Dear Hank & John - 275: What Good Death Quotes

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

How does public domain work? What is the most common name in human history? Why do we sleep in the dark? What's up with epigraphs in books? When does researching become spying? How are categories useful? 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. Gourds up for a think of it, dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you a new advice in bringing all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, yeah, we had a pretty good childhood. Remember when dad used to take us to that hill and put us in tires and roll us down, roll us down the hill? Only vaguely.

Yeah, those were good years. Those were good years. I really, did he do that? I don't actually remember that. No. Okay. No. Okay. I mean, I do kind of vaguely remember being inside a tire

at some point in my life, but I don't, I don't think I was rolled down a hill in one. I do, I had so much childhood and I have so few memories of it that I just assume whatever anyone tells me is true. You know, like, I remember when Dad used to put us in tires and roll us, I mean, I couldn't actually know that I said it out loud.

I don't know whether or not that happened. I was a child for thousands and thousands of days and I have like seven memories. So who knows? John, I did this gag a while back. We made a video on our bizarre beasts YouTube channel. YouTube back home is Hushed Bizarre Beasts, where we talked about Binterongs,

and Binterongs piece smells a little bit like buttered popcorn, which is real weird. And a person who works at a wildlife place where they have wild animals including a Binterongong, sent me a jar of bintarong pee. And it was, and like, this is great. It means I can, as a part of this thing, smell the bintarong pee and tell you what it actually smells like to me, not just like that you've heard this,

but this is like a direct report with a man holding a jar with a towel in it that is soaked in the scent of a bintarong. Oh boy. And it's a good gag. It's a good thing where jar with a towel in it that is soaked in the scent of a bintarong. Oh boy. And it's a good gag. It's a good thing, I'm a content creator and I will do what it takes to create a content. But I do not know what to do with this jar of bintarong smell.

Well, it's been sitting on my desk now for like a month and a half. I've got a solution. It's not like you have an actual organism that you're going to like mess up the Montana wilderness or whatever by introducing this new kind of tree frog. It's a liquid. Like you just pour it out and then you wash extensively, wash out the container. It's not like just a jar of pee.

It's like a jar of the towel that the bentarong peed on. Oh. And it is like, there's like a dewy inside, just because it was warmer wherever it was than where it is now. Okay, I have a new idea then, which is that you need to dig a hole and you need to bury it. You need to have a kind of a series of farewell rituals that the whole family participates in,

and then you bury it. We have recently buried it. Do you want to smell it? No. I can send it to you. Oh no, thank you. I appreciate the gesture, but I'm good. I, I'm all full up on other organisms here right now.

Just jars of things, just jars of things. I am kind of, you know, I like a little bit having a bunch of weird stuff. I've got two decapitated bobble johns. Yeah. It's just over the years, all of my bobble heads. Those aren't that weird actually. The bobble head versions of me,

I would say 95% of them have been accidentally or purposefully decapitated. Yeah, they do have a seeming just a weakness at the neck, I suppose. Yes. Well, the whole underlying problem with bubble heads, right, is that they're a little top heavy. Yeah. Well, we wanted to make it accurate.

And you and I both also have weaknesses at the neck. It's true. And the rest of our bodies too. This first question comes from Scott. We're going to answer some questions from our listeners because that's what we do on the podcast. Scott's true. And the rest of our bodies too. This first question comes from Scott. We're going to answer some questions from our listeners because that's what we do on the podcast. Scott writes, dear John and Hank, what's the deal with works entering the public domain? What does that phrase even mean? Does it just mean that like everyone owns it now? Like, I recently purchased a new copy of Dracula. That $12 had to go to someone, right? I get that I'm paying for

like printing and binding and whatnot, but could I just legally print my own copies of Dracula and sell them? Yes. Yes, you could. Yes, in fact, we've thought about doing that. Yeah, we've thought about doing a series of public domain like beautiful books that are expensive

and that people buy and then we give all the money to charity. But then that seemed like a lot of work. And actually publishing. It's also hard. Yeah, publishing is really difficult. The margins, the profit margins aren't that great because of the aforementioned binding and whatnot. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. I mean, especially to make something that's attractive.

But even to make something that's readable, like book design is hard. It's a lot of work. I don't understand why it's so hard, but I tried to do it once and I was like, oh my God, this is a high skill job. It's one of those things that's like, it would, you would imagine putting words

on a piece of paper in a way that is attractive would be something that you would be able to do. No. But it is not. Nope. You have to have a lot of skill to do it well. Yeah, and a lot of training as well, I think. So yeah, that's one reason.

The other thing to remember in this Scott is that, like, as a rule, the author doesn't get that much of the cost of a book. Right. Like, the money that goes to the author is not that large a percentage of the book cost. And so, removing that, which is what happens when a book enters the public domain, doesn't shave that much off the cost of a book. Now, there are like dover-thrift editions and stuff that cost like two or three dollars and that, you know, are made to be as inexpensive as possible, smallest possible margins, the least space between lines, etc. But in general, this stuff costs money. Interestingly,

even e-books kind of cost money. Like, it's still a fair amount of work. Yeah, it's it's it's work to prepare them to be an e-book. Once they are an e-book, it is basically free to make another copy, which is the nice thing about e-books. But this is why you can download, like you could, for example, download Dracula for free, no problem. But getting a physical copy, especially if it's going to look nice, costs money in the same way that, like, my book costs money, but, you know, minus the 50 cents or whatever I'd make on a paperback.

I have often been asked how I feel about the prospect of my work someday entering the public domain. And the answer is that I feel delighted. If my, if there's a single person who wants to read my books the day after they entered the public domain, dead me is going to be so happy. I mean, it really should happen sooner. And there's interesting effects, right? Like, like, yeah, the first Agatha Christie books are now entering the public domain. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been for a long, long time, and that's why there's so many Sherlock things. Yeah. And much fewer, plaro, and missmarple things.

Like you can, like you can make a Sherlock thing. You, right now, you can go and make a Sherlock thing, you can sell it, you can write Sherlock fanfiction and put it in a book and sell it to a person in a way that you can't with, you know, anything that's not in the public domain, which is why there's like Sherlock the TV show, and there's like the British Sherlock show, and the American Sherlock show, and there's like Sherlock with Robert Duney Jr., and they're all different Sherlocks,

but you can do that because it's in the public domain. It isn't just like I can print a copy of a Sherlock Holmes book, which I could do, or record an audio book of it, like I could do all of those things. Right. But I can also use that character, and that allows for all this freedom, and all this creation that otherwise wouldn't

happen. And it allows Sherlock Holmes to continue living new lives, which I think is just so exciting. Yeah. And really, I think what most creators would like the most is not for their descendants to make the most possible money from their intellectual property, but to have the work survive, to have the work and the characters be in conversation

with the present in some way. Yeah, like what you really want is for people to continue to care about your work because that kind of keeps the stories alive and contemporary even as they age. And so, yeah, I agree. Like I would be happy if my work went into the public domain in, you know, less than 90 years

or whatever the current number is. Yeah, and I don't think that either of us have created characters that will live the way that Sherlock did, but I think that there are lots of characters out there like that that are not able to live that life. Right. Yeah, for sure. And lots of stories that, you know, for example, the people who are really big about preventing

works from going into the public domain like Disney, like they had lots of stories that they profited off of that were not, that were, that were released in the public domain, like Peter Pan. Like Cinderella, Snow White. I the public domain, like Peter Pan. Like Cinderella, Snow White. I mean, the list is literally endless. It was all of their original things, or just things that had already been created.

They were in the public domain, they made them, and now they're like, actually I'm not so sure that you can make that now, because we kind of have, we've kind of are kind of the people who made Peter Pan, Peter Pan. Of course, it's like Peter Pan things. Yeah, but they get annoyed when you try to make a snow white thing

that's too much like there's snow white thing. Right. So that's the deal with the public domain. And I believe very strongly that things should enter the public domain sooner. That said, Hank, you and I could both release our work into the public domain if we wanted to and we choose not to. So yeah, well, I've only had like five years.

It's not Bay Thirsty In Glory here. I'm not ready to now part ways with looking for Alaska just yet. I may get there, but not today. This next question, John comes from Sarah Beth who asks, dear Hank and John, I was thinking the other day about how many people have been named Jose and I was wondering, what is the most common name ever in the world, not just people living right now, but if you look at names throughout all of history,

what name has been used the most, I will never be the most common, Serapheth. Hey, you don't know that. There is a long future for humanity ahead. I am hoping and maybe Serapheth is really gonna catch on and there'll be billions of you someday. John, I found this question fascinating when I did a little bit of research because I was like, I don't know, hoping and maybe Sarah Beth is really going to catch on and there'll be billions of you someday. John, I found this question fascinating when I did a little bit of research because I was

like, I don't know, maybe somebody knows the answer to this. Not only does no one know the answer to this, no one could know the answer to this and two different people could come up with very different, different answers because do you count Joe's as Jose's? Do you count Sarah's with an H or without an H? Do you only use English or do you look in all of the languages? Do you consider the same name, the same name if it is, you know, basically the same in one language from another or it's pretty different?

Like, James. Right, like is John Giovanni. Exactly. Like, very different names, but they are the same name. So it's impossible to know because there are lots of subjective decisions that you would have to make, which also, it's kind of beautiful to me that it turns out that this thing that we would think is pretty objective, turns out to really require a lot of subjective decision-making on the part of the person doing the study. And that is often the case when we are studying things like this, sociological things where people and like in, in the way that people have done these analyses,

they often say they often only count like individual spellings. And so like, for example, Oliver would get a preference because there's really only one way to spell Oliver, but Muhammad would, would not get a preference and might rank higher than Oliver, but it's actually wait on the list because there's like three or four different common ways to spell it. Yeah, yeah, there are different ways to transliterate different names, but then also as names spread among languages, those names can be spelled or pronounced differently. languages, those names can be spelled or pronounced differently. I think though that we also can't know because we don't know the names of almost everyone

who ever lived. That's the other thing. There's this common misconception that there are like a huge percentage of the people who ever lived are currently alive because population growth has been quite dramatic. And that's true. because population growth has been quite dramatic. And that's true. I mean, the global population has been doubling faster

and faster over time. And but 93 to 95, maybe 97 billion people have lived of whom like seven billion are currently alive. And only like 40 or 50 billion lived in the last hundred years. Right. And also, if you go back a couple or a few hundred years, we just don't know what those people's names were.

Like not very many places have good records. You could do it in like Ireland and that's it. Not only that, 99.9% of human history occurred more than 2,500 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Almost the whole time we've been here, we know quite little about at least in terms of like what everybody's name was. Oh God, I would love to know what somebody's name was

50,000 years ago. Wouldn't that be cool to know? Yeah, I mean, we're not even totally sure that people had names 50,000 years ago. I mean, I, they must have, they must have had something like names. And I, and like we're always like cavemen, grog, and ug, and I'm like, no,

they would have had beautiful names. Or not, I mean, there's a lot of like beautiful languages out there, Hank, but like maybe it all sounded like Dutch and it just sounded like they were all clear in their throats. Wow. Gosh. Oh, that's, that's, that's honestly all the Dutch people listening are just nodding in, in acknowledgement.

They know. It's not a bad thing. It's a great language. It's extremely expressive. It's just a bad thing. It's a great language. It's extremely expressive. It's just like a lot of, all right. Keep going, John. You know more about the Dutch than I do. You lived there for a while. I'm sorry if I hurt any Dutch people's feelings by saying that the language involves a lot of, but it does. I mean, look, American English to be clear is hideous.

I'm aware, like, I hear, would British people do American accents? I'm always like, oh, that's what we sound like. We do make a lot of, eh, eh, eh, no, eh. It's also flat and nasally. We get our ideas across. I'd like a hamburger. I would. I believe in capitalism I believe that banks should never be regulated

Okay, I don't have enough cars Do you have any mayonnaise for this sandwich? All right, All right. That's a little too close to home. The American accent. That's what we sound like to the rest of the world, Hank. This next question comes from Grace, he writes, dear John and Hank, I didn't know the answer to the saying.

I don't know if you know the answer, but I thought it was an interesting question. Why do we sleep in the dark? Like, if it's night outside and our bodies know it's night and we're tired and all that, why do we still sleep better with the lights out? Amazingly, grace. Oh, grace, this is, you're going to have to, we're all going to have to get used to this thing that is hard to believe that we are not in control of our bodies, and that there are lots of things happening way beyond our notice, and completely out of our control. And one of those things is that dark makes us sleepy, and light makes us less sleepy, even in situations where we would like to be sleeping. And we take that information in through our eyes, and we get that both through our eyelids a little bit, but also when we sort of like

rouse throughout the night and take in a little bit of light by opening our eyes a little bit in ways that we would never notice unless there is a bunch of light that would wake us up. So our circadian rhythms, which defines when we get sleepy and how well we sleep and how stressed out we are during sleep times are controlled by the amount of light that we perceive. And only through our eyes, it seems like there's with some thought that maybe our skin, because there are compounds in our skin that respond, like chemically respond to, to light. But it appears that people who like blind people who have, can sense no light,

basically, their circadian rhythms are not affected by the presence or absence of light. So it's just what we are seeing. And we are not in control of it, and we are not aware of it, but it is a thing. And why evolutionarily is a separate question, but physiologically, it is a rigid system. Let me ask you a follow-up question.

Is there any way that a nocturnal animal in your opinion could ever become like the sentient dominant species on the planet, or is being nocturnal just kind of an inherent problem? Well, I think absolutely they could, but also their nocturnal isn't actually that common of a trait, like where they're asleep all day and awake all night.

Mostly what we have is direnality, where what we think of as nocturnal species are active a little bit for a while after night, and then they go to back to bed. But yeah, I don't see why not, especially like they've got other ways of sensing the world around them. The question that keeps me up at night is whether that could happen to an organism that exists under the water. A superior fish being, if you will. Exactly. And I think about that all the time, specifically with octopuses more than fish these days, because I think it's like, honestly, now that I'm a little bit grown, I think that superior fish being would be much less likely than a superior cephalopod being.

That seems very possible to me. They can do so much. They're so smart. I read this book called, at Days Clothes, a history of nighttime that talks about what night was like in medieval Eurasia for people, like in, you know, like say the 10th century. And people used to wake up for an hour or so at night. Yeah. And it was this separate period of consciousness and wakefulness when different things happened that just doesn't exist anymore, which I find quite strange. Yeah, well, we've got better systems now, I guess.

I guess that's true. I mean, to some extent, there's not like as much to take care of in the middle of the night. That's true. You do not used to be that you get cold and you have to put another log on the fire, at least. All kinds of things. John, this next question comes from Clara,

and I'm asking it because like, I, there are so many things that I should know and that I shouldn't be embarrassed to ask, including this one. Dear, and good John, why are there poems and quotes from other works in fiction books in between chapters, in the beginning, et cetera? How did that become a thing?

How does an author choose them? And do I have to read them? I guess they might establish themes, but I must admit that I sometimes just skip them if I wanna keep reading the story. Re-listening to old episodes always comes my anxiety. So thanks Clara from Berlin. This is a great question actually.

I read a book called The Art of the Epigraph by Rosemary A. Herd where I learned a lot about epigraphs. They really rose in prominence during the 18th century when writing and reading became more universal experiences in large parts of the world. Because before that, like, there's just like when you were reading, say, Hey, Ovid, there was just an expectation that you'd also read a bunch of other, you know, Roman poets. And so they would make references and assume that you knew them. Right. And then there was this sort of tradition of collecting quotations from a lifetime of reading.

Like the most famous example of this is this book, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Then it's like 2000 pages long and has thousands and thousands of quotes. What did it have been like a big deal if you were a writer? Would you be like, fishing for a Bartlett's mention? Oh, for sure. I mean, that's being mentioned in Bartlett's.

Even like 20 years ago, was as close as most writers could expect to come to immortality. Okay. It's wild how fast that changed. I mean, I still have three or four editions of Bartlett's. But now, of course, if you want to quote, the internet has them, they aren't accurate, but they have them. So the use of these Democrats is partly to talk about

theme or to set a tone or to make reference to something that the book or the story or the chapter is a response to. It's also often used as a way of trying to like set expectations or put yourself as a writer in a certain category. But the thing that I found so interesting about this is that almost from the moment epigraphs began to be used in fiction books, novelists began making up epigraphs. in fiction books, novelists began making up epigraphs. Like, George Elliott, for instance, used fictional epigraphs in her work that didn't acknowledge their fictionality. So, like, so almost from the beginning,

fiction writers were playing with the idea of like, this is true, this isn't. And that's something that I liked so much that I did it in the Fallenar Stars. Like, there's a made up epigraph in the fault in their stars. I like epigraphs in general. I like the most when they are made up. I mean, yeah, I love epigraphs in science fiction when it's a system of world building,

where you're like setting the stage and you're setting the tone and like, and you're also like creating the existence of a book, an important book, or an important thinker or author in that world, who doesn't exist in our world. And it's always seemed to me a little bit pretentious, especially because it's oftentimes it's like holy books, or just deeply important meaningful works of philosophy in the universe of science fiction. but the author of the book is just writing this stuff that we aren't now supposed to as readers and, you know, do, like imagine that as like world changing foundational philosophy for these people. But it's just like some guy named Frank came up with it. Like you couldn't get away with it if outside of an epigraph almost.

Right. That's, that's exactly right. Do you, you don't have epigraph it if outside of an epigraph, almost. Right. That's exactly right. You don't have epigraphs for either of your books, do you? No. I did not have. No, maybe. God. I don't think you do. I don't think I do.

I didn't have one for looking for Alaska, or an abundance of Catherine's. I had one for turtles all the way down, and then I had the made up one for Fall and our stars. I had one for turtles all the way down because- Just one at the made up one for Fallenar Stars. I had one for turtles all the way down because- Just one at the beginning, is that? Yeah, just one at the beginning. Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills, which is a show-and-how-our-quote, which is, you know, pretentious philosophy.

But I wanted to have it because I didn't know how else to say this is a book that never mentions the phrase free will that is about free will, right? I didn't know how it's to say that. And maybe if the book is good enough, it can do that on its own. But I think it's, I wanted to establish at the outset that like for me and for this book, the problem is not the question of, of will. It's the question of being able to will what you will. There's a turtles all the way down element to free will

that I was also trying to explore alongside of like, you know, obsessiveness and recursion. Right. And so that was like a super useful quote for me in thinking as I was writing the book, and so I decided to put it in the book. But I have often worried like, oh boy, it does, it does set a bit of a pretentious tone. Yeah, there is an element of pretension.

And like I didn't really get why until I wrote novels. But now when I read books that have epigraphs, I'm like, are you just bragging that you've like read a bunch of cool books? Like it's what it feels like that you like read in a sophisticated way that you like even know about this quote, how do you know about this? And sometimes I'm like,

you deserve, you absolutely deserve it. And like, you know, oftentimes, novelists are English professors and or professors of writing at universities. And so like they do a lot of reading. So it makes sense that they would have this like big backlog of amazing thoughtful quotes, but like, I don't have that. So if I did a bunch of, if I did epigraphs before every chapter, I'd be on like, quote, a pdf or whatever every day, and like, just type in death and see what good death quotes there are. You don't have my way in. You don't have like a, like a Google doc or a notebook you keep, like when you read a book that you love that of lines from it. No, John, all of my notebooks are full of like meetings from budget presentations.

I mean, the Anthroposite Reviewed book is probably 95% me taking that Google doc and turn it into a book. Yeah, God. It's just a stitch together of quotes that I love. Interspersed with a memoir. We're so, we're so, we have such similar paths, but such different minds. Yeah, although I will say that one thing I like about your writing Hank that I try to emulate in my own, is that even though you are pretentious, there's no like question about it.

You're a little bit pretentious as a writer. Of course. You are also self-aware. Like you understand what you're doing well enough to be able to make a little bit pretentious as a writer. Of course. You are also self-aware. You understand what you're doing well enough to be able to make a little bit of fun of it. The thing I find most unbearable about writers is when they can't make fun of themselves. It's so cringy to me to hear, and I won't name names, but like, there are some very famous writers who genuinely think that they are geniuses, and it's so uncomfortable.

And it also just, like, it tells a story to readers that isn't true. It tells a story of like, oh, this, you know, I am a famous writer because of my incredible talent and because the muse whispers into my ear each morning the great love stories of our time. And I want to be like, no, you know, you're a regular person. I mean, all of it, you come to understand is, you know, narrative building. And so they want to build a story of that people will understand as they read in the book about like the greatness of the author.

And lots of authors do that. And like I think that it can deepen your enjoyment of a book if you believe it, but we are kind of, we've moved out of that part of our history, especially with like I certainly could never make that case because like you've seen YouTube videos of me humping on Elk statue. Right.

Like I could never have pulled that off. I'm in the same boat. You have to be a little bit self-aware because you know that people are like, no, I know that guy. He's an idiot. You've seen my TikTok. Yeah. Hank, this all reminds me of a great story about William Faulkner. So William Faulkner, who's an American novelist, I don't even know if the story's true, but I'm gonna tell it. Okay. William Faulkner is like bird hunting

with the famous American actor. I don't even know who. Let's say Clark Gable. And, okay. And they're talking about, there were a couple other people and they're talking about writing.

And Clark Gable says, Mr. Faulkner, who are your favorite authors? And Faulkner says, well, I suppose, John does pastos and myself. And Clark Gable says, Mr. Faulkner, who are your favorite authors? And Faulkner says, well, I suppose John does passos and myself. And Cargable says, oh, Mr. Faulkner, you right. And Faulkner says, yeah, Mr. Gable, what do you do? What?

I mean, that is, the crux of the story is correct. I've found it. And did I get, did I get carte gable right? No, it wasn't even an actor. It was a newspaper mend. Dang, it's a much better story with carte gable than it is for a journalist. The quote was, do you write Mr. Faulkner? And then he informed him that he had won

the Nobel Prize in Literature. Oh, dang. I guess that's a pretty good comeback to be like, I do, yes, and indeed an Academy in Sweden acknowledged my contributions. Yeah, it's like when people ask me if it's my first VidCon. It's a little different. It's a little different. It's a little different from when people ask you if it's your first VidCon. If we have aroused any suspicion that we might be humble people, we have now completely

made clear that that was an illusion. That is your Nobel Prize Hank is having founded VidCon. That is... Look. I got... It's something... Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel Prize in literature soon to be won no question no doubt by Hank Green. This podcast is also brought to you by my new podcast where I just read public domain books

and then question mark and then profit. I don't know. I still think that's a good idea. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Superior Sephilimapod Beings. Superior Sephilimapod Beings far more realistic than Superior Fish Beings. And finally, this podcast is brought to you

by a pretentious epigraph, just any pretentious epigraph that shows how clever and well-read the author is. You know the best one, the one that's in like fully 35% of literary novels is that George Elliott quote, if we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar, which lies on the other side of silence, which is a great, great line.

Yeah, but you know it's overused because I've heard it. John, this next question comes from... Hey, hey, hey, Hank, do you want me to interspers some quotes from my quote document through the rest of the podcast, because I'm happy too? Great. Just at the end, but between every, between every question from now. my quote document through the rest of the podcast because I'm happy too. Yeah, great. Just at the end, but between every, between every question from now on. Sure.

And before and after the news. Sure. John, this next question comes from Caleb who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm researching my little brother. When does researching become spying? Caleb. I mean, immediately.

Right? Well, no. Well, because you already know everything about your little brother that you should know. No, because if you're like interviewing your little brother, if you say, hey, I want to get to know you a little bit better. And I'm wondering if I can ask you a few questions. What's your favorite color?

What do you want to, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? Stuff like that. That's research. If you're like rifling through your little brother's stuff, that's fine. What about asking questions of people in his life without him knowing?

Oh, I think with a non-famous person, the line is whether or not they're aware of being researched. And then I think with a famous person, the line is, Hey, are you looking at me at a restaurant, which is spying or like reading about them on Wikipedia, which is researching? There's got to be that that was just two, that was just two examples. I want rules.

I don't have firm rules, Hank. I know. That's the problem with the world. Like because ultimately, if you're going gonna write a biography of a person, you do kind of have to do some more research. You're gonna have to get like primary sources. And maybe if the person's dead, you're gonna like read all their old letters. That feels like spying. Yeah, I think it's a place where it's really hard to know what the rules are, Hank. Which actually reminds me of something Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. Wow. That's a good or a week. I mean, you're all week. Fantastic. Yeah. Well, what can you just answer questions from our listeners with just dope quotes? Well, Hank, you don't William Carlos Williams says no ideas, but in things.

Well, let's have this be a thing, man. This question is from Sydney, who asked dear Hank and John, I'm a long time listener, and I've noticed that you guys frequently talk about how arbitrary categories are. You've touched on why categories are flawed, but in what ways are they useful? Why do we have to group stuff together with stuff that is similar, but not the same? Contents and categories, Sydney, can you do it? What do you got in there? All right, Hank. As Audrey Lorde wrote, it is through poetry that we give names to those ideas, which are until the poem nameless and formless about to be birthed, but already felt.

And what I mean by that is that one of the main things categories can do is give us names and form for ideas that are difficult to find language for. Categories can be a way of creating language around something. The problem is when we forget that we are creating that language. Yeah, but it's completely understandable that we would have that reaction when when language is so often the filter through which we understand our world. Just have to push against that. Yeah, it reminds me of something that Mary Oliver once wrote, this, the one world we all

belong to, where everything sooner or later is part of everything else. There are no categories, Hank, because everything sooner or later is part of everything else. God, John, I'm shocked. I could do this all day. That first quote, I didn't believe that you're going to be able to do that at all, let alone find a quote that was actually very apropos. And then that second one also very good in that moment.

So I'm feeling outclassed, frankly, do you want to do that? He's from Mars and I have to go on the other side. Yeah, but first I need to quote, Pope John Paul II. It's probably unfortunately he never said this, which is a real bummer. He was a big football fan, but he probably never actually said of all the unimportant things. Football is the most important, but it's so true. And of course, of all the football teams, AFC Wimbledon is the most important hank. It's not good.

It's not a good situation in South London at the moment on a lot of levels. But the level at which we talk about on the podcast is the third tier English football level. AFC Wimbledon have garnered just a single point one draw from their last seven league games. That's not good. You want at least like one point per game on average. You don't want one seventh of a point per game on average. So it's a really difficult time. Now, obviously, like a bunch of players having COVID or having to self isolate during this period has not been helpful, but yikes. It's not great. And it's definitely at this point, capital W. Wory. So I would say that we're at a level three or four emergency at this point. We're at the point where I feel like I need to like open up the window from level three and say like buy some players and then wimble then shouts back. We don't have any money

Can you give us some Sorry, so that's not good, but Hank I have good news. Okay. I have really good news There's a knockout competition that aFC Wimbledon plays and unfortunately it's called the Papa John's trophy Oh, no, you know, it has a naming sponsor. And over the years, it's had some good sponsors. And now it's got to really somehow or another, AFC Wimbledon have managed to make it

to the last eight of this competition. Weird. I know. Winner the wrong games. I am aware we are definitely winning the wrong games, but we've eaten some pretty good teams on our way to the top eight. And now amazingly, Wimbledon are just two wins away from playing at Wembley England's

national stadium in front of no fans for the Papa John's trophy, a real thing that you can win in sports. But I mean, Hank, it's a real competition. And I mean, I guess we could theoretically win it. We don't know who we're playing in the next round yet. That draw does not happen until January 23rd, but it could be Sunderland, which is this team that plays in the third tier of English football, even though they have like 30,000 season ticket holders and pay individual players more than AFC Wimbledon's entire budget for the season.

But it could also be in the next round, the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes. Really? Yeah. They also made it to the eight. They also made it to the final eight. That's very weird, because they're not good either. They're not good. But this is a competition to be clear that mostly pits not good teams against each other.

It used to be known as the John Stone's paint trophy. If you remember that from previous episodes of the pod, because I know you have a photographic memory of every time I talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon and you don't zone out at all. What's the news from Mars? And news from Mars was also some sad news. We have officially ended the professional

career of the insight mole. So it is now just a piece of technology sitting on the surface of Mars that we're not going to try and do anything else with. So this thing, the heat flow and physical properties package that was deployed as part of the insight lander to dig into Mars and learn about the planet. And it was supposed to go like really deep into the planet, tell us a bunch about how heat moves around inside of Mars. It would tell us a lot about the crust of Mars turns out

the soil is tricky. And probably what happened is that there's just not enough friction in the soil to hold it. And so it was just bouncing up and down in the ground. And after all of the work that was done to try and get this thing down 10 feet, it only went down about two centimeters. So on January 9th, the team decided to officially end the mission, that part of the inside mission. Now, always when you fail at something on Mars, well, not always, but often when you fail at something on Mars, and in this case, you do learn things, the structure of the soil, for example, we also learned that it's hard

to get a digger in. So we would have to do that in a different way if we tried to do it in the future. And also we learned how to use the robotic arm of the insight lander and strange ways that it was not designed to do. So maybe we will do that again in the future. It wasn't like it was just like a thing that just didn't even turn on and didn't do anything. We did get some useful data out of it. It just wasn't about the heat of the interior of Mars, which is what we were going for. Dang it. Yeah, that really is too bad because I know all those scientists

like built the thing on Earth to try to figure out what the issues could be and that's disappointing. So there's a lot we won't be learning about like the seismic activity on Mars that we are hoping to better understand about Mars quakes. Yeah, we still have good data on Mars quakes and inside is still one of the things that it does is it is able to use earthquakes to sort of map the interior of Mars. This was like to be able to like detect how heat would move around inside of the planet would tell us different things about the interior. It reminds me of something that Carl Sagan wrote once, maybe we're on Mars because of the

magnificent science that can be done there, that the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time or maybe we're on Mars because we have to be because there's a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process. We come after all from hunter gatherers and for 99.9% of our tenure on earth, we've been wanderers and the next place to wander to is Mars. It's true. Great. He was good at that. It's an next place to wander to Hank. He was good at that. But not until at least 2028. That was the last thing that Carl Sagan said in that long quote about Mars. He said, we should go to Mars. We should. It's so important.

It is. But not until 2028, Carl Sagan. John, thank you for making a podcast with me. We're off to record our Patreon only podcast this weekend stuff where we talk about stuff that we like this week. Hopefully, there will be some of that. And you can find out more at patreon.com slash to your Hank and John, and all that money goes to help fund

all the things that we do at Complexly. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune of Mettish. It's produced by Rosie Yonahal Sirohas and shared in Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast, it's by the great Gonna Rolla.

And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪