Dear Hank & John - 248: Nature's Solar Panels

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

How do you greet multiple friends in different time zones? What are some other card games that scratch the same itch as Uno? Could I swim in the water table like a lake? Can I photosynthesize like a plant? If other animals didn't already fly, would we still have invented planes? When bugs land on us, is it because they think we're majestic? 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

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or is that prefer to think of a dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be a advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John. Hank, I actually have a joke for you this week. If that's okay. Yes.

Yeah, take the load off. So, a guy goes over to his friend's house and his friend's a farmer and the guy sees pig walking through a field and the pig only has three legs. And the guy says to his friend, hey, what's the story with that three-legged pig you got there? And the farmer says, oh, now that's, that's Bessie. I mean, Bessie is an extraordinary pig,

truly a special pig, utterly, utterly unique. Do you know that Bessie can make noises? And they aren't like English, but you can absolutely understand what she's saying all the time. And the guy's like, okay, yeah, that's great. Yeah, but I guess I was just wondering like about the three-legged thing.

And then the farmer says, nothing about Bessie. When Bessie was three, Bessie won Bess didn't show in the entire Indiana state fair in her category of pigs. And then the guy's like, yeah, no, I get the Bessie's a cool pig and everything. I'm just saying like, why does Bessie have three legs? And the farmer says, oh, you know, a pig like Bessie,

you don't want to eat all at once. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Okay. All right, I didn't see it coming. It's awful. But hey, so is meat eating generally. I, this joke reminded me of Orin, who recently saw a pig going to the bathroom and looked

at me and said, my hypothesis is that pig pee come out the butt. That's a really good use of the scientific method. And I would love to see an experiment designed to test that hypothesis. Hey, before we start answering questions from our listeners, we're going to have to address one really big issue that came up. We usually save the corrections for the end of the show, but this has to be front loaded. A lot of people wrote in with what I felt like was a little bit of vitriol about the fact that we made fun of dry bones, the Mario Kart character.

Oh yes, yes, we did talk about how not only have we never used dry bones, but we would never use dry bones. Yeah, well, everybody thinks that we are idiots. Well, we are. So I'll just read you one letter. This one came from Matt who wrote to those who have not seen the light Dry bones is the best Mario Kart character and you are both clearly amateurs Dry bones is in fact the most underappreciated character in the entire Mario pantheon You should be a you should be ashamed of your treatment of such a sweet young turtle skeleton. Yeah, I mean, a nice thing about dry bones is that you jump on a set and you fall as a part, but you don't kill him because he can reassemble.

So that just feels better for to my heart. Yeah. So I played as dry bones on Mario Kart for like a full hour to try to get what all these people are screaming at me about. And I have to say, yeah, dry bones pretty good. Ah, all right. I liked playing with dry bones. So I would like to issue a formal, complete, unreserved apology to everybody who got really mad at us for saying that

dry bones was a bad Mario Kart character. Hank and I are genuinely rank amateurs. We do not play Mario Kart professionally and we will try in the future to better reflect to that reality in the way that we talk about Mario Kart characters. And also, of course, the apology extends to dry bones as well. I'm very sorry, dry bones. John, do you have questions for us today? A bunch of them.

Okay, great. I love it. You want me to ask one? No! I mean, I can do it. This one's from Raven, who asks, dear Hank and John, how do you greet your friends? I have a group of internet friends,

and we live in very different time zones. So as of late, we've been saying, hello, good time, but there's got to be a better way, not a crow, but a raven. Yeah, I guess you can't say good morning when everybody's in different time zones. So you just got to say, good. Yeah. So we have other ways of saying hello, you know, like hello, for instance. Yeah, there's a good one or high or Ola. Yeah, I don't know when it happened in my history of living in Montana, but I say howdy now.

And it's so do lots of people. It's a common thing to say. I suggest howdy, it's great. It sounds nice and it is not so much a hello as a how are you doing and but like fun and short. So how do I really think it's a how are you doing because if somebody says well, it's working and I and I answer like, oh, I mean, I was doing all right. I heard this joke about this big.

Now I'm thinking about how messed up it is that we're animals, that eat other animals. Yeah, and by choice, we have the option. Right, so I feel like the proper response to howdy is just a tip of the cowboy hat. A tip of the cowboy hat, which is nice. When I encounter people in real life now, which admittedly isn't that often,

but when I do, like if I'm running or something and I see somebody who's running or biking toward me, I like a subtle nod of the head. Yeah, but you can't so much always do that over internet. You know, you want to greet people. You can though, you just write asterisk, subtle nod of the head asterisk. Do you do anything in particular with your eyes?

I feel like this is an extremely subtle gesture where it's like, there's a great deal that goes into it and I always get it a little bit wrong. Yes. Well, especially like the lifting of the channel a little bit, which is sort of like, I recognize you, but also like there's some amount of like man to man thing.

No, I don't think it's that. I did, somebody did tell me once like in college or something that if you, when you're not to get someone, lift your head up, then you're expressing your like superiority. And if you lower your head down, when you nod, then you're expressing your subservience or whatever. And that is an example of the kinds of things that people say in college that you take seriously that are absolutely depraved in their meaninglessness. Yeah.

Raven, you could also create new words. This is one of the great things about having a friend group is that you don't need to use the words that everybody uses and have been using for all these you. What's so good about these words that we've had for so long? Make up some new ones. Orin does it all the time. Yeah, that's what makes their current hello of good time a really good hello. Yeah, hello, good time, a really good hello. Yeah, hello, good time. It's great where you could do what Orrin does

where he just puts the letter B in front of everything, which works for hello, where you ever go, bellow, and that's great, that's cute. But it doesn't work for buy because that you've already gotten, that's the same. But buy, it actually gets cuter. And if you wanna say, be by, then you have to say, be by, bye, bye.

That's the dumbest thing. Alright, and we have another question. This one comes from Taya who writes, Dear John in Hank. My family plays a lot of card games and we're very competitive. And I love Uno. I think it's a good alternative to other more intense and complex games. However, especially since this all started, my family has gotten annoyed by how much I ask to play Uno.

What are some other games I can ask to play that give me the same feeling as Uno. Thanks a lot. Te. I mean, you got the obvious ones. Skip bow, basically I always felt was we would like to sell Uno, but can't. I think I actually think the story of Skipbo is more we made Uno and everyone owns it. We need to make a new game that's the same that everyone will buy again. Yeah, they don't own the Skipbo.

You don't have it yet. It's not already in your home. So you can do another one. No, I think that you should use actual playing cards to play games. Like that's the, that's the great thing about a 52 card deck is that you can play so many different games. Like you can play gin rummy, you can play spades, you can play hearts, and all those games give me the same feeling as Uno, but the game that gives me the feeling of Uno most of

all is a game I did not play until I came to the American Midwest. And I guess it is like the Midwestern game. It's called Yuka. Have you ever played Yuka? I've heard of Yuka. I don't think I've played a Hanna Yuka ever in my life. It's so good. It's so fun.

And it's really easy. So like, it's like Uno in the sense that there's the right mix of luck and skill, and there's really in the end not that much skill. I love it. Right. Do you have to, do you have to like pay attention? Because Uno, I feel like requires not much

in the way of paying attention. Catherine and I play cribbage, which you're constantly doing math in cribbage. You have to like, you get points for having 15s in your hands so like a seven and an eight in your hand. Yeah. And I'm like, all right, so I got a two and I got six.

And that's a eight, so I forgot, two and a six and a seven and that's 15. I'm just like, it's not, it's fun, but it's not like I am, have like all this extra brain space for like conversation while I'm playing cribbage. Yeah, most of my conversations while playing Euker do revolve around regrets that I have regarding that particular game of Euker. This is not going well, but it is. It's very fun and it's pretty easy to learn and I really recommend it. I also love like Yatsi and dice games,

which are fun and fairly meaningless. I like games that are competitive, but you can't actually get mad at anybody because that ruins the vibe. Yeah, there's definitely, well, I think that Uno can have a little bit of that when you're like, where am I gonna put this while draw four down?

Who am I gonna hit you with before or after the reverse? Right. But I wanna tell you, John, about a trick that I use when I'm in a situation that Taya is in here. And it is, I go to Google and I type in the thing that I like and then I type in a space and then the letter V and S. And then it will show you Uno versus Skipbo,

because apparently people are like, which one of these should I buy? Or Uno versus Crazy Eight, or Uno versus Xamarin? I don't know what that is, but I bet it's fun. Hank, what is your all-time favorite non-video game? Do you have a go-to? Boom. I mean, weirdly, there's this game called Tukido that I play a lot. It's a board game and it's like you are in feudal Japan going on a vacation and you have to have the best

vacation. Oh, I've played that game. Yeah, whoever has the best vacation wins. Yeah, it's fun. And I'm like, yes, I love it. I like to be, and it's fairly short, it's fairly clear. It's pretty easy to explain to a newcomer and like they're probably not gonna win the first game, but they're gonna play it and they're gonna know what's happening. Yeah, that's a great pick.

Yeah, I really like that. As far as like an actual board game that costs money, but probably my favorite game to play is Cribbage, which is amazing because it's just like all you need is a 52 deck of cards. We should make a deck of cards. What would we add to the deck of cards that would make it better than all the other decks of cards? What if we made a...

Americans? Americans? I was thinking more like AFC Wimbledon history. You know? Mars? There's a big... We can sell two. We can have an AFC Wimbledon Techacard.

There's a big audience of people out there who want to learn AFC Wimbledon history while playing Yooker. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do a Wimbledon one and a Mars one and see which one sells better. Let's not do that. Competition. Let's stick with no, no, no, no. Okay, we have another question.

This one's from Kusho who writes, John, and Hank, in the most recent episode, you both answered a question about the water cycle and mentioned giant underground lakes. And I realized that I imagined groundwater to be like large, cavernous, dark swimming pools for some reason. If I board a hole through the ground deep enough to reach this water table.

Could I actually like swim in it like a lake? And more importantly, would it classify as a beautifully foolish endeavor? Great job. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. I think that not mostly. Mostly you drill water down and you get water out of a well.

It's like loosely packed. Like when you dig down at the beach and like the water comes up out of the beach, it's like that. We're like, you create the hole and then the water sort of seeps into the hole because there's water around. But there are also big lakes,

like big caverns that you could swim in, for sure, that are... They're down there, so you could, if you found the right one, in the right place. But it also could be terrible. It could be like a bad lake, but usually a nice cold, fresh water lake. Yeah, so Kusha, I'm not an expert in this certainly, but I have played a lot of Minecraft, and I think it's like Minecraft where I do. When you dig down, sometimes it's lava,

and sometimes it's just like, water starts pouring out of nowhere. Sometimes it is an underground lake. Sometimes there's weird, old, abandoned mind shafts down there, and you think like, oh, I'm going to be able to get lots of loot out of this and I'm going to have like a goonies like adventure, but then you just get eaten by a spider. The great news is it is nothing like that.

And there are no spiders down there that will come out of your pipes. Right. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's a great theory, except that how do you know? Okay. So Hank says that life underground is not like Minecraft. And I say that life underground is like Minecraft believe who you want kusha That's how it works in 2020. It's just two people with opinions and we are both equally trustworthy and And you decide do your own research and and by your own research I mean open up YouTube The thing that you want to research is underground

really like The thing that you want to research is underground. Trains, fighters. And then you'll find out an answer that is determined by an algorithm that is interested not in providing you with reliable information, but in providing you information that will cause you to pay attention for the longest amount of time possible. That's correct, which is huge. Never mind.

We all know what this means. This next question comes from Drake who asks, Dear Hank and John, hi, I'm Drake, and I think humans would be a million times cooler if we made our own food like plants do. I've learned in my third grade science project that a sea slug can use the chlorophyll it eats and algae to make its own food from the sun. Is there any species genetically closer to humans that can do photosynthesis? If not, my cousin and I think we should merge with slugs instead of artificial intelligence since we're killing all the green plants too fast, sincerely Drake.

I love this. I love everything about it. Also, this is also from Sienna, my aunt, who paraphrased and typed this for me because my hand was tired from playing Minecraft. It's hard out there when you're my hand was tired from playing Minecraft. It's hard out there when you're in third grade and you love Minecraft. It's true. There are photosynthetic animals and not usually animals that do this as the primary source of their energy, but yes, definitely as part of their energy, there's an aphid that does this, the p-a-phid, does this, the p-aphid,

which is called the p-aphid because it's green and it's green because it has little plants, basically living inside of it that provide it with food. There's also a salamander, which is the closest relation to us that has, it's called the spotted salamander, and it is a vertebrate. It is the only vertebrate that has a photosynthetic part of how it generates energy and it basically is colonized by an algae and that algae lives inside of its skin and produces nutrition that the salamander actually consumes.

It's not the only way that it gets energy but it is a big part of how it it's life sustaining energy. So this is within the realm of possibility. Like we could eventually like establish, I don't know, colonies of land-based algae that live on our skin and help us give us lots of the energy that we need. It would totally be possible.

I mean, like, I don't know what, so we are really. We generate a lot of energy. We need a lot of energy to survive. It's just extremely energetically taxing to be a human. Just the amount of work that the brain is constantly doing burns with tonic calories. Who leaves me? I know.

We don't have a ton of surface area per unit of mass. So we're pretty heavy for the amount of skin we have. So, but it could be better than nothing. I don't think it would ever be enough to sustain us, but it could be like one to 2% of the amount of energy that we need. And that's not nothing, you know? Yeah.

And also it would be like, maybe it would absorb some of those harmful UV rays. That's what I really want. So I can go outside and not get sunburned. It would also just be very cool if you could get the photosynthesis skin. You know how you can get different skins in my craft? Maybe, I'm guessing.

I will tell you that you will be green. You will be green. Yeah. Feel like the color green. Yeah. Ever since I was a little kid, people have been making jokes about like, are you green? Are you feeling green today? Is it easy being green? Of all the people in the world, I would be the least bothered by waking up tomorrow, green. Be like, oh, finally. Yeah, I could come back to all those people and be like, yes, correct. I am green. All of your insults eventually turn my skin green, which you would think is a bummer, but no, now I'm photosynthetic.

Yeah. Take that. Well, thank God for plants. They do it great and are wonderful. Little solar panels made by nature and creating everything that we consume. What would we do without it? Seriously. Can you believe this? Can you believe this?

This is amazing. Yeah, I have one of those moments suddenly. I have those moments periodically. Like sometimes I go outside and I'm like, there's so much life out here. Like, it's not just that life happened on Earth. It's that life happened everywhere on Earth. Like I was on a walk yesterday

and there was a maple tree inside of an oak tree. Like, there was a maple tree that had, I would say, maybe an 8-inch diameter trunk that was growing out of the hollow part of an oak tree that was still alive. And I just had one of those, like, double rainbow all the way across the sky moments where you're just marvel at life's ability. And also it's like desire. The weird thing about life to me is not that it exists or that it exists in such abundance or that it exists in such absurd and astonishing diversity.

I love the new YouTube channel that you're making bizarre beasts because every week I'm introduced to some astonishing new form of life that exists on the The same planet where I live. It's not just that so much life exists It's that like life wants to be and and life wants wants to be different and life wants to be broad and it's That blows my mind. Mm-hmm. Do you know about redwood fairier rings? No. And when an old growth redwood tree is logged, so cut down, like a big, beautiful redwood

tree, and we don't do this so much anymore, it's cut down, what would happen is that the roots would still be alive. And so all around this giant diameter of tree, little sprouts would come up. And they would each try and make their way as an individual tree. And now some of those rings are like full growth size redwood trees. They are hundreds of years old now. And they basically are this like perfect ring of extremely tall beefy beautiful redwood trees

that all grew from the common root base. And you can use spottees out there sometimes and they almost look like one extremely large tree that has a hollow inside. It's very cool. Some ways they are. And they are. And by the way that they interact with each other,

they're branches don't grow inward because that's shaded. They only grow outward. And so they are this really massive hollow tree. And that just made me think about that. Well, thanks for coming to today's episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed. Or SciShow, yeah. Yeah, but oh well, I can't believe

that I've never reviewed Redwood fairy rings on the Anthropocene Reviewed. That is my jam. That is right up my alley. Yeah, I've been to one and they're like, it's really, it's an impressive and weird thing where you're like, wow, okay. Yeah.

So there you go. There you go. So there's cause for hope in Redwood forests and also in lots of other places. This next question comes from Maddie who writes, dear John and Hank, if there were never birds or things that could fly, would we have ever built planes? or things that could fly, would we have ever built planes?

Maddie, this is the Mindblower's episode of Dear Hagin John and you just blew my mind. I don't know. I don't think we would have. And that makes me think what other stuff is there? What thing would do if only we'd seen another thing doing it? I don't know. I guess the argument that we might have tried to do it anyway is that we might have at some point wanted to get out of earth

to see the moon up close or something. And then we might have developed rocketry not as a way to like fly from place to place, but as a way to try to leave Earth's orbit. But I, this would be a fascinating alternate history where everything is the exact same. It's just there are no birds. And no dragonflies, no lady of bugs.

Yeah. Or maybe there's like, maybe there's flying insects, but they only fly like three feet off the ground. So it never occurs to you that you could go up that high. But then maybe like once we started like climbing tall mountains and we noticed the atmosphere was different, maybe I don't know. I don't know.

Well, I mean, there are lots of things that we do that aren't in nature. You know, there's not like any books out there that we were like, ah, that's, we should make one of those. But I don't know, there's not like any books out there that we were like, ah, that's, we should make one of those. But I don't know, there's something different about flying where it just seems so impossible, unless I've seen something do it. You know, as a human on the ground, I'm like, well, you can't like just build a thing that flies. But if you see a bird, you're like, well, I guess you can build a thing that flies because nature did it.

Yeah. So I just wanna be that bird. I don't know. I feel like we probably would have figured it out eventually, but it would have been a really different process. Eventually win, Hank. We only figured it out as it is 100 years ago. Like,

you're actually also the person who did it would have been like, way, way, people would have been like, what are you doing? And they're like, I am really outside the box. I'm really outside the box person. Well, yeah, I mean, if there were nothing with wings, how would we have imagined wings? Well, yeah. And if there were bugs, like bugs fly so differently with their like fast, fast wings than birds that

like soar and glide, right like fast fast wings than birds that like sore and glide. Like you can sort of imagine that. Whereas like what would our first planes have been like. Like that kind of thing where you really just like can't be on it before your legs like go numb immediately because of the vibrations. Which reminds you that today's podcast is brought to you by bug planes, bug planes to make your legs all numb. Yeah, I don't know if this is more efficient, but it is louder. This podcast is also brought to you by John

Actually Green. John Actually Green. He has to eat like one less bite of hot dog, but he's actually green. I like that a lot. That might be my favorite one ever. Anthony Spidecast has brought to you by Howdy. Howdy, don't answer with how you're actually doing. And finally, this podcast has brought to you by Drive Ones. Drive Ones, the most underrated Mario Kart turtle skeleton. We also have a product for all some message. It's from Justin from Kentucky to Nicole Pottenger.

I thought if John Green said these words for me, you wouldn't ever feel insecure or unsure about them. I love you. I'm proud of you. You're an incredible person, and I'm privileged to be taking this journey with you. Thanks for taking it with me too, as we figure out the future together all as well.

And could you possibly both give a personal hello? She's a big fan. Hello, Nicole. Hello. Thanks for donating to the project for awesome Justin. Oh, hang on. Yes. That reminds me the most wonderful thing happened. What? Do you remember a few project for awesome messages ago? I do. Somebody was like, this is the day that you and I are going to jump in the ocean

wherever we are, whatever is going on. Well, those people made a TikTok of them listening to the podcast, their face is lighting up and then walking in their clothes into the ocean and jumping into the ocean in a totally socially distant, appropriate way and it was beautiful. It was really nice. It was the best thing I've ever seen on TikTok.

This next question comes from Christina who asks, dear Hank of John, I was watching Jurassic Park the other day. There's this scene towards the beginning where they're finally getting to see the dyno up close. They all stand around the sick Triceratops and pet her and look at her in the mouth and generally are all up in her space, admiring the beauty and size of this living dinosaur. This had me thinking, what if when bugs and other critters crawl on and around us, they're

kind of doing the same thing? Are they just admiring our bigness? Do they want to pet us the way that we want to pet really big dinosaurs? I find this disturbing but also kind of nice. Send help, Christina. You know, this makes me feel better about having bugs on me. I want them to be like,

oh, look at this big amazing animal. He's so beautiful and giant. Look at that breathing. He breathes so much. I mostly feel like they must be thinking like, well, this is a weird horse. Why is this rock warm? So I feel like, treat as terrain. I don't, I don't think that bugs think much about us one way or the other, at least not in the way that,

that we think about dinosaurs or other bugs. But there is something wondrous to me about in general the scale of life that that like you could fit millions of bugs on me and you could fit millions of bacteria on a bug and you could fit millions of me's on a Brontosaurus. I've always liked thinking that way. Yeah, but what I want is for there'd be tiny little things that admire me. I just want to be admired. Well, that's why there are babies.

Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, I just want to, I just want to be looked at the way that the paleontologist from Jurassic Park looks at that triceratops. Sss, I don't. But that does get to one of the important differences between the two of us. Yeah.

Who cleans up the poop at Jurassic Park? Or do they just let it sit around? Well, it isn't to open long enough for it to be a massive issue. All right, we have another question. This one's from Anonymous, who writes, Hi, John and Hank, I love your podcast and your YouTube videos. I really want to be a soccer player and play with Lionel Messi,

but I live in Yemen. And in Yemen, we don't have good football teams to get scouted and our league is suspended because of all the things that are happening in our country. What should I do? Thank you. I love you guys. This is a tough question, anonymous,

and we are not soccer experts, although one of us pretends to be. One of us is much, much, it's possible there's a scale of soccer expertise. John is pretty far down, but I, I, I put him to shame in my lack of expertise. But thank you, first of all, for writing in and reminding us that there are people over the world who listen to our podcast and watch our videos. That means a lot to us. And it's very cool and interesting.

And I hope very much that it is a thing that is helpful and good in your life. Yeah. And I'm really sorry that there's so much suffering in your country right now and so much instability and so many systems that are really experiencing catastrophe. And one of those, of course, is the way that people play together and enjoy sports together. I encourage you to try to keep playing, keep playing if you can, keep playing if you can play safely,

and hopefully find joy in the game itself. It's really hard to live amid so much uncertainty. And if you're anything like me, maybe sports can be a place where you don't have to think about it as much. I'm sorry that it looks harder to do it professionally than it used to. And I hope that changes. Yeah, it sucks. I'm sorry. We've heard from lots of you the last couple of weeks about things being really, really difficult. And I'm sorry that they are so difficult.

It's for lots of different reasons. I think it's different depending on where you live, how well your community is coping with the pandemic, but also lots of lots of other factors as well. So we hope wherever you are, and however you're doing, that you're able to find joy where you can find it and find hope where you can find it.

I still believe, in fact, in some ways more than ever, that hope is the correct response to the human condition. And I still believe in the idea of radical hope that hope is available to all people at all times. And so we just didn't feel right not acknowledging that it's really difficult for a lot of y'all right now. And so wherever you are, we hope that you're able to get the support that you need and that you're able to know that this is temporary.

There's a great librarian proverb that I often think of that Raj Pajabi introduced me to, no condition is permanent. That is correct. And now Hank, let us artfully transition into the news from a third tier English soccer team that isn't currently playing. Okay, how is that going?

I think I did a great job of making the transition. Thanks for asking. But how is the sport going? Oh, there is no sports. The league one playoffs are happening. So like the teams that are, you know, maybe going to go up to the championship, they are doing, they're playing offing right now. And I'll confess that I'm a little jealous.

It seems like that would be a fun thing to be doing instead of not playing and having escaped relegation by some measures by like one eighth of one point. But Wimbledon's stadium is continuing to be built. And that is the big hope, I think, for Wimbledon fans. A, that football will come back with fans. Hopefully at some point soon, although dot, dot, dot, and B, that the next time we all see

AFC Wimbledon play, it will be in their own stadium in Wimbledon back home, where they belong and have not been for 30 years. So the stadium construction is continuing and the plan is to have the first game of the season at the new stadium. All right. Let's do it or not, depending on what is the correct thing to do. Depending on the advice of public health experts. Yeah. I mean, right. Like, obviously, Wimbledon is a little bit of a footnote in that

discussion. Oh, yeah, yeah. What's the news from Mars? How's the, how's the other planet that we might be able to inhabit someday? Well, if you, so imagine that you've been spending quarantine, uh, to scroll through images of far off places that you will not be able to travel to. Well, I've got another one for you because the European Space Agency released some very dope flyover footage of the Coral of Crater. And basically you get to like,

it's like doing Google Earth and can, except it's a giant 51 mile across crater filled with ice all year round because the 1.25 mile deep crater forms a cold trap, keeping cold air in and preventing the ice from sublimating away. So sublimation is when ice goes directly from solid to vapor without hitting that liquid, which it can do on Mars because of the low atmospheric pressure. So why can we get in detail at this awesome icy crater? You can. And you can find it by searching for CoreLev crater. It'll be fairly easy to find

named for Sergei CoreLev, who drove much of the Soviet space program, including the launch of Sputnik and later the flight of Yuri Gagarin. And you can watch the video and you see what it would be like if you were, like in, say, a bug plane flying over the crater, really high up. You sort of like start way up above it and then you sort of fly around the whole perimeter.

Video footage was created by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft and its high resolution stereo camera, which gives you top of graphical information as well as actual pictures. So you can see how like not just like a flat picture, but with depth to it. And you can just search, you can go to the European Space Agency YouTube channel or just search for a coral of crater flight. Cool. Are we still, are we still gonna get the rover off the ground before August 11th? So far so good. No, no news there.

Okay, because no news is good news. I have pinned all of my hopes on getting that that rover off of the surface of Earth ASAP. Yeah, I hear you. All right, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Once again, Hank's book of beautifully foolish and dever is available wherever books are sold. I'm so excited for Hank and so proud of the book. And I can't wait for all of y'all to read it and to discuss it with your friends and family.

And also on the internet. There's a bunch of different places that you can do that, including the fans of an absolutely remarkable thing, Discord channel, which has the acronym, of course, of FART, with two A's, with two A's, yeah, and absolutely remarkable thing. FART! And absolute, we remarkable thing. Fart. Ha ha ha. Good. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna MetaShitts, produced by Rosiana Halsey Rojas and Sheridan Gibson. Our editorial assistant is Debukutra Kavardi, and our communications coordinator is Julia

Bloom. The music you're hearing now is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.