Dear Hank & John - 277: One Quirk Too Many

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Why do American weeks start on Sunday? How long should Christmas decorations stay up? How do I add variety to my life? What's a failure that felt like success? Is it okay to use a gift in its thank you card? 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. Dore's up for a thick of a dear John and Hank. It's a podcast for two brothers answer your questions, give you a new advice and bring them all the way to the news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, how do you make an octopus giggle? I don't know. You give them 10 tickles.

John, octopuses have 10 tickles. And I bring this up. Hank. Yeah. Hank, correct me, science man. Well, it's just that I don't know if you've seen the Nobel Prize that I keep in the background of the vlogbrothers videos.

It's the Nobel Prize for being extremely pedantic. And I won it the old fashioned way, which was by pointing out that Octopi don't have tentacles. Octopodes have feet. Oh my god. So there are three ways to pluralize Octopus. They are all fine. Octopi is probably the least correct of all of them.

If we're gonna be pedantic. I agree. But you were correct that Octopodes are octopodes. God, octopodes. But octopuses is by far the best. In any case, this is all in reference to this conversation that has been happening around hibernation and how America has failed at students by teaching people

that bears just sleep for four months. And you really should not get Hank and I started on the topic of fragmentation. I just, I need everybody to know how mad I am about the hibernation discourse. Because it's, I can't be this mad on Twitter because it doesn't make any sense. Because you, first of all,

thank you for anybody's allowed to be mad on Twitter. That's the defining characteristic of the platform. But it wouldn't make sense because I'm the only one who's getting 30 hibernation hot takes in my TikTok and Twitter replies a day. And I'm just so really over it. So this is a weird thing that happens on the internet where somebody points out that some piece of received wisdom

is slightly wrong or oversimplified because indeed, much of received wisdom is oversimplified on account of how we're just trying to describe extremely complex experiences of being human in limited language. So, like, yeah, there's language itself as an essentializer. And then you have the additional level of essentialization, which is that not everybody needs to know everything. Experts in bear hibernation need to know more about bear hibernation than I do. Yeah, the bear experts need to know. I need to know that they basically sleep for four months. The thing that drives me crazy about it though is that what happens on the internet is somebody says, Hey, a piece of received wisdom that you've been told is true,

your whole life turns out to be slightly oversimplified. And then everyone concludes from this, bears don't hibernate. And now it's even more wrong. Right. And so like, if you think of like, right being a two on a scale of one to 100, you've gone from zero, which isn't right, but it's close to right. It's close to two. To a hundred, which is very far away from two.

Oh, much longer. And so now there are millions of people walking around telling everyone else, hey, did you know that bears don't really hibernate? Right. And you say that you're the only person who's been affected by this, Hank, but in fact, I was recently reading an essay

that one of the new essays that's gonna be in the Anthropocene Reviewed book, and it involves a Groundhog. I have a Groundhog who is my great nemesis. Having a nemesis is one of the things in my life that I was missing until I became friends with this Groundhog, and now I have a nemesis and everything is back to being good and right in the world. And in the essay, which I was like reading to a small group of people just to get some feedback, I noted that this groundhog hybronates and so many people were like, no, no, you're going to have to change that because it turns out that

groundhogs don't hibernate. Just learned about this. And two things. One, groundhogs are what's known as true hibernators because they actually do hibernate in the way that we think about hibernation. And two, even if they didn't, he would still be underground for four months doing barely anything, which is our functional definition of hibernation. We need to live in a world where just because zero is not the exact same as two does not mean that 100 is the correct answer. Yeah, I mean, the thing about hibernation is, and this isn't, the thing about hibernation is, and this isn't just a thing about hibernation, it's this case with a lot of terms,

it means different things to different scientists. Yes. Like if you are in one scientific community, you are using a word differently than people in another, which is this is the case with tentacles, octopuses have tentacles, but if you are a specific kind of cephalopod scientist, you need to differentiate between different kinds of tentacles.

And so you have, you call some kinds feet, and you call some kinds tentacles. And that way you can talk about them without getting too confused. That is not an important distinction for me. I don't need to worry about that, right? And like, this is a problem scientists have too when they're communicating,

and they're like, well, we can't say that because like, and I don't care how you talk. The word tentacle doesn't exist to have your meaning. It exists to convey an idea. And if we're gonna require a vocab lesson before we teach people about an octopus, people aren't gonna learn anything. Finding a shared vocabulary for talking about stuff

is actually pretty difficult, but it is not made any easier or better by all these people racing in and like celebrating Ding Dong, the Witch's Dead, hibernation never existed. And they can come in and say, like, look, you've been lied to, it's actually wrong. The thing about the hibernation example that really makes me angry is that they say, I used to think hibernation was sleeping for six months. And then that's it. They don't talk about what we actually got wrong,

why they don't, is because what we actually got wrong isn't that interesting, because bears do just sleep for six months. They might stand up a couple of times, but I sleep for seven hours, and I stand up a couple of times because I can't go without being for that long anymore. Yeah, exactly. Dude, I not sleep.

No, because I stood up to pee. No one would say, if Hank, like, oh, he's not a true sleeper, so much as he's taking three to four naps in the evening that are interrupted by the outbreaks. Right. Like, this is, this is anyway. No, I want to keep going, Hank. I want to go one level deeper to make just one more point if we may, which is that we constantly forget

that language exists to try to describe experiences and in that process, it will always come up short. Experiences don't exist so that language can exist, language exists so that we can understand and share experiences and understandings and imaginings. And the way that it functions, and I, you thought we were done, but I'm not because I've got a really important point to drive home here. That is a really compelling thing to sort of grab onto that. Like, you've been lied to. But it almost never is actually that you've been lied to.

It's just that, like, the world is complicated and we have in exact ways for expressing reality. I also desperately want to be done with this, but I need to make one more point. I think that once you're done with your point, I'll make my final point and then we can move on. Great, and then I will have one post script, but it'll be very brief. Okay, go, go, go! Oh, I lost it.

It was so important. It was critical. It was critical to our species being able to move on, but I've lost it. Oh, I remember it. I remember it. Part of the reason that these, you've been lied to, takes are so compelling to us is because they feel like a shortcut to true expertise. And a, and a superiority thing. Right. That's what it's about deep down. It's about like wanting to feel to feel like, oh, I know the real truth of hibernation. But the thing is in trying to, like, in trying to shortcut your way there, you actually know less about hibernation

than you did when you started. And this is not about hibernation. This is a metaphor for all of our information feeds on the internet. Okay, I feel like we actually did have a post script and a post post script. So I think we've fulfilled our obligations. Okay. Great. One more thing about hibernation though.

No. One more thing about the project for awesome. The project for awesome is coming up, John. Yes, the project for awesome, as you are listening to this podcast, if you are listening to it, the date comes out starts on Friday. It starts on February 12th at noon, Eastern time. And it ends on February 12th at noon Eastern time and it ends on February 14th at noon Eastern Time. So please join us at youtube.com slash vlog brothers. You can go to projectforawesome.com to learn how you can donate to support organizations like partners in health and safe the children. They're going to be lots of great perks available, including, including a P for a only episode of Dear Hank and John where we answer questions that

only about octopuses. There will also be lots of other great perks available, including my workout playlist, which is so much I've been talking up this workout playlist, Hank, but you know that one of the great secrets of my life is that the quality of music I listen to is so much higher than people would think about me. My workout playlist is it's going to it's going to shock and delight you both with its beauty and with its profanity and all of that and much more is available at ProjectForAwesome.com slash donate.

I have I have done something that John has never done. Oh, and all of all of his years of writing. And I have written a short story that takes place in the universe of an absolutely remarkable thing. Oh. And adds a little bit to the story, gives you a little bit more Robin content. It takes place at VidCon. It's kind of a heist story of a kid-napped famous pig.

An April gets to use her pet detective skills and does she meet one of the founders of VidCon? Yes, she does. And it's real weird. Wait, are you telling me that you cut me out of your absolutely remarkable thing VidCon story? You're not. No, I didn't cut you out.

You were never in it. That's an example of how you get cut out of something. How can you have the meat in one of the VidCon co-founders and not the other one? I insist on a revision. Also, I want it noted. I want it noted, but maybe the reason that you cut me out is because when I read your first book for the first time,

I gave you almost no notes. And the one note that I did give you was, I'm not sold on this pet detective backstory. It feels like it feels like one quirk too many, and you are like full steam ahead. I was like, I appreciate that advice. I'm keeping it in. Because I want to write this VidCon pet detective story where a famous pig gets kidnapped. Yeah. And somehow, like, John Green's just like not there, I guess. I guess he's like, he's having a sick day.

You're doing so. We're never together at VidCon. I feel like we're around constantly together at VidCon. Oh, I don't feel that way at all. I mean, maybe because I go to a lot of VidCon's, you don't go to. But you know who did make it in is Colin Hickey. So Colin's in the story. Great.

Well, let's hear more about all the people who you didn't cut out of your Vidcom story. Go to projectfraughtsand.com slash donate and get Hank's story that I'm not in. This first question comes from Felix, who writes, dear John and Hank, I've just bought a beautiful fairy tale theme to calendar for my kitchen wall.

And I love it so very much but I'm Swedish and my calendar is American and there is a clear difference between Swedish calendars and American calendars Swedish calendars start every week with Monday because that's when the week begins American calendars start with Sunday at the beginning of the week What why I find this highly illogical and totally confusing please explain Felix Gosh Felix it does seem like you do it better than we do. I mean, the reasons for this in some ways may predate. There are reasons.

Like with everything on the internet, there are a lot of like hypothesized reasons that are not super well-sourced, but the reasons may predate Christianity and go back to the Egyptian calendar where the Sunday was the day of the Sun God. And that was treated as the beginning of the week. My understanding of it has always been that it's the beginning of the week because in America, the week begins on Sunday.

It's only begins on Sunday. It's only begins on Monday because of the 40 hour work week, which is a relatively recent invention, right? I would argue that Felix's calendar is more up to date with the world we live in now, but ours is more like historically accurate, because the...

Well, accurate, but more historically inspired. Here's the thing. Okay. There are lots of reasons why things are the way they are, but mostly they are the way they are because they are the way they are. Very true. So you tell me that we wanted to start the day on Sunday

because Sunday was the day of the sun, God, and you start with, but that's not why the day is Sunday now. The day is Sunday now because we start the week on Sunday because we start the week on Sunday. Here's the analog I would point to. We have these weird keyboards. I actually made an Anthropocene review episode about this where the top row of letter key starts QWERTY.

And for a long time, everybody would make fun of this because it was so obviously and wildly inefficient. And there were all of these other keyboard layouts that were far better and more efficient and you could type faster and with more accuracy and increase efficiency and grow the size of the economy and blah, blah, blah, blah. And the most famous of these keyboards was the Devorek keyboard. There's just one one problem with the Devorek keyboard, which is that the most rigorous studies show that it is not meaningfully faster than Quarty. And that in fact, like mostly by accident,

Quarty is a fairly efficient keyboard layout. Like it's closer to peak efficiency than it is to peak inefficiency. So the reason it lasts is because it's good enough and changing would be a huge inconvenience. Would be way harder. Yeah. Which is why we're stuck with feet in America.

Yes. And you don't mean the appendages at the bottom, uh, the Ethan ankle or indeed, uh, octopus is eight of them. You're referring to feed in miles and just, yeah, the imperial units, I guess is what they're called. We don't always have the best systems here in the United States, but you know what we do have. Ah! Okay, please tell me. barbecue. We have the Koreatown Audity, one of the artists on my workout playlist, projectfrasse.com slash donate.

How much do you know about the Koreatown Audity? I don't know what that is. That's wonderful. Well, you should get my workout playlist. Okay, John, this next question is from John who asks, dear Hank and John, I feel like we don't get a lot of questions from John. It's true. I was thrown off a little bit by actually sent this one in. Okay. My house is the only one on the block that still has the lights on the bushes and the Christmas tree up. My mom says it's staying up until my sister sees it, but she lives out of state and hasn't left her apartment in like six months.

How long do you leave up Christmas decorations, best wishes, John? I'm just glad that we're getting to a practical one here because I also need advice on this as a person whose Christmas lights remain up. Oh, yeah. Well, okay, I can tell you our policy in this family, but I also don't wanna prescribe other people's Christmas lights.

Like, there's nothing I find more annoying than when one of my neighbors will come up to me and say in a conspiratorial tone, like have you noticed that this family hasn't taken down their Christmas lights? And I wanna be like, well, maybe they've got some stuff going on. You know, like it's been kind of a rough year. And like,

maybe they just want to have some lit up bushes in the evenings and I don't care. And please, God, let's just let them be. It's hard enough to be alive in this world without having the condemnation of your neighbors. But our family's personal thing is that we keep the tree up for the 12 days of Christmas. So for 12 days after Christmas day, and then we dispose of the tree, which is always a, it's always a wonderful experience, Hank, because every year I'm like, this year I really am gonna take the tree

to Broadrope Park where they have the big tree pick up and everything I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, And then like three weeks later, I'm like, it's going where all the other Christmas trees are. Which is what? Done the ravine? It's going to its home in the bottom of the forest. When you got a yard, like,

when you got a yard that has space for it. Yeah. I just see why not do that? The reason you don't do it is because then you're every every day when you take your same walk in the woods You walk past like nine years of Christmas Yeah, and you remember like how great each one of them was and you're like man How high does the river have to flood to take care of this issue?

And you're like, man, how high does the river have to flood to take care of this issue? You could just throw them in the river, John. Oh, that feels, for some reason that feels wrong. Whereas if the river rises up and takes them, that's what can I do? The other thing here, and it's just hinted at in your email, but I think it might be a big thing, is that your mom misses your sister and this has been a huge disruption in her life and their relationship and this is a way that she has of marking that and maybe just let that be okay. Yeah, the broader advice from my perspective is that they are not, they are not Christmas lights, they are winter lights. Yes, that's a great point, Hank. I love that. I love that idea.

And you know what, John, if they need to be spring lights or they need to be summer lights, that's okay too. Let's just get through this. Speaking of which, we have another question from Liz, who writes, dear John and Hank, how does one deal with the groundhog day like quality of pandemic life? I'd never heard it describe that way, but it's so true. Write down to waking up at the same time every morning and having the same song play every morning because Sarah really, really likes waking up to the Beatles, whereas I'm like, what is there an emergency?

There's help. It's a body. Help. Just waking up to a wall of sound. It's zero to 60. Yeah. How does one deal with the groundhog daylight quality of pandemic life? I know the end is in sight with the vaccines.

I hope you're right, Liz, and that I have it a lot better than many people, but I'm having a really hard time staying motivated and not, not bummed out all the time, I hope you're right Liz, and that I have it a lot better than many people, but I'm having a really hard time staying motivated and not bummed out all the time when I'm stuck inside of 500 square foot apartment that doesn't allow pets. I'm trying to exercise and eat healthy and talk to friends, which all helps. But what are some other safe ways for me to add variety and novelty right now?

I appreciate you guys so much. Novelty. Yeah, to be eight Liz. Gosh, boy, novelty is in short supply right now. That's a great great point. I have found a few things to do novel things that I find really helpful. Some of them are weird, but I'm just going to lay them out. Number one, Sarah and I have begun attending virtual artists talks on zoom. So you can like go just like look up up fancy commercial art galleries in New York City,

question mark on Google and look at a bunch of those galleries and they all have hugely successful contemporary artists doing Zoom talks while they walk through these exhibitions that no one can see or are only available by appointment or whatever. And it's just so interesting to learn from artists, how they're responding to this time and what kind of stuff they're making in this time. And you can just kind of doodle in the background. Like the great thing is you don't have to really listen

because you're not like in a meeting that you're participating in, you're in a talk that you're listening to. And so I have found that actually to be the thing that feels the most transformative to me where I feel like, oh, I'm not stuck inside of the same house, I'm actually doing something new. There are a lot of like activities out there

that work for a little while, puzzles work for a little while. Yeah. I think that mom actually got us, I think got us this subscription box that's a watercolor subscription. She got you a prescription box. When I say us, I mean me and Catherine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I got cut out of that. Just like I got cut out of your story. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And it has all the tools you need and like you are surprised at the end of it that you have made a thing that looks quite good, though always, Catherine's looks quite a bit gooder than mine.

But like, you know, that costs money. There are also ways to do that without a subscription box. You know, there are tutorials online. There are products and there has been more and more research about how the different kinds of content, consumption, behaviors that we have these days affect our overall level of well-being and listening to music, maybe unsurprisingly, remains one of the best ones.

Can I make one more recommendation? Yes. The New York Times has a daily puzzle. I think it's free. It's at least free to start. It's called Spelling Bee, where it's like a honeycomb and they give you seven letters and you have to make as many words out of the seven letters as you can. And I'm not sure how I would be doing on this earth if it weren't for the spelling bee. And my final suggestion is to walk around as much as you can. Because and go, yeah, and you can walk places you've never been before,

and there's always something new to see. In fact, I just got the, every day on the spelling bee, there's at least one word that's called a pangram that uses all seven letters. And I just scorched the pangram while you were talking, Hank. Oh, wow! That was good job. To let the thing. I feel a little bit slighted, but okay. No, no, oh, you were talking Hank. Oh wow, that was good job. To let the thing.

I feel a little bit slighted, but okay. No, no, oh, you feel slighted. You feel slighted. Call me the next time I write a VidCon story that doesn't have you in it. I feel slighted. Whatever, you have so many main characters. I'm sending you watercolors. No, I can't have siblings.

The story that I've been writing lately actually does have a brother in it and he's a younger brother in everything. You've been writing a story lately? That's, that's news to me. Well, you know, here and there, it'll come out in 2030. Right after this podcast is renamed Dear John and Hank. I don't know, John, there's a lot of good starship launches

happening lately. Oh, which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by that starship launch that resulted in a fiery flame ball of doom. Starship launch that resulted in a fiery flame ball of doom. I'm sure that we're on the cusp of Mars. It's exactly when exactly is planned. I got all the data they needed out of it. Great.

This podcast is also brought to you by the Padantic Tentacle. The Padantic Tentacle. It's a new publication from your friends at awful industries. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by hibernation. Hibernation, just because it's not zero, doesn't mean it's 100.

And this podcast is also brought to you by the pile of nine Christmas trees at the bottom of Johns house. The pile of nine Christmas trees at the bottom of John's house. The pile of nine Christmas trees at the bottom of John's house. The white river refuses to accept. I don't live close enough to the river. I got to work on that. All right, this next question comes from Kira who writes, we've got a version of this question a lot over the years, but I like to this version. What is a failure that you consider a success because of what it meant to you? Pumpkins and penguins, Kira. For me, the one that stands out is when I was in college and I applied to the Advanced Fiction Writing class, and there

were 12 available slots and 14 applicants. And I was one of the two people who did not make it into the class. Because at the time, it felt very final. It felt like, well, if I'm not one of the 12 best fiction writers in this particular class, at this particular college, I'm probably not going to have a life in the arts. But I learned so much more from not getting into that class. Like for one thing, I learned why I didn't get into the class class like I learned that the stories I was writing weren't very good.

And it wasn't because and they weren't they weren't bad because I was inherently a bad writer is kind of the wrong way to think about writing I think they were bad because I was like imitating other writers I admired instead of trying to understand how I really wanted to tell stories and how I liked to tell stories, you know. And so that was, that was probably the failure that I learned the most from. It still stings a little bit. It stung immensely at the time. I mean, it's one of the only times I went to bed sobbing over something related to, you know, to not a, not a, not a personal problem. Not a personal problem. Yeah, but not a person. Yeah, it was brutal. I mean, it was, it was really painful at the time, but I also, I did learn a lot from it. I'm highly suspicious of brightsighting, like I don't think that most clouds have silver linings. I think that most of the lessons we learned from suffering can be learned

more cheaply, and that in some ways it can seek to make suffering worse to tell people like, oh, at least you're learning important lessons from all this pain you're going through. But I did become a better writer because of that experience and probably more than I would have from taking any single college class. I've done a bunch of different things that have failed in sort of like the traditional business

sense where all of my first projects that no one knows about were business failures. One that people do know about is NerdCon Stories, which was like, let's have a conference for people who love storytelling, which is very broad. And also, not writing a super-present wave of interest, the way that VidCon was when we started that. What we did have was two years of the best, coolest, weirdest experience that I could imagine. And did it fail in that we couldn't keep doing it

because it was losing money and it went a little bit bankrupt and it almost went bankrupt. It didn't end up going bankrupt. It failed in the sense that we lost money on it. Right? Yeah. Anytime you start a business, you aim for it to either

break even or make a profit and it did neither. And in that sense, it failed. Yeah. But I think that you would agree with me that you've spent worse money. Exactly. Yes. The value of nerd con stories for me was immense. And I think for the people who were there, it was immense. And I felt like Hank, you and your team put together a really amazing program. And it felt really special. And it felt very unlike anything else I'd ever been part of. I think it was a success. It's just a success that lost a bunch of money. Yeah.

It's so easy to measure everything by the sort of default units of measurement. And the easiest one is to count. And we should definitely not only measure things that way. This question comes from Caitlin who asks, Dear Hank and John, if given stationary as a gift, is it expected that you use the stationary to write the thank you gift to the giver? Does that show how much you love it? Or does the willingness to use something,

or does this willingness to use some of it so quickly look like a dismissal or you're inherently Gifting it back to the giftor found found pens and prairie heads, Caitlin This is a tough one. There's a talk because I can see both sides If you're an anxious person and I am I can see how you could walk all the way around this problem and never see yourself to anything other than more worry. Yeah. This could go wrong no matter how I act. Yeah, eventually this person just gets a text. Thanks for the pen.

Look, obviously I'm not an etiquette expert, but I think it's nice to use the stationery. I think of this too. I think it's like, hey, I like this stationery so much that I decided to write my first thank you card on it to you to say thanks for the stationary. Here's some other people I'm planning on writing thank you cards to after I'm done. I don't know. Look, you didn't buy this so that I would keep it on a shelf for 20 years, which is what Hank does with his stationary. Most of us, or many of us, anyway, are sitting on some gifted stationary that is desperately

wishing that it could fulfill its purpose, but we just haven't found our way to it yet. Yeah. So yeah, I think you should do it. All right. It's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first because there's a lot of news from AFC Wimbledon beginning with the fact that after losing at the new Plowlane to the franchise currently, applying its trade in Milton Keynes, our 11th league game without a win, it was finally decided that AFC Wimbledon had to part ways with manager Glenn Hodges and a point

as their interim manager, Mark Robinson, who's been with the club, I think from the very, very beginning or at least from the early, early years, and who's been the under 18s and under 23 coach, really like a bull guy, deep, deep relationship with the history of the club, no experience managing at the senior grown up pro level. So, you know, I don't know how it's going to go for him, but I really wish him the best. I would love to see him succeed and be able to get the job permanently because he's just such a nice guy. So talented and has done such great work with so many Wimbledon youth, not just on the

football field, but also just in life. So he's a great guy. I really hope it works out for him. But man, it's now 11 games without a win. 538.com just published a list of the 637 best professional football teams in the world. And AFC Wimbledon was like 623rd. Just and great. We were behind. You're on the list. We were behind like the Philadelphia unions B team. So that was a little discouraging. But it's, it's obviously from here, it's going to be

a difficult road. I think we have good enough players, but every year it feels like we are just desperately trying to scrap another season in the third tier of English football. The problem is, and I've heard a lot of people say, like, oh, well, it's not the end of the world if you get relegated because you'll be a good fourth tier team, but that's not actually clear to me. It's not clear to me that we would have one of the biggest budgets in the fourth tier. I don't think we would. And so if we can stay in League 1, we really, really need to at least until we can get fans

back at Plow Lane. But this is just such a hard time. And I really feel for all the Wimbledon fans out there. There's between the lockdowns and having to watch on your phone as your team gets crushed every week, it's a little disperiding. So, it's a new day, a new management team. It may be temporary. There may be a permanent manager within the next few weeks.

But who knows if Mark Robinson can put together some results, anything is possible. Well, John in Mars News, which you've already referred to, there was a launch of the SpaceX Starship prototype. It was the SN9. The SN10 is also sitting out there ready to take its test flight. This is the heavy lift vehicle that SpaceX is hoping to use to get crude missions to Mars. So like they're learning a bunch of stuff about this. They want this like to be a reusable heavy lift vehicle Goes up

Lands down they've become very good at this with some of their other rockets and This is not going as well with this so the goal of this is to sort of like what what you have to do is you launch up And then you this thing has like fins on it. So basically flies its way down launch up and then you, this thing has like fins on it. So basically flies its way down, dropping through the air back toward where the launch pad was, which is really nice. So you don't have to like, go somewhere

and then grab it far away. It actually comes right back to where it launched from. And then at the very last moment, because it's gonna fall much more slowly when it's sort of horizontal to the earth than when it's vertical. At the very last moment, it has to kind of make itself vertical again, come down and land. That part is turned out to be very difficult.

It has to do that because that's where the engines are. So that's the only place that's going to slow it down. The last two times it looks to me, I'm no expert, that it is sort of overshot the vertical and it started to go horizontal in the other direction. And then you're just not getting the thrust you need to slow down enough. The, the, the, the starship slows a big fireball. Yeah, the, the starship slows down a good bit. And then it explodes when it hits the ground. Orin is not happy about this. We watched the launch together and he was like, why did it explode? And I was like, well, it didn't go as planned. And he just kept asking why it exploded.

And I kept emphasizing that it is a test flight and is meant to work out problems, but he was really unhappy about the last part. And he was like, can they fix it? And I was like, yeah, they'll do another one. And he was like, but that one, can they fix that one? And I'm like, no, they can't fix that one. That one's not, doesn't exist anymore.

He's really into things not getting broken. He doesn't like it when things are broken and can't be fixed. It's a real bummer when something stops existing when you're a kid because you've, yeah, you imagine a lot of life into that thing. Yeah, and you haven't experienced a lot of things stop existing. So even, it's, it's even like you haven't experienced that many things like, you've even noticed them even go away.

Like maybe they do stop existing, but they, like he sometimes get attached to trash. Right. Or he's like, no, I can't throw this away. Right. But anyway, so the idea of the Starship program and the SN10 is on the launch pad to try again soon is to get humans to Mars.

Elon Musk says that he is still highly confident that the first crewed fights to Mars will happen in 2026, John. Highly confident. So highly confident. Highly confident. The first flight will be in 2024. First crewed flight to Mars in 2026 I like I like you know just just saying stuff even if it has no

Connection to reality. Yeah, that does seem to be one of the primary discourse strategies in the Here in the first quarter of the 21st century, the sort of like manifest it by tweeting it off in enough world view. So, who needs? What are you on a manifest? Let's tweet that. Not like, how about just cheaper college education? Yeah, or like renewable energy now.

I have a little manifest section of my 2021 vision board that I put up at the end of each vlog withers video. It's in the bottom left corner. And my most recent manifestation is to manifest a live action penguins of Madagascar film, which has not happened yet, but you never know. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. All right. Oh, man. Well, Hank, thank you for parting with me. And thanks to everybody for listening. We're off to record our Patreon Only podcast. This week in stuff over at patreon.com slash deer, hank and john, you can sign up there if you want.

Don't feel obligated to though, we won't get mad the content there. Isn't that great. The project for awesome is coming up on Friday. So get ready. If you want to be a part of it, you can go to projectforawesome.com. If you've made a video, submissions are open now,

but they close fairly soon. We're doing a different different this year we have to submit before hand not during the project so get it going do it join us and uh... you all on friday can't wait i'm very excited it's gonna be a lot of fun you will be this podcast is edited by joseph tuna medish it's produced by rosiana holes for a hawkson shared in gibson our communications coordinator is julie bloom or editorial assistant is tooki Chakravarity, the music you're hearing now.

And at the beginning of the podcast, it's by the great gunna roll-up. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. you