Dear Hank & John - 258: A Really Old Cheetah

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

Will it be safe for my roommate's rabbit to be on TV next spring? What do I pack for an evacuation? Did people make paper planes before the Wright Brothers? What's the website you mentioned that had ballot information? Why don't we hear animals fart? How do I feel better about working at an oil company? Would giants be slow? 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

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ in the fall. The book swagged. Autumn. An autumn mobile. Oh, I was so close. I knew the... Yeah, you got close. I knew that there were two major words for autumn.

It's going to... Tomorrow is the first day of fall, John. Yeah. And my son gets really excited about fall. I think he only remembers one other one. And he will come into the house screaming, I see a sign of fall. Oh, that's very sweet, which is really great. I am less excited about this fall than I have been about any fall during my lifetime, because the weather is about to get colder. And all of my socialization occurs out of doors. I'm also terrified of fall.

Everything about fall seems bad to me. I go outside and it's a little cool and Orin is like, it's a side of fall. And I'm like, Don't, don't, don't, winter is coming. Yes. Yeah. The leaves even started to change here a little bit.

And that just feels very, very ominous to me right now. Yeah, the leaves have started to change here as well, especially the maple trees. And it is a little... Look, it's possible that six months from now, you and I are going to look back on this fall and winter and be like, wow, that was so great. It was better than spring and summer. I think that's probably less likely. Yeah, it seems less likely. And so what I'm trying to remind myself of is that regardless of what happens and we don't know what's going to happen, we will keep going for as long as we can as well as we can. That's my motto for our species. Okay, yes. And we have done a remarkable job of it so far.

Maybe in some cases, too remarkable. I was gonna say remarkably bad at times, remarkably good at other times, but above all, extremely remarkable. If there's one adjective you can apply to our species, it is remarkable. I will remark on this. That is something one can remark on.

No doubt about it. Yeah, I think we're definitely, we may not be the best species that ever lived on Earth, but we are definitely the most remarkable. We're the most remarkable thing in the known universe. Yeah, like I feel like I could spend way more time remarking on humans than I could remarking on say Venus. But we'll get to that at the end of the pod.

Let's start out with some questions from our listeners, including this first question from Steph, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my roommate and her rabbit Floyd have auditioned and been cast in a rabbit agility competition TV show. TV show. We're pretty sure this is not a weird scam. No, Steph, let me stop you right there. How sure are you? Yeah, I feel like you need to be very sure that this is not a scam. that this is not a scam. Ah, yep, you need to be very sure. That said, while I think it is maybe a scam,

I also think I would watch the heck out of a rabbit agility competition TV show. Yeah, the plan is for my roommate and Floyd to fly to Los Angeles for a weekend, sometime in the spring to shoot. So this question, like all questions deep down, is about the pandemic. Is Floyd's breakout role worth the risk? How do you plan for and agree to something that's so far in the future? Will the virus be contained by the spring? We're in Canada, so we're pretty wary of the United States right now. Floyd is employed. Steph. I might continue your level of weariness of the US

on into the future, potentially permanently. I think that Floyd might be okay. So let's just like car Floyd out of the equation, unless Floyd can go by themselves, which I don't know if that's allowed. Can a rabbit just get on a plane? I feel like the rabbit agility TV show is going to involve an owner, but maybe not.

Maybe not. Here's my honest answer. I think being on reality TV shows is a lot of work for usually very little screen time or other reward. That is definitely the case. I think like the amount of pleasure and happiness and fun times that you get out of being on a reality TV show is usually pretty limited, unless you're desperate to meet other people

in the rabbit agility world, in which case, I guess maybe it could be a cool opportunity. Yeah, that's a great point. Two great points, John, of the first one being, we should, I would like to see a survey of how people feel about their reality television show experiences. And at one time, this would be very difficult to do. But now you can simply survey 100 Americans and get

30 who have been on reality television shows. And they will tell you how they felt about it. It's not even an exceptional experience anymore to be on reality TV. It's something that appears to happen to just about everyone who hasn't been on wipe out at this point. Yeah, we've been watching a wipe out related show called Cannonball and it has like 24 contestants per week. Most of whom, by the way, are on screen for like between six and eight seconds. And for this, they have to like jump into a freezing cold lake of water. It's always so cold. Why is it always so cold? I don't know. I feel these things in the summer. Well, they're trying to make a point.

At any rate, here's the deal, Steph. Would Hank and I do this show? No, no. But are Hank and I passionate experts in rabbit agility also know? No. And it may be the kind of community that is very excited. And I don't know what the sort of like,

what how lucrative this is. You know, if the upside is, what could it possibly be, John? In the thousands of dollars. I would hope that you get a free flight, free lodging, and maybe like 1200 bucks. And like a ton of carrots. Right, 12 years supply of carrots.

Do rabbits actually like carrots, or is that just a cliche? Of course they like carrots. Right. A year's supply of carrots. Do rabbits actually like carrots or is that just a cliche? Of course they like carrots. Anyway, this is, don't listen to us. Don't listen to us. Oh, God. All right, let's move on. This next question comes from Malia, who asks a question that we received in many different forms, which is wild and terrifying.

Help, Malumbia says. There are currently wildfires where I live in Oregon that are spreading pretty quickly. We are in the level one evacuation zone, meaning that we should be packing and have a plan. I don't know what to pack. What should I bring? Should I bring my great grandma's chair?

Some of my favorite books, my stuffed shark from IKEA that I sleep with. How many candles is too many candles to bring? Should I have had a list of things to bring before this even started? Not the Obama, Malia. This is why we are asking answering this question because we cannot, it is too late, I think, probably to help Malia, but it is hopefully not too late to help other people. Make a list. You got to make a list. It's got it because this is such a stressful situation. If you have a little bit of time to leave and you have a list, then you can just check things off on the list.

And study after study after study after study shows that checklists work. Yeah. And what they really show is that not having a checklist doesn't work. So you end up in situations where you very much thought you were going to bring a specific thing with you and you did not bring that thing. Now, it's very hard to know exactly when you say, like, okay, what can we fit in the Subaru? What are the things that you both cannot replace and that you really do not want to live without? And, you know, going through that and spending time on it is the only way to make those decisions. Yeah, it's just such a hard thing and we know so many people are going through this right now, including friends of ours and we wish you all the best and it's scary. I don't know what else to say

about it. Yeah. Even if you are not in a current wildfire zone, there are lots of reasons that you might need to evacuate your home. And so having some supplies on hand and a list of what you want to bring with you is always a good idea. Hank, sometimes I think back to early in this podcast, when you told me that you keep like a two week supply of water and food with you at all times. And I, it's what, it's what the government recommends. It's not even, it's not weird.

I laughed at you and called you a prepper. And now, well, how the turns have tabled. Yeah, well, maybe that I have more than I used to have. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, so you really don't ever know, and I do think it's useful to have a checklist. It's also important to know that sometimes you have to leave without going through the checklist. And if you have to leave, you have to leave. And your life

is more important than any stuff. Yes. The only thing that can't be truly replaced is your life. No, there are lots of other things that also can't be replaced. They're just not as valuable. You got it. That one. You can remake your grandma's chair. Get out of whittling knife. Disturbing. All right. This next question comes from Craig who asks, dear John and Hank,

did people fold paper airplanes before the Wright brothers? Yes. Yes. I know a lot about this now because we did research on it. I know a fair amount about it too. People folded paper airplanes maybe from the advent of paper. It seems to have been quite soon after paper.

And amazing thing is that I found out in this research is that Da Vinci designed that helicopter thing, the ornithop, I don't remember what it's called. It's called something neat. And he actually made a paper model of it to see if it would work. And so that was a kind of paper plane. Before they were called paper planes, because they weren't called planes, because planes

didn't exist. They were called paper darts. So we know that paper darts existed because it was illegal, and you could be fined $10 for throwing a paper dart at the New York Stock Exchange during the 1800s, which makes me think that for a while this was a problem. So they had to have a rule about it. Yeah, and it seems that paper planes were both pretty common and that they helped inform

some questions in airplane design through much of the 20th century. So, you know, if you're out there folding paper planes, you're engaging in an activity that is much older than air travel. But to be engaging in an activity that is much older than air travel. But to be fair, almost all human activities are older than air travel. Yeah, apparently they only became,

started being called paper planes. So even after the advent of planes, there were still called paper darts. And only began being called paper planes. Once there were some planes that started to look more like paper darts. Whoa. And the airplanes that we see these days.

That's a little lessening linguistics right there, Hank. Yeah. It's pretty cool. All right, Hank, it's time for our weekly question about voting in the United States. We're only going to do one of these a week. There was a chance that this was going to turn into a how to vote an America podcast. It's not going to happen. We've decided not to do that, but we are going to answer one question about voting every

week. The voting system in the United States is a wee bit complex. You can learn more by looking up how to vote in every state, the amazing YouTube channel, that Hank and folks that complexly have made together. But this election is extremely important in the United States. It's important to people outside of the United States as well because the US is so globally significant. And we want to help people understand how to vote.

So Diana writes, dear John and Hank, last year, or maybe two years ago, time is meaningless now. One of you recommended a website that lets you view your full ballot in US elections when you type in your address. And I found this super useful last year, or possibly two years ago. And now I cannot find it. Do you by any chance have it handy?

Pumpkins and penguins, Diana. It's called ballotpedia, I think. Is that correct, John? This is what was in my brain. Yes, it is called ballotpedia.org, but you can just Google look up my sample ballot, and it will usually be the first search result, although of course your search results are tailored to you. So for all I know, your first search result might be some kind of political

misinformation, but ballotpedia.org, and you can look up your sample ballot, and then you can like see all the things that you'll be voting for, and you can do a your sample ballot, and then you can like see all the things that you'll be voting for, and you can do a little bit of research and figure out who you want to vote for for the various offices, and on the various like resolutions and whatever. It's also possible that your local election people will do a better job than ballot PDF.

So ballot PDF will just tell you what the elections are, give you sort of really, for individual elections, they'll just tell you the people that are in them, then you can lift them up, for things like ballot initiatives or laws that you might be voting on, they usually give a pretty bare bones version of it, and those tend to be more well explained

at the local level, so you can also look up your, this is sort of like type in sample ballot and then like your county, and it may be that they will provide that for you on the internet pretty easily, but it may be that that's not the case because it's, again, administered very locally in the US.

So that's why things like ballot PDF are great because that works for everyone. They figured out how to do it. Yeah, so look up your sample ballot and please make sure you are registered to vote, make sure your registration is current, and that you have a plan to vote just like it's important to have a checklist in other parts of your life. If you can have a checklist about how you're going to vote and know exactly how you're going to do it, it makes it far, far more likely that you will actually see it through. And you can find out if your register to vote very easily by going to vote.org,

they just have you type in your name and address and they can look up on the national registry and tell you whether you're registered is really important to check and really, really easy to do at vote.org. And then once you're done doing that, you can go to youtube.com slash how to vote in every state and find your state. Look it up.

There's a shorter than three minute video there for you to watch. John, this next question comes from Jessica who asks, dear Hank and John, why don't we hear animals fart? I'm just going to stop you right there. What kind of dog you got? Yeah, yeah. I feel like dogs fart extremely loudly. It's true that we don't hear a lot of wild animals farting,

but that's because we don't, I presume that's because we're not near them. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Jessica says, why don't we hear of a cacophony of little tots in the woods or at the zoo? I mean, how often do you fart, Jessica? Is it just a cacophony in your home? But maybe if you got like enough monkeys around, you would expect to hear a lot of farts. But yeah, you can definitely hear animal farts

and it is not a butt cheek thing, which is proposed by Jessica. In fact, I've done a little bit of research and it seems to mostly be about the opening, the anus, sphincter there. And that you can actually, like, there was a doctor who was asked about this who spends a lot of time down there and discussed that

in just like anything else with noise, there is both what we call the frequency and the amplitude. The amplitude is how loud something is and the frequency is how it vibrates. And so you can control frequency by tightening usually or loosening and you get a higher pitch or lower pitch like I'm doing with my voice right now. So I can go, uh, uh, or I can go louder. Uh, uh, and that is about the amount of amount of air moving through the thing. So you can, you can force more air through and that makes it louder or you can tighten or loosen and that will adjust the frequency, which is apparently something that is capable of doing to some extent with our own petudies. I find that I have very little control over the frequency or the amplitude.

I definitely have control over the amplitude. Okay, well, that's the sense. The sense. The sense the portion of the podcast dedicated to our 11-year-old listeners. We just want you to know that we see you. We know you're out there 11-year-olds and we hope you enjoyed that. This next question comes from Mononymous who writes, dear John and Hank, I recently finished graduate school and it took me like four months to get a job,

which was very stressful. And I finally found a job at an oil company, which has in the reception area a painting of the monopoly man being showered by oil and dollar bills. Now, my God, it does. I could see a picture of it right now. We're not going to post this on the Patreon at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John because we're not trying to get this person fired, but this is an epic, epic painting of the monopoly man holding an umbrella with the umbrella is made of money and then oil and money is showering down on the monopoly man.

Yeah, and it is an unsigned painting. So we do not know who the artist is. I love everything about this painting. What I love. Oh, yes, very much. I mean, what I wanted in my home probably not, but what I love most about it is that it's the least self-aware painting I've ever seen in my entire life.

Okay, oil companies are famous for being unethical to put it mildly. I don't wanna work for the bad guys, but I also need to pay rent and eat, and the job market is terrible for obvious reasons. What should I do to feel like I'm not part of the problem of slowly destroying our society? Anonymous.

Hank? I'm thinking, John. Oh, okay. I don't know the answer to that question. Okay, so I have, I think an answer. Okay, you go. I think if you want another job and you want to work in a different industry, you should pursue other job opportunities.

I also think that there is no such thing as completely ethical consumption in a system of extractive capitalism. I just don't think that exists. I think the work that we do for money is an important way that we allocate our attention and our resources, but it's definitely not the only way, right? Like, we also allocate our attention and resources by the causes that we care about, by the causes that we support with our money

and with our time, and we allocate our resources by how we decide to distribute our votes, and by how we decide to distribute our votes and by how we decide to distribute the money that we make. And I absolutely understand like needing to pay rent. Yeah. And the challenge is that brings like those challenges are kind of inherent to the system as we are currently imagining it. Now, obviously we need to imagine these systems very differently. But that's where we are right now. Well, here's the other thing. I think it's important to recognize that you working at an oil company is exactly as ethical as me using oil, which I also do and most people do. If you are working

at an oil company, doing specifically on ethical things, if you are working to slow the public's understanding of climate change and the severity of that problem, that's a totally different thing. But people have to work in the oil industry because we need oil for lots of things. If oil just stopped happening right now, it would be very bad for humans. Lots of people would die. It wouldn't be a small problem. You know, obviously we need to move away

from these systems as fast as possible. But also, I think that it's important to recognize that the people who work in that industry are doing work that is necessary as it exists right now. Now, absolutely, those companies are working very hard in spending lots of money to slow our transition away from their product.

And that is unethical and it's extremely dangerous and it's going to have a long-term negative impact on many, many people, probably all people. But I try to understand that like my life is dependent upon the hard work of people in extractive industries, even if I think that we should be working as fast as we can to not have that be the case.

So like somebody's gonna have to do this work and it is probably best done by people who can bring a diversity of viewpoints into that company, whether it is, you know, at a very low level or not, just having it be a bunch of people who all believe that climate change is bunk would be not great. So I think it's important that we have good people working in these industries for as long as they are necessary. We just also need to be working as hard as possible to be making them not necessary quickly. John, this next question

comes from Tina who asks, dear Hank and John, I just had a dream about giants. They were destroying my home city. I was fast enough to outrun them, but I was wondering, would giants actually be slow? They're so big. Does time work differently for them? I feel like time is much faster for flies. Would that be the opposite for giants? Still stuck in quarantine, Tina. This is a very quarantine question, John.

It is. I think we're all dreaming some version of being attacked by giants. Yeah. I mean, there is something to be said that all of the big animals do go slower. And there has to be good scientific reasons for this. I guess like force equals mass times acceleration. So if you move faster,

the force of moving is larger. If you are more massive. Yeah. So I guess, yeah, you would have to be slower. Like blue whales, you know, they can move fast, but their individual body parts move slow. Yeah, how fast do elephants run? Because I feel like elephants are the best model for giants we currently have. Yeah.

Well, how fast would you guess the elephant can run? I would guess that an elephant can run approximately 12 miles an hour. Well, and how fast do you think the average or the fastest human can run? Well, I know that Usain Bolt can run 100 meters in just under 10 seconds and using the power of mathematics. I would imagine that that means that he runs it

like 20 miles an hour. 27. Oh, I was about 27 miles an hour. So pretty good. I was in the neighborhood. So you say Paul can go 27 miles an hour. I bet I can go like 10 maybe. I'm a little bit.

I know for a fact that I can go like 11 1 1 2 half miles an hour, but only for about a quarter mile. Yeah, I'm like a fact that I can go like 11 and a half miles an hour, but only for about a quarter mile. Yeah, I'm like a cheetah, but a really old one. Cheetah. Well, an African bush, all of it's top speed is 25 miles an hour. Okay, so they're fast. So they're fast. So we should be very, very afraid of giants. Yeah, I think now I think giants are an active threat. I was not worried about giants until this question was asked. Yeah.

Now I'm very worried about giants. Well, the thing about giants is that I think our stories about giants tend to portray giants as being very slow because otherwise, there would be no match, you know? Like, there wouldn't be a competition between regular people and giants. The giants would have already won and it would be no match, you know? Like there wouldn't be a competition between regular people in giants. The giants would have already won and it would be over. And so we have to imagine them as being weak somehow. And so we imagine them as like, oh, yeah, no, they're big, but we're fast.

You well, I mean, the thing about an elephant moving fast is that it's body parts don't look to be moving that fast because it's just big. So you gotta long stride. And this is the case with blue whales, right? Where it's like the thin, the back fin there, the tail, as what's called, can move quite slowly but be pushing a lot. Right.

And very hard. And yeah, so a fly might look like it's moving very fast but actually be going quite slow because it's just like in comparison to its body size. You know the other thing about giants that just occurred to me is that we often imagine giants as not being very smart, right? Like role dolls, giants aren't that smart.

And I think that is also because if we imagine them otherwise, they become an existential threat to us. Yeah. Well, I mean, we like to existential threat to us. Yeah. Well, I mean, we like to imagine some things that are threatening. Yeah, but we love to be able to like take them down somehow, right? Like, David and Goliath only works because David's got that slingshot. We love a story where humans are in with a chance. Right. The odds are long, but we can do it.

Yeah, vampires are immortal unless. Exactly. So yeah, giants, I think would probably be pretty fast. And could you run away from them? Probably not. So let's just not have there be giants. Win for everybody. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you

by They Might Be Giants. They might be. And I'm not going to see them in concert next month, which was my plan. Boom. This podcast is also brought to you by the monopoly man, being bathed in oil and dollar bills. God.

He's just covered. He's just absolutely covered. Do you know that he has a name and that his name is Rich Uncle Pennybags? Oh gosh. Well, at least it's just pennies in those bags. Yeah. That's more, that's more a weapon than a currency at that point.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by the television program Cannonball. The television program Cannonball. Some people say it's like the breaking bad of reality TV. Oh gosh. And this podcast finally has brought to you by the amplitude. The amplitude.

It can be controlled. I find that it really can't be. Well, do you need practice more? We also have a project for awesome message from Oliver Cosset. Oliver, thank you for donating to the project for awesome. If this is being read in 2020, Oliver writes, chances are it's a pretty stressful time right now.

Thanks for acknowledging that, Oliver, I appreciate it. I just wanted to remind everyone to take a moment to breathe, to try to find calm and then return to putting your energy toward whatever matters to you. Uh-huh. Thanks, man. Yeah, that's so lovely, Oliver. Thank you. Okay, I think it's time to move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Hank, I'll go first because AFC Wimbledon are back in action.

All right. Does that mean they're playing sports? They're playing sports. Hank, the league one season has begun and it began with a bang followed by a whimper, followed by another bang, followed by another whimper. AFC Wimbledon tied two-two in their first game of the lead one season against recently promoted Northampton Town. Now we are favorites to be relegated this season, but Northampton, can you call it favorites when that's the situation? We are considered, yes. We are favorites to be unfaithored this season, but Northampton Town is even more favorited

to be unfaverated than we are. So this wasn't necessarily a great result, but AFC Wimbledon did score a goal 22 seconds in to their League 1 campaign, which is fairly promising, I think. On the whole, I thought that we played really well. I watched the game. There was a lot of attacking from AFC Wimbledon. I felt like we had more possession of the ball, better passing than I've seen certainly in the last couple seasons. I thought some of the new players were really promising. In fact, one of the new players, Ethan Chislett scored. I don't want to say that I feel hopeful because I don't even know if the season is going to get completed. Who knows. But I do feel like that was

a good game. And it was just really fun to watch AFC Wimbledon play football again. It felt like a little dose of normality amid all of the everything else. And so it was just a joy. You can listen to the broadcast, the radio broadcast, there's obviously no fans in the stadium, but you can listen to the broadcasts at radio, WDON, or they have an app, AFC Wimbledon does. And it's just great. I love the two commentators.

One of them has a photographic memory and remembers every single game that Wimbledon has played on every single day. And so like 55 minutes into the broadcast, he'll be like, this reminds me of 27 years ago on this day. When of course, like, you know, Wimbledon, uh, lost two, one to Yulville town and the goals were scored. And I'm just like, oh, this is just, this is just such a joy that it's all back.

So yeah, it was really lovely. And then Hank, then I found out the best news of all, which is that there's life on Venus. There's life on Venus. So I guess our Mars News, our Mars News this week will be Venus News because it does impact Mars in the main way, which is that for a long time, we have thought our best chance of being able to study life outside of our planet and the solar

system would be Mars. And this isn't because it's the most habitable place in the solar system. It is just the easiest to get to. That also has a chance of either having potentially existing life, but much more likely signs of ancient life that stopped being around a long time ago. And the much more likely candidate for life are the liquid oceans inside of the gas giant moons. So there's lots of water there, there's lots of heat there. So if life can happen on the hydrothermal events of there, there's lots of heat there. So, if life can happen on the hydrothermal events of Earth, there's basically no reason why it couldn't happen on Enceladus, for example. But, that's neither here nor there.

Mars was like, it's easy to go to Mars, you can land there and walk around fairly easily unlike everywhere else. You certainly can't walk around on Mercury, certainly can't walk around on Venus, which is even hotter than Mercury. You can, like, the surface of Venus, you can melt lead. Like, it's not a good place. It's not a good place for a lot of different reasons, but it turns out that at the upper atmosphere of Venus, so like, way up in the atmosphere, there's basically a fairly narrow band of Venus'

atmosphere that is, like like 20 degrees Celsius, which is like beautiful outside. It's one atmosphere of pressure. So like same as earth. And so water can be liquid there and is liquid there. The problem is that Venus is a big problem with acid. So it's very acidic way more acidic than any life on earth could live inside of.

It's like 90% acid. Like a person could be there easily as long as they didn't let the atmosphere touch their skin if they take a breath. For example, they would die instantly in a very painful way. But the idea is that possibly, excuse me for walking through this whole thing. Possibly we think in the early life of Venus

it was a fairly nice place to be, even on the surface. And it's possible that during that period of time, life evolved there. If that happened, then over the course of Venus becoming less and less hospitable, the life, like certain kinds of organisms could have evolved to live in this actually fairly hospitable compared with the rest of Venus layer of the atmosphere. Now, we don't have anything on Earth that can live in anything like the acidity that we have on Venus. We have extreme files on Earth that can live in acidic environments, but those acidic environments are like, basically, like, 40 times less acid than what it is on Venus.

So could there be life in that zone? Maybe. And people have talked for a long time about whether there could be life in that zone. But just recently, last week, there were some scientists who published a paper, a very exciting paper that said they found phosphine, which is basically ammonia, but instead of nitrogen, there's phosphorus. Phosphine's a super bad gas here on Earth. We don't study it that much because it's very dangerous. But here on Earth, some bacteria do produce phosphine

in environments where there's no oxygen. So one of the biochemical pathways that produces energy for life to live on, one of the byproducts is fasting. We don't know of any other way that fasting could be created on Venus. This doesn't mean that it can't be created on Venus. There are things we don't understand about how Venus' atmosphere works. Obviously, we've never been there.

We've only studied it from afar. We know quite a bit about it, like we're learning more about it every day. We also don't know that, like, as much as we could about phosphine, because it's not a fun thing to study. In general, the more dangerous a chemical is, the less it is studied, because chemists want to live to a ripe old age. And almost every chemist knows somebody who didn't or knows somebody who knows somebody who didn't.

So you'd be careful in the lab. So there are things we don't know about both of those things that, and those two unknowns, along with the extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, means that there's nobody out there saying that we found life on Venus. But we did find a chemical that indicates, like we have both sides of the story now, where we've got this space where life could certainly

exist if it could evolve to live in such an acidic environment. And we also have this biosignature that we don't know how it would be created without life. And that's really exciting and interesting. There is really only one way to figure out what's going on though, and that's to send a probe to Venus. Got a good Venus. Some atmosphere. Got a good Venus.

For us to look at. We've got to go to Venus. You open it up. The fastening gas comes out along with the microbes, and almost definitely they die instantly, and we can study them. And then there's this sort of like, 0.0001 percent chance that sort of like, you know, point

001 percent chance that it's like, oh, wow, I found a perfect home. It's inside your brain That turns out bad. So you got to be really careful when you're doing that kind of thing because it's it's an Uncharted waters. We've never studied a microorganism from another planet before but boy do I want to or more correctly I want someone some human to right. This is somebody who knows more of what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I, this is very exciting to me. And I have to remind myself that sometimes the things

that I want to be true appear to be true because I want them to be true. Absolutely. And something I really admire about the scientific community is that when they want something to be true, they almost require more evidence because they're aware of how that bias works. But the reason Hank, I want there to be life on Venus

so, so badly, is that it might orient human interest away from Mars just until 2028, which is when this podcast will be reading him dear John and Hank in the event that no humans have made it to Mars. So I don't want to make life on Venus about me, but I think that this is a positive development for me. Yeah, I mean, it certainly does,

it does broaden our planetary interest. Yeah, it's so cool. Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thank you for potting with me, John. If you want to send us your questions, you can do that at hankandjohnatgmail.com. We're off to record our Patreon Only podcast. This week in stuff where we talk about something

that tried to make us happy this week. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Metic. It's produced by Rosiana Halstrow-Hoss and shared in Gibson. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

Don't forget to be awesome.