Dear Hank & John - 266: Doin' My Work, Jerk

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Why does the Twix company care about left and right Twixes? What would happen if I found dinosaur bones in my backyard? How do I reply to my boss's strange greeting? Did people roll their eyes in the 1800s? When will we need to update our maps for new continents? Do planes fly over Earth's poles or go around? Do Americans really put cream into coffee? Will copies of the Anthropocene Reviewed book be signed even at my local bookstore?  Hank Green and John Green have answers to all these questions in their first foray back into independent podcasting!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. Of course I prefer to think of it 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 week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. What do you say about a man who's been national politics for over 50 years who's run for President three times who has once the youngest Senator and is now the oldest president elect.

What do you say? I guess he was Biden his time. Yeah, that's pretty good, but I'll admit that my enjoyment of the joke is affected by my like overall enjoyment level of the world, which has gone up significantly in the last five days or so. Oh, don't worry, John. The stress will come back. It has been a weird week,

and I think we should just not talk about it. I want to take an unusual approach this week and begin by asking you a question that I find very important and very troubling. Okay, it's from Kylie who writes, Hi, John and Hank. First off, Kylie, thank you for putting my name first.

It means a lot to me. It's not why I'm asking your question, but it certainly probably is working on me in a subconscious level. Kylie writes, why does the Twix brand have this obsession with right Twix versus left Twix? I don't think anyone cares,

confusedly, Kylie. No one cares about any of the stuff in advertising. The entire point of an advertisement is to make you care about something you otherwise would not. That's why they exist. So I think it's more to make you notice. So you're saying that you didn't notice that there were two twixes and a twix?

Well, no, it is literally called a twix, which I assume is a little like a twin, but with an X. Well, I never thought about that. But anyway, I don't actually think the point of those advertisements is to make me like the advertisement. The point of those advertisements is to remind me that twix exists and to make it impossible for me to forget that Twix exists.

So that the next time I am in a convenience store, which I mean could be 2023, I will look down and think to myself, do I want to watch McCall it? No, because I haven't seen a watch McCall it add in like 35 years. Do I want to Twix? I guess. And then I'll get a twist, even though, even though Hank, and this has become important to me in the last two weeks, because we've exited the post Halloween period when the kids eat a lot of Halloween candy, and we've entered the post Halloween period where John eats a lot of candy. And so I've been thinking about this a lot because I've been eating a lot of candy. And the thing about Twix is that somehow it still exists even though it is terrible. So there must be something to this advertising campaign because the product has survived.

I like Twix just fine. No, but I don't. I like twigs just fine. No, I don't. I do find it very. We don't find it very. Uh, last Halloween probably, we didn't get a lot of Halloween. We weren't able to do the Halloween thing. But it's either. So we still, we still handed out candy to ourselves.

Let me, that's, we kind of did that. We got a bowl just in case of put it on the porch and nobody came by. So I got some York program patties for myself, which is my favorite candy. Oh God, that's such a bad pick. I mean, you could have picked any. Well, I don't know if it's my favorite candy, but I like them a lot. And I like junior men's. I like minty chocolate.

True, that's fine. One of my favorite flavors. Andies, you know, those Andies chocolate men's taste is good. Oh yeah, excellent. You say that there are better picks and maybe there are, but I find it really interesting. And I know that there are people who know the answer to this question, but like, there are so many candy bars that have just stuck around. What's your call? And they're not going anywhere. And even like Snickers, like the sort of like chief king of candy bars. Right. It's not going in,

but like nobody's coming in and like innovating and like trying a new kind of candy bar. Well, they are. They're called power bars or cliff bars. Right, right. They're like, no, it's candy bar, it's good for you. Right. You want a candy bar that's going to give you energy and protein and snickers is over there being like, excuse me.

What do you think I am? I have nuts. I'm a sugar and nut distribution service. Yeah, it's not, it satisfies, which is I guess what they're trying to get with that. But wouldn't you want to pay more for one that has the same amount of calories? But there hasn't been innovation

in like the candy part of candy that much. I agree. Right. I think it's interesting that companies like Twix have to advertise, or brands like Twix, have to advertise constantly. Snickers does the same thing. Whereas a brand like Watcha McCallet,

which is a beloved, like for, I am a fan of Watcha McCallets. And for a brand like Watcha McCallet, they never have to advertise because everybody who loves their product is already addicted to it. And they know that they live in a niche. Yeah.

The thing that I find interesting, Hank, is I believe that if Watcha McCall, it started advertising with the same like level of constancy that Twix advertises, what you would call it would become the dominant candy brand and Twix would go where it deserves to be, which is to the graveyard of retired candy brands, because tastes got more sophisticated. I don't, I think that they could, they could maybe supersede Twix, but they wouldn't become the dominant candy bar. Snickers deserve that, that space and will maintain that space. Snickers should be the number one candy bar in America, and then it should be what you

would call it, and then it should be three musketeers midnight dark. As, as, ooh, good, good, good save, John, as long as we're not counting peanut M&Ms as a candy bar. No, peanut M&Ms obviously they aren't. Peanut M&Ms are the greatest candy. Peanut eminems are probably the greatest innovation. This is bold. Maybe the best food.

Yeah, well, I think they're the most important innovation in the history of food. Like I think they're more important than refrigeration or salting meat or any of that stuff. Like God, they're good. I haven't had a peanut eminem in a while. They're shelf staple. I gotta go get them. I haven't had a peanut eminem in a while. They're shelf staple. I gotta go get them.

You don't need a freezer, although if you have one, peanut eminems can get even better. They are good, yeah. They're the perfect mix of salty and sweet. They're the perfect mix of protein, fat and sugar. They've got lots of all three. And they taste amazing.

They also got a great texture mix. They've got the crisp of the candy shell. They've got the sink, like the nice delicate sink of the milk chocolate. And then the, you know, like actual legume of the peanuts, right, which has a great crunch to it. Right, it's like the 19th century landscape architects being like, you need all three kinds of views. You need the pastoral view, the agricultural view,

and the forest view, and a peanut M&M contains universes within it of texture, of taste, of nutrition. Uh-huh. I used to get, because I've been vocal about my support of peanut m&m's. I used to get peanut m&m's whenever I do shows. People would like bring me peanut m&m's. And so that's why I haven't had any lately. Yeah, I remember we would eat them on the, in the van on the, stuck not doing fun things.

So many times after we would do shows in like, from like 2008 to 2012, because we didn't always schedule our time perfectly. The signing part would end at like one 15 in the morning and we would get back in the car and it would be like everything is closed. Like the Wendy's drive in just turned off their lights and we'd be like, well, at least we have four pounds of peanut in the name. Yep.

Because it's food. It's food. I wonder if they have vitamin C because if they have enough vitamin C to stave off scurvy, like I think I might try to go a year only eating peanut m&Ms. Well, that's my new business idea is vitamin C of peanut m&Ms.

I just buy peanut m&Ms, I spray, I spritz them with vitamin Cs. And then I resell them at a 50% markup. And you can call them, you can call them, you could call them the only food you'll ever need. It's like, you know those people in Silicon Valley who drink soyland, like tech company that,

yeah, you don't need that. You just need nutrition shakes. You need my new product, MNCs. Ha ha ha. I'm gonna look up how much vitamin C is in a peanut in the menu. I bet there's some. I bet there's none. Oh yeah, there's plenty.

There's 0.1 milligrams. That's all you need. Is there? Yeah. Oh, I guess it's in the chocolate. It's probably in the chocolate. How much do you need per day? Oh, you need a lot.

So what you're saying, Don, is you don't only need like 900 servings of peanut in the M's, take a true daily dose of vitamin C. You can get enough vitamin C according to the government if you eat 650 servings of peanut M&Ms. Now, every day, just be clear. Now, I know, I know you're wondering how many peanut M&Ms's in a survey? 25 so all you need to do in order to get enough vitamin C to go about your daily life is to eat 16,250 peanut M&M's per day, which is only only 14,000 calories. Yeah, listen if you're gonna take on the peanut M&M only diet You're gonna have to have an active lifestyle. Nobody, nobody's going to disagree with you on that.

I think I was wrong. I think it's 146,000 calories. Well, in that case, a very active lifestyle, probably, but that's beside the point, Hank. The real question is, if I'm going to eat enough peanut M&Ms to get me my daily dose of vitamin C, how often am I going to have to eat a peanut M&Ms to get me my daily dose of vitamin C. How often am I going to have to eat a peanut M&M? Could you do it fast enough? The answer is that you have to eat 677 peanut M&Ms per hour, which, oh, that's doable. Which I believe boils down to like just over 10 peanut M&Ms per hour, which, oh, that's doable. Which I believe boils down to like just over 10 peanut M&Ms per minute, which, if it definitely is slow.

Like I can eat way more than 10 peanut M&Ms in a minute. You just have to do it, but you have to do it while you're sleeping. You do have to do it while you're sleeping. I think that's when you hook up the IV probably. Now you're just soulent, John. You gotta blend them up and drink them. You've come all the way back around. I mean, at its base, soulent is just peanut M&M's

put in a blender and sprinkled with some vitamins. I mean, that's, there's a multi-million dollar company that has that as its model. And God bless them. Well, don't because they're ****. Yeah. Hey, by the way, we are an independent podcast now.

We're a wonderful relationship with WNYC over the last two years. They helped so much with helping dear Hank and John, but also helping to launch SciShow Tangents, helping the Anthem Poussion Reviewed. It's been a wonderful, amazing relationship. We loved working with them. We hope they liked working with us. But we have decided to become an independent podcast. Again, hence,

Hank's feeling absolutely empowered to criticize privately held corporations. Oh God. Well, John, I got another question before we get to deep. This one is from Savomie who asks, dear Hank and John, what would happen if I found dinosaur bones in my backyard? I live in a residential neighborhood in Toronto and I was wondering what would happen if I just found a bone and it was a dinosaur bone,

would they just like dig up my whole neighborhood? Would all my neighbors hate me? Digging for dinosaurs swam me. So this depends on where you are. Yeah. A little bit. They're not gonna dig up your neighbor's houses, but there are in Canada specifically, and this is province by province, but in the places in Canada where dinosaur as bones are often found, the government just owns all of the dinosaur bones in the country, like preemptively. So when you find one, it is already theirs. And they can kind of decide what to do once they know about it. This is mostly a problem,

or mostly comes up in mining and in like mineral exploration. Right. So they'll find a dinosaur bone and then they have to call the government and be like, we found one of your bones because it's yours. Come and get it. And then that can sort on the process of the mineral exploration. So there's some tension there between the government and the mining companies, which is not unusual for there to be some tension between those entities. But there are some really fantastic, amazing finds that have been made in that way,

and that wouldn't necessarily have been maintained if those rules hadn't existed. In America, if you find a dinosaur bone on your backyard, it's yours. And so you can sell it. And that has also been a problem because very historically or scientifically significant dinosaur bones have been found and then sold to private owners. And then those private owners can, you know, be like, you know, you can't see my dinosaur bone scientist unless you pay me a lot of money or, you know, you certainly can't have it unless you pay me a lot of money. So that can be an issue when we're trying to actually like understand the, the, you know, history of our planet. So in Canada, I like how they do it better, but weirdly enough, the bones then can't even leave the province.

So a museum in Toronto can't display dinosaur bones from Alberta, which is kind of cool. But it's also a problem for the museum in Toronto, where they have a lot of dinosaur bones that they'd like to show off from the rest of Canada, but the laws don't allow it. Hank, do you know where the first dinosaur bone that was understood to be a dinosaur bone was found and the incredible story behind it? I'm pretty sure I've heard this story, but it's not jumping to me. Okay. like, yeah. I'm just gonna distill the story to its most important part, which is that it was a Megalosaurus bone.

It was known in the scientific literature as scrotum humanum because it looks like a giant scrotum. And in fact, was widely believed to be the fossilized scrotum of a giant scrotum. And in fact, was widely believed to be the fossilized scrotum of a giant as giants had been described in ancient texts. That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, that's real good. Yeah.

I'm seeing it. It's the end of a leg bone looks like, you know, how they're sort of like the knobs on the end for all those. Not look like the end of a leg bone. I mean, it looks more like strutum, humanum than anything else in the whole entire universe. Laura writes, dear John and Hank, my boss always asks me, what's shaken, Bacon? Oh gosh. And I don't know how to respond like nothing's shaking, but saying that doesn't sound right and saying not much doesn't feel like a grammatically appropriate reply. I want to say, I'm good because ultimately I think that's what they're asking me, but I'm good definitely isn't shaken. How's your bacon shaken, Laura?

I mean, the answer to what is shaken is not much, but saying not much doesn't work because your boss, obviously, wants for there to be more rhymes in the workplace. And so you gotta be like, not much, hutch, or something. And now you call your boss Hutch and they deserve it. They deserve it. Or you just say, uh, see you later alligator. I'm, I'm exchanging my labor for pay.

Ray. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, hain' my work, jerk! Oh, that's it! That's the one! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

What's shaking, Bacon? Uh, yeah, I, I, yes, this is, this is the only option. It's clearly what they want. Yeah. You have to throw them a rhyme back. And we've given you several options and you can pick the one you feel is most appropriate. John, this next question is from Merida who asks,

Steer Hankajan, I was in a musical that took place in the 1800s. And one of the characters rolled her eyes as a reaction to someone else's line. My director called her out and said, people didn't roll their eyes back then. Is that true? I thought it was just a thing that we were born with, like laughing.

If not, do you know the history? Mary plus Rita equals Marita. Oh, that's a great name. It is a cool name. Marita, I looked into this with Deboki and was shocked to find that it is a new thing. Whoa. We haven't been rolling our eyes in exasperation that long, which shocked me.

Are we sure? Yeah, so we rolled our eyes for a bunch of different reasons. Like, eye rolling has happened for a long time. It was a flirty thing for a while. We're all sort of like, it was like a cum hither, like, come on over. Look at my eyes. I'm telling you to come this way. You see how it looks like I'm about to faint dead away?

Doesn't that make you interested? It was also like an oggling thing for a while. Like Shakespeare talked about rolling eyes in terms of like, lured glares, and I don't know what that would have looked like. Well, but that doesn't make any sense unless the person is exceptionally tall. I don't know. He talked about rolling eyes, but like literally looking away from them. What rolling eyes describes could be

a bunch of different things? Oh, I guess you could be like rolling them from left to right, like, oh, hello over there and over there, yes. Or just like around in a circle. Yeah. Like, woo, my eyes are Googling out because you're so gorge. Yeah. Wow.

But apparently the signal of exasperation My eyes are Googling out because you're so gorge. Yeah. Wow. But apparently the signal of exasperation wasn't around until the 1900s and didn't really catch on until like the 1980s. Really? So it's a fairly recent thing. Wow. And well.

But I will say, I will say that your director is creating a play that is not gonna be watched by people from the 1800s. It's gonna be watched by people from the year 2020. And so we should communicate using the tools that we have in our toolkit. You guys aren't gonna be speaking in 1800s accents. You aren't gonna be wearing no synthetic fibers. It's okay to have some anachronisms here and there.

We're communicating with our current audience and they should know that as a person who is a drama professor. This next question comes from Luke who writes, Steer John and Hank on a recent episode of the podcast when discussing the possibility of the Tesla roadster crashing back into Earth in 10 million years, Hank mentioned that the continent of Europe or Eurasia,

as I know that Hank is partial to, Hank is partial to the classification of Eurasia. This is not like an opinion of all of the ideas that humans have made up, the fact that even Europeans that do not know where Europe ends is an indication to me that there is a problem with the classification. Anyway, because the Tesla Roadster won't come back to Earth for like 10 million years by the time it does come back to Earth, if it does crash into a continent, it will be crashing into an entirely different continent

because the continents are moving around 10 million years the long time. That got me to think at what point in the future will we have to update our maps due to the continent's shifting? Have we ever done this in the past? How long does it take for substantial drift to occur? I hope you're catching my continental drift, Luke. And 10 million years things are,

it turns out it's gonna look pretty similar. Like it'll be different enough that we will have to change our maps. But we'll not be. We'll not be. Well, I'll change some of our maps because some of our current islands will not so much be. That's gonna be a problem first.

It's far before a continental drift will cause us to change our maps. But yeah, 10 million years from now, things will look roughly the same as they are now, but we do have ways of projecting where the continents are, like, what direction is they're moving in? We know this. And so we can, like, project into the future,

fair number of millions of years, or tens or hundreds of millions of years, what the earth will look like. It's not exact, of course. But that's pretty cool that we can do that and hundreds of millions of years, what the earth will look like. It's not exact, of course. But that's pretty cool that we can do that and sort of have an idea of what the world will look like in 60 or 100 million years. If I've learned anything from the last two weeks,

it's that predictions don't have to be exact for everyone to listen to them. Probably don't include that in the podcast. Tuna, you know what Tuna do include it and include me talking to you. We're an independent podcast now. We can be metta. So do you know when we'll have to change our maps? We change them already. We usually think of maps as two-dimensional. Yeah. But there are lots of places on earth where we have also three-dimensional maps and where the ground changes

height a lot in areas that are volcanically active, it changes height, where plates are smashing into each other, it also changes height where erosion is happening. So we change our maps already now because of the action of the inside of the earth. So all these things result in us needing to change maps, even if there was no continental drift, just by the action of wind and rain and the ocean and the rivers. So yeah, we change maps, and it is a constant gradual process. So cartographers will never be out of business.

Well, we'll see about that. Cartographers will be in business more as the apocalypse proceeds until they are until they don't exist anymore. John this next question is also about maps. It comes from David who asks, dear brother's green, I was watching a Vox video on the Arctic and I couldn't help but notice how much closer Canada is to Russia than I had previously thought. Flat maps of the world obviously don't show this.

So my question is, does this mean that a direct flight from Toronto to Moscow travels directly over the Arctic Circle, or does it just travel across the Atlantic like all the other European flights? Confused about maps, David. So the map we look at inevitably shapes the world we understand ourselves to live in.

This is something I wrote a lot about in my book, Paper Towns, like if you have South be up, the world looks completely different. It's like so disorienting. It takes you a while to even realize that it's earth. And if you, for instance, don't put Europe dead in the middle at the top, as if like all eyes on us. Then the world starts to look different too. So they are very close together, but the question is actually a very interesting one, Hank. What happens when it makes more sense to fly over the top than it does to fly around. Well, here's the shocking thing, John. To fly from Toronto to Moscow,

you don't actually fly over the Pacific Ocean, you fly over the Atlantic, because that's how big Russia is. Moscow is on the, on the sort of European side of Russia. And so it is, Some would even say, in Europe. Yeah.

You're going, you're almost there. Yeah, and in Siberia, which is also in Europe, is closer to Canada. And then China, which again, is in Europe, is closer to Alaska as well. Australia. But there are youably part of Europe is not Europe. Okay, no, India, which I guess according to this idea

that this large landmass is called Europe, would also be in Europe, in which case, you would also fly across the Atlantic. So sometimes you fly across the Pacific, sometimes you fly across the Atlantic, but do you fly across the Pacific, sometimes you fly across the Atlantic, but do you ever fly over the top is the question? Yes, people do fly over the top, and there is no reason to not fly over the top.

It just turns out that there aren't a lot of things up there. Right. So if you're flying, for example, what's one that would do this? If you're flying from Chicago to Mumbai, India, you fly what is known as Santa's shortcut. Also known as the polar route. That airspace was first opened up in 1988 and restrictions were relaxed further in 2011.

So it does happen. And I'm looking at this Chicago to Mumbai flight. And there's also a Chicago to Delhi flight. And they both appear to go not like over the North Pole itself, but like pretty dang close. Yeah. Also, he throw to Fiji. That's so good. That thing. That they call it Santa's shortcut. Yeah they call it Santa shortcut. Yeah, the Santa shortcut. John, this next question is from Rod, who asks, I wanna make sure because Rod has confused me

and now I am unsure. Okay. Dear Hank and John, when Americans say they put cream in their coffee, what do they mean? Surely it is not actual cream, which in the UK is very heavy and rich. Is it really cream? Not fish in, rod. It's cream, right? Yeah. What else would it be? We don't put like a ton of it in. No, you should sometimes do. That's the key, rod. The reason

cream works so well is that you need a tiny amount of it. Now, there are some people who, put in a tremendous amount of cream into their coffee. And I agree with you that that gets a little rich for my tastes. And we do have all of the regular coffee drinks with milk, your cappuccinos, your lattes, your et cetera. But a lot of people, they like black coffee and then just a little bit, a little touch of cream. And it's, how do you drink your coffee? With a little sugar.

I don't usually do cream or milk, but like I can. I just think it makes it taste a little less like coffee, and I like the coffee flavor. Well, that's definitely like a sign of being middle age too, I think. Like I think as you get older, you tend to like black coffee a little bit more. But yeah, Rod, I recommend trying it. Just put a tiny little bit of that delicious heavy cream into your coffee and see if you like it. If you don't, no worries.

You can just drink it black. But yeah, I think that is, I think that's how we do it. Mostly these days, to be honest with you, Rod, we do it with like half soy, half almond milk, or with oat milk. Yeah, we love our oat milk. It's really good though. It's good. Sarah loves oat milk. Yeah.

This next question comes from Audrey who asks, Dear Hank Adon, except for me because I only drink decaf. I'm very excited for John's new book, The Anthropocene Reviewed. Thank you. And I know that all the books in the first printing will be signed. But I usually get books from my local bookstore when new books come out. Well, copies be signed if I get it right when it comes out. Even if I get it from my local bookstore, like the maiden, not the plant Audrey.

Yes. Oh, Audrey, the plant from little shop of arts. Little shop of horse, joke. That's good. Yes, Audrey. So the whole strategy behind signing the entire first printing of the book instead of trying to somehow only sign certain pre-orders is that every single copy that initially goes into every single bookstore will be signed, at least in the US and probably Canada. So your local bookstore, well, if they have

the Anthemocene Reviewed book, which I hope they will, will have signed copies. In fact, they won't have unsigned copies, at least at at first because the idea is that is designed enough to make sure that every copy that goes into every bookstore is autographed. So you should feel free to wait and or you can pre-order it from your local independent bookstore as well because it doesn't come out for a long time like it doesn't come out until May. Some bookstores aren't taking pre-orders yet, but yeah, you'll be able to buy it when it does come out.

And the world will look, I don't know what it will look like in May, different probably, but I'm really excited for the Anthropocene Reviewed book. It's weird and a little nervous making to be publishing a book of nonfiction. I don't feel like I's qualified to do it for some reason, but I have loved writing the Anthropocene Reviewed and I hope that people respond well to the book, which reminds me

actually that today's podcast is brought to you by the Anthropocene Reviewed Book, coming to bookstores everywhere May 18, 2021. If you live in the US and Canada, you're going to have a darn hard time finding an unsigned copy of it. This podcast is also brought to you by M&C's. They're just peanut M&Ms with a little bit of vitamin C spray on them, so you don't have to eat 140,000 calories to knock it, scurvy. And today's podcast is brought to you by scrotum, humanum.

Scotum, humanum. It was actually dinosaury legum. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm here all week. And also this podcast is brought to you by Santa's Shortcut. It was actually dinosaury legum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm here all week. And also this podcast is brought to you by Santa's shortcut, Santa's shortcut. He threw the Fiji in just 18 hours.

Some shortcut, Santa. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we need to talk about acorns. We've gotten almost as many emails about acorns as acorns have fallen in Indiana this fall, which is really saying something because as I have learned from your many emails, this is a mastic year for our local oak trees. So Laura explained this quite succinctly writing, dear John and Hank, I'm sure a bunch of people have already written in about this. Thank you for acknowledging that, Laura. You're correct. But I'm going to do it anyway because plants are amazing.

I'm guessing the reason you have so many acorns this year is that it's a mastic year. Every few years, all the oak trees in an area coordinate with one another to produce a ridiculous amount of acorns way more than the squirrels are able to eat, so that the trees will have a better chance of reproducing. Then the next couple years, the trees will go back to normal production, and the squirrels will get most of the nuts. This also means that the squirrels have a really good year during masting, and then populations go down until the next masting year. And this is one of the things about masting that kind of blew my mind when I read more about it, Hank, which is that, A, we don't really know what's causing this exactly. B, it seems like large groups of oak trees are able to communicate and coordinate because there's no other explanation for the varying distance between between massing years. Where? And see, they seem to do this maybe, possibly at least in part, to control the population

of mammals that eat lots of acorns. They're like, we can't have the same amount of acorns every year because then they'll all get eaten. So we have to have some big years and some little years so that they can't eat all of them in the big years and then the population goes down in the little years. Right, but it would be easier to understand if everybody, if the trees were like, yes, so every three years, we laid out a lot of acorns and then we go two years, but they don't, they don't do that. It's, it's, it's much weirder and potentially more mind-blowing than that. So that is why there are a goodillion acorns in Indianapolis right now. And it is also, it also means that the oak trees are

talking to each other, which Sarah reminded me is basically the plot of her favorite novel of this year, Richard Powers book, The Overstory. So I'll be reading that next, and I will report back. Trees are amazing. They are evidence that the rule of life is not as we were told as children that only the strong survive, and you must only compete to survive. They are evidence of the fact that collaboration and cooperation is also essential to any form of life surviving. Cool. And the side effect is that you have to definitely wear shoes outside all the time.

Oh, yeah. No, you can't even walk five feet without stepping on two or three acorns. What's the news from Mars this weekend? Well, in Mars news, scientists have been studying some asteroids near Mars, and they found one that seems to resemble the moon. Oh, so the asteroids, they're studying called the Trojan asteroids. They follow the same path a planet does in its orbit around the sun, but then there's

sort of like our a set distance behind or in front of the planet. So there's these sort of like gravitationally stable points that they can chill out in. So they sort of orbit the sun, along with the planet. We know that planets like Jupiter have thousands of these asteroids because it's very big, and so those pockets are really big, and can collect a lot of asteroids in them. But we didn't know about as many of these around terrestrial planets. If Earth has Trojan asteroids, we still have had a hard time spotting them, because their location is close to the sun, and it's difficult to look at them with a telescope.

But Mars seems to have Trojan asteroids. We definitely have found them. So a team of astronomers used a tool called the X-Shooter from the European Southern Observatories very large telescope and chili to study a set of Trojan asteroids and see what they are made of. And they studied how sunlight bounced off Trojan asteroids and see what they are made of. And they studied how sunlight bounced off of them to figure out what they're composed of and found one of the asteroids was different from the other ones. And it was unique among this set of asteroids. And it looked quite a bit like the moon. Why it looks like the

moon is unknown. There are a couple of guesses. It might be a piece of the moon, which does happen. Obviously, the moon has been hit by a lot of impactors, and so that throws little bits off. It could just be a normal asteroid that just looks like the moon and ended up that way through a process of solar radiation and space-weathering that created a moon-like patina on the outside of the asteroid. Sort of like how all river rocks end up like sort of river rocky if you give them enough time. Uh-huh.

And then it's also a chance that it's actually a piece of Mars' crust that ended up in orbit somehow and ended up looking a bit like the moon. So we're not sure, but there is a weird asteroid around Mars that we have discovered. And we only know it's weird because it isn't like the rest of them that we studied, but it may actually be a piece of the moon over there. That's kind of lovely. Yeah.

I like the idea of sharing our moon with Mars a little bit. It's got a little bit of moon. Yeah. Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon is in equal parts, great and terrible. AFC Wimbledon played their first game back at Plow Lane. It was an extremely emotional day. There was a wonderful live stream for an hour before kickoff where Wimbledon fans, former Wimbledon players all were able to share together in the magic of that moment, even though we couldn't be there together in real life. And then Wimbledon took the field against a very good Donkastor oversight and went into the lead.

And we all know that in this fragile, fragile world, nothing is more fragile than Wimbledon with a 1-0 lead. And so sure enough, Donkastor equalized almost immediately. We then went into a 2-1 lead. And I thought to myself, are these less, no, no, Don Gastro equalized almost immediately. So the game ended two two. Well, that's not terrible. It's not terrible. If you get drawn all season, you'll be great. Well, just keep getting draws. Yeah. At this point, I would be fine with drawing the rest of our games. I mean, it wouldn't be that fun, but it would be a heck of a story. So that was great. And it was just, I mean, it was

just magical to see Plow Lane and to see the players there. The pitch looks amazing. The stands look great. And to know that we built that place and we built it, you know, taking out loans from ourselves, basically, I mean, the stadium was built primarily via a bond that the fans raised themselves and the club will pay us back. And it's just a wonderful day. And I felt so, so grateful to everybody who worked so hard for almost 30 years to make that moment possible and who never gave up on their dream at such a testament, I think, to what can happen when a community holds on to hope and sticks together. And then three days later, AFC Wimbledon released a statement

saying that, quote, some players and staff have tested positive for COVID-19. Some is a very, it's a big adjective in that sentence. I'm still really hopeful that we can play the rest of the season and it would be really heartbreaking if we couldn't. But obviously, the safety of the community has to come first and so we'll see. Obviously, well, that is awful and I don't know, obviously, don't know what it means.

I'm sure that it's... Me neither. The kind of thing that will continue to happen. Yeah. But I also know that we'll get through this. We will and it is really encouraging to see a good response from a vaccine candidate, at least from initial results. It's really, really encouraging. a good response from a vaccine candidate, at least from initial results. It's really, really encouraging.

Yeah, we'll get through this regardless. This will end, pandemics end. They always end. Many of them have ended before, but if we can speed the rate at which we get through this, that would be wonderful. Yeah. Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me.

And thanks to everybody for listening. We really appreciate you sending in your questions to Hank and John at gmail.com. And we're just so glad that you're here with us. Yeah, thank you. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Meta, it's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas and Sheridan Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Devoki Chakravarti, the music you're hearing now,

and at the beginning of the podcast, it's by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.