Dear Hank & John - 255: Hello, Mr. & Mr. Green

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

What is "other" on my phone's storage? How do I handle my life being thrown off track? What's the policy on renaming a fostered fish? Are mushrooms a vegetable? How do I smile from behind a mask? Can I run through people's sprinklers? How do I start a conversation with my roommate about enjoying your work? How do I navigate bookstore genres without consulting someone in person? Hank Green and John Green have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] 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 I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be's advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. Yes. What part of the human body is long and flexible and is about two feet long and it contains the letters P E N S and I. I'm just going to say what? The spine. Ah! The spine. The spine, John. The spine. Hey, hey, so I found out something really interesting this week. This is going to blow your mind.

Okay. You know our Uncle Mike, we don't have favorite uncles. But if we did, you know our Uncle Mike are famously... Our famous Uncle Mike, yeah. Our famously quiet, reserved, brilliant, impressive, imposing, intimidating Uncle Mike. Yeah, I know, I know Uncle Mike. I just found out that Uncle Mike listens to this podcast. And he just listened to me make a spine joke, John.

Not my favorite spine joke of all time, but I'll have another one for you next week. I can't wait. Anyway, hi, Uncle Mike, if you're listening. Yeah, he was very sweet. He said some very nice things about the podcast and my book and an email to me, which is a nice

moment to get an email from Uncle Mike. How many words were in the email? Would you ask them? Under 50? Oh, yes. Yeah. He can say a lot with a few words. Indeed.

Unlike us. I know you would think that we might have gotten a modicum of his ability to speak with some precision, but no, we're about to ramble on for God knows how long beginning with answering this question from. Brian. Okay. Hank, I wanted to ask this question because I actually know the answer. I know the answer in such detail. And it's, as you know, I almost never know anything.

So this is really exciting for me. Bryn writes, dear John and and Hank, the other day, my sister and I were trying to record a dumb video and my phone ran out of storage, mid video, and I went to my settings to try and free up some room. And it said that over half of my storage is being taken up by this category called other. Oh God.

If it is a pictures or videos or apps or messages or my system, then what is it? Is it my FBI agent? Hank, what is it? We got it first off. We got at least 12 questions this week that referenced my FBI agent, which I assume now is like a meme.

Like I assume it's a thing. The agents are saying where everyone imagines that they have their own FBI agent. So I'm glad that we've reached that point in the dystopian story. Anyway, Bryn, you know what that other is? I'm almost positive. I know exactly what that other is.

Do you know what it is, Hank? No, actually I don't, and I'm super curious. It's Netflix downloads. If you download something off of Netflix, it just goes on top. So you could watch it offline, it counts as other. And I had this problem with my phone and my iCloud where I was like, I don't understand.

I have like four terabytes and it was all, it wasn't even good Netflix shows. It was like Barbie Dreamhouse that I downloaded for Alice. Not for myself, although I'm, they do have some jokes for growing up, so which I appreciate that shout out to the Barbie Dreamhouse writers. They're looking out for me.

It's Netflix downloads, Brian. You just got to get rid of those Netflix downloads. John thinks it's Netflix downloads. Let's hope. I actually, this week, I have a lot of space in this computer and it popped up with a little year out of disk space. So I go into my footage dump folder and I take all the old vlog where there's files out. I'm like, that'll fix it.

Then the next day, it came back and it was like, your computer is full again. And then, and if you want to write and tell me what happened here. So I opened it up and I searched my entire hard drive for big files. And there was a file, it was at MoV file, 123 gigabytes.

And it was just kept getting bigger. Every time I gave it space, it would make itself bigger. And I don't- Like a coin, a fish pond. Yes. Yes, it's doing something. I don't know what it was doing. I don't know what program was creating it,

but it was continually creating it. So I did a full reboot of this system and deleted the 123 gigabyte file and now I'm good. Now I'm good. I mean, that seems like it was almost definitely your FBI. Yeah, I'm good. Now I'm good. I mean, that seems like it was almost definitely your FBA. Yeah, I'm worried. You should be. I mean, I think that, John, I think that my FBA agent is hopefully entertained by all of the things that I do. At least I hope that my FBA agent is really into microbes because he's getting a lot. Yeah, I think my FBI agent is probably like,

oh my God, this guy will watch anything on YouTube at one o'clock in the morning. Nothing is below his standards. No, I've noticed. I know, you see my watch history. And after 11 p.m., I'm just, I'm completely unreliable. Like will I watch somebody build a swimming pool with a stick in the jungle?

Yes. Those are amazing. They're so good. You watch a lot of, I'm surprised by the number of boat videos you watch. I just like to look at the ocean, Hank, okay? And I can't do it from Indianapolis. So this is my way.

Let's move on to another question. Okay. This next question comes from Eliza, who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm a first-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, aka the cluster of university. This is a reference to an editorial

that was published in the student paper that did not bleep out that word. I'm being kicked out of my dorm today and as I was packing the overwhelming feeling of loss came again. I say again because not too long ago I was a high school senior, ready to go to prom and to graduate

when suddenly everything was ripped away. I arrived on campus thinking, finally, I can see people again, only to be proven wrong just two weeks later. It's hard not to feel like my class is a little cursed at times, and I was wondering if y'all could offer us some hope? I'm starting to feel like nothing will ever be the way I planned. And maybe that was a pipe dream from the start. I just can't help but feel lied to and

robbed of the quote best years of my life. Don't get me wrong. I'm going to stop you there, Eliza. I'm going to stop you right there. I understand being upset. Yeah. This does suck. I don't want to minimize it. I do not know where the insidious lie came from that the ages of 17 to 21 are the best years of your life, but it might be the worst lie that we collectively believe in, which is really saying something. Of course, it's not the best years of your life. It's a time of constant uncertainty and change,

and yes, there are wonderful things, but there are also terrible things. It's very big years of your life and you're having an extremely big version of them. And I'm sorry that it's big in so many terrible ways. But this morning I was talking to my kids and they were talking about whether summer is better than winter and my daughter observed this deep truth that I had never crystallized for myself

before in the way that she crystallized it, which is that when it is winter, you feel like it will never be warm again. And when it is summer, you feel like it will never be cold again. Wow. And because it is now, you cannot imagine what the future will be like, but it will not be like now. Yeah, it will not always be like this. So there is that. And I think one reason why this hurts is because it feels like there is a clear path that you've been working toward.

And now that path is much less clear. And maybe it will clear up in the future and it will basically just sort of restart, you know, and maybe you'll get three years of college instead of four, which admittedly is certainly not ideal. But there is also the fact that like, there are many times when paths will look clear and they will be set out in front of you

and then suddenly they will not be available. And the thing to do in that situation is of course, like, you know, if you can, of course, like there's grieving and frustration that comes along with that, but there is still a path there that you're still on. You just have to figure out what that one is. Yeah, yeah, but you do still need to grieve

and it does still suck. And there are gonna be a lot of times in life when you think you're on a path and it doesn't happen, or at least it doesn't happen the way you imagined it. And right now, one of the strange things about this historical moment is that most people are having some version of that experience. Obviously, some people are having extreme versions of it. Some people are having minor versions of it, but a lot of us had imagined the summer of 2020 or the fall of 2020 a little differently than how it's gone. And that loss is real. But I think we also have to be good at identifying paths when they are not necessarily clearly

and set out in front of us. And that's part of becoming better at being a human. You know, even after talking about this with you a bunch, I just keep coming back to what Alice said. When it's summer, you think it's never gonna be cold, and when it's winter, you think it's never gonna be hot, and you're wrong. It is. It's gonna be warm again. And maybe we can't wait. Soak days are coming. And you know, John, another thing is that Kristen also emailed us who also has just been sent home from UNC. So maybe we can help you too.

Well, we got a bunch of emails actually from people who've been sent home from UNC. It was very sad to read all of the emails this week and see so many. Yeah. Kristen writes, dear John and Hank, I just moved into my dorm 12 days ago, and now they're sending us home.

Thanks for the $23,000 two-week vacation. I feel like there's a little bit of anger as well as, as well as grief. But the real problem is that one of my sweet mates brought her fish, this is terrible. Oh my God, brought her fish to the dorm and can't bring it back because she has to fly back and she can't bring it on the flight. One of my other sweet mates is

taking custody of the fish for the semester, but the fish shares the name with her sister's ex-boyfriend. What is the policy on renaming someone else's fish? Well, here's the situation. I think a fish name can get, it can be pretty malleable. Yeah. So while it is in your other sweetmates home, that fish is named manhole. And then when it returns, it's named Derek again.

Yeah, I think that's fine. I think you can call your roommates fish whatever you need to to get through this experience. I would argue the bigger concern is that in terms of keeping a fish alive for months is a long time. And so your main job here is to return with a fish regardless of that fish's name. Speaking of which, John, five fish names in five seconds go.

Err, Good one. Ah, that great. And Lizzo. That was the dream. Yeah, one was, one was, one was, one was, one was, one was, er, okay. Yeah, no, that was four. That was four and Lizzo is my fifth. All of them were just sort of like noises of frustrated thought and Lizzo. Okay, well, like, whichever one of those you want, you're welcome.

John, you gotta put yourself, you gotta lean out over the edge. Gotta see what happens. Gotta be like plate, nocturn, animal, plant. Danger. There, see? Those were good. Minor better.

John, this next question comes from Annabeth who asked, dear Hank and John, are mushrooms a vegetable? They're a fungi. They're not even plants. How could that be a vegetable? Not a chase, Annabeth. What?

Not a chase. What's the opposite of a chase, not a chase, Anabeth. What? Not a chase. What's the opposite of a chase? I'm not a chase. Oh, Anabeth Chase. Anabeth Chase is from the Percy Jackson books, John. Oh, I was thinking very literally. I was going for a pun, yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So first of all, obviously, the category of vegetable was made up. This idea that they're all categories. Yeah category of vegetable was made up. This idea that they're all categories are made up. Sure. This is like the underlying problem is anytime you come up against these weirdnesses and taxonomy, the thing that you have to remember is that like the category, it's not like vegetables came to be based on a category. The category came to be based on our observation of vegetables.

And then as our observation of vegetables got better, we were like, oh, it turns out this category is like, yeah, a little oversimplistic. It's not good. But I will say that taxonomically, there are all kinds of things. Like they're scientifically taxonomically, there are fruits and fruits are a certain kind of thing

and then vegetables are a kind of other kind of thing. But vegetables is the one that really doesn't really mean anything. And so, but I brought this question up because Debokin and I looked it up and the the USDA has thoughts on this which I'm a big fan of. Okay. So the USDA categorizes mushrooms under other vegetables. And here are the categories of vegetables, John. You've got, this is a court like for now. This is what we have arrived at. Dark green vegetables, red and orange vegetables. Beans and peas, starchy vegetables, which shouldn't count because they're basically just

bread that grows. Right. And then you've got other vegetables. And other vegetables includes, it includes funguses, summer squash, avocado, and iceberg lettuce. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Avocado is a weird one. It's really hard. Avocado. It is. Avocado is probably the most interesting food that human eat. Iceberg lettuce, though. I think they put iceberg lettuce in other in the first attempt in a multi-decade process to hopefully remove iceberg lettuce from human diets.

No, John. Hahaha. No, John. No, I love salad dressing. And iceberg lettuce is the purest way to get it into my mouth with a little crunch. Poor summer squash, though. I know. What about all the other squashes?

Why do they get to live happily in either dark green vegetables or red and yellow vegetables? Where the winter squashes go. Like winter squashes to me, are they star-chee vegetables? Any, I also amazed by this fact. They have mushroom, summer squash, iceberg lettuce, avocado, etc.

How do you put it, etc? At the end of that list of things that have nothing to do with each other. Right. And other things like mushrooms and iceberg lettuce. And avocado. Iceberg lettuce and avocado are the most opposite foods. Right.

Nobody's ever like, hot, I really feel like some iceberg lettuce toast. Actually. With a little honey mustard, I can see it. I bet you would like it with some mustard. Yeah. All right. So there's your answer. Fungi avocados, iceberg lettuce, et cetera.

Et cetera. All right, Hank, let's move on to this question from Christine who writes, dear John and Hank, I've been wearing a face mask because reasons, but I miss smiling at people. What gesture can I make to people I don't know, to let them know I see them and what they do? What is happening out there?

I'm just laughing at this question. Oh, okay, it was such a weird laugh that I got confused. Yeah, it's like a door creaking open. What gesture can I make to people I don't know to let them know I see them when I'm wearing a mask, I don't wanna just like say hi all the time. Yeah. DFTWAM, Christine.

Easy enough. Obviously, you just have to be wearing a cabana hat and you just do a little, you just pick it up a little. Oh, a little tip of the hat. Yeah. Nothing like a tip of the hat, like hello there. Do you think I can do? I'm 40. Can I wear a cabana hat yet? No, no. You're like at least 20 years and 42 Jimmy

Buffett concerts away from being able to wear a cabana hat. That's the rules. I do want to wear a cabana hat, but I don't want to go to any Jimmy Buffett concerts ever. I think I can do it. I'm sympathetic to your plate, but those are the rules. I don't make them. Anyway, Christine, the answer to this is extremely simple, which is that you can actually tell that people are smiling via their eyes. Yeah, you know, you gotta let it get out there. You gotta let your juice do the work.

Yeah, you just, but I saw a great tick to huck about this when somebody was like, when coronavirus is over and I'm smiling at people and it's you're just smiling with your eyes And this because I do find myself doing that now like when I'm wearing a mask and I'm trying to be expressive with my face like I it's all in my eyes Yeah, so I'm like here's me with very wide eyes. Here's me with happy smiling eyes And I do feel like at some point I'm going to take off the face mask and people are going to be like, why don't you smile with your mouth? Yeah, I also sometimes will recognize someone and then they will be like,

okay, you're gonna have to tell me who you are and then I'll tell them and they'll be like, I'm so sorry and I'll be like, no, I've covered my face. This is, I'm wearing a hat and a mask. You've got like three square inches with it to figure out who I am. Yeah. Not fair.

Yeah, I personally, I mean, obviously want this to end on every possible level, except for the level where I can't recognize anyone and no one can recognize me. I kind of like that level. Just going to move through the world without ever. And whereas I am the opposite and would like, I feel like I should start wearing a Kabbana hat so people will be like, that's Hank. He's the guy who wears the cabana hat. Oh, I mean, you just had a moment of real, deep, self realization, but I don't know if

it penetrated as deeply as I need it to. You're going to stop recording the podcast for a sec. We're gonna let you sit with that feeling. If you could go call your therapist real quick, learn about how you're thinking about your cabana hat, and then I'm gonna need to just spend a 15 solid minutes alone with that. By the way, Hank, that's a feeling that you share

with everyone who has a cabana hat and wears the cabana hat out on a regular basis. Yeah, yeah, probably true. Well, this one's not that expensive though. Okay, let's move on before Hank starts online shopping. This question comes from Maya who writes, dear John and Hank, I've been going on bike rides around my neighborhood in the evenings.

And sometimes I see that a few of my neighbors have their lawn sprinklers going. And I get pretty sweaty from biking and the weather is very warm at the moment. Would it be acceptable to get down off my bike and run through their sprinklers? How can I pass this off if I get caught? PS, I am an adult, Which is a kind of definite thing.

Yeah, sometimes Orin will run through people's sprinklers and then he'll be like, come with me. And I'll be like, I don't think I can. Yeah, that's his answer. You can and I can't. And he's like, why not? And I'm like, I don't know. But like, I don't make the rules, buddy.

But that's what it feels like to me. And I will sometimes I like lean my arm out over the sprinklers and like get some, just like get a little sprinkle. Yeah. And then maybe like splash it on my face. But I feel like if someone was doing it in my yard, I think I'd be okay with it. I wouldn't at all.

And here's my take on it. If the sprinkler, because of the way that the person set it up, extends out of the yard into a street or across a sidewalk, or across a sidewalk, you are allowed to stop on the sidewalk and let the sprinkler sprinkle you to quote Hank several times, because that is the person who put the sprinkler in basically saying like I'm allowing for this possibility. But I don't

think you're allowed to like run through someone's lawn while the sprinkler is on. Now there is another question here which is why are we using perfectly potable water to sprinkle on grass that cannot be eaten, which is a question for a separate podcast called the Anthropocene Reviewed Episode Three. Okay. But we got that one settled. No problem. Oh, hey, that reminds me.

Okay. Does it remind you of the same thing that reminded me of because we're going to find out. You go. It reminds me that I have a major announcement that I forgot to make. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's different. But I know what it is. I have a new book coming out. It's coming out next May, I think, and it's a collection of essays. It's my first book of nonfiction. It is called the Anthropocene Reviewed, and it's a mix of episodes of the podcast that have been expanded and revised to turn into a book and also new reviews.

It's my attempt, I guess, to chart what it felt like for one person to live in the Anthropocene at one moment in history. So yeah, it's available for pre-order now. And also, I will be signing every copy of the first printing in the United States, if you are ordering it in the United States. I guess that won't surprise anybody who's familiar with my past books or with the episode of the Anthropocene

Reviewed where I talk about the artwork of the Japanese artist, Tira Yuki-Doy. I like to make repetitive marks on paper. So I'm excited. He will sign anything. I'm really excited for the book and also quite nervous about it, but yeah, I am really excited and I hope that you like it. Congratulations, John. I'm excited. Thank you. Thanks. John, this is a few years since I published a book. So it'll, it'll, I hope it's, uh, move on. I hope people like it. Oh God. Okay. Go. This next question comes from Caroline who asks,

hello, Mr. and Mr. Green. That's not what the name of the podcast is. Though that would be fun. That would be a great podcast name, though. Then we would have to have to have to end our pet. It seems like time is slowing down, John, and that maybe we will get to Mars by 2028. Do you want to double down? No! I just moved into my dorm and my roommate is pretty great. We get along and I enjoy living with her, but there's one thing I haven't been able to talk to her about on her whiteboard.

She has written DFTBA. I want to ask her about it, but starting conversations is not a skill that I'm great at. I've been waiting for her to notice my DFTBA pin that I have on my backpack, but it's been three days and she has it. What do I say to bring up the subject? I don't know if she listens to the podcast, but if she does, high Lucy, it's Caroline. Any duplicity to be as advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm an empath and Carolot, Caroline. This is very sweet, but I think it's totally possible, Caroline, that she did notice, and she just also hasn't said anything,

because she's also nervous. Yeah, it seems likely. I think it was a great move to write into the podcast. It's, that's a very passive choice. My kind of move. I really like it. But I do think at some point you've got to say, like, hey, I know what that initialism means. Yeah. What's the opposite of aggressive?

So you can just like passive aggressive. But then there's like whatever this is. Yeah, but this isn't passive aggressive. It's merely passive, right? Like, we've all had occasions like this where you see somebody reading your favorite book and you're like, no, I'm not gonna say anything because like I... Right, well this is like...

I've seen movies where people say things and the people who say things aren't people I wanna be like, like we all have those moments. Yeah. It's passive friendly. It's like we're trying to create friendness, but passively. And active friendly is great, passive friendly is great.

But I think that you don't need to bring up the DFTBA, you just bring up something around DFTBA. Like, you're like, are you excited for pizza-miss this year? Or have you ever gotten... No, that's not no, that's bad. That's a terrible idea. John doesn't like. John doesn't like.

It's so creepy to come if you're just like, I guess it's a little creepy. If somebody said, because first off, somebody could know DFTBA and not know us. That is possible. I guess. They could certainly know DFTBA and not know pizza mess. Right?

Like, the longer it goes, the weirder it gets, as is the case with so many things. Right. True. And so so you just got to buckle down and say, do you follow TikTok star Hank Green? I think you mean do you follow TikTok star John Green or TikTok over user Hank Green? I

because you're obsessed with the total number who has more followers, which I think is a very 2017 way of judging success on social media. I subscribed to the Uncle Mike theory of social media stardom, which is that really the amount of your social media impact should be your number of total posts divided by your number of total followers. That's very good. You're very, you're, you're one of the tops on TikTok then. And if you have, that means that if you have one follower and zero posts, you're the most successful social media star all the time. Yeah. Anytime you're dividing by zero, that's the win.

Her unit of work. Yeah. I mean, if you really, if you want to win, if you want to win social media, then don't use it. What were we talking about? I'm trying to figure it out. Sorry, I was doing a Rubik's giveaway. Yeah, I was looking at TikTok, sorry, I got lost. Trying to figure out how to get Caroline in on the friendship path, re their common interest in at least the initialism, DFTBA.

Yeah, so I think you just say, like I noticed you had DFTBA written on the whiteboard and I have a DFTBA keychain. Did you know that John Green has a new book coming out? Yeah, it's called The Ethnicity and Reviewed and it's available for preorder, wherever books are sold. Yeah, that would be my way in Caroline, but obviously everybody has a different opening line.

Yeah, and you gotta do this soon because you're probably not gonna be in that dorm much longer. No, I hope not. I hope everything goes fine and that you're in that dorm for a long, long time. But regardless, Caroline, you're probably gonna wanna shoot your shot because it may be that the people in your dorm are the only ones you're gonna get to hang out with potentially just you

and your roommate. God, which reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by COVID-19. COVID-19 has a sponsor message here. It says don't wear a mask. So I guess we really will take money from anybody, John. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I do nothing for you. And also this podcast is brought to you by the Anthropocene Reviewed book. The Anthropocene Reviewed book, John forgot to plug it until halfway through the podcast. But now I've plugged it five times. This is a project for awesome message from Alex and Geo to Allie, Allyson Goose, Sarah Sky and Wiki. Sorry, fam, we totally put this off into the last second and now can't think of what

to say. Y'all are really cool. And we're glad to have the Kuku bombs. Maybe one day we'll all be in the same place. Maybe, maybe Alex and Gio, maybe Fingers crossed. I do hope that one day I can be in the same place as my friends and brother. And yeah. Yep. I miss that.

I don't miss traveling as such, but I do miss seeing people I love. Yeah, I miss being in the places. John, this last question before the news from Art Mars and I have someone who comes from Laura who asks, dear Hank and John, I've recently been in a bookstore twice and had issues finding my book

due to looking in the wrong genre section. The first time I looked in the fantasy section to find it was in a section labeled dark fantasy. Oh. I didn't know that was the thing, but now I do. The next visit I was looking for a book for a sci-fi themed book of the month, instead of the sci-fi section, it was in the mysteries and thrillers section. Normally, I have no issues with asking help from the book store staff, but a current time in all that stuff I'd like to avoid it. So how do I know which genre I should be perusing for books? All help us appreciate it Laura. I just went to Barnes & Noble to stealth sign some copies of my book and I went through the entire science fiction section and

it wasn't there. And so I've discovered it was in the science fiction and fantasy section, which was separate from the science fiction section. Wow. Yeah, the ideal solution to this is to ask a bookseller and they'll almost always be extremely helpful and know where the book is, but I understand why that might be complicated in this current time. I have also had this experience a number of times. I think some of it speaks to the way genre is changing and bookstores try to shelve stuff with other things that you might also like if you like this, right? Like they try to do readelikes of a kind, but that doesn't really work if you can't find the book you're looking for.

Right. Well, I mean, here's the situation. We can't even figure out what mushrooms are. We think, we think iceberg lettuce and avocado belong in the same category. Right. It's just hard. It's hard to categorize things. It's hard. Dexonomy is hard. Yeah. And it's really hard when it comes to books because there are a lot of books that are romance novels and literary fiction and science fiction. And there are some books that are romance and mystery and literature and SF and fantasy and YA. Like it's endless. That's one of the things I always really liked about publishing young adult fiction is that that all lived on the shelf together. So Holly Black and Lori Hall Sanderson and Jacqueline Woodson and Walter Dean Myers could all live together.

Right. And I always thought that was really, really cool. Yeah. But obviously, it's hard to do that at scale and just be like, here are all the books. You do need some kind of taxonomy and I get that. Yeah, you do. And I think that these things are always in flux. And so like dark fantasy kind of didn't exist,

and then it did, and it may not exist in the future. And my Barnes and Noble in particular, if you're listening and you work there, what's up? It looks great in there, by the way. You're doing fantastic work. And it looks like it is in a state of flux where maybe science fiction and fantasy is continuing to be broken out from itself.

But there are books that definitely, I wouldn't know which section to put it in if those weren't blended categories. That's a great point too, that a lot of bookstores are in flux right now, and they're obviously responding to, you know, in many of their cases, the biggest challenge in history. Yeah. And figuring out how to do that well is not easy. And I feel like we should say, Hank,

that this is a great time to support bookstores. It's always a good time to support bookstores, but this is a really great time to do it. If you can, if you live in the United States, you can support your local independent store by shopping for books at bookshop.org, but bookstores are just so important to publishing and they support a lot of jobs and yeah, so support them if you can.

All right, John, do you have any news from AFC Wimbledon for us? Hank, the stadium is really, it's really coming together. It's not going to be ready by the first game of the season. Of course, that doesn't matter very much because there won't be fans. Right. At the beginning of the season, or at least it looks like there probably won't be fans. The beginning of the season. The first game is currently scheduled. Like the first game of the third tier season is currently scheduled for September 12th.

And I know that because the fixtures list has come out. That's right, we have a schedule hank, a schedule. We know who we're playing. Is that what the fixtures list is? That what they call it? Yeah, so we know who we're playing and in what order. Or I guess I should say, in the past, we would have known who we were playing and in what order in the past when we believed in the future. In the current present, we know who we hope we are playing and in what order, because who knows what's going to happen with the league one season this year, but assuming that things go according to plan, the season will begin on September 12th, which is several weeks later than usual in an attempt to get the numbers

of new cases in the UK even lower than where they are now. So it'll start on September 12th and run through basically mid-May. The highlights of the season for me are obviously the games against Milton Keynes, those are important games. It does look like the game against Milton Keynes, the home game, the home version of that game, the game that we will be playing at Plow Lane, the place that they tried to take from us, and that Wimbledon fans have rebuilt, will be on January 30th of 2021. I've got that date circled in my calendar as the first time I get on a plane question mark, question mark, question mark. Wow. That, that, that's probably a little ambitious, but it would be great

to see, see Wimbleden playing at Plow Lane, especially that particular game, because I think it will be a sell out. Also Swindon Town, Hank, who you may remember from years and years ago of playing FIFA with me, Swindon Town have been promoted up from League 2 to the third tier of English football. And they will be playing Wimledon on September 10th. Wow. So that's another exciting fixture for me. But on the whole, the schedule looks, I don't know.

I mean, a lot of Wimbledon fans talking about, is it better to play the good teams at the beginning of the season or do we want to save the good teams for the end of the season when we're playing at Plow Lane and we've got more crowd noise and more energy. But who knows if there will be a crowd, nobody knows. Yeah. So we know who we're supposed to be playing, which is a step in the right direction.

We still don't know when any of it's going to happen. I hear that. Well, John, this weekend Mars News, we just got a little update on Perseverance, which has done a bit of a course correction on its journey to the red planet. Is that normal? Is it going to be concerned? Is one of the normal. There are five of these. So this is the first of five.

Okay. 15 days after liftoff. Eight of the spacecraft's thrusters were fired and a thing that is called a trajectory correction maneuver, which is exactly what it sounds like. And that is going to launch it out of our orbit into Mars's orbit. And the next one is going to happen at the end of September. There's also a backup planned for February, in case any last minute corrections are needed, as the rover gets ready to land. In the Jezero crater, which is a wonderful, weird, cool geologic place to be on Mars.

And so it's very exciting that Perseverance will all going to plan be there quite soon. You can see the full map of how all this works at Perseverance's Twitter count, which is at NASA Persevere. And according to the account, as of August 15th, the spacecraft has gone about 27 million miles already, with about 265 million miles to go. That is mind blowing.

Yeah. It's a distance. It's a distance. Not as far as we've ever gone or anything, but it's certainly farther than any person has ever gone. Yeah. I mean, I've done a lot of air travel. I have some pretty, not to brag. I have some pretty fancy medallion status, but I'm not anywhere close to 28 million miles. You get a really, you get a really special medallion if you make it to 28 million miles. They really, I mean, that's should, that Delta should get a sponsorship with NASA. Pay, pay,

pay them. And then, and then we, they'll just say, anytime curiosity or perseverance wants to go on a flight anywhere in the world free, absolutely. Hahaha. Got, got to love Delta. I can't wait for the day, heck, when Delta finally sponsors me. Yeah. I'll wear like, I'll wear like a Delta Polo

when vloggers videos for the rest of my life. Can I life. Can I tell you in the tens of thousands of people listening a secret? Yeah. But it's a secret, so don't tell anybody. Okay, yeah. I was recently reached out to by a competing dietary fiber supplement brand. Two metamusel.

Are you serious? I was. That is a metamusel? Yes. What, can I guess who it was? No, you are not allowed to guess, John. Okay. What did you, what did you say? I said send me some of your product and I will see what I think of it. Wow. I mean, I have to say Hank, if you get sponsored by a supplementary fiber brand that isn't Meta Musil, my faith in your seriousness as an ad-pitchman is going to be in the toilet.

I will have no faith in you whatsoever. At that point, you might as well be the guy who's on info-mursals shouting about cleaning surfaces. Well, look, maybe it's way better. So I'm just going to let him send me some, and I like it better. Right. And I'm sure that the prospect of financial compensation will in no way affect your relationship with the product just as it never ever does for anyone ever.

We'll see. All right Hank, I look forward to you selling your soul for a different supplemental fiber brand. Thanks for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. You can write us at Hank and John at gmail.com. We really appreciate all your emails. We're off to record our Patreon only Patreon podcast ad that you can find at patreon.com slash deerhank and John and that podcast is now called this We Can Stuff. Where we talk about stuff that ideally made us a little happier and usual. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Metash. It's produced by Rosie Yonahal, Swirlhawson, and Sheridan Gibson. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakra Verdi. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom.

The music you're hearing now when it's the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say, in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome. you