Dear Hank & John - 269: Into the Future, Vittorio

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

How do I achieve my dream fridge? What do Danish people call Danish pastries? Is the North Pole a continent or an island? Why are cartoon mice cute? How do cats purr? How does rounding up for charity work? Can I put your voice in a build-a-bear? 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! Doors I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you a new advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John! Yep. Why, whatever, you go golfing, why do you always bring another pair of socks? So that...

Why, Justin K. How are you? Why, Justin K? Justin K's? Justin K's. What is that? Justin K's. What, you can do this. You need a putter?

You get, just in case you get, what do you get when you golf? Like a good outcome, right? I've never, a birdie. I've never golf. I've also never golf. I've watched it on television a few times. Just think my friend Chris is really into it. So sometimes I see it on TV and he'll make all kinds of comments and it's and I'll be like, well that he did hit that ball very straight and far. What an impressive achievement. John, I think that the people at home have got it by now.

It's just in case you get a hole in one. Just in case you get a hole in one. Hank, I wonder how these sock related dad jokes are going to play for like the whole eternity after December 11th, which is when awesomesocks.club closes to new members. Well, and so everybody after that is going to be horribly disappointed to where they can no longer get a socks subscription at awesomesocks.club slash deerhank or awesomesocks.club slash deer. John, thank you to all the people who've been using my promo code that doesn't really matter because none of the money goes anywhere except to charity.

It's true. And I don't care about the future, John. I care about now. And the great news is the awesome socks club is doing amazingly well. We kind of sold through our initial guests at the upper limit of how many socks we would need. So we have beaten our own expectations. The result of that is that if you bought socks before like Sunday, November 29th, they will arrive as normal. But if when you were buying socks, there was a notification that told you about this, you will get your first two pairs of socks in February and then one pair of socks every month after that because we just can't make socks fast enough for you folks. So that's exciting.

It is exciting. And we should unpack that a little bit, Hank, because this is another example of, Hank's what I consider irrational exuberance running up against my what I consider reasonable caution. And I have once again, this does not happen all the time. It should be set. No. But I have on this occasion been proven wrong. And your irrational exuberance was warranted when it came to the awesome socks club. And I would like to formally apologize to all the people who are getting two pairs of socks in February, instead of getting one pair of socks in January and one pair of socks in February, that is my fault because I set the number to low.

Yeah, but this is kind of your last chance. So if you wanted to check out the awesome socks club, that's awesome sock.club slash to your Hank or awesome socks club slash to your John. And you can see how you can sort of delight yourself once a month for all of 2021. Or you can have somebody get it for you as present or get it for someone else's present. Look, there are so many options. It's just its end list. All the money goes to charity. And the very best part is that instead of having a .com domain name like every other website, it has a .club domain name which is very exciting. Awesomesocks.club. You've never

been on the .club side of the web. There's just two things in dot club side of the web. There are subscription services. Yeah. That are clubs. And then there are the hottest new place where there's flash and lights and disco balls. Oh, right. You definitely cannot go there. Yes.

Because of that's pandemic. Right. Yeah. Have you, I want to get to questions from my listeners, but I dearly want to ask this question. Uh-huh. Because have you ever been to a club? I don't think I have been to a club.

I've been to a venue. Right. But I've never, it's Montana. I don't know that we have any clubs here. I have to say every time I've been to a club, I've had a good time. It's just that I just feel like maybe that part of my life has come to an end. Yes, I agree.

There's nothing wrong with this activity as long as there isn't a current pandemic. I have a related story, John, that I want to tell you about the time that I was in New York City and someone said to me, let's go to a bar and I was like, okay, let's go to a bar. And he was like, how do you feel about going to a dive bar? And I was like, I don't know what a dive bar is.

It took me to the dive bar. And I discovered that a dive bar is what let's go to a bar. And he was like, how do you feel about going to a dive bar? And I was like, I don't know what a dive bar is. It took me to the dive bar. And I discovered that a dive bar is what in Montana, we call a bar. It's true. I've been to a lot of bars in Missoula. Now that we're significantly into the podcast, maybe we should do what we do, which is answer questions from our listeners. And I want to ask you this question,

Hank, because it reminded me of our childhood. Dear John and Hank, I'm 20 years old, and I have two big dreams in life, both of which revolve around fridges. The first one is to own a smeg fridge, because they are so beautiful. I have no idea what that is, but I guess it's a kind of fridge.

The second is to own a fridge that dispenses water, because to me, that is a symbol of success. So when I own one, I know that I will have made it. The problem is that smeg do not sell fridges that dispense water. How do I reconcile these two incompatible fridge-based dreams? I think you've got to get rid is that smeg do not sell fridges that dispense water. How do I reconcile these two incompatible fridge-based dreams? I think you've got to get rid of the smeg dream. It's no good. And you've got to embrace the fridge that dispenses water dream. Because

when we were kids, Hank, do you remember this like going to other people's houses and seeing that their fridges dispensed water and being like, oh my god, the Sutherlands? Yeah. I have got it figured out. Well, not just that, but chipped ice. Not only that it dispensed ice, but there was a giant motor in there that just ripped it to shreds on the way out. But even a refrigerator that would dispense ice,

I mean, I'm 43 years old and I don't have a refrigerator that can dispense ice. Me either. Because it's almost like it would beense ice. I mean, I'm 43 years old, and I don't have a refrigerator that can dispense ice. Me either. Because it's almost like it would be too good, you know? Like sometimes you don't want your dreams to come true, because you want there to be something that you're out there reaching for. And for me, like I'm out there reaching for a fridge

that when I push a button will give me ice. And I worry that if I got it, I would stop being ambitious. Right. Well, or you just find something else to want. This is a thing that I think is useful as I try and hold on to the wants that I'm like, okay, with. And I know that if I satisfy them, they'll just get replaced by something else. So I might as well stick with the want that I currently have because I know it. I know the shape of it. I know how bad it is. And I can sort of like manage it. So I have better advice for you though. Are you ready for this, John?

Yeah. Now, you have big dreams. I do. No. Oh, Sophie does. Sophie does. But I do, I do too. Can we talk about mine? What you need is a third dream. So, one of your dreams is to get a smeg fridge. One is

to get a fridge that dispenses water. Your third dream is to become the CEO of smeg. Yes. And then you are in charge of whether or not water comes out of that baby. By the way, I have Googled smeg fridges and they're really cool. And I'd like to rescind my earlier comment that you shouldn't work on getting a smeg fridge. You totally should. But it should be part of your larger dream, which is to become the sole owner of smeg. Right. So that you can announce, you can have a press conference and you could say, I bet you wondered why I gathered you all here today. It's to make a major announcement

about the future of smeg. We're in the water and ice distribution business now, baby. That's right. And you can say, you can look down on the grave of Vittorio Berk Tazzoni, who's the current CEO of smeg. I'm just assuming that you've both lived good long lives and he's done with his time. And you can look at his grave and you can say, I know that you hated this idea and I know you're spinning in there, but it had to be done, my friend.

We had to move into the future, Vittorio. We had to take this retro brand into the 22nd century, Vittorio. What a phenomenal name for a CEO of a refrigeration and oven company. And by the way, I know Vittorio, Bertor Azini is a listener to the podcast. So I just want to say hello. Thanks for listening. Sorry for making fun of your fridge earlier. It was before I'd googled it and realized how cool your fridges are. But if you want to make a really great fridge, I'm just going to tell you right now, it's got to be a situation where I push a button

and it gives me ice. Yeah. And I realize this is not the biggest problem in the world. But I open my freezer after reaching and get the ice. And the problem is that the first three quarters of ice is all frozen together. And so there's only like six to eight pieces of ice at any time.

And if I'm not careful, if I don't have a pretty good, if I don't make a point of going in there every couple of days, then I've just got a big frozen block of ice. And then I've, and then I'm in a situation where I've got to take the whole thing out, but you're right, Hank. You need dreams in this world. That's right.

You need to, you need something that you're reaching for. That's like the green light across the bay and the great gatsby that, that, that, that you have to push yourself toward despite being born back ceaselessly into the past. And that for me is a freezer that dispenses ice. Well, Vittorio, that's it. That's it. I don't want to go back into the past and marry someone else.

You can just want to, you'll get there. John, freezer. You'll get there. Vitoria Brutizoni has been the CEO of Smeg for 72 years. That's a good run since he founded it in 1948. I think that he's kind of taken a bit of a back seat to his son, Roberto, Bertotzoni. And I'm not saying this because I think you can't do it, Sophie. But it would be best if you may have left out a detail that you might be the child of one

of the bear-todd zones. Yeah. That does seem to be the fastest way to get into this mega hierarchy. Yeah. But there's other ways. Yeah. I think what you should do, Sophie, is you should become a venture capitalist or some kind of, I don't know, I don't know how people who move the big pile of money around and make the pile of money bigger. I don't understand how any of that works, but you should become one of those people. Should devote your whole life to moving the pile of money

around and making it bigger as you go and siphoning off some percentage of the money you move around until you are in control of a large venture capital fund that owns like 4,500 different companies and then you should go to your board of directors and you should say we're making a new investment. It's smeg and they're going to be like, it's what? And you're like, it's smeg and we're not buying it so that we can make money. We're buying it because this has been my dream all along.

This has been the whole point of moving the pile of money around these last 45 years so that I could buy smeg and make the maker refrigerator that dispenses ice. Boom. Done. John, this next question comes from Matt. Great. That says, dear Hank and John, what came first? People from Denmark being called Danish or the sweet baked good being called a Danish. And the grand scheme of things, none of this matters, Matt. Well, I didn't think that we needed to answer this question

because obviously the Danish people came first and then like, this is a Danish, Danish, and so we're gonna call it a Danish. Except that if you're in Denmark, they don't call it a Danish, they call it Vienna bread, because it's not from Denmark. Oh, wow. It's like how everybody had a different name for syphilis. You know, like the Germans called it the Italian disease

and the French called it the German disease and the holes called it the Russian disease and so on. Yeah, it's like that, but for Danish. Yeah, exactly. No one wants to take credit for Danish. If you go to Denmark and you ask for a Danish, they will look at you weird because they're like, why are you just saying that you want a person from Denmark? Don't you want to know? It's called Vienerbred, which is Vienna bread in Danish.

And in Vienna, they call it Copenhagener plunder, which means bread from Copenhagen, which is me Danish, Danish bread. So the people in Vienna think that it's from Copenhagen, the people from Copenhagen think it's from Vienna, and we're not entirely sure what happened here, but it's possibly due to the fact that Danish bakery workers in 1850 went on strike, and then a bunch of Austrian bakery workers came into Vienna and they brought their own recipes because no one was baking.

And then suddenly there were Austrian people making these Danish danishes, or they were making Danish, they were making Austrian pastries in Denmark, and then they became very popular in Denmark. And then when they started to send them other places, they were like, oh, these are great Denmark treats. This is kind of similar to how in the United States, we have a kind of meat that we refer to as Canadian bacon. Yes. And you would think that in Canada, they would call it bacon, the way that the rest of the world calls our football, American football, and we just call it football. But no, in Canada, they call it by its proper

name, which is back bacon. And it also isn't even particularly popular there from what I've heard. Like I think Americans consume more Canadian bacon per capita than Canadians do. Well, it's like the fact that we have French fries, which are the most, they should be called American potatoes. They really should. Because they're the most American thing that exists. It's really our only major contribution to global cuisine. They're very good.

They are. Although hilariously, as with our other major contribution to global cuisine, the hamburger, the best ones are not from America. Like, well, and hamburgers are also not named after a place in Germany. What is wrong with us? Are they the hamburger?

Oh, they are. Is a place in Germany? Oh, yeah. They're named after... Do people from Hamburg refer to themselves as hamburgers? They're saying... Ik bin, I'm hamburger. Isn't it Ik bin, I'm Berliner, like, not actually what Berliners would say?

Well, I think a Berliner is both a person from Berlin and also a pastry. So we've come full circle. Oh. People from Hamburg call themselves Hans Eaton. Oh, it's like how in Indiana, you don't call yourselves Indianaians, you call yourselves Hoosiers,

just cause you're just like, I picked a word. Oh, it's not my favorite thing about Indiana. I was recently emailing with some people who work in the state government and they kept referring to like Hoosier things and I just, I wanted to be like, is there any, I know that it's a little late for a rebrand because I know we've been a state for like 140 years. I know we've been calling ourselves Hoosier's the whole time. Is there any way we could just quietly consider

just being people from Indiana? Yeah, I actually think that it's really weird and great because everybody else is a Montana and a California and a Floridian and you're like, no, I think it's fantastic. Is there any other state like that? We just picked a word. Yeah, I also like that the. Is there any other state like that? We just picked a word? Yeah, I also like that the etymology of Hoosier is unknown

and everyone who's ever tried to establish the history of the term has failed upon closer inspection, which I think is, I, okay, I'm fine with it. I'm gonna, let's move on. Let's answer another question. He's caught up, everybody. He doesn't wanna make the Indianaians mad at it. I am worried about it because it's a very divisive thing. And I don't want to I just don't want to get in the middle of it. You know, it's like,

it's like how I try to stay out of Irish politics because of our relatives. This next question comes from a band who writes, dear John and Hank, I don't even know what the question is. I've just tried to change the subject. I've tried, I've been trying to convince my sister that the North Pole is not a continent, but the more I think about it, the more I realize, I don't know if it is a continent. Is it a continent or is it an island? What is it?

Contanently confused Amanda. It's not an island or a continent. Or is it? Now I've set it out loud and I feel like maybe it is, but the North Pole is ocean, it'll it often, in fact, I think always has ice on it, hopefully anyway. So yeah, you can go and stand on the North Pole

but only because there's ice there. And that leads me to the question, is a giant floating raft of ice a continent, which no, no, but ice is a mineral. And continents are just minerals that float on top of the magma ocean of the mantle. So, right. Who said? So kind of. The only thing we know for sure, Amanda, is that like, and this has become a recurring theme in Dear Hank and John, like all other categories, this one is artificial and constructed. And so we decide what is and is not a continent.

And we have to remember that we are deciding that because, you know, these are, these are constructs. We're trying to fit a bunch of things into boxes when, you know, like the universe doesn't fit neatly into boxes. The only thing we know for sure, Amanda, is that Europe is not a continent. That's the only fact about continents. Yeah. We can definitely say that one. Now, I think this is confusing because Antarctica is so clearly like we talk about it as a continent. Right. And it is. But when we look at it on a map, it's just a bunch of ice, just like the North Pole is just a bunch of ice and look at it on a map. But under the ice. That's partly a fault of the map, right? Like, I thought this is one of my long time issues with world maps. Like, why is Antarctica white when all the other countries and

continents are not? It's partly because like, it doesn't technically belong to anyone. Which is cool. Why not just make it pink? Yeah. Why is it white? Well, it's, yeah, it is confusing. But underneath the ice in Antarctica, there are mountains and rocks, and it's a whole continent. It's just a bunch of stuff going on there.

Just very right down at the bottom of the earth, which is kind of neat. We got a weird bottom continent, which, you know, we didn't, wasn't, you know, guaranteed or anything. Congrats, Earth. Good job. Sometimes I think about the fact that none of the,

there's no reason why anything is shaped the way it is and it's very upset, it's not upsetting. It's just a dysorienting. I mean, there are reasons. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be this shape. Like, nothing has to exist. Florida didn't have to exist. There could be like an island just like floating

in a place where there isn't an island and we would've lived in that world with all those people who would've been from there and it would've just been very different, but it's this way instead. Yeah, and we would've had all these weird things that we said about those people where we would be like, oh, you know,

those people living in the mountains, that's the different kind of person out there. Yeah. Well, in some ways, it would be a different kind of person. I know because culture and geography and human consciousness are all extremely weird. That's true. All right, I think we have another question.

This one is from Lindsay who writes, dear John and Hank, rats and mice are notorious for spreading disease throughout history. And when one skirys through the home, mouse traps are set to catch the little critters, why then did cartoon mice become cute and lovable? The mice in Cinderella, Mickey Mouse, the great mouse detective Jerry from Tom and Jerry,

Pinky and the Brains, Stuart Little, Remi from Ratatouille, they're also popular. Why did we start adoring cartoon mice when real mice are so reviled. For clarity, rats at mice are different in remy as a rat, not a mouse. Oh, okay. So, and in general, and in general, we find is that like mice are portrayed as good, and rats are portrayed as bad. And I think that is interesting, and has a number of factors. But if you, the main thing is if you look at a mouse,

they are cute. Yes. And I don't like it's like why things are cute is complicated, but mice are cute. And so even if even if you really don't want to have a mouse in your house, because they're pooping in your cabinets and they're eating your rice, they're still killing you,

you do want to kill them, but they're still cute. So, and so I think that's why they end up playing roles and as lovable characters. I think there's also they end up playing roles and as loveable characters. I think there's also something else going on here that I can't prove. Okay. I do agree that the cuteness of a mammal

is a huge determinant of how it is treated in popular culture. This is actually explored brilliantly in the greatest film of all time, Penguins of Madagascar, which is like the best film about the Anthropocene and the ways that humans are selecting organisms for cuteness.

But I think something else is happening too, though, which is that the animals that we fear and that have historically been tremendously negative forces in human life are cutified at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century almost on mass. So we see the emergence of teddy bears, you know, probably the most dangerous animal of all time to humans becomes the most lovable childhood play thing. We see the emergence of tiger,

the tiger, the lovable, rambunctious, completely undangerous tiger. We see all of these animals become cute in this moment when we are becoming so much the dominant species on earth that suddenly, so much the dominant species on Earth that suddenly, instead of those animals being threats to us, we are becoming aware that we are a threat to them. Instead of the world being a thing that is attacking us, the world becomes this thing that we have to protect. That's interesting, John. And I think that's why we made those animals cute. Yeah, it's also an expression of power to be able to say like, this extremely powerful thing actually is just adorable.

That's how powerful we as humans are. Yes. And like that is a sign that the consciousness, at least of like this particular part of the earth, switched over and was like, we get how powerful we are. Right. We are in control of this earth. Yeah, there's an Anthropocene Reviewed uh, not to plug my own podcast about teddy bears and the history of the teddy bear.

And that's a big part of the actual story of why teddy bears became teddy bears was a story of like humans having so much power over bears that we decide whether they live or die, we decide whether they're cuter threatening. Mm hmm. We are in charge of the image of the bear now. Yeah. Wow, what a power move. A weird one. But then again, like the 20th century was really weird.

I think we're only really beginning to engage with how weird it was now. It's very weird. What a weird time. Yeah, it's very weird for sure. But rats really didn't get, didn't really get that treatment. We've continued to kind of hate on rats. And even Remy, like the idea of not that I've watched Ratatouille several times recently

for any particular reason, but I have. The kind of idea of Ratatouille is that like, he has to overcome the fact that he would be seen as disgusting in his, in his like the, his dream job. Right. And that is a very difficult thing. It's like one of the main tensions of the movie. So even in the case that we of Remy, which is the cutest, best rat, he's still being like

the reality of him not being cute is being contended with. But I wonder, it's a very good movie. It is a great movie. I wonder, and I don't know enough about this to have an opinion about it, but I wonder if rats became rats, like in the sense, you know, even now we talk about like ratting someone out as, you know, telling on someone, I wonder if rats with all those negative connotations predated the awareness that rats were what spread bubonic plague, which was, you know, kind of the worst thing that they've done in human history.

Yeah. I mean, I think that the bottom five, bottom five, okay. It's the worst thing rats have done. I would probably venture to humans. Yeah. I don't get speak for individual rats. Okay. Yeah. Like, I think it's important. like rats aren't just bad because they spread disease. They also were a pest. They would eat your food, which is like people needed that. Oh, yeah. No, they were a huge pest problem.

Yeah. So they remain a huge pest problem. Yeah. When I was in Haiti, I was like, why are all these buildings up on the stilts? And they were like, so that the rats can't get into them and eat the food. I was like, oh, yep. Big issue. How do cats per?

Actually, weirdly, we're not entirely sure. Now, we have some ideas, but like... By the way, that question is from Lydia. Thank you for your question, Lydia. So they have a muscle in their larynx. They dilate and they constrict their glottis, which causes the air to sort of like, you know, rumble as it goes through. And we, this like, but they actually like location and like the specifics of how the

purring organ functions isn't entirely clear. It's hard to get a cat in an FMRI and I have them sit there and get a real calm and happy. That's also hard to do that with me. That would be happy and not moving, but also cats will calm and happy. That's also hard to do that with me. That would be happy and not moving, but also cats will pur and distress. So if you're holding a cat, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're purring, doesn't mean necessarily that they're happy.

They kind of comfort themselves with their pur. So yeah, so it's still a little bit of a complicated structure in there that weren't not entirely sure how it works. And the fact that they can pur both while breathing in and breathing out so they can per constantly is also kind of a cute little mystery. Oh, that's really lovely. And it reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Purring, a cute little mystery.

The podcast is also brought to you by a dive bars. Dive bars. Very special, very, think you can find them occasionally in New York City or absolutely everywhere in Missouri, Montana. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by Europe, not a continent. And this podcast is brought to you by Remy the Rat.

Remy is not the Ratatouille, Remy is the Rat, which is a joke you only get if you are on, to take a tick talk about. Oh, it's a good joke though. John, this question comes from Persephone who asks, dear Hank and John, I thought all the money from the awesome sock scrub was going to charity.

I went to sign up, there was an option to round up for charity and add an additional dollar to my total. Is that for administrative costs or is it a different charity? Persephone. No, it's just an extra dollar for charity. It doesn't replace any of the other dollars that go to charity.

So the way that we've set up the Awesome Sox Club is similar to the way that like Newman's own is set up. If you live in the United States, if you know anything about that salad dressing company, they also do other foods. All the profits go to charity, but there are still costs, of course. There are costs to make sure that, you know, get by your side and shipping costs and all that stuff.

So that extra dollar, if you choose to donate it, is just an extra dollar that goes straight to charity. Just gravy. Yeah. Just gravy. Charity gravy. That's a great way of thinking about it. I've never known what that phrase made it's just gravy, but do you?

John, do you? Because I discovered recently that other people don't do this. Do you ever just drink gravy? Oh God. No. I don't I don't even like gravy on I don't like gravy. Oh, ever. If you could, if anybody listening to right in, let me know if I am not the only person who does this, that would be great. Because I started to feel, started to feel real weird about it and like I'm a weirdo.

It's very upsetting. That's really, really a bummer. I wish I didn't know that about you. It's like, it's like I just found out that you are a robot and that like the way that you, that's just really upsetting. I wish I didn't know that about you. That must be how you feel about me eating cereal that's moistened with water. Yeah. No. Yep. All right. Hank, let's answer one more question from Ally who writes, dear John and Hank, my best friend Grayson, absolutely adores you both. It's very

endearing how excited he gets talking about you and his birthdays coming up shortly on the 3rd of December. So I have a small favor I'd like to ask. He said, and I quote, honest to God, if Hank and John Green actually say, happy birthday, Grayson, I will take the audio from that podcast and put it in a build a bear. I am so serious right now. I'd be buried with that bear Grayson. Do not get buried with that bear.

Live along and happy life. Forget all about it. But before the time you get buried with that bear. Grayson do not get buried with that bear, live along, and happy life. Forget all about it before the time you get buried. Collaborate with many people on many wonderful projects, but happy birthday, Grayson. If you do not send us a video of that build a bear saying happy birthday, Grayson, in my voice, I rescind the happy birthday. Can we do it together so that I get to be involved at all? Great, let's get ready. Three, two, one. Happy birthday, Grayson. All right, I think that was good.

Okay, okay, Grayson, we're gonna do this, but only on the condition that you send us a video of this build-a-bear saying happy birthday, Grayson, in our voices. Well, in all, so I'm gonna need a picture when you die, which I will be dead already, but when you die, you're gonna have to send a picture to one of my heirs of you in your casket with your bear.

Don't do that, Grayson. Hank, a lot of people wrote in to say that they share my complete inability to understand the difference between East and West, especially once they have memorized that they are East of something. And then if they move west of something, they're in trouble for the rest of their lives. And I appreciate it. Thank you for making me feel less alone. Hank, I wonder if you could read the number 37 in our show notes here. You got it, John. It's from Shana who asks, dear Hank and John.

I was listening to episode 267 and I did pretty much the same thing, although on a less public scale. During my year 11 final 20th century history exam, I referred to East Berlin as West Berlin and West Berlin as East Berlin. And thankfully my teacher said, because I was so consistently wrong, he would overlook the error,

said with an Australian accent, Shona. Oh, I knew it. I knew, that's it. That's what I wanted. Oh, that's all I wanted. I don't like, because I I wanted.

Thanks. Thank you very much, Hank. I was like, oh, why am I doing this right now? Why did he want me to do it? To send me a 10 hour loop of just 10 Hank's saying Shauna that way. Shauna. All right. In less funny news, oh God.

Hank, as you know, AFC Wimbledon have really struggled this season in giving up goals immediately after scoring them. There is no organism institution or manufactured good that is as fragile as a one-nil AFC Wimbledon lead. And Wimbledon have developed some really fascinating strategies for dealing with this. Of course, a couple of games ago, we scored in the last minute of the game with essentially the last kick of the game, Brilliant Strategy, won that game one new. Then in our FA Cup first round game, which is a knockout competition, we had an even better

strategy, which is what, what if we don't score it all and we just take it to penalties, and then we win the penalty shootout, brilliant. And then AFC Wimbledon went back to their old bad ways in the second round of the FA Cup, playing a fourth tier side, Crawley Town, AFC Wimbledon scored to go one-nill up, beautiful goal from Joe Piggit. And then within, I don't know, five minutes, it was tied. And then I don't know, 15. It was tied and then I don't know 15 minutes later. We were down to one because we had scored far too early. I don't know how to get the message to manager Glenn Hodges and the boys. Stop scoring. We got to stop scoring in the first half. It just, it doesn't work. We've got to figure out a different strategy. We're just scoring way too early.

And so AFC Wimbledon are out of the FA Cup. There will be no dream tie against a huge Premier League side this year. Instead, we will focus on maintaining our League one status, hopefully through the end of the season and into next year so that actual fans will be able to celebrate the really beautiful stadium that I got to watch. I got to see pictures of during the the FA Cup game and it the stadium looks so good. I just wish there were fans in it. There will be John. There will be. Yeah. It's true. Well, what's the news from Mars this week? The news from Mars is so cool, John. So according to some data from the Curiosity Rover, there were once mega floods in Gale Crater, where Curiosity resides.

And the indication is very cool and about four billion years old. So researchers from Cornell, Jackson State University, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Hawaii have been studying data about the sediment inside the crater and they've been able to find these huge, weird 30-foot tall wave-shaped features called mega-ripples, also called anti-dunes.

Whoa. And we have seen similar features on Earth and they were formed about two million years on Earth because of melting ice. And on Mars, these are much older, about four billion years ago. And four billion years ago, a meteor crashed into Mars. And when I say a meteor, well, we're talking like a thing, the size of a small planet. So this was a very big event for Mars.

You can see it. Hmm. Basically, the entire northern hemisphere of Mars is an impact crater. So four billion years ago, there was this massive crash geologic event. And the heat from this melted like all of the ice on the planet and released a bunch of carbon dioxide and methane

that was trapped in the surface. So not only did you get a bunch of liquid water from the melting ice, the carbon dioxide and methane warmed up the planet. So not only did you get a bunch of liquid water from the melting ice, the carbon dioxide and methane warmed up the planet, so the atmosphere was warm, and it was wet, and that created a big like water vapor cloud, and then a lot of it rained down in this massive giant mega flood, where the rain mixed with water traveling down mountains

to create all these flash floods. This adds to previous research that's found evidence of these floods on Mars, including rock data from the Pathfinder mission. So it seems like this, like potentially. Now, we're not entirely sure that this is like the only thing that led to this warm wet Mars, but potentially this impact, which was absolutely devastating to the planet and would have obviously killed anything that currently lived there, ended up making Mars for a long time habitable by throwing up all of this carbon dioxide and methane

into the atmosphere and also creating, like at first it was just extremely cataclysmic and like, you know, obviously not a good place to be, but after some time could have meant that there was this longer period of fairly stable, fairly warm Mars. How that interacts with what we know of is a fairly long period of standing water on the surface.

We don't know for sure, but it could be that those things are related. Wow. I mean, all of that just reminds me of how ridiculously vulnerable atmosphere is. I know I'm so sorry that I've given you this new worry about atmosphere, but it is a tenuous little thing

with sp of gas that is very necessary. Well, it's just a thing that we've been, you know, we messed with for a long time without understanding that we were messing with it. And now we're messing with it, understanding that we're messing with it. And I, it doesn't mean, to be clear, I'm not proposing like a day after tomorrow scenario

or like overnight, there's a cataclysmic event as a result of changes to the atmosphere. But the slow motion, many layered catastrophe, for me, all of this research just underscores how real that is and how critical it is to the future of the human story to take it seriously. Yeah. It's hard because I think that we often forget that gas even exists and that we're constantly like, you know, we would die immediately without it. A thing that I didn't really know until fairly long into my, you know, education that is my

life is that, like, air pressure actually forces oxygen into our lungs. So like all of the atmosphere that is sitting on top of us right now is pushing down on us and in on us in all directions. And that's what like that pushing pushes oxygen into our blood. Without that pressure, we wouldn't be able to do that, which is why when you are in a low pressure environment, not as much oxygen gets into your blood. It's not just that there's not as much around. It's that the pressure isn't there to force it in. Now I'm moving my hands around.

You can feel it. I'm feeling the gas. I'm feeling the... Feel the gases. Feeling the fact that I'm on earth. Yeah. And I'm in a weird soup that I don't see or think of as a soup, but it's still there.

Just swimming through this weird gas soup. Thanks for pauding with me. Now I live in a different universe. I have to leave. All right, John, thank you for making a podcast with me as well. If you want to. Hey, before we go, we're gonna end this episode

with a 10 minute clip that's the first 10 minutes of my brother Hank Green's first novel an absolutely remarkable thing. It's the audiobook, which you can get at all the places where you get audiobooks, and I love this book so much, and I wanted to do this this week because they discovered a monolith in Utah that reminded me that Hank's books have a way of becoming ever more relevant and present in my life even as time passes. Like they become better predictors of the future as things unfold that Hank saw that I couldn't see when he was writing. So things unfold that Hank saw that I couldn't see when he was writing. So enjoy this 10 minutes of the audio book after the credits and please consider getting an absolutely remarkable thing for your friends and family this holiday season. Thank you John, I hope that everybody enjoys that. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Metisheets produced by Rosiana Halsey Rojas and shared

in Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Blum, our editorial assistant is Deboki Chauk-Ravardi, the music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. by me, Hank Green, read by Christen C. actual death. But in order to get to that, unless you want to skip to chapter 13, I'm not your boss, you're going to have to deal with the fact that I, April May, in addition to being one of the most important things that has ever happened to the human race, I'm also a woman

in her 20s who has made some mistakes. I am in the wonderful position of having you by the short hairs. I have the story, and so I get to tell it to you the way I want. That means you get to understand me. Not just my story, so don't be surprised if there's some drama. I'm going to attempt to come at this account honestly, but I'll also admit to a significant pro-me bias. If you get anything out of this, ideally it won't be you being more or less on one side or the other, but simply understanding that I am,

or at least was, human. And I was very much feeling only human as I dragged my tired ass down 23rd Street at 2.45 a.m. after working a 16 hour day at a startup that, thanks to an aggressively shitty contract I signed, will remain nameless. Going to art school might seem like a terrible financial decision, but really, that's only true if you have to take out gobs and gobs of student loans to fund your hoyditoid education. Of course, I had done exactly that.

My parents were successful, running a business providing equipment to small and medium-sized dairy farms. Like the little things you hook up to cows to get the milk out. They sold and distributed them. It was good business. Good enough that I wouldn't have had a lot of debt if I'd gone to a state school. But I did not do that.

I had loans, lots. So after jumping from major to major, advertising, fine art, photography, illustration, and finally settling on the mundane, but at least useful, BFA and design, I took the first job that would keep me in New York and out of my old bedroom in my parents' house in Northern California.

And that was a job at a doomed startup funded by the endless well of rich people who can only dream the most boring dream a rich person can dream, being even more rich. Of course working at a startup means that you're part of the family, and so when things go wrong, or when deadlines fly past, or when an investor has a hissy fit, or just because, you don't get out of work until three in the morning, which honestly, I hated. I hated it because the company's time management app was a dumb idea and didn't actually help people. I hated it because I knew I was just doing it for the money, and I hated it because they ask the staff to treat it like their whole life

rather than like a day job, which meant I didn't have any time to spare to work on personal projects. But I was actually using my degree doing actual graphic design and getting paid enough to afford rent less than one year out of school. My work environment was close to technically criminal, and I paid half of my income to sleep in the living room of a one bedroom apartment, but I was making it work. I fibbed just now.

My bed was in the living room, but I mostly slept in the bedroom. Maya's room. We weren't living together. We were roommates. And April from the past would want me to be very clear about that. What's the difference between those two things? Well, mostly that we weren't dating before we moved in together. Hooking up with your roommate is convenient, but it is also a little confusing when you live together through much of college, before finally hooking up, and have now been a couple

for more than a year. If you happen to already live together, when does the should we move in together question come up? Well, for Maya and me, the question was, can we please move that second-hand mattress out of the living room so that we can sit on a couch when we watch Netflix? And thus far, my answer had been, absolutely not, we are just room mates who are dating, which is why our living room still had a bed in it. I told you there would be drama.

Anyway, back to the middle of the night that fateful January evening. This shitty app had to get a new release into the app store by next week, and I had been waiting for the final approvals on some user interface changes and whatever, you don't care. It was boring work BS. Instead of coming in early, I stayed late, which has always been my preference.

My brain was sucked entirely dry from trying to interpret cryptic guidance from bosses who couldn't tell a raster from a vector. I checked out of the building. It was a co-working space, not even actual least offices, and walked the three minutes to the subway station. And then my metro card got rejected for no reason.

I had another one sitting on my desk at work, and I wasn't precisely sure how much money I had in my checking account, so it seemed like I should walk the three blocks back to the office just to be safe. The walk sign is on, so I crossed 23rd, and a taxi cab blares its horn like I shouldn't be in the crosswalk. Whatever dude, I have the walk light. I turned to head back to the office,

and immediately I see it. As I approach, it becomes clear that it is a really, really exceptional sculpture. I mean, it's awesome, but it's also a little bit New York awesome, you know? How do I explain how I felt about it? I guess, well, in New York City people spend 10 years making something amazing happen. Something that captures the essence of an idea so perfectly that suddenly

the world becomes 10 times clearer. It's beautiful and it's powerful, and someone devoted a huge piece of their life to it. The local news does a story about it and everyone goes neat. And then tomorrow we forget about it in favor of some other, absolutely perfect and remarkable thing. That doesn't make those things unwonderful or not unique. It's just that there are a lot of people doing a lot of amazing things, so eventually you get a little jaded. So that's how I felt when I saw it.

A 10-foot tall transformer, wearing a suit of samurai armor. It's huge, barrel chest lifted up to the sky a good four or five feet above my head. It just stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, full of energy and power. It looked like it might, at any moment, turn and fix that empty regal stare on me. But instead, it just stood there, silent and almost scornful, like the world didn't deserve its attention. In the streetlight, the metal was a patchwork of black as-night matte and mirror-reflective silver.

And it clearly was metal, not some spray-painted cardboard cosplay thing. It was stunningly done. I paused for maybe five seconds before shivering both in the cold and in the gaze of the thing, and then walking on. And then I felt like the biggest jerk. I mean, I'm an artist working way too hard at a deeply uninteresting job to pay way too much in rent so I can stay in this place so that I can remain immersed in one of the most creative and influential cultures on Earth. Here in the middle of the sidewalk is a piece of art that

was a massive undertaking, an installation that the artist worked on possibly for years to make people stop and look and consider. And here I am, hardened by big city life and mentally drained by hours of pixel-pushing, not even giving something so magnificent a second glance. I remember this moment pretty clearly, so I guess I'll mention it. I went back to the sculpture, got up on my tiptoes, and I said, Do you think I should call Andy? The sculpture, of course, did nothing.

Just stand there if it's okay for me to call Andy. And so I made the call. But first, some background on Andy. You know those moments when your life shifts, and you think, I will definitely without a doubt continue to love and appreciate and connect with all of these cool people I have spent so many years with despite the fact that our lives are changing a great deal right now, and then instead you might as well unfriend them on Facebook because you ain't never going to see that due to get in your whole life.

Well, Andy, Maya and I had somehow thus far managed to avoid that fate. Maya and I had done it by occupying the same 400 square feet. Andy, on the other hand, lived across town from us, and we didn't even know him until junior year. Maya and I, by that point, were taking most of the same classes because, well, we really liked each other a lot. We were obviously going to be in the same group whenever there was a group project. But Professor Kennedy was dividing us up into groups of three which meant a random third

wheel. Somehow, we got stuck with Andy, or probably from his perspective he got stuck with us. I knew who Andy was. I had formed a vague impression of him that was mostly, that guy sure is more confident than he has any right to be. He was skinny and awkward with printer paper pale skin. I assume he began his haircuts by asking the stylist to make it look like he had never received a haircut.

But he was always primed for some quip, and for the most part, those quips were either funny or insightful. The project was a full brand treatment for a fictional product. Packaging was optional, but we needed several logo options and a style guide, which is like a little book that tells everyone how the brand should be presented and what fonts and colors are to be used and what situations.

It was more or less a given that we would be doing this for some hip and groovy fictional company that makes ethical fair trade genes with completely useless pockets or something. Actually, it was almost always a fictional brewery because we're college students. We're paying a lot of money to cultivate our taste in beer and be snot be about it. And I'm sure that's the direction Maya and I would have gone in. But Andy was intolerably stubborn and somehow convinced us both that we would be building the visual identity of Bubble Bum, a butt flavored bubble gum. At first his arguments were silly, that we weren't going to be doing fancy cool shit when we graduated so we might as well not take the project so seriously.

But he convinced us when he got serious. Look guys, he said, it's easy to make something cool look cool. That's why everyone picks cool things. Ultimately though, cool is always going to be boring. What if we can make something dumb look amazing? Something unmarketable. Awesome. That's a real challenge. That takes real skill. Let's show real skill. I remember this pretty clearly because it was when I realized there was more to Andy. By the end of the project, I couldn't help feeling a little superior to the rest of our classmates, taking their skinny jeans and craft breweries so seriously. And the final product did look great. Andy was, and

I had known this, but not really filed it as important, an extremely talented illustrator, and with Maya's hand-lettering skills and my color palette work, it did end up looking pretty great. So that's how Maya and I met Andy, and thank God we did. Frankly, we needed a third wheel to even out the intensity of the early part of our relationship. After the Bubblebum project, which Kennedy loved so much, he put it on the class website, we became a bit of a trio. We even worked on some freelance projects together, and occasionally Andy would come over to our apartment and force us to play board games. And then we'd just spend the evening talking about politics or dreams or anxieties.

The fact that he was obviously a little bit in love with me never really bothered any of us because he knew I was taken. And well, I don't think Maya saw him as a threat. Somehow our dynamic hadn't fractured after graduation, and we kept hanging out with funny, weird, smart, stupid, andy-scamped. Who I was now calling at three o'clock in the morning. The fuck, April, it's 3am! Hey, I've got something you might want to see. It seems likely that this can wait until tomorrow. No, this is pretty cool. Bring your camera. And does Jason have any lights?

Jason was Andy's roommate. Both of them wanted to be internet famous. They would stream themselves playing video games to tiny audiences, and they had a podcast about the best TV death scenes that they also filmed and uploaded to YouTube. To me, it just seemed like that incurable ailment so many well-off dudes have, believing despite mountains of evidence, that what the world truly needs is another white guy comedy podcast. This sounds harsh, but that's what it seemed like to me back then.

Now, of course, I know how easy it is to feel like you don't matter if no one's watching. I've also since listened to Slein's spotting, and it's actually pretty funny. Wait, what's happening? What am I doing? He asked, here's what you're doing. You're walking over to Grammarcy Theatre and you're going to bring as much of Jason's video shit as you can, and you're not going to regret it, so don't even think about going back to whatever Hentai VR game you're playing.

This is better, I promise. You say that, but have you played Cherry Blossom Ferry 5, April May? Have you? I'm hanging up. You're going to be here in five minutes. I hung up. Several people who weren't Andy walked by as I waited for him. Manhattan is less legit than it once was, for sure, but this is still the city that never

sleeps. It is also the city of, behold, the field in which I grow my fucks, lay thine eyes upon it, and see that it is barren. People gave the sculpture a quick glance and kept on walking, just as I had very nearly done. I tried to look busy. Manhattan is a safe place, but that doesn't mean a 23-year-old woman by herself on the street at 3am isn't going to get randomly harassed. For the next few minutes, I got to spend a little time with the structure. Manhattan is never really dark.

There was lots of light around, but the deep shadows and the sculpture's size made it difficult to really understand it. It was massive. It probably weighed several hundred pounds. I took my glove off and poked it, finding the metal surprisingly not cool. Not warm, either, exactly, but hard. I gave it a knock on the pelvis and didn't hear the bell ring I expected. It was more of a thunk, followed by a low hum.

I started to think that this was part of the artist's intentions, that the goal was for the people of New York to interact with this object, to discover its properties. When you're in art school, you do a lot of thinking about objectives and intent. That was just the default state, C-Art, critique art. Eventually, I stopped my critique and just took it in. I was starting to really love it. Not just as a creation of someone else, but the way that you love really good art.

Just enjoying it. It was so unlike other things I'd seen and brave in its transformrness. Like, I would be terrified to do anything that visually reflected mecha robots in any way. No one wants to be compared to something that's mainstream popular. That's the worst of all possible fates.

But there was much more to this piece than that. It seemed to have come from a completely different place than any work I'd ever seen before. Sculpture or not?