weird to have like my editor talking to me about like, you know, asking questions about the book that like, I was like, well, obviously it's this. And, but like, of course it's only obvious to me. And because like, I have all these, like I have a lot of the stuff sort of like written out in a, in a, you know, explanation to myself so that I can make sure I don't mess things up that aren't in the book but are reflective of the the reality

they're in and i feel like sort of more comfortable talking about all that stuff and i well i i will once the second book is out because like a lot of that stuff was designed to inform the second book yeah i think it's somewhat different when it's a series. And I also think it's different writer to writer. And part of why I don't feel comfortable with my previous kind of radical position on authorial intent is that I don't know what works for other people. I don't even really know what works for me. I only know what is kind of working for me right now creatively. And I'm not, yeah, I'm over the days of making grand pronouncements about that stuff because I have entered an age of profound uncertainty in my life and I hope to be able to remain in this place of uncertainty for the rest

of my life, because even though it's uncomfortable, it feels more accurate, I guess, or it feels more true to me. I'm trying insofar as possible to stay in the uncertainty these days. Yeah. And that's hard in a world that is sort of like asking for for certainty a lot yeah of course and and there are times you know there are times when it is really important to make declarative statements uh but yeah for me right now there are some things i think i know but there's a lot i don't know um and there's a there's a lot i still have to learn so i'm trying to i'm trying to get comfortable with that so that i can get learning instead of constantly being defensive and acting like i already know when i don't which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by

everything john doesn't know everything john doesn't know almost everything uh speaking of which this podcast is also brought to you by 68 million 68 million the actual shoe size of italy now that i realized that there's four sizes per inch not one size per inch because i didn't know that until just now it depends on your measuring system sure they do it differently in europe they do also i guess probably it would be the european size probably it was an italian boot but also today's podcast is brought to you by a size eight and a half black leather boot which is the actual real italy boot that's what they call it they call it the italy boot because it has the same dimensions as italy just a little shrunk

and of course this podcast is additionally brought to you by the letter H. The letter H. That's it. That's all you get. That's all you get. I'm very busy. I just dashed off this 800-word email. And you know I just dashed it off because H.

This next question comes from Anonymous, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm an opera singer, and I'm beginning to realize that I'm extremely driven in my life and career because I constantly crave attention and love when people are impressed by me. I'm worried because sometimes I think my love of attention might be bigger than my love for the music, and I'm not sure if that's a sustainable motivation for a long-term career. In opera, you're in your prime by 35 to 45, so you need to be in it for the long run if you're to be serious. I've tried to change my ways, but it's hard. Should I just be okay with this, or is it a sign that I should change my path? Ella a fui la toute l'anonymous.

That was some really good French. I thought that was going to be italian and so i started out feeling it was going to be italian you know and it could be it appears to be french here's the thing when i was a kid i wasn't good at much as a student i was not a very good student but i was told that I was good at writing stories. And I really liked that. I really liked being told that. I liked the approval of adults, especially because I didn't get it in a lot of other times from my teachers. And I liked, you know, getting to ride in the big yellow school bus to Tampa, Florida, because I

won an elementary school creative writing contest. That's why I liked writing. Like, realistically. Yeah. You know, I liked writing because adults told me that I was good at it and I just wanted to be good at something. Right. I mean, and I did like reading and I did like, you know, and I did like telling stories. Right. And I had an affinity for it. But the idea that passion is somehow pure to the thing, that like a professional football player is successful primarily because of some deep love for placing a sphere inside of a net. I think that's just an oversimplification. I agree. And I also think that it's kind of like a dangerous idea that if you're doing it for the wrong reason, stop doing it. But we're all out here searching for meaning, right? And continuing on a process of mastery is a way of getting meaning. And receiving praise from outside is a way of getting meaning as well.

So I think it's fine, especially because and if you can drill down and find those specifics of what is interesting and what is good about a performance or a piece of music or an entire opera, which is not something I know anything about. I mean, no. In fact, there's nothing I know less about. I disagree. Name a field I know less about. I know more about quantum mechanics for sure. Well, I mean, there's all kinds of fields that we don't know anything about because no one knows anything about them, John. And that for me is opera.

But who knows? Maybe in the second half of my life, I'll become a big opera fan. I do like some rock operas. Did you know that Smash Mouth's All Star is a part of a rock opera, John? Yeah, of course it is. I haven't finished writing it yet, but. That was a good joke. Honestly, that joke made me happier than any joke has in several weeks. made me happier than any joke has in several weeks. It was well set up. It was kind of a dad joke, but it was very well set up. And then I tried to yes and you, and then you hit me from a totally unexpected direction and I, and I greatly enjoyed it. No, thank you for it. Thank you. I mean, that's the kind of approval that I deeply, deeply need. So I thank you. All I've done now is encourage Hank to tell more bad jokes. All right, this next question comes from Raiden, who writes, Dear John and Hank,

John often talks about AFC Wimbledon having the smallest stadium in the league. I've been wondering for a while, what does stadium size have to do with the quality of the football played? what does stadium size have to do with the quality of the football played? Great question, Raiden. This is a great question, and I have been too afraid to ask. So thank you. So if you're playing in the Premier League and you're on TV every Saturday in like 175 countries, most of the revenue your team gets is from TV rights.

And that's true for most sports. But if you're in the third tier of English football or the fourth tier, almost all of the revenue you get is match day revenue. So it's people coming to the stadium on the match day. They pay for their tickets. Maybe they buy a pie or two. Maybe they purchase a pint of beer. Yeah, they have like those. You can buy a pie? They have like those meat pies, you know?

Oh, that's even better. Oh, yeah. You should really go to an AFC Wimbledon game, Hank. Anyway, well, I mean, you know, in the future. Anyway, that's where most of the revenue comes from. Ticket sales, concession sales, et cetera. If you have a small ground and AFC Wimbledon until now has had the smallest stadium in professional English football, it's impossible to maximize, like it's impossible to compete with

people who are selling two or three times as many tickets. afc wimbledon sell out almost all of their games but that means that they sell 4 800 tickets a team like swindon town for instance has a stadium that seats 12 or 13 000 people now they're not going to sell that out but they're going to sell 8 000 9 000 tickets a week they're going to have twice as much money. And so that has been one of the huge limiters of AFC Wimbledon's growth. And really, it's an incredible success story with a stadium so small to have found a way through sponsorship revenue and through the membership model that AFC Wimbledon uses. So it's equally owned by all of its fans. All of those strategies have allowed Wimbledon to kind of compete above their level for the last few years. But Hank, and this is a nice transition to the news from

Mars and AFC Wimbledon, all of that is changing because now Wimbledon are going home to their historic place, back to Plough Lane, back to Wimbledon. It is the final chapter of this 20-year saga to get a football league team back where it belongs. And just in the last few days, the final approval for the final last piece of construction happened on the new stadium. The new stadium will seat, I think, around 9,000 people to start, but it has the potential to grow up to 15 or even 18,000 people, which is what some Premier League clubs have. And in order for this to happen, especially given the circumstances, you know, construction has slowed, everything is uncertain at the moment. Somebody had to come in at the last second and make a significant investment in the club. And somebody did that. It's a guy named Nick. And his investment in the club does not affect the ownership structure of the club at all. So the ownership structure of the club is still, it's 75% owned by the Don's Trust. Everybody who pays

25 pounds a year gets to be a member of the Don's Trust. So he just came in and generously invested in the club as thousands of other people have done over the last few months to get the stadium built, but he did it on a bigger scale and made it possible. So it's happening. And I am so relieved and excited. I mean, to people who care about this football club, in many ways, this is more important than getting back into the football league, than getting a promotion. This is the end of the story. It took 20 years, but they got back home. I've told you this before, Hank, but Wimbledon fans, ever since they were forced to move out of Plough Lane, their old stadium, their stadium for over 100 years, they were forced to move out of it. And they've been singing a song called show me the way to plow lane that goes i'm tired and i want to go home i had a football ground 30 years ago and i

want one of my own and they have shown the world the way to plow lane and it just makes me so proud to be a wimbledon supporter and fan and sponsor and so grateful to the thousands of people who have worked together to make this happen. And meanwhile, at the same time, the AFC Wimbledon Foundation continues to do just tremendously important work in COVID-19 response around South London. And I'm so grateful to all the volunteers who are making that happen. It's just very heartening at a time when I need that. Yeah. Well, in Mars news, there's two things that I want to talk about.

First, of course, the SpaceX first crewed flight went up to the space station. It happened. And that is a step on the way to more and further space exploration. So that's very exciting. Oren was over the moon about it. He wants to watch the video all the time.

And I don't really even understand why, because it's a good video. But we've looked at lots of rocket ship videos, but he's really stuck on this one. I think he kind of gets it, which is touching for me. really stuck on this one. I think he kind of gets it, which is touching for me. But then also in sort of more direct Mars news, just to talk a little bit about Perseverance, there's a bunch of instruments and experiments on the rover, including these two. And this is all going to make sense at the end. Scanning habitable environments with Raman and luminescence for organics and chemicals. And then there's the wide-angle topographic sensor for operations and engineering. Both of those are terrible names.

Really, really bad names. If you shorten them, they are Sherlock and Watson. So, boom. Take that. Yeah, I mean, but this is a long-standing issue I have with the initialists of the world and acronymizers of the world. Like, why not give the thing its clearest name? Yeah, I don't know. It's, I mean, scanning habitable environments with Raman and luminescence for organics and chemicals is bad.

But the experiments scope out the rocks, basically. Sherlock is gonna measure how light scatters off of stuff to measure the chemical composition of things, figure out what minerals and organic compounds are inside Martian rocks. And that might give us clues into the possibility of ancient martian microbes whereas watson is a camera that takes pictures of all the rocks that sherlock is going to be learning about and that actually feels pretty true to the sherlock watson relationship exactly yeah watson sort of is watching and documenting and then uh

and also sherlock going to be doing experiments on five samples of different potential spacesuit and helmet materials that are being sent along with Perseverance and Sherlock

is going to be measuring how they do over time and exposed to the Martian elements. It's pretty cool. I'm very excited for Perseverance.

Me too. I need that thing to get off the ground and on its way to Mars ASAP. Yeah. Well, John, thank you for potting with me this week. Thank you. It's always a joy to talk to you. Yeah. I'm glad that you're my brother. Same. Really glad. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna-Medish. It's produced by Rosianna Hals-Rojas and Sheridan Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Paola Garcia Prieto.

The music you're hearing now is by The Grand Canarola. And as we say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.