Dear Hank & John - 272: If It Was A Good Moose

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Are Medusa's powers affected by beauty's subjectivity? What's the difference between dry and wet measuring cups?  Have you ever started a blog before? What are some surprisingly edible things? How do I pet a moose? What do you get a baby for Christmas? Where is Gibson and why is your podcast shared there? 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. There was a further thing 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 weeks news from both Mars and FC Wimbledon, John. Yeah. Why was 2019 so afraid of 2020? Why?

Because they had a fight and 2021. It's not a good joke. It's not a good joke. It's not good. Why was six afraid of seven because seven eight nine? It's worse than that because it's like it makes even less sense. Because at the end, you're like, okay, but like, what does it have to do with 2021? And yes, 2021, the fight with all of us. Right. We all lost the fight with 2020. And this is our last podcast episode of 2020. And then we're taking a week off. I think it's the first episode of 2021. No, it's coming out a week from today, which is still 2020. Okay. But then we're taking a week

off and we're going to launch with just spectacular flare in 2021. You've never heard a podcast. We're going to have new segments. We're going to have. We're gonna have a belt buckle review section of the podcast. We're gonna describe belt buckles to you. It's not just that. We are reinventing Dear Hank and John from the ground up. No more questions from our listeners.

Now, we're only taking questions from people who don't listen. Yes, we're taking every tweet by a living former US president that's posed in the form of a question. That's it. It includes a question, Mark. And we're devoting one episode to each of those tweet questions.

Yeah, for some of it, we're also going to have a section on Numerous Mathics. Sure. So it's going to be a Numerous Metology podcast as well. And that, of course, is the study of stamps. The collection of things, of currency paper tokens, I think it's, I think it has to do with money. What stamps are, have been and can be, well, not legally,

but can be treated as money sometimes. Sure. So yes, it's gonna be coin collection podcast. We're gonna talk about really cool coins too. Can I just give people a thrilling example of the kind of things that they can look forward to when we only answer questions asked by former living US presidents on Twitter?

Yeah, hit me. What are these rhinos hiding? And that is a great question, John. They have so many folds in their skin. You can fit lots of stuff in there, maybe rare coins. I mean, we know some of the things are hiding bones. Right? Those are all in there. Muscles. All the organs. Subcutaneous fat. We know that there's a lot that they're hiding. What we don't know is what else they might be hiding. Yeah. That's right. Skin folds could be full of coins, rare coins. They could have some of those upside down airplane stamps

inside their skin folds. And we won't know until we dive deep on the question, what are these rhinos hiding? And where are these rhinos hiding? Spoiler alert. One of the things that we're gonna discover is that we don't know for sure what these rhinos are hiding, but we know they're hiding something.

I love this new podcast, John, it's gonna be so much fun. And of course, we're gonna end every podcast with one of those semi-retorical questions where we use the word they, but we don't define exactly who they is in the situation. You'll get it, you know who they is. You know. Right, you'll, yeah, you get it. You know who they is. You know, you know, you know, you know.

Yeah. We may not know for sure who they are, but we know that they are hiding something. I'm sure that everybody's really enthusiastic to hear about our coins and politics podcasts. It's not a politics podcast. Like we only answer the questions that have been posed by former presidents on Twitter. Okay. This is a great idea. It's not a politics podcast. We only answer the questions that have been posed

by former presidents on Twitter. Okay. This is a great idea. It's easy. I'm starting a new podcast. I don't even need you. I don't need you for this idea. Oh, man.

Well, then I'm just going to do all new mathematics all on my own then. You don't need it. What I'm excited about with your rare coins podcast is the fact that you don't own or know anything about rare coins. I don fact that you don't own or know anything about rare coins. I don't, I own some, I own some spectacularly common coins. It's going to be all about the most common coins and what's special about them because why we got always focus on certain coins

and the expense of others. And also 2021 is all about people who don't have expertise making statements as if they do. It's one of the major themes of 2020, but it's gonna be the major theme of 2021. Yeah, speaking of which, I have strong opinions about who should get the vaccine first, because I am a public health expert now, because I have a microphone,

and I sound like I know what I'm talking about. Oh God. Can I, I'm gonna introduce a new segment right now. Great. It's called Soul I Want to Get. Okay. And in Soul I Want to Get, we search Twitter for the phrase, Soul I Want to Get in quotation marks.

Okay. And that provides you with people who are writing new words to the following line, give me the beep boys and free my soul. I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away. Oh, like I wanna get lost in your something else. Yes. And so for example. Okay, give me an example.

This one is from someone named Sai who says, I knew it. I knew it. That's very good. Actually. The moment I thought of it, it would be... That's exactly... That's exactly...

That's exactly... That's exactly... That's exactly... That's exactly... That's exactly... That's exactly... That's exactly... in those pizza rolls and tripped away. See? I knew it. I knew it. That's very good, actually. The moment I thought of it, that's significantly better than answering presidential tweets posed as rhetorical questions.

Oh, God. Lord almighty, Twitter is a place. Yes, it is a place. All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners, which is actually what we're gonna do in 2021 on this podcast. First question comes from Oliver who writes, dear John and Hank, I have a philosophical question. So the myth of Medusa is that she's so hideous that you'll turn to stone just by looking at her, but hideousness is a matter of opinion, right? So if you didn't think that she was hideous, would you still turn to stone Oliver sixth grade?

This is a great question. What if I'm just into that? Right, what if you like snake hairs? Yeah, I mean, people. Yeah, this is a thing. Different boats float in different waters. Metaphorically, of course, in actuality, all boats float on all waters. If they float on one, they tend to float on others.

Oliver, first off, I love that you're asking the big important difficult questions already in your young life. It means very good things for your future. I always understood that people turn to stone when they saw Medusa out of fright. Well, I thought it was just magic. Like, it wasn't anything in particular to do with Medusa's hair or face. It was just like, I got magic eyes.

That turned you to stone, but I could be wrong. I don't pay a lot of attention. I always felt like all these snakes are about to bite me. And then I'm so scared that I turned to stone. Like I have the fight or flight reflex, and I'll tell you from experience, when I have the fight or flight reflex, it's called the fight or flight or freeze reflex

for an action because I freeze. Right. So Odysseus is fighting Maduice in the mirror or flight reflex, it's called the fight or flight or freeze reflex for an action because I freeze. Right. So Odysseus is fighting Medusa in the mirror of his shield, right? Yep. Have you ever been in a situation where you have to, you were everything's reversed and you have to like do anything at all? Oh, it's impossible.

It's so hard. I would. The neopractus. I know. He must have practiced. I can't even shave, let alone eliminate Medusa. So he's in the, and he's like walking backwards. It's just like stay very still and he just

was like walks and like, that's how I imagine it. Yeah, I mean, I have a difficult enough time telling my right from my left and the best of circumstances. When you reverse everything so that when my hand moves left, it moves to the right in the mirror. There's no way. I can't come, no way I can come.

My hair, no way I can fight a Medusa. Well, I've just realized something. I can do nothing my hair, no way I can fight a Medusa. I've just realized something. I can do nothing in a mirror except back my car up. I can back my car up in the mirror. And so they should change the story. So Odysseus just backs his truck up right on a Medusa. I like that version of the story better. I'm not sure that every detail of it was available

to the ancient Greek storytellers, but he definitely had a dope rig. I will say also, when you look in, and maybe the mirrors these days are just of higher quality than Odysseus's mirror shield, but like when you look into a mirror, I never feel like, oh, thank goodness, I'm not seeing the proper image. This is why I think it's magic. Yeah, it's just magic, but your question is a good one, Oliver, and we need to think more about the ways that we construct beauty, and thank you for helping us do that.

Yes. Okay, John, here's another question. It comes from Betsy, who asks, do you're Hank and John? I've been baking a lot of Christmas cookies lately. This sounds lovely. It's the best thing to do this summer years. Make cookies.

And the recipe keeps reminding me that I must use a liquid measuring cup for liquid and dry measuring cup for dry. And generally I use just use the dry measuring cups for everything. Why? Why must I use different cups? Are they actually different in any way?

Liquid ingredients and dry ingredients, Betsy. Boy, John, do you know what the difference between these two things are? I have no idea. I use them. I have to say interchangeably. Yeah. So, but you do know that they are different things.

So you have like the cup measure, which has all the ingredients on it, and you fill it up with liquid, or with solid. Right. And then you have the like scoopy bits that are like exactly the size. Yep, the scoops. Right.

So it turns out that people get all up in the business because the idea of the liquid is that you don't want to, you don't want something you have to fill all the way up because you'll spill it. And so it has like a, has levels. And the idea of the scoops is so that you can level it off by pushing the stuff off the top. So it's extremely exact. This is the problem I have with it.

There is nothing when you are measuring with cups that is exact. There's no fifth cup, there's no eighth cup, that like you only have, like the gradients are not intended to be exact. The measurements are deeply, like the number of significant figures is very low. And so like if I can't have two fifths of a cup in my recipe at all,

the difference between a third and a fourth just isn't that big of a deal. So if you want to be a stickler about this, get a scale. Otherwise get off my business and let me make my cookies. Okay, because you feel so strongly about this, I'm nervous about offering a different opinion. But my experience has been, and this is just my personal experience, this isn't science, my experience has been that baking requires more exact measurements than, say, making chili. I agree, absolutely, which is why if you want to be a serious about baking, get a scale. But if you just want to make Christmas cookies, it's fine to use different cups. Okay. Well, this makes me feel better about my current strategy, which is to use

whatever happens to be available. I will say that the chances that we're going to not receive correction emails about what you just said are Neil. No, I can't wait. All of the people who are pedants about baking will agree with me that a scale is the way to go. Okay, thank God. I'm still nervous because I'm the one who has to deal with the correction emails. A lot of times you don't even see some of the horrible things that people will say about your mistakes. No one says anything horrible. No, they're very nice. You got to be hot about something, John.

That's true. And I appreciate you hearing my heat and saying, okay, this is fine. I don't know. I won't rescind from having an opinion on this. The next question comes from Yanling, who asks, do you, John, and Hank, have you ever started a blog before? Then I have a definite answer, too.

Well, I can only answer questions about my personal experience in this beautiful, broken world. And the answer is, yes, Hank and I have both had blogs. We have both had blogs. Hank was like a professional blogger. I was. This question does feel like it came from the past. I know. I was just thinking when was the last time I posted to my blog? And then I checked. And it has been a while. What's your blog? If you go to johngreenbooks.com, my big hit website, I don't know if you know about it,

hey, I don't know if you've been to John Green. Well, I did go to johngreen.com first, and now I'm looking at maybe some property. I'm maybe looking at getting some property. I know, I don't have johngreen.com, and you do have handgreen.com and et cetera, et cetera. But I, there's a section of johngreen.com that's called my john green. Oh no. And I can sign up at my john green. Oh, well, I wish him all the best at selling

all of the real estate in southwestern Tennessee, but and northern Mississippi as well. He's expanding northern Mississippi, but my website is different. It's john green books dot com. And there you find that I have a blog. How do I find it? You go to jongribooks.com and then you go to the little area at the top right where you find more things than it says blog. And I myself am shocked to learn

that my most recent blog post was on August 27th. Yeah, I am also surprised to see this, specifically because I did not write this blog post. It is a blog post acknowledging that I have written a book called the Anthropocene Review that comes out in May. And it has a comment. Wait, it has several comments. Four comments.

Why are these people commenting? Barbara says, Satisfear Podcasts and but thanks for sharing yourself with us. Well, Barbara, you still have an opportunity to buy the book. I'm, I'm, well, okay, so is that my only blog post ever? That's my only blog, that's my only blog post. That's my only blog post. Yeah. I have written one blog post at johngroombooks.com

and full disclosure, I did, I did not write it. Full disclosure, it is a press release. Yeah, it's a great press release. I'll say I know who wrote it and they're wonderful, but yeah, it wasn't me. I do have a quote in it that I wrote. Uh-huh. What was that? Can I read it as, as you? Sure, please, yeah, do my, it wasn't me. I do have a quote in it that I wrote. Uh-huh. What was that? Can I read it as as you? Sure, please. Yeah, do my do my accent. Before I was a novelist. Oh,

God. Before I was a YouTuber. No, I was a book reviewer. No. That was that good, John Green. I don't have one accent. Not only was that bad, it reminded me that in a time when so many people are doing so much damage to the national reputation of the United Kingdom, nobody, nobody is harming that country more than you with your accent. This is such a difficult time for our beloved British listeners. They are dealing with so much uncertainty, and then you have to pile it on by making them think that that's how they sound. One day, everybody's gonna find out

that I have a really great British accent, I just never use it. Mm-hmm, I bet. Before I was a novelist, before I was a YouTuber, I was a book reviewer, and the format still fascinates me. As I've been revising and expanding the essays for the Anthropocene Reviewed,

I've begun to understand these reviews as an attempt to chart the contradictions of human life as I experience it, how we can be so compassionate and so cruel, so persistent and so quick to despair, and how consciousness is at once depraved in its meaninglessness and profoundly sacred in its meaning. That's a little much. It makes me feel like a little like you wrote that for the aliens to hear. It's inscribed on a golden record that we've sent out into space. Yeah. I'm trying to get, I'm trying to really get those alien book sales. By the way, every copy of

the first edition of the Anthropocene Reviewed Book will be signed by me and you can get them wherever books are sold. Right. And human consciousness is both depraved in its meaninglessness and sacred in its meaning. Hank, do you still have a blog? I mean, I guess Eka Geek is still up. Oh, but you haven't posted to your blog in a while. It's not still up. It is currently not up. Wow.

Uh-oh. Okay. It's a nice reminder that in the fullness of time, all things will pass, including websites. Yeah. My blog is down, John. So who knows? There was a lot of posts there, but hey, I think that to some extent, nothing lasts.

I need to ask this question from Elise. Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, I'm a teen. And therefore, I have been following Hank's TikTok quite closely as of late. Elise least I am also on TikTok and I am a solid platinum TikToker at least. I make hit just hits. TikTok. I don't make flops. I'm like, who's only made four albums and they were all great.

Taylor Swift. She's made nine albums but they were all hits. On the. She's made nine albums. But they were all hits. On the Taylor Swift of TikToks, at least, I've never missed. Okay? It's true. You look at Hank's TikTok? Oh, sorry. He's brilliant, but he's got some, some duds.

Okay? He's made 5,000 TikToks. They can't all be amazing. I've made a lot of TikToks. When I make a TikTok, it's like when you're waiting for a new Thomas Pinchin novel or something, like the world stops. It's pronounced Pincho. I mean, we both, we both mispronounced it.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna,

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, Oh God. Super dumb. What were we talking about? It's, I mean, first off, Thomas Pinchon does not get to have an epit, you can't be both famously reclusive and have a strong opinion on how your name is pronounced. You don't get to, you don't get to be both

You have to choose. Yeah. Yeah, you have to not care. All right I mean it's such a it's such a niche joke Most people don't even know like anyway, there's this writer and I Said his name wrong the way that like everybody says it wrong Yeah, and then Hank corrected me incorrectly and it's very funny to me. Okay. But this wasn't a question. But this wasn't a question about my hit TikTok and my attempts.

Like I'm working so much harder to get people to follow me on TikTok where I don't make content that I have to get people to buy my new book. But anyway, at least your question. There are so many things that look so tasty, but you keep telling us not to eat. I want to know the opposite because if you don't follow Hank's TikTok, he's like got this whole thing where he's like, don't eat grass, don't eat other things that you shouldn't eat, you know, that's like part of this. Don't eat paste. Just trying to help Gen Z survive to adulthood. What are some things that seem wrong, but we actually can eat hungry Elise? Yeah, so like a big one is lettuce.

I don't know if you've ever seen lettuce, but it's like you take a big bunch of leaves and then you just crunch right into them. And they're really delicious, like full of crunch and water, and I love it. You wouldn't think that it's edible, but it is. That's true. That's true of lettuce.

No, also pop tarts, another one, where you're like, that doesn't look like food. It looks like cardboard with holes in it. And then you have it and you're like, that tastes okay, I guess. There's Play-Doh. That is always a surprise to me. That you can eat Play-Doh.

Yeah, that's pretty wild. Yeah, I mean, it seems like it seems kind of food-ish to me. I mean, yeah, I guess. I don't look at Play-Doh and think like, oh, I should eat that. But you can. I mean, don't eat a ton of it, but you can eat a little bit here and there. If it's fresh, you know, just out of the box, I always have a little bite. I love the idea of surprisingly edible.

And that's a great brand. Yeah. I would buy anything in the surprisingly edible brand, especially like, you know, that whole genre of TikToks where it's like, which one of these forks is actually a cake and which one's a fork? Yeah. Like, I want to, I want to, I want to eat more highly processed foods that are made to look like non-edible consumer products. Like, I want to go by a watch for breakfast.

Yeah, like a pop tart. You know, it's true. Like you look at a pop tart, you don't immediately think like that looks like food. You immediately think like, oh, that looks like, like I don't know, like a advanced post-it note or something. I would love a food brand that just sells me highly processed, like Cliffbar style things, but in the shape of non-edible experiences,

like books. Like, if I could eat a sweet Cliffbar of a book, I would love that. I think that'd be, that's a that. I think that'd be fine. That's a, Hank, I think that's your next big idea. We stumbled across Hank's next million dollar idea. So there are some things that you can eat and people do eat that seems very where there's certain birds nests that are made by bird spit that people eat and the first bird nest soup.

Yeah. You can eat chalk. Is an okay thing to eat. It's completely non-toxic. Really? Don't eat like a ton of it. Well, I mean, that goes for anything. Don't eat a ton of anything. Yeah, you can, you can chop on some chalk. In fact, I think sometimes they actually want to get calcium carbonate into people. They usually don't make them chew on a stick of chalk to get it. And clay also was a thing that's like that where clay is sometimes used as a, a thing to help

you feel better. Bismuth is the active ingredient in Pepto Bismuth. One of the active ingredients and Bismuth is the least radioactive substance. We used to think that it was the last, the heaviest element that wasn't radioactive, but it turns out it is just very slightly radioactive. It has a half life that is longer than the life of the universe. So boom, take that. That's kind of beautiful, actually. So far, not longer than the life of the universe. So boom, take that. That's kind of beautiful, actually.

So far, not like the ultimate lifetime of the universe, but so far. What? Well, we don't. Do we know? We know how long the... We do weirdly enough know how old the universe is, which seems very wrong.

I know we know how old the universe is. I'm saying, you said with great certainty that you know how long the universe will be into the future. We know that. No, we do not. It could be, it literally could be days. But in this circumstance in which it is days, then we, no one will notice when it happens.

So that'll be nice. Yeah. And the last thought that I'll have will be like, oh, business did have a half life longer than the universe. Wow. You will not have time to have that thought. I'm a very fast thinker, Hank. Okay, I'm a quick wit. Thomas Finchow. Oh, things are a little loose here this week. It's our end of your spectacular. It is. I love it.

No, we're not necessarily firing on all cylinders. I think it's been a win so far. This next question comes from Paige who asks, hi, it's dear Hank and John, Paige. No, I like high. I like high. I like high. I think high is appropriate.

I saw an Instagram video of someone getting a pet moose. You don't know this, but petting a moose has always been one of my lifelong goals. No, I did not know that about you, Paige. You're right. I want to pet a moose. Sure. Anyways, now I'm currently crying because I understand that I probably will never pet a moose.

But I want to. There is so big and cute, and I want to pet a moose. Question is, how do I make this happen? Turn to 394, Paige. Why 394? I don't know. That's a secret just for Paige. What's on page 394? I don't know. That's page. That's a secret just for page. What's on page 394? I don't know. That's a question that will be answering in our hit new podcast. Semi-redual

questions with Hank and John. The book I took down off the plate didn't have a page 394. Yeah, page. I'm going to hazard a guess that you want to pet a moose because you've seen a lot of pictures of moose. Because my experience of being in the presence of moose is that you do not want to pet them. Yeah, I mean, I'd want to pet a moose if it was a good moose, if like somebody had made it a petable moose, but like, one, I don't know that's something that someone should do. Yeah. So I don't know if I want to support them in that endeavor.

Right. And two, I don't know if I trust them. Because they're big. They're so big. Yeah, one of the only times I felt truly afraid. Yeah. In the purest, in its purest form, was when dad and I were rafting on the No attack river in Northern Alaska when I was like 14 and we hadn't seen a person in 10 days and

then suddenly a moose. How have you done things like that? What person was it that did that? I was just thinking about your... I hated it. I know dad is listening and I loved the time with dad. Yeah. But I would have loved to spend that time with dad. I mean, it was beautiful.

It was beautiful. It was great. It was a great trip. Do you remember, I was thinking about that Huck Finn thing that you did, where you like, with a bunch of other teens, lashed a bunch of logs together and floated down the Mississippi River with like, an adult.

Yeah, that's an interesting telling of the story. That's not what happened. Okay, that's how I have always imagined it. Ever since I was a kid and you were doing this and I was like, oh my God, I can't believe John's doing that. In some ways it was worse. It was me and like a bunch of other 13-year-olds who we did make the raft.

And then we rafted down the French broad river, which is a less intimidating river in a lot of ways than the Mississippi. It sounds very similar to what I said so far. But we weren't with one adult, we were with one 19-year-old. See? It says way worse than I said.

I know. I, yeah, I, I, what can I say? The 1980s were a different time. And you just ate anchovies? You came home and all you wanted to eat with anchovies and bagels? Yeah. I still like an anchovy, actually.

Bagels are also not bad. Yeah, that's all I ate for like eight days, and I lived out of a five gallon bucket that I had all my stuff in. Yeah, and it was pretty good. It was a good life, and I had an awesome, awesome time, but I do look back on that and think like, wow, that was, I was courting some danger that I didn't fully understand at the, yeah, I mean, like,

our parents were like, yes, barely a teen, go off and don't drown. See in three weeks. I mean, another way of thinking about it, Hank, is that when I went on that trip on the French broad river, I was like 14 months away from going to boarding school and having essentially no adult supervision for three years. I mean, those are different ways. This is just not at all my experience. It's very strange.

If we were gonna ask people, they would say that the weird rafting trip is a thing I did. Yeah, I mean, we did have very different childhoods in a way. I think the experiences that people would associate with, yeah, you would be the like experiences of adventure and everything. And that actually was like closer to my childhood.

Like you never really like went on crazy trips and like got jobs in random places over summers when you were in college or in your 20s. And I did that almost every year. Yeah. I mean, it was the same person. Like I had all, believe me, I brought all of my, I brought all of my problems to the Arctic. I was still me up there.

That's the big problem with the geographical curious that you bring yourself with you. But yeah, now it was weird. It was a good, anyway, the point is that if you are ever in the presence of a moose in the wilderness, and it's a big bull moose, you're not going to want to pet it. Yeah, yeah, but if we're going to be thinking about like moose adventures, like if I'm just going to like imagine, I want to like ride through the sky on a moose. I want to like ride through the sky on a moose. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Yippee, that's it. That's it. This podcast is also brought to you by Thomas Pinchel. Thomas Pinchel. You're saying it wrong.

He's the author of such hit books as Gravite's Rainbow. Today's podcast is also brought to you by surprisingly edible.com. Oh, I'm rising it edible.com. This is excellent news. I got to get that surprisingly editable.com. Oh, I'm surprised. Surprisingly editable.com. This is excellent news. I gotta get that before the episode comes out. It's definitely a real website where you can definitely buy real things. Oh, it's available.

Oh, no. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha makes me think that I should maintain my website. If I have four regular commenters, I feel like I need to be on there more often, answering more of the difficult questions. Where are they coming from? Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC, Wibbledon, we need to answer a couple more questions. Beginning with this one from Jazz, who writes,

do you John and Hank, what do you get a baby for Christmas? Okay, it goes on to talk about how my husband and I had a baby. This year, she's incredibly wonderful. Our families are all asking, what does she want for Christmas? She's a baby. I know the answer.

You get a baby, a well-wrapped box that contains more paper that you can scrunch up and crunch up and tear and do whatever you want with. And that's what you get the baby, that's it. But no, here's what you get a baby. You get a baby stuff for you. You get a baby, the things you need. That's what you ask.

This baby needs like a new six pack of Miller light. That's not what I was thinking, but okay. Yes. This baby needs consumables, because this baby isn't looking to increase their overall number of things in their house. So like, baby wants Miller light. Baby wants bath bombs. Baby wants bath bombs.

Baby wants some of those like some of that like, artisanal pink sea salt to sprinkle on top of a home cooked meals. Baby wants some lavender oil for babies baths by which Emmy mommy. Mommy needs some lavender baths. Baby needs some like vanilla scented candles. Baby needs some chamomile tea. Chamomile. None. I'm not No, I'm not I'm not I'm not engaging Not engaging you're welcome jazz we answered your question and the answer to brilliant

Thank you. Want to answer one more question before we go to Mars and AFC Wimbledon? Yeah sure This question comes from Juliana who asks dear Hank and John. I hope this isn't a dumb question But at the end of each podcast you say your podcast is shared in Gibson. Where is Gibson? And why are you sharing it there? Aren't podcasts shared everywhere? I'm not British, but Hank, pronounced this with a British accent. Juliana.

So fat. I mean, the funny thing is you are very familiar with someone named Rosiana who has a British accent and says her name in a British accent sometimes and yet and yet. I'm not saying I can do better, by the way. I'm just saying that therefore I don't try. Sheridan Gibson is a human person. Yeah, I just talk really fast at the end. And the podcast is produced by

Sheridan and Space Gibson. I'm just very, I feel very, Andrew is young. I'm very bad for Sheridan right now. After all these years, people think that she's just a place to locale that we Sheridan. No. Sheridan Gibson.

That's what it sounds like. It does. Now that I've heard it, I definitely get it. But yeah, it's a reference to a person, not a reference to a place. Correct. Hank, yes. I mean, AFC Wimbledon, as you know, have been scoring too early.

This has been a problem all season long. No team in the top four divisions of English soccer have given away more points from losing or tying positions than AFC Wimbledon. That's how big of a problem it is. So AFC Wimbledon in the middle of the week played Sunderland, which is a huge team. They have they're much, much bigger than we are in terms of like support and everything. But we managed to tie that game one, one. That's quite a good team, they have, they're much, much bigger than we are in terms of like support and everything. But we managed to tie that game one, one, one. That's quite a good result, I thought.

And then we had a home game against crew Alexandra. And I know what you're thinking, Hank, who exactly? And crew Alexandra, no offense to all the crew Alexandra fans out there, but crew scored in the 60th minute. It was one nil, and I was so discouraged and so frustrated. And then in the 90th minute, the games only last 90 minutes, take in the 90th minute. In what I thought must have been a brilliant, brilliant strategy, AFC Wimbledon scored an equalizing goal via Ryan Longman who has been great all season.

That sounds great. And I was like, what could go wrong? What could go wrong? There's only the like extra couple minutes they add on for injuries and substitutions at the end. We didn't even go a full minute before we gave up the losing goal. The night we scored in the 90th minute and we still scored too early. It is shocking at this point.

It is a problem. But at some point, it stops being a coincidence and it becomes statistically significant that we cannot hold onto a lead or a tie for even 45 seconds. So now we have to see what we'll then our 15th in the lead one table. And we're still six or seven points away from relegation.

So like it's not a emergency. Yeah, it's pretty close down at the bottom. It's pretty close down. It is, it's very crowded toward the bottom of the table. And I don't, I was feeling so good just a month ago. I mean, in terms of AFC, we all didn't season. And now I am not feeling great. And then there's the second level, of course, which is that with all the increased restrictions for the UK right now, it's not clear what's going to happen with the season in general. So yes, the hula blue as per usual,

what's the news from Mars? Well, John, and news from Mars, it's interesting and exciting. So insight is a spacecraft that's been on Mars for about two years, trying to learn more about the planet, and that's included a seismometer to measure Mars quakes, which are earthquakes, but on Mars. And they can tell us about the interior of Mars. And this month NASA announced some key findings from that data. So it takes a little laugh for all this stuff to get processed and go through peer review and stuff. So, here's some of the things we know.

One, Mars has a lot of Mars quakes, but none of them are very strong. Insight has measured more than 480 Mars quakes since April of 2019. None of them has been larger than 3.7 on the Richter scale, which is a little surprising to seismologists, but it could just be that we're watching Mars during a quiet seismological period, and maybe we'll catch some big ones later. The second result is that scientists think that Mars' wind is messing with some of their quake measurements, so the wind might be responsible for the fact that there have been very few quake measurements since June of this year, so somehow the wind is interfering with their ability to detect the Mars quakes.

And third, the quakes are weird. So we expected that Mars quakes would have a type of wave called a surface wave, which travels over and along the crust. And these surface waves were gonna give us information about stuff going on as far down as 250 miles below the surface. But for some reason, none of these quakes have had surface waves.

So maybe Mars has a crust that has lots of like fractures beneath in the site, or maybe the quakes that have been detected are coming from much deeper in the planet. And so we're not getting those surface waves, which is a bit of a bummer because those surface waves maybe would tell us stuff about the surface of Mars that we're not getting data on. But we are, but it is interesting nonetheless that it doesn't seem to have surface waves because that tells us a lot about the, potentially a lot about the geology of Mars. So whatever habitations are built on Mars, it sounds like are going to have to be built to withstand some level of Mars quaking. Yeah. built to withstand some level of Mars quaking. Yeah, I mean, probably the,

I mean, 3.7 is enough that it's very likely to not cause damage. Any more damage than like the wind would, for example. Right. The wind would be a greater force in the structure than the quake. Right. I mean, it just blows my mind to even think

about seismic activity. Yeah. Which is so deeply associated with Earth for me that we literally call them earthquakes. It's hard for me to imagine that happening elsewhere. Yeah, of course it does. It's just strange that there are planets out there being planets. Thanks to everybody for listening, especially thank you for listening through this most difficult and strange year. We hope that you're doing okay out there. We are looking forward to 2021 and hope that it will be an easier year for many of you and many of us. This podcast runs on your questions,

please email us your questions and comments at hank and john at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Manish. It's produced by Ros on a Huls Rojas, and Sheridan Gibson. The communication coordinator is Julie Bloom, our editorial assistant is Deboki Chauk-Ravardi, the music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast about the great gunorola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. you