Dear Hank & John - 285: A Pill Meant for Horses

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Is it okay to ask people for their discarded tree branches? How long would the vaccine need to be in my system before a whale could eat my arm without me needing another dose? Where should the Anthropocene Reviewed book go on my bookshelf? Why does my toilet water move when it's windy? Have you ever been in a sewer? How do they get all that medicine in such a small pill? How should my sister celebrate her 16th birthday? What do we do with my father's neckties? 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

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for the whiteboard. I don't know how I could remark penicillin. We've actually extensively remarked in the sense that when it started out, and I know you're not looking for a history of penicillin, hang, but bear in mind that for the last like eight weeks, I'm sorry I've been away from the pod for the last two weeks, I had the most stressful work period I ever hope to have,

just because a lot of things were happening at once and also foolishly I agreed to sign my name 250,000 times which is just it just takes a while. Uh huh. Anyway, I missed the pod, I missed being with you, I thought the guest hosts were as usual much better than I am, but now you're stuck with me. I had a good time. I had a good time without you John. While I was finishing the Anthropocene Reviewed book, my new book, my first book of nonfiction, lots of signed copies available. It comes out May 18th. While I was finishing that, I was thinking about penicillin because we always talk about

penicillin in the context of its discovery in 1929 by a guy named Alexander Fleming, who basically discovered it by accident. He looked down, he saw that some of this penicillin stuff had killed some of the bacteria in one of his petri dishes. He said, that's funny. And then that became the world's stock of penicillin. But no, no, the world's stock of penicillin, Hank, comes from one melon,

what, in a peoria, Illinois grocery store. Oh, that was discovered by the bacteriologist, Mary Hunt, that was taken back to a lab, and then it was remarked in certain ways, like they put it through a bunch of X-rays, they exposed it to different kinds of radiation and stuff to make it more powerful. Oh wow. And pretty much all of the penicillin

that we have used since comes from that one melon. Wow. The most remarkable thing about this story by a very wide margin is that after they had scraped the mold that became the world supply of penicillin off of this melon. Mary hunt and her colleagues ate the melon. They ate the melon.

Why not? Why go, God, why not? It was on the poor bacteriologist. These are people intimately familiar with infectious disease. Why not? Why not? They're intimately familiar with the fact that we have an immune system

and we can handle it. And also, penicillin is keeping the bacteria out. I, that's what it does. Even if you told me, John, this melon covered in green and white mold is penicillin and it will cure all that ails you. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it, Hank.

Let's answer some questions from our listeners. Melons have thick rhymes. And that book, The Anthropocene Reviewed, is available everywhere on May 18th. Is that right? Yep. And it's every, all pre-orders will be signed. And you can get them in the US and Canada.

In the US and Canada. And you can pre-order now wherever books are sold. This first question comes from Gabby. Who asks, dear Hank and John, is it socially acceptable to ask someone who is trimming a tree for the leftover branches? My mom did this last week to a complete stranger, but I cannot imagine that that is normal. I understand she wanted some Easter decorations, but what would you do if someone asked you

for your branches? Sticks not stones, Gabby. So Gabby, I hate to side with your mom on this one, but I regularly, when I see in my neighborhood one of the big tree service companies, I regularly walk over and say, hey, you guys gonna do anything with those wood chips because I could use them. And almost always they say, we would be very happy to dump the wood chips in your backyard wherever they're having to go dump them where we usually dump them. Well, I'll be honest, John,

that sounds like a thing that you, like you never cease to surprise me. It sounds like a thing you wouldn't do. But here you are doing it. But I guess it is a thing you would do. You have underestimated how much I need wood chips. Right? So like, you're right.

I don't usually talk to strangers. I certainly don't usually ask strangers for favors, but my garden runs on wood chips. It is, I can't make it happen without a huge supply of wood chips because I engage in something called glizzonya gardening. Oh my gosh, tell me more. Where you have a layer of dirt, a layer of wood you have a layer of dirt, a layer of wood chips,

a layer of dirt, a layer of wood chips, a layer of dirt, a layer of wood chips. So I need lots of wood chips. And then I line the whole garden with wood chips. So I know which parts are the beds. And we don't have like weeds growing up in between the beds. So I almost can't have enough wood chips.

I have like this year, I maybe asked like two to many people. And so I'm taking some have enough wood chips. I have, like, this year, I maybe asked like two too many people, and so I'm taking some of the wood chips, and I'm, you know, creating very beautifully mulched paths through the woods that I can walk on, and that's fun too. That's a lot. I'm so... I say this as if I've been doing it for months and months, when, in fact, I've only been doing it since yesterday.

Because before that, I was working very, very constantly. So, yeah, it's been a great day, though. I really enjoyed my day in the garden, good. But you've been doing the wood chip thing for a while now. That's not new. Oh, yeah, for several years, yeah. Okay. So apparently it's fine and look.

It's easy to say no if they need those branches, but like also you might be doing them a favor. So we, I think we should talk to each other more often in general because the more we get together, the happier we'll be as I learned during the online raffi concert that I viewed this weekend with my son. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a real American heroes moment, Hank. What?

Nothing. Okay. I forgot, you actually kind of like Rafi. I do like Rafi. Yeah. I remember when we were kids, you would like sing Rafi songs, a fair amount of the time. Oh, I don't remember, like Rafi as a child,

but I do like Rafi as an adult. And like, didn't Rafi sing baby Beluga under the sea? Yeah, yes, that's right. Oh, Hank, you sang that constantly when we were kids. I believe you. Constantly. How can you not remember that? I almost heard nothing else come out of your mouth

throughout your childhood. Well, because you were much older than me. I'm not talking about like when you were two and we couldn't form memories. I'm talking about when we were buggy boarding in Viru Beach when we were like 13 and 11. Oh wow. Well look, I knew I knew the words to baby Beluga,

but I didn't know how. So that's how my memory works. I kinda like coffee too actually. I don't know why I was critical earlier. In case you're not listening. I've gotten a lot out of your music. I like it's been a nice point of connection for me and my kids.

And also, like, I grew up listening to Hank sing the baby Baluga song. Every time we were out on the ocean, because a one of Hank's big worries was that we would be attacked by... You don't remember any of this? It's totally understandable, concern. So you thought we were gonna be attacked

by like a whale or a shark or something. And you, you had had it was almost like you Treated singing the baby beluga song as an emblem of protection a way of being like well You know if they know that I'm a fan of Whales they won't go after me they'll go after the go after John because he's he's not singing He's clearly hates whales I have no I have absolutely no memory of this But it does

sound like something I would do. It also sounds like something that I would do to excess in a way that would annoy all of the people around me. It was excessive for sure. It just in so far as it was ceaseless. You know, like, because even when you weren't singing the baby blue guitar song a lot of times, I would look up and look over at you and I would see that you were singing the baby blue song. You were just trying to do it really softly. So no one else would hear. Well, at least I was being respectful.

Yeah, you were a super sweet kid, Hank. This next question comes from Emily who writes, dear John and Hank, if I got the COVID vaccine, let's say the Johnson and Johnson one. And then a baby blue good whale jumped up out of the sea and bit my arm off. Would I need another vaccine? How long would I have to wait to get my arm cut off by a baby beluga whale before the vaccine would be all in my system?

Not J or K or L, but Emily. That is very weird, Emily, that you have keyed in to the only thing we have discussed so far on the podcast today. But yes, and extra weirdly, that you have keyed in to the only thing we have discussed so far on the podcast today. But yes, and extra weirdly, there's a person I follow on Twitter, Professor Ekiko Iwasako, who has answered that question, not only as like a thought experiment, but has done research on mice to determine if you give a mouse a vaccine and then remove the muscle from them within 10 minutes of that

vaccine being administered, it has enough time to get to the lymph nodes for the immune system to be activated. And this is all sort of like the idea being like, like, to study a little bit of how this happens. Like this isn't just to, like a thought experiment. This isn't just a satisfactory acidity. This teaches us about how vaccines work. And they found that it was basically immediate. So you'd be good if a beluga came as long

as you didn't get the vaccine within seconds of a beluga whale eating your arm off, you're good. Okay. I mean, that's a huge relief. And it's hard for me to imagine a situation in which I could get a vaccine. and within seconds have a beluga whale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it's in Florida, they have special vaccination centers that are on Vogue boards. They just thought that would be fun. Yeah. They're just trying to do it in the least efficient way possible because they think that's better for the memes. It's, yeah, Florida. This next question comes from Claire, who writes, dear John and Hank, I recently pre-ordered my copy

of the Anthropocene Reviewed Book. I'm excited for it to arrive, but when it does, I'm not sure where to put it. I have my books organized alphabetically by author, except for nonfiction books, which are organized by a subject on a separate bookshelf. Should I put the Anthropocene Reviewed Book next to my copies of your books or with my nonfiction books?

As the author, I figure you're the ultimate authority. Stop right there, Claire. Authors have no control. The author is never the authority on anything. All the author does is pick the words in the book. The reader is the authority. It's your choice. It's not my choice. Especially when it comes to your home library. It's your choice. It's not my choice. Especially when it comes to your home library. This is one thing that I didn't get to realize until I think fairly recently that you get to decide how to organize your home library any way you want. It's one of the great joys of life.

In fact, when I was finishing the book, I kept thinking, you know, when this is over, I get to recadilog my home library. And it was a big motivator to me to think about the pleasure. I feel such, this is not Sarah's favorite part of the recadilogging of the home library every two or three years, but I feel such pleasure when I take all the books off the shelves. And I, you know, I dust all the shelves and clean them very carefully. And then I start to think about, well, given the way that we've

been reading in the last couple of years, how should we organize it? Because sometimes fiction and non-fiction is a super-helpful way, but sometimes, especially when it comes to art books, we both read a lot of art books. If I'm thinking about a fiction book that's about the life of an artist, that's a fictional take, historical fiction, or whatever, I want that in the art section. that's like a fictional take, historical fiction or whatever. I want that in the art section. If I'm thinking about like, where are my John Green books? I want that in the John Green section. But if I'm thinking about where are my books

of extremely in-depth, Yelp reviews that are also kind of a memoir, that are also kind of a meditation on this strange human paradox of being at once far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough. Well, I want that in I don't have sociology. I got no idea where this book is gonna go on bookstore shelves.

That's way beyond that. That's true. What are they gonna do with it? I have no idea. Do they have a section? Or they're just gonna put it in young adult, Just like put it by all the other John Green books. Do they have a section for... They can't do that.

John, I luckily, hopefully, you don't need to worry too much about that. Is that right? I don't know. I have no idea what to be worried about, Hank, which is part of the problem actually. Like, usually I know what to be worried about. And then I'm very, very worried in everything.

And that sucks, but like, at least I know what to be worried about right now. I feel like, I don't know what to be worried about right now, I feel like I don't know what to be worried about because I've never written a book that was published for adults before, I've never written a nonfiction book before. I don't even know what I don't know. So I'm just gonna roll with that. Yeah. Claire, I'm just delighted that my book is gonna be

in your library. Honestly, I would put it with Hank's books. Okay, well, I mean, maybe those are all in the same place. That's how I do it. I have a whole shelf. It's just books that my friends wrote, which is very weird. Oh, that's nice.

That's what happens when your friends were the I YouTubers. And there was that period of time whenever YouTuber was writing the book. Still, one of the best jokes I've ever made was when I was talking about an absolutely remarkable thing. And I said, I thought it was really good. And not just for a YouTuber book. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I've noticed that the water in my toilet moves around on windy days. Why does this happen?

Whoa! The pipes are underground. Question mark, question mark, question mark. Also, I'm pretty sure the water treatment plant is enclosed. Question mark, where could the wind be reaching the water? I don't know. I think I do.

What? Really? I think so, and I, my guess is, and I could totally be wrong about this, that the air pressure in your home is changing when the wind blows because the wind is pushing into your home and that is pushing the water down. And then it's coming back up and that is causing it to move around a little bit. What? But that is just a guess. But I know, like this is a thing. It may be that your toilet is moving a little bit.

Yeah, because that's what I was thinking. If the house is sort of being buffeted by wind, you can feel that in a house a lot of times. And then I would think that the toilet would move and the water would move. This appears to be a known effect, John. Okay. Wind gusts cause the air pressure in the sewer pipes to fall, causing the bull's water to be drained downward somewhat

when the air pressure goes back up the winds. Whoa. Why? That is mind blowing. Why does it cause it to fall? I don't know. Oh, air vents, sewer pipe air vents. Oh. So apparently sewer pipes have air vents,

which actually now that I'm thinking about it, I think I may have known that. Makes sense. You don't wanna have too much build up of certain gases. Yeah. Hey, can I ask you a related question? Yeah. Have you ever been in a sewer,

like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle style? I've not been in a sewer. I've been in a stormed sewer, like a storm drain, but not in a sanitary sewer. I've looked into sanitary sewers. So I have been, wow. If I was gonna guess one of us, it would be me. Well, I have this weird thing where I'm very, very anxious

and I spend all this time, I lose many hours of my days to my obsessive thought problems. But then at the same time, it's like not very difficult for me to get into the White River, which is essentially an open sewer. And it's also not very difficult for me to walk around a sewer system for a while. I did it because I was researching, it was this a long time ago, but I was writing a piece for a magazine here. And I got a whole tour of the water treatment facility and everything. And that was really cool. And then I was like, to one of my friends, I was like, Hey, is there a way to like get in the sewers? And my friend is like, Oh, yeah. And so we did. And it was scary and super weird and very eerie, but mostly like I expected to feel like terrified,

but mostly I just felt a lot of awe and gratitude for the work that went into creating this thing. And like it's not a perfect thing, especially in Indianapolis, our sewer system needs to be a lot better. Hence the White River being an open sewer and everything. But still, it is an astonishing amount of work that went into this public health effort that in the process made it so that all of these infectious

diseases that had been a huge part of the human story just didn't exist for Indianapolis anymore. Yeah. cholera just doesn't happen in Indianapolis because of the incredibly hard work that was done 120 years ago. Yeah, and that work continues. And then the maintenance that has been done ever since. And it's just amazing. I just, I, it, instead of making me feel like whoo spooky, it just mostly made me feel like, God, humans are an astonishment. Yeah. Our lives are so contingent upon the work that it's done by people who are not

remembered and aren't around. And I like to remember them even if it is just sort of an aggregate. You know? Yeah. When we are gone, I hope that the people who come after us will remember us in the aggregate. John, this next question comes from Maya who asks, dear Hank and John, I just started taking some meds and I realized something interesting about pills. They are almost always the same size. And they're so small that we can swallow them easily,

at least most people can. How is this possible? Why don't some illnesses require much bigger pills? I'm kind of amazed and also confused. Oh, they do. How do they get so much good stuff into that small of a thing, Maya? Well, they don't always.

I, for example, take six pills of the same medicine a day. Yeah. So they can't fit enough into it. So they make multiples of the same pill, and they're not small. So at this point, I can take all three of them at once. Wow, that's impressive. I have this pill that I have to take that is quite large and I get really intimidated by it. And I got to like walk around the bathroom a little bit and psych myself up

because yeah, it's like miracle max. My doctor described it to me as a horse pill. And ever since he described it to me, no, every time I look at it, I'm like, this is a horse pill. This is a pill meant for horses. And you're just a little, you're just a little boy. Or are you gonna do this? But I manage, I manage. I mean, most medications are,

there's a few things that work here, but most medications are quite low in their dosage. Right. Like in terms of the number of grams, there's not a lot of grams. Right. And so like, oftentimes most of what is an appeal, one, there's always a lot of stuff that's in the pill that isn't the medicine. Like there's all the things that like stick together basically so that it will stay inside of a pill. Because otherwise you got a powder and a powder is annoying.

It's hard to get the exact dosage of a powder. Yeah. And it powder used to be a thing. Like people used to like have medicinal powders and they'd come in little sashays. Yeah. You'd pour them into your drink, but we don't. Or you could pour them into a little capsule that then you swallowed the capsule. The capsules. Yeah, we don't see capsules as much anymore. You don't see them as much anymore. Yeah. But so we have gotten better, I think, in general, with pills. The other thing that sometimes they contain, and this is my very favorite thing about pills,

is you know, there's time-release medication, where you take the medication, but then it keeps doing its work over eight or 12 hours. Oftentimes, the way that time-release medication works is through microincapsulation. They take a little bit of the medicinal substance and they put a coating around it, called a microcapsule.

And then that coating eventually erodes when it comes into contact with stomach acid or whatever else. That process, microincapsulation, is the exact same process that creates scratch and sniff stickers. I know this because I wrote about scratch and sniff stickers for the Anthropocene Reviewed book, but like, it's amazing. Humans are ridiculous. Yeah. And imagine having that technology and being like, oh, you know what we could do? Scratch into stickers.

You know what else we could do? While we're here, we could make pain medication last for 12 hours instead of four. Yeah. The medicine I take, that one that I was just mentioning, it doesn't dissolve in my stomach. So like they have a coating that dissolves in a basic solution, but not an acidic one.

So it doesn't dissolve until it gets to my lower part of the digestive system. It's got to do its work in the colon, so it's found a way to wait. It's found a way to wait. I love that. In fact, think that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by micro-incapsulation. Micro-incapsulation, whether you're scratching and sniffing or hurting and, oh gosh, sick and it's great. That's, they really paid the big bucks for that one.

I'm sure. They hired me to read a catchphrase. And I wrote one. This podcast is also brought to you by talking to strangers about wood. There's some wood there and that would be nice if I had it. So talk to that stranger. Well, it wood there, and that would be nice if I had it. So talk to that stranger.

Well, it could be, but it might be wood chips, it might be branches. You don't know. It's true. I was encapsulating both of those ideas and a normal sized capsule. Today's podcast. I don't know why that would got me.

Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by the flat and windy part of Iowa, the flat and windy part of Iowa, as opposed to the rest of Iowa. And finally, this podcast is brought to you by Baby Bluga Bites. That sounds like a candy now that I've said it, and it sounds delicious. And they're at a store near you, and they're a kind of serial. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Baby Blue Goodbytes, the serial, oh my God, we finally have a million dollar idea. BabyBalugaBytes.com, babyBalugaBytes.com, please be available.

Please be available. Yeah. Oh, I don't have any internet. My internet is down. This is disaster. This is my moment. I need the internet to work right now. Here's the situation.

BabyBalugaBytes.com is available, but Rafi has, get it. Obviously it worked. Get it. Pretty hard. Hey, Hank, we'll work this out with Rafi later. Okay. Like you think Rafi's going to be like bummed out about the $40 million he makes from baby

BalugaBites are exciting new all organic cereal that is really healthy and it's so good for babies. You won't even believe it. It doesn't contain any actual beluga. That's what I'm not for babies. Well, just Cheerios contain cheer, of course not. Nobody's gonna conclude that. It's baby beluga bites. It's an organic non-beluga bite cereal.

And it's the future. Good. I feel like you're gonna let this idea go, Hank, when it's the best idea we've ever had. I don't know. Baby food is an incredible market because every baby needs it. I don't know how to make food.

Food is so hard. All right, let me try for something else. Give me a second here. What are you gonna do with baby little good bites, but food? What do you mean? What are you doing? All right, so you remember in the old days when there would be bloodletting?

Oh my gosh. Okay. Stay with me here, sure. They would have the leeches. Uh-huh. Well, leeches, that's very 18th century. We've got the new way to put your humors back in balance. Baby blue, baby blue, good bites. We bring a baby blue, good to your house. It gives you just a little bit of a bite. Those humors are right back in balance.

Yeah, no, that's up to me a lot to catch up. See what on earth? 2000 bucks for every fair few tick use of this new technology. I like it. See, it's about the margin, John, because you're not going to be selling a lot of them, so you have to sell them for a lot. I wonder, okay, serious question, Hank. Could we sell one?

One? No. No. One person getting bit by a beluga? No. A baby baby for a lot. For a lot of reasons. I think it would be hard to get the baby. I think it'd be hard to, yeah, be hard to get the baby beluga. I think it'd be harder to get the baby beluga

than it would to get the $2,000. Yeah, let me keep thinking about this because we're close, I can tell we're close to something. I'm way more on board with the serial. Like remember when you came up with the idea for VidCon? Uh huh. And I was like, that's a good idea, but it's close to a great idea.

And then I had the central insight that took it from a good idea to a great idea. Which was. I was the one who lifted it off. Okay. I feel like that's how close we are right now with baby beluga bites. Oh man.

I just don't want to be just. You just don't want to be in what? You don't want to be in the business of taking care of beluga whales and you don't want to be in the business of making food. I understand that has limited my vision for baby beluga bites significantly, but I'm not ready to give up.

All right, well, John, we're making a podcast next week. So come to me next week with a full proposal. And I'm going to need you to have your ROI's listed and your KPIs and your OKRs and some and just one LMFAO in there, just for me. I didn't know all of those acronyms that you used, but I knew like way too many of them. This next question comes from Phoebe who writes, dear John and Hank, my sister, Ellie loves your podcast and is turning 16 very soon. I was wondering how you would suggest celebrating. And if you could say happy birthday, happy birthday, Ellie, happy birthday, Ellie, you only turned 16 once. And I'm really glad that for you, you're turning 16 at a time when you can be with all your friends, have a great hangsech.

It could be worse could have turned 16 in April of last year. Oh, I'm sorry that you have to turn 16 during a pandemic. I would celebrate. How did you celebrate your 16th birthday, Hank? I don't remember. I don't remember nothing. 16? What was that? 1996?

I was, yeah. Ah, I was, I didn't have any of my good friends yet. So probably hung out with, well, I liked them. That's some of them. I probably hung out with those people that I hung out with at that point in my life. But maybe not, because my dad didn't like those people very much.

I hung out with my CompuServe friends. Nice. I was on the internet then. And that was like the summer, the second summer of CompuServe, when I was like working for CompuServe, right? Not in a paid role, but in a free internet role, which was as good as getting paid. And yeah, I don't know.

It was nice. And I think I saw mom and dad at some point probably they were living in the house. So I assume that I came across that I don't really remember. Ellie, make it interesting so that you have some memory because I would truly I kind of want to call mom and dad and ask them if they have a memory. But John, if you do that, what if they remember one of ours and not the other ones? He's gone. He's gone. He's already left and done it. He didn't hear my objection. No, she's got stuff going on.

Okay, that's good, John. Because my concern while you were gone is what would happen if they, if mom remembered one of our 16th birthday parties, went on the other. Yeah. With happy, a bad situation for her to be in. We would have put her in a tight spot. Uh-huh. Yeah, so Hank and I can't really give you advice because Hank and I can't remember, not just our 16th birthdays, we can't remember each other's 16th birthdays.

We're indeed any 16th birthday party I have ever been to. We are that age now. Is that bad? I'm young and hip and with it. Hank, you want to answer one more question before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon? Yes, John. This is a pressing question from just the entire world. And maybe it's good that we're here.

But Stephen asks, Steer Hank and John, my father collected a whole lot of neckties during his long academic career, but neckties are out of fashion now. They're lovely neckties, and I hate to see them go to waste. What can we do with them? Thanks sincerely, Stephen, not a walking chicken,

stephen, stephen, Stephen, stephen. Oh, yes. I see it. I love going in a department store looking at Nectize. They are very pretty.

They are a cool thing that is hard to make and people worked hard to create this fashion accessory that I never wear. And indeed, at this point, I am not sure I will ever wear a necktie again in my life. Oh, I think you will at your funeral. Do you think? Cause like, I've got a ways.

You know, it's hopefully some decades off. Yeah, hopefully God, please. In the last putting aside how much I like having you in the world, I can't not have you in the world right now. At this particular moment, please, oh God. You and I both, for each other's sake, not to mention the families and whatnot, like just on a pure functional level, we need to be here for a while.

I can't do your job and I don't think you could do mine. No, no. So, but I, and I think that like, okay, so lots of things have sort of unformalized and maybe the, the coffin situation will unformalize. I don't even know that you'll have ever, ever have a coffin. I'm not sure that I picture you with a coffin. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can, you guys can get a, everybody can sort of get around and like have a chat about me. I don't need to be there. My body doesn't need to be there, I mean.

Oh yeah, yeah. This reminds me, Hank, do you have a will? Gosh, I do. I don't know if it's 100% official yet. Ha ha ha ha. Just sign the piece of paper. Oh my gosh. Does it count?

Does it count if I haven't signed the piece of paper? I don't, I know, I think you gotta sign the piece of paper. Oh my gosh. Does it count? Does it count if I haven't signed the piece of paper? I don't know. I think you got to sign the piece of paper. It can't be like, oh, I did all the work because then people could make the argument that like if he wanted the will to be officially, would have signed it. Yeah. Well, here, this is my official statement. I want the will to be real. Is that good enough? That's going to be really fun, Hank. I can't wait to go to court and say, hey, so I have a podcast. It's listed under comedy, but it's not funny. And, um, Hank's on it every week. And he said, here, I'll just play you a little bit.

Oh, no, let's go past the part where the baby, beluga bites off someone's arm. That's not relevant to today's, to today's pressing question. Right, little later, he says, I want it to be official. Is that good? Are we good? Now I think we're good. Let's just make it, let's decide that beat on.

Okay, thanks. Oh, man, I love that you are creating work for the legal profession. Oh, yeah. It's not my favorite thing to do. So what do you do with neck ties, which are so beautiful, but are not super functional, and in their ornamentation are not seen as like central

ornaments the way that they were used to. What do you do about the beautiful neck tie collection? I mean, I honestly don't know. I just wanted to talk about how lovely I think they are. I mean, you could start wearing neck tiesies. Yeah. That would be my suggestion. Because right at this moment when neckties are most unfashionable is also the moment when you have an opportunity to establish a sense of fashion that is particular and super beautiful and very you by wearing your father's huge necktie collection.

Yeah. In fact, I had a friend in college who did that. He always wore neckties at college and no one else did and I think it was really cool. Yeah, I mean, this is a thing that I have started to realize about clothes is that when you put on a outfit and you look at yourself in the mirror and you say, that doesn't look like me, that is an experience unique to you.

Other people will not think, that doesn't look like you. Because you look at you way more than anyone else looks at you. And so you just like show up and you're dressing different, people be like, ah, you're dressing different, that's cool. And like that's you now. You get to be whoever you are. Well, yeah, you can change. I had this idea that like adult fashion sense, especially, gets calcified and, you know,

around the time that you turn 30, you buy the clothes that you will wear some version of for the rest of your life. And I really believed that, even though it's silly and it makes no sense. But then this thing happened like 14 months ago and I was suddenly like, I think I wear sweatpants now. And then I was like, I like to wear khaki pants, that aren't khaki though, that are gray or blue or like a dark red or black. I like to wear slacks.

I don't know why. I'm a surprised as anybody to learn that I like to wear slacks, but I do. And I like to wear a certain kind of button down colored shirt that again, I did not like to wear before 2020, but I really like it. It's a pop of color. It makes me feel happy.

And I like it. It's a pop of color. It makes me feel happy. And I like it. And that's, and so now what had been this deep understanding of my own fashion sense has completely changed. And like I wear a lot of athletes, which I would not have believed possible. So I think if you're ready to make a fashion jump, make the fashion jump. It's kind, honestly, I don't wanna overstate it,

but it's kind of exciting. It is. I mean, I feel a little weird having said that, but I really like trying out new ways of dressing, which I didn't do for a really long time. I know me too. In fact, I might wear a necktie tonight. Like, if I came downstairs after work for dinner time,

and I don't know, I, we're ordering out or something, but like if I came downstairs and I was wearing a necktie, with this, with this cool kind of colorful shirt I have on, I think Sarah would be like, oh, it's pretty, that's pretty cool. It's kind of bold, I like it. Yeah. And if she didn't want to look, I just want to look a little nice. If It's kind of bold, I like it. Yeah. And if she didn't want to look,

I just want to look a little nice. If she didn't like it, I would still enjoy it. Like I would just feel like I had a slightly different day. You know what, I'm announcing it today. Oh wow. Is international, if you have a necktie and you feel like wearing one, where the necktie day?

Today is that day. I thought today was gonna be the day where you started wearing neckties all the time. No, no, no, not all the time. I mean, unless I like it, maybe yeah, not rule it out. All right. Well, John, do you have any news from A of Summoning for us? Cause we are three weeks behind. There's been joy. There's been hope. There's been despair. There's been everything, you know, it's, there's this great line in Robert Penn Warren's novel, All the Kingsmen, where he says, the end of man is knowledge, but there's

one thing he can't know. He can't know whether the knowledge will kill him or save him. And right now, that's how I feel about hope as an AFC Wimbledon fan sponsor and co-owner. So nine days ago, we were playing Northampton Town, and it looked like we were going to win the game one nil. And then with the last kick of the game, for no reason, the referee gave a penalty. It was not a penalty. It was a total dive. It was a total dive. It was a bad call.

They gave a penalty. And our goalkeeper, Nick Xanav, who's been with AFC Wimbledon since he was a kid, jumped the right way, made the save. We won the game. Oh, and suddenly we were only inches away from being out of the relegation zone. At this point, there are six teams that are really, really close to each other. And four of those teams are going to get relegated. And two of them are going to survive. And that put us right in the thick of that six team group.

And then we lost a game, which was frustrating. And then earlier today, we played a game against a team, the kind of team we've got to be beating. We had a lot of possession, which is good. I like the way this team plays under new manager, Mark Robinson. We, I don't know, did a nice job of crossing the ball. But then when we got near the goal, you could just feel that the guys just feel a ton of pressure on them. They were overhitting crosses. They were overhitting shots. And there is a ton of pressure on them. I mean, I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Like, they need to win probably three, maybe four of their last 10 games. And like, that's, that's the reality.

And, and if they don't, it's a significant, you know, it's obviously devastating for the club. It's also really bad for their careers as individuals and they all know that. And it is a lot of pressure. I can't even imagine the kind of pressure that they're under. And then in the last minute, the same goalkeeper Nick Zaniv, who was a hero in the game earlier, he kicked the ball against the leg of an opposing player. And it just rebounded back in the wrong direction. And it's scribbled into the net. And we lost. We lost one nil. And that was a game we needed to win. There is still hope. But not a ton. Just like, just like Robert Penn Warren wrote, there's one thing that you can't know. And that's whether the hope is going

to save you or the hope is gonna kill you. Oh yeah, you're, well, John, I'm sorry. It's okay. Hey, there's a helicopter on Mars. There is a helicopter on Mars. On April 3rd, NASA announced that the ingenuity helicopter that had been strapped to the belly of perseverance dropped its four inches,

it sort of swung out and then it dropped and it landed on the planet's surface and perseverance drove away. And now it's just sitting there or well, as you listen to this, it may not be sitting there anymore because it is scheduled to make its first flight before this podcast comes out on April 11. So we will know more when this podcast is out about whether it is possible to fly a helicopter on Mars and perseverance will be there to film it, do that. It has both audio and video capability.

It will film this Mars helicopter if everything goes to plan and look, everything has been so far. So why wouldn't it? Well, let's not jinx it, Hank, but yeah, it has gone incredibly well so far. Yeah, and it was, it was great news that the helicopter landed in its proper position. Do they, do they think that it should be possible for the helicopter to fly on Mars? There is no reason it should not be possible. So like we, we know Mars's gravity,

we know how many molecules of stuff are in the air that for the blades to push against We know how how big the blades had to be and how heavy they had to be and I think to some extent it was even tested in a kind of A simulation that not a simulation but like an actual Hmm a place that had a lot of air sucked out of it and then they basically put a Tether on it to pull up on it, which simulated a lower gravity, and it did work. So it should, and the things that could go wrong are many. Like the battery might not be keeping itself warm enough.

Of course, yeah. Yeah. You could just like have had some, it could have been jostled the wrong way during landing or something, but almost definitely all those things have been accounted for. So, but you know better than I, dear listener, how did it go? Hopefully great.

Hopefully great. Hopefully, flying on Mars. That's right. Well Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening, and we're off now to record our Patreon Only podcast. This weekend's stuff, if you want to support Complexly's work by becoming a patron to Dear Hank and John, you can do so at patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John, and you can listen stuff if you want to support Complexly's work by becoming a patron to Dear Hinkajon. You can do so at patreon.com slash Dear Hinkajon and you can listen to our weekly secret

podcast this week and stuff, which Payton recently described as her favorite podcast. So somebody I like that I mean not us but somebody. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tinnum. It's produced by Rosiana Halsey, Rohaasson, Sheridan Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom, our editorial assistant is Deboki Troker-Varty, the music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast,

it's by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. That'd be awesome.