Dear Hank & John - 286: A Number Likely to Go Up

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

What's the worst job you've ever had? Why are hats so important? When should I get a vase? Should I wash my hair with cold water? What happens when a cemetery goes bankrupt? How do I become less emotionally dependent on my ex? Why aren't there spicy animals? 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. Yours up for to think of it Dear John and Hank. Is the podcast where Hank Green pretends to have way more energy than he actually does? And we've been the answer your questions and give you a new advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and A.F.C. and William Alden John. Yes. You know, I'm a science guy and I recently learned that the doctor hits you with that little hammer on your knee. There's no reason they even do that. They just get a kick out of it. I'm a science guy and I recently learned that the doctor hits you with that little hammer

on your knee. There's no reason they even do that. They just get a kick out of it. I mean, there is a reason. There is a reason. I don't know what it is either, but there is a reason I assume doctor is tough. It's to test the speed of reflexes. Right.

To make sure your nervous system is going at the correct speed. Exactly. Which is quite fast. But apparently not that fast because he hits it and then, whoop, yeah, takes a second. Yeah. Pretty amazing. John, I bought a thing and it is called 150 prompts. And it's a number of, and I'm going to pull a prompt out.

And I'm going to ask you a question from this great thing. Okay. And here it is. I want number 82. Well, they from this great thing. Okay. And here it is. I want number 82. Well, they don't have numbers. Okay. So I'll pull it from like 82-ish. Yeah, around half way-ish, a little further than half way.

I don't know, what's 150 divided by two? A little less, a little further than half way. Yep. Okay. What's the worst job you've ever had, John? Sssss. I've had some stinkers. I'll be honest with you. The worst my first thought was CEO of VidCon This which is not this is not a statement about VidCon or the people I worked with. It's just a very, it was a very hard job. I was, I had too many stakeholders as they say.

It is a hard thing to balance. It looked like a hard job. Like I would watch you at VidCon and think like, oh my God, that looks hard. Events is just, events is very stressful because you're basing your entire business on how three days go. And you're expected to sleep during some of those three days. Yeah, no, it was a very weird business

to have like 362 days of expenses and three days of revenue. I hear you on that. The worst job I ever had probably was working at a warehouse and stacking stereo equipment, boxes full of stereo equipment into semi trucks all day. Uh huh. And the work itself was fine, but it was in an unair conditioned Florida,

central Florida swamp land, warehouse and sticky. It was just very, very sticky in there. Sticky situation. And I felt so gross every day. Probably the worst job I ever had, like objectively, was working the graveyard shift at stake and shake. Yeah, I expected to hear stake and shake.

That, I remember that. Yeah. And I remember being actually like a little afraid for you. Yeah, I mean, I will say not totally without reason. Yeah. Three o'clock in the morning in an Orlando steak and shake. It's not the best place I've ever hung out in my life. But look, I still eat steak and shake. I've worked at some restaurants. I definitely would not go to again. I won't name them, but I've worked at somewhere. I'm like,

whenever we're like, you know, driving along the interstate and they're like, well, what kind of fast food should we get? I'm always like, well, tell you what kind of fast food we shouldn't get. But steak and shake, oh man, I love steak and shake. Steak and shake is good food. I never had any questions about like the quality of the food or the, you know, safety of the preparation. And as you know, Hank, I'm somebody who pays a lot of attention to food preparation, safety. It was just like the job sucked. Like the pay was really bad.

People don't tip very well at three o'clock in the morning. Like it doesn't necessarily bring out the best in who you are. You know, when you're going to stay could shake at three o'clock in the morning, that's not always your best self. Yeah. And then there was just a tremendous amount of vomiting in the bathroom. Yeah. If I had to say one thing about that job that really sucked, it would be that every

single shift. Fluids. Someone vomited in the bathroom. Yeah. That was, that was also my biggest complaint about working at Walmart. We're, we're for some reason, this was my responsibility a number of times. And it was never, I never cleaned up puke, but I did clean up a, more than one other kind of bodily fluid. And I once, I once, I once, it's, I don't know if I can tell this story.

No, but I once, no, no. I know what it is. I've heard the story. You don't want to hear it. I don't think you should tell it. Okay. I don't want, first off, I personally don't want to hear it again. I find the story disgusting. Secondly, I don't want to, first off, I personally don't want to hear it again. I find the story disgusting.

Secondly, I don't think our listeners need to hear it. I think we should move on to questions. In fact, so many of our listeners were so generous to write in wonderful questions. We're sitting here using 150 prompts from your prompt book. This first question comes from Quarrel who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are hats such a big deal? What I mean is hats have a lot of meaning in certain contexts like removing a hat has a lot of meaning. For example, like at a funeral

or church, you often remove your hat. People tip their hats. Is there something special about the tops of our heads? I'm very confused. Please help. Not a rock or a floral coral. I once was having a conversation with my mother-in-law. And she commented that one of Catherine's old boyfriends wore his hat while sitting down at dinner at a restaurant. They went out to Outback Steakhouse or something. And he wore his baseball cap the whole time. And that this was a big red flag for her. Yeah.

And I was like, wow, I just lucked out that I know that that's a thing you care about. Because like, never would I, in a million years, would I think I need to take my hat off at an outback steakhouse. It's a big deal to a lot of people. I think it's a, it's a show of respect. And now we can like debate about why it's a show of respect or whether it needs to be. But there's lots of cultural shows of respect. In fact, Hank, did you know that a lot of people believe that the saluting in the army

is a sort of version of tipping your hat or taking your hat off? Right, it's just like, so you were doing that, but then you didn't always have a hat, so you just sort of made that signal. Yeah. And even though we no longer tend to like say tip of the hat to you or whatever, we still do a version of this where we nod at strangers. And there's been a lot of sociological research into this, like why do we nod at each other in public spaces, especially people with whom we should might share some affinity, like cyclists,

for instance, tend to nod to other cyclists. And there's also been a lot of research into, like, when people nod upward and when they nod downward, like what those two kinds of nods might communicate. But all of this, the hat tipping, the nodding, all of this is theorized by many to be a form of dealing with the problem of sharing physical space with strangers, sharing public space with people we don't actually know, which is a relatively recent phenomenon for humans, right? Like, was not an issue 7,000 years ago very often. And this is called civil inattention, which is maybe my favorite phrase of all time. So civil inattention.

John has got a question. Coral, John is so happy you asked. It's like, I'm not going to start answering an email because John has a speech note. I'm prepared. No, hey, it's not that I have a speech repair, but this is so fascinating to me. And of course, I know the reasons why it's fascinating to be, we could get into them if we wanna go into therapy or whatever,

but it is weird, right, that we go to the grocery store or we go to Target and it's full of people we don't know. And we're able to navigate that even though that's a relatively recent experience for humans. Yeah. And it's super weird that we think it's weird when we see someone we know. Yes. Right. Like that's the weird thing. Right. And it's like, Oh, I didn't expect to see a person I knew because I don't because place where I live. Because that's the moment that civil inattention is broken. That's the moment where this thing that we all take for granted, which is that we can be anonymous in public spaces

gets fractured. Oh, yeah. I haven't had that in years. It's nodding this hat tipping behavior. This is all a way of dealing with the presence of strangers without having to like engage in conversations and make them not strangers anymore. And then when we see someone we know in Target or whatever, the spell of civil inattention is broken. And nobody ever explain public privacy. And nobody ever explains that like this public privacy is a really lovely, valuable thing

that you force your entire family to give up if you become famous. Yeah. Well, yeah, as long as you're there with them, yeah. It is definitely a noticed phenomenon in the greenhouse hold here in Mizzou, Montana. Oh, my God. I mean, going with Hank to any public space in Mizzoula, Montana, it's the equivalent of like walking around town with Barack Obama or like being out with Justin Bieber. Like every single person knows who he is.

That is definitely not true, but it is not unlike walking around with the mayor of Mizzoula. Right. Like John An Engen walks around town, people know who he is because it's a small enough town. Well, I guess people, most places know who the mayor is, but it does feel a little bit like that, except that nobody's like, what's up with the potholes, Hank? So there's that advantage. Yeah, it is, it is a whole thing.

I had a fact for this one, much like not nowhere near as deep as yours, which is just that hello in sign language is like you put your hand at your head and move it up a little bit. So it's basically kind of the same signal. And I guess I don't know, the top of the head, it's a part of our face that we don't do much with. And so it's like, let's just expand our face to like extend it into the hat and let that be an emotive, like an added emotive tool. One thing that I think is completely undersold about human communication is the face. Oh, yeah.

And so we have a lot of muscles in our body and they all connect to bones, except on our face. Now this is not entirely true. Like, sphincters don't connect to bones, your heart doesn't connect to bones. But like, they're like facial muscles are special because they are skeletal muscles that oftentimes go from instead of from bone to bone, they go from bone to muscle or bone to skin. So they exist only to yank your skin around. And there's only one reason to have a bunch of muscles that exist, that you have evolved to have in a very, in an area of your body, it's already very dense with nervous infrastructure.

So it's like complicated to do this. You have a bunch of muscles that all they do is move your skin around. And part of this is like so that you can talk effectively, but a huge amount of it is so that you can communicate with people. Yeah, if you think about it, especially pre-language, we were entirely dependent upon those expressions, expressions with our faces, with our hands, with our bodies. Yeah. But then even after the emergence of language,

so much of language is context dependent, right? Like, yeah. So much of it is about my facial expression when I'm saying something. And this collapse of context is a huge part of what makes social interactions on the internet so complicated and charged. Now, it can also make them lovely.

Like one of the big frustrations for me when I was a kid is that I could never, I could never quite figure out how to communicate to my peers in a way that they understood me because I didn't have a great handle on all of those facial expressions and I didn't have a great handle on those kind of like nonverbal cues.

Oh, so much data being passed, yeah. Exactly, but then when I went on the internet when I was like 14 or 15 We were all just made out of keystrokes and that sort of leveled the playing field for me And I felt like well here I can be Understood and I can understand others in a way that I can't in real life and and so I I don't think it's all bad news But that collapse of context in online communication is certainly very weird. And we've built up tons of structures

to try to deal with it, right? Like we have 5,000 emojis to try to do what facial expressions do. Yeah. I, what the hell are we talking about, though, John? Is this still the conversation about? We're talking about hat tips. We're on our first question. My hat's serious.

We got it. We got it. We got it. We also didn't answer the question. Like, why are hats such a big deal? I still don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. I just really wanted to talk about civil and attention, but I like Hank's theory that they're just a way

of extending the face. John, this next question comes from Clemens who asks, dear Hank and John, when does one acquire a vase? I moved out of my, this is the opposite of what I have. I moved out of my parents' house about a year ago, and recently I have been wondering, when do you get a vase?

It isn't really an essential household item, but nonetheless, it feels like something that it would be useful to have. If at some point someone brings me flowers, I would need a place to put them, right? So, do I just buy a vase, not prepared to receive flowers, Clemens? Yeah, I feel like maybe Hank and John should buy a vase, not prepared to receive flowers, clements? Yeah, I feel like maybe Hank and John

should have a vase fire sale. Because... Yeah, you guys won some vases over the last 17 years of being with Sarah. I feel like I went from zero vases to now, yeah, too many vases. Yeah, at least 17. It's like you get one a year, we don't know how.

I do remember, though, not having any vases and being, and I remember like putting flowers in like a 20 ounce sprite bottle. Right. Yeah. Putting flowers in like a large water glass or whatever, which by the way works fine a lot of the time. Got a sprite would be good. And can even be sort of cool in its own way.

John, could you not mention sprite or any other so-and-as? Oh, I forgot you're not drinking soda. So I shouldn't mention not just its lemon lime taste, but also the delicious bubbliness of it. I mean, one of the things I really admire about sprite, and I don't want to get too deep into this, but no soda stream can ever capture. It really can't full bubbleliness. It very much can't.

There's so many bubbles per square ounce. Yeah, I mean, like, it's funny. I've had a soda stream for like longer than anyone. No, that's not true. But I've had a soda stream for like the third customer. I was an early adopter and I love it, but I don't like the fine tunedness of the number and like type of bubble that gets into a soda

is very, it's remarkably specific and difficult to duplicate. Now also, the thing is that like you have to fill it up one third with corn syrup to really make it feel like a soda, which is the main thing I'm trying to avoid. So, yeah. But back to the question, I'm sorry that you can't drink soda Hank. And I won't mention the incredible mouth feel of Sprite's astonishing carbonation ever again. But I feel like you don't need a vase or a vase,

however you say it. Well, there's two different things, John. Because, oh God, are they really? Yeah, well a vase is what you get when somebody gets you flowers and they come in a vase. I think he's kidding. A vase. I think he's kidding.

That's something that you go out and purchase. Okay, all right, you were kidding. I was worried for a second. Yeah, so that's my feeling about it is that like the number one way that you get a vase as somebody like brings you a vase that has flowers in it for whatever reason. Yeah, I think a vase is almost certainly carved crystal. Yeah, I don't know about that,

but I think like you can use things you already have in your house as a vase if someone who brings you flowers until you get a vase. Yeah. Because the thing is once you get a vase, you're never getting rid of it. Well, this is the last time in your life when you're gonna have that feeling

of an unbearably light life where you don't have a vase, right? And I think you should extend that period as long as you can. Yeah. Yeah. And here's a way to get back to it. Now, if you end up with a bunch of vases, you have also ended up with a bunch of other stuff. So getting rid of the vases won't actually solve your problem, but I have a friend who owns a flower shop and Cliff and Lindsay, two friends who go on a flower shop together. And they, they're a flower shop and I think this is fairly standard practice. Well, they will give you a discount on your flowers if you bring in a vase because they always need Vases.

Like, they buy them constantly. So they give you like a dollar or two dollars off here depending on the size of your vase if you bring one in and you can give flowers because they're going to have to buy those vases anyways. And this way, it's not like they're not like making a bunch of new vases that they're just having to like send out and then people are like going to put them in their cabinet forever and not use them anymore. I love. Thank you for that solution, Hank.

Yeah. This next question comes from Sadie who writes, dear John and Hank, a friend told me once that you should always rinse your hair with cold water because it will make your hair dry faster. Now, before we get to the heart of this question, Hank, which I genuinely don't know the answer to, can I just point out the weird human phenomenon that when a friend tells you information that is weird or surprising, you remember it forever because I had a friend tell me in middle school that I should rinse my hair with cold water in order to make it less puffy.

Like to. Or to problems. I don't know if this is really a friend looking back on it. I had a classmate tell me this. Yeah. And I believed them, but I have no idea whether this is true. Yeah. So Sadie goes on to say, in my head, hair rinse in warm water should dry faster because

the water is closer to boiling temperature, but admittedly, I don't really understand how evaporation works. At what temperature should I be washing my hair to ensure maximum drying efficiency, Sadie? Basically, it's not gonna matter. Like the difference in evaporation, I can't imagine will be significant, but it will definitely not be better if it's colder.

You are correct. Warm water evaporates more quickly, but it's going to cool down very fast. Right. So it doesn't matter that much, but there's no reason to make yourself uncomfortable with cold water if you can take a hot shower for the sake of your hair. Yes. The only reason to have your last, so there is a couple of reasons to take a cold shower. You save energy.

And also, you just want to prove to yourself, you can do it. It's not the only two. Oh, God, that's such a huge thing in a certain genre of podcast. I don't know how to describe this genre of podcast, except to say that it's about people who take cold showers and also seek other forms of like efficiency or their constructions of yeah, you know

Product productivity hustle productivity obsession. That's what it is. Yeah, and I made a video about this way way back in the history of vlog brothers I think that I read a book called flinch because of course like I Am constantly in a tug of war match between being a normal person and being convinced. Being a productivity tech room. By those people that I need to be more productive, not that I feel like I could be, honestly. But yeah, and I did it one time and I was like,

that seems fine. Now, I do like to jump into a cold body of water. And I think that that should be done whenever possible. And I don't mean like Arctic or anything, but I think that like anytime you can jump into a river or a lake and it's like acceptable and you're not gonna get like itches. Ah, yeah, it's good.

I think that at least we should do that more. I drive over way too many rivers I don't jump into. I spend way more time on rivers, I think, than the average person. And when I am on the white river, admittedly, it is one of the dirtiest rivers in America, but I rarely think to myself, oh, god, I wish I were just swimming in this.

I think there's a lot that you can do on rivers other than swimming them, but it's nice. I will say, I like to wade. I think what you're actually saying is you like wading. No, I it's nice. I will say like, I like to wade. I think what you're actually saying is you like wading. No, I like to swim. I do like to wade as well. When I was on this goes back to me being on tour and my two of my bandmates, Paul and Joe to George, have been in bands a lot and have toured around a lot. And they have a thing where they like to jump and get into a river whenever possible. And every time I didn't do that, when we were on tour

because I was cranky that morning, or because I just like didn't want to go through the hassle of drying off or whatever, I look back on as a regret. Okay. But that's me. I'm just gonna say, if you're jumping into rivers, you don't know, well, stay safe out there. Because rivers, I'm not kidding, rivers are no joke. They're dirty and dangerous. Well, also like, yeah, I mean, know the current.

Oh yeah, you know, know the river. Oh yeah, I agree. Two things I worry about, Hank, food safety, water safety. It's because there's two ways I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go by poisoning. I mean, I wanna have last words like Paul Claudel who said, Dr. D, do you think it was the sausage? And I do not wanna go, I do not wanna go on the water.

Water is very dangerous. No doubt about it. So just know if that's how I die, just know that I was pissed off about it. I was like, oh God, I can't believe I talked about this on Dear Hank and John and then it happened crap, crap, crap. That's gonna be my last thought. It's happening right now.

I know this is happening and I can't undo it. Yeah, that's gonna be just to give you a preview of my last thoughts. Should that be how I go? Let's keep with the questions about death. You got another one? Always. This next question comes from Kevin E. Wright's,

Dear John and Hank. My wife and I were walking in a small town past a cemetery and I noticed a property for a lease sign on a building nearby. And then I thought to myself, what happens when a cemetery goes bankrupt? What do you do with all the like headstones and stuff? Oh gosh, John.

Our cemetery has happened a lot. Our cemetery's private companies? Yee, often, yes. Not always, but often. They're often nonprofits now. I've got a friend who works as a cemetery and it's run by the county, I think. I know it's government.

So yeah, sometimes it's owned by the government. Sometimes it's a nonprofit. Some of them are for profit enterprises or associated with for profit enterprises because of funeral homes or whatever. I mean, it seems like there is a cap on the amount of money you can make. Like, yes. A lot of times though, part of the burial expense goes to like a forever fund that ostensibly pays for the forever upkeep of the cemetery and so on.

Right. They have an endowment of some kind. Yeah. But you're right. It does. There are 93 billion dead people right now about and that number is likely to go up. And the next 120 years, it's gonna be 8 billion higher. Well, we don't know that Hank, but it is probably gonna go up. And yeah, as long as as long as there are new humans being born and humans dying, the, there is a there is a long-term structural problem, right. Maybe with the business model, but it reminds me of something that John

Maynard Keane famously said when somebody pointed out that in the long run, in the very, very long run, there were some problems with his economic theories and he said, well, in the long run, we're all dead. So eventually, the way we will solve the cemetery problem is, you know, the way that we're gonna solve every other problem. Can I make a suggestion and you can tell me it's terrible? Yeah.

So at the moment, I am a, I don't need to be buried, just scatter my ashes at some place that I like. Right, but I could be swayed if this were the new idea. Okay. You assign me a gravestone that's already taken, but by somebody who's been there for a long time. And then you say to me, okay, this person, Jeffrey Kalamazoo is dead.

And has been dead for a hundred years. Learn as much as you can about him, because we're gonna be putting a new gravestone up and it's gonna say Hank Green and Jeffrey Kalamazoo. And you will take up the same, you will take up a, not a new spot, you'll share it. So like at this point, Jeffrey Kalamazoo is just like dirt down there.

Well, but it's also a way of potentially making a new generation of people who know about Jeffrey Kalamazoo. Exactly. So I'm just like, I will take some time to learn something about this person and know that like we shared this earth, not at the same time, but we shared this earth. And then 120 years or 150 years from now, somebody will get buried there and it'll be like,

Hank Green, Jeffrey Kalamazoo, and Alice Snyder, and we'll all be in there together. Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of a lovely idea. I would support that. I mean, not for myself, for myself, I wanna be at the very top of Crown Hill Cemetery above in a construction that is built on top of whatever vice president is up there. For context, Crown Hill Cemetery is this big cemetery in Indianapolis. It's the biggest cemetery in Indianapolis, one of the biggest in the world. And it actually does have a hill, which is a

miracle for Indianapolis. And at the top of the hill, which is the tallest point in the city, is the last and final resting place of James Whitcomer, Riley, who was a children's author. And I want to be buried on top of him. I don't know what that's going to work. There's a, they've built a beautiful like sculpture at his last and final resting place. And I would like them to build a structure that goes on top of the top of Crown Hill, directly above, right? The, is this asking too much of the world, probably? And then that is where I would, that is where I would like to be buried.

So what you're saying is the exact same idea as me, except that you'd like a skyscraper. Yes, and to be clear, I'm just asking for people buried on top of you forever. I'm just asking for one city block, okay? Just one city block where the only thing is my remains. Which reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by your gross ostentatious tomb.

John Green's gross ostentatious tomb coming to you in 50 years. Oh God, please, I don't actually, like I don't actually want to gross ostentatious tomb, but I also kind of do. And this is the thing. This is like me and the productivity podcasts. Yeah, so I would like my tomb to somehow reflect

this ambivalence that I feel. Right, just like I want my future NFTs to reflect my have some kind of no, no, no, no, no, you're I mean, there's only one thing more, more embarrassing than part of you kind of wanting a big tomb. And that is part of you kind of wanting to be involved in the NFTs. And with anything to do with NFTs. I agree. Just when I thought I'd achieved like Max Kring along comes Hank. Okay, here's the situation.

I'm not going to get buried, but you can buy the NFT of my dead body. Oh God. Oh God. It's, yeah, and there's only one of them. There's only one of them. There's only one of them. There's only one of them. So it's basically me putting your name into a spreadsheet, but we're gonna charge $200,000 for it.

And you are gonna get a 13 character code that makes it clear that you own the idea of Hank's tomb. Today's podcast also, of course, brought to you by civil inattention, civil inattention, obviously a rant John wanted to go on. That is exactly the one I was going to use to fight it that one. The very words I was about to say, this podcast is also brought to you by my Walmart story. I wanted to tell it, but nobody wanted to hear it. Yoinks. And today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by A Vaz.

A Vaz. Not a vase. All right, John. I have another question. It's from Tommy who asks, dear Hank and John. I think this one's for you, but we'll see. My girlfriend and I decided to break up a couple of months ago, but we have stayed very close friends since.

We talked to each other about how our days are going and what is going on at work or school and what's gotten us feeling down. She's the only friend I feel comfortable talking about my feelings with, but I can't talk about everything with her. For instance, when I'm feeling sad because I'm missing her, I don't have anybody else to talk about this sort

of personal stuff with. What should I do in this kind of situation? Is this something that therapists could help with? Do be as advice is greatly appreciated. Takas and Tortillas. Tommy. I do think it's something a therapist could probably help with, but I also think that a lot of us, I know this was the case for me when I was younger. I had the expectation that one person, typically my romantic partner, would be the only person I confided in.

Yes. And that there was also almost something that was disrespectful to the relationship, to confide in anyone else. Wow, yeah. And that is too much for any person to hold, I think. Well, yeah, I think it is possible, but I certainly don't think it's ideal or expected

or it's just that thing that you said about how I almost felt like it was a betrayal to share my emotions with someone who was not my partner. Yeah. That is so important. Like that is an idea and I don't know where we got it, but we got it and we need to unget it. Yeah, it's a lot of pressure to put on one other person and it's especially a lot of

pressure to put on one other person when you're both trying to navigate what life looks like for both of you after the end of a romantic relationship. And I mean, I've been in that situation before. I've been in a very similar situation. And I don't think that there's an overnight solution. I don't think you wake up tomorrow with the solution. I think that it's a long-term process solution. But we all need to be able to confide aspects of our lives to more than one person, I think.

I mean, or at least I do. I don't know if we all do. I do. And that's work. It's work to build those relationships. But one thing I found was when I started to try to do the work, there were actually already people in my life who were excited to be close to me and who did care about me and who I just hadn't been confiding in because it felt wrong or or or or it I felt uncomfortable with the idea and then slowly as I began to do that I became a better friend and I also became a better romantic partner in a lot of ways because I was putting less pressure on that one relationship to provide

for all of my emotional needs. Yeah, and I mean, I think there are certainly situations where that we can find ourselves in where we don't have people who seem excited to take on that role. And yeah, and like that may be a situation where therapy is like helpful in that one way. There are other ways that therapy will probably also

be helpful, but it also may take some time, but thinking about establishing relationships where, and I have a hard time with this, where like outside of my family, where I feel I can be supported and I can sort of like, you know, talk about the real hard stuff, has been a lot of work for me.

It's been a process of unlearning things and also a process of like, I guess part of like the unlearning is unlearning like shame, unlearning shame about like feeling overwhelmed or feeling like I can't do something or being unsure or like all these things that I was kind of have been told to not feel or that I, if I am feeling that I should ignore that or something.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, this is a joke, but it's a joke with a point. I've talked about this before on the Anthropocene Review, but when I was in college, my college girlfriend asked me what my biggest fear was, and I said abandonment. And then she was just really quiet, because that's a lot, that's a lot to hold. And then to fill the awkward silence I said, what is your biggest fear? And she said, geese. And I realized that I had I'd missed the mark on my answer. But the thing is now looking back on it, I needed to do something about my fear of abandonment. I needed to do something about my fear of abandonment. And that solution wasn't to find one person who was never gonna abandon me.

The solution was to build a broader network. And that's a long term. Diversify. Yeah, diversify my identity, diversify my relationships. And that's not to say like I have foundational relationships in my life. And if they ended, it would be devastating. Oh, yeah. And I don't want to minimize that in any way. Like there's no there's no getting around that, right? Like part of being a person is being profoundly reliant upon and dependent upon other people. And, and, you know, if for whatever reason,

those foundational relationships ended, whether that's my relationship with you or my relationship with my spouse or my relationship with my best friends, it would, it would be awful, awful brutal. You know, but I think part of the reason I'm able now to be a better brother and a better spouse than I was able to be 10 or 20 or 25 years ago is because I have worked hard to try to you know build out some of those relationships so that there isn't only one person that I can confide in because I think that's a for a lot of people that's that's just a lot to hold you know it's just a lot to try to carry around all the time. And so that's the work that I would encourage you to do, but it's very, very long-term work.

And so in the short term, I would encourage you to definitely talk to somebody, like, reach out to a therapist. Because come to think of it, one thing I really love about my therapist is that I can confide in her and I can like have absolute trust in that confidence. Like she literally can't say what I tell her, you know, like she's not allowed to gossip about me. And I really, I do really value that. John, we got one last question before we get to the all important news from Mars and aFC Wilmedance from Sam. I am so excited about the news from aFC Wimbledon by the way.

Well, the me is like, we have the best news for may FC Wimbledon coming, but what is our last question? It's from Sam who asks, dear Hank and John, I was studying for an ecology midterm when a question struck me, why are there no spicy animals? I understand that plants use capsaicin to make themselves spicy to prevent predation and that some animals evolved to be poisonous to other animals, but why didn't animals become spicy to keep predators away? Or, or are there just a bunch of spicy animals out there and we haven't found them yet? I can look, can I look forward to eating a naturally spicy insect for dinner someday?

Best Sam. Sam, you can look forward to eating a naturally spicy insect right now if you want to, because any stinging ant is spicy because they have formic acid in them. Really? And in fact, there are people who make fire ant chutney for this reason, for the flavor, that the spicy flavor that the ants add.

But you can't have like a spicy mammal. Like meat is meat, you know? Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. But I'm not really interested in pursuing more meat in the future anyway, but I am, and I hope the ants won't take this personally. I am interested in pursuing potentially some insect-based protein. So I'm enthusiastic about the prospect of some spicy ant burgers.

And here's the situation. If we start making meat from scratch, which we're starting to do, and I expect, by the time I'm heading on out, that there won't be a lot of meat getting eaten anymore. That's my hope anyway. At least not sort of like a meat that was created by an actual living animal that we maybe get as mega spicy. We can do whatever we want, we're making it. Yeah, we can just grow it spicy. Though at the same time,

you could also just like put some hot sauce on it. So there is that. Why, it could mix it up. Yeah, do whatever you want to do it. Great. All right, let's move on to the news from AFC Wimbledon. Hank, AFC Wimbledon have been in the relegation zone since forever ago.

Uh huh. And every season, for the last three seasons, somehow AFC Wimbledon in the narrowest possible margin escapes relegation. Yeah, it remains a third tier English soccer team. somehow AFC Wimbledon in the narrowest possible margin escapes relegation. Yeah. It remains a third tier English soccer team. It happens. It happens so routinely that I've started to believe that it's natural,

but of course it isn't. And if you flirt with relegation, uh-huh, you will eventually be relegated. Yep. And when AFC Wimbledon were playing this weekend, I was watching the game on my I follow app. And we were playing Accrington Stanley. They scored a goal and my heart sunk. And I looked at the table and I realized we were in second to last place. And I was like, you know what?

It's gonna happen. Yeah. And I have to accept it. And it sucks. But it's gonna happen. Yeah. And I have to accept it and it sucks, but it's gonna happen. It's the die is cast. Sure. And then we scored five goals, five goals. We scored five goals. We won the game five one. And now our goal difference is better than any of the teams around us. Oh right. Because that matters. Goals and and and suddenly we are not in the relegation zone for the first time in five months because we scored five goals. Olly Palmer, you might remember him, Hank, as the guy that I hyped up early in the season as finally we have a big, big striker again. Yeah.

Well, he was hurt for most of the season. He's back. He scored two goals. Ayuba Saul, who's a very, very small person. And that is the ideal Wimbledon strike team. He's a bit of a central attacking midfielder, but that's the ideal Wimbledon strike team, a giant like Ali Palmer and a smaller person like Ayuba Saul, Ayuba Saul, who like, like six months ago was playing in the seventh tier of English football. I you basal scored two goals. He's 19 years old.

He's amazing. I love everything about him when he was asked if he was satisfied with his performance. He said, I won't be satisfied until I'm the best soccer player in the world. It was amazing. How did we score all these? We haven't scored. We haven't scored five goals since 2011 was the last time we scored five goals away from home.

We weren't even in the football league the last time we scored five goals away from home. We beat acting as Stanley five one. We're out of the relegation zone. There's seven games left for Wimbledon. I think we need to win three of those games. We scored five goals. So there is hope. There's real, real hope.

I cannot believe it. I just, we gotta win, we gotta win three of seven games, though. Potentially, it's hard to know. It depends on how many of the other teams win, but I think if we win three, we should be safe. So Hank over at the Nerdfighter subreddit, there was a post about this, and there were so many wonderful comments.

One person said, I'm afraid they've used up all their goals for April and just one game. Yeah. That's my worry. One person pointed out that it was the first time that Wimbledon have won a game by more than one goal in 18 months. One person said, this club has consistently made me feel like we're living in a movie and they're the main characters. And that's so true. Like how do they do it year-of? Oh my god. So obviously there's a long way to go. But hope, hope, hope. What's the news from Mars? Well, it's less good. So it's been like just a string of great news from Mars. But now we've got a little hiccup. We don't know. Even saying it that way makes me,

is making you more worried than you should be, but ingenuity, the helicopter has been delayed. And we're not entirely sure why. So it was pushed back to no earlier than April 14th. So again, that's before this podcast comes out. So maybe it's resolved itself in the meantime. Did they say why? They did say why, but it didn't mean anything. They basically said we ran a test to get the blades to reach 2,400 revolutions per minute, which is below the speed at which it would actually take off. So just like get the things moving.

And during the test, a thing happened. Like what the press release said means nothing to me. A thing happened that basically told it to stop. And we're not sure. And so now that the engineers have to go through and figure out exactly what of the 400 different reasons why it would be told to stop, it stopped. So who knows what that means.

It could just mean that it took a little longer to speed up than they were expecting it to. And so things weren't exactly as predicted. And they will know that and they will use that data to change something slightly. And it'll take off immediately. But it's, blades did move. It's spun, it spun, it's little blades.

So it can spin. It's past all its other tests. It's surviving the nighttime, which is a concern because it's quite cold. Right. And it's using its power to survive the nighttime. So far so good, but not exactly as good as we were hoping. We were hoping that by now,

I would be telling you about a helicopter that had flown on Mars, but not quite yet. Okay. Well, we will keep our fingers crossed. And indeed, as we must for AFC Wimbledon as well, there was another comment on that subreddit Hank, and I thought it was really good. And it reflects both this podcast and the community at large. Anyone who stumbles upon this subreddit would be so confused. Like, is it a

subreddit about third-tier English football or is it a subreddit about Mars or about Pelicans? What's going on here? And indeed, what is going on here? But I'm very grateful to learn about Pelicans and Mars and third-tier English football with you Hank and thanks for potting with me. All right. Thank you, John. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune of Mendeschitz produced by Rosiana Halstrow, Hassan Sheridan Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Trocrovarti, the music you're hearing now, and the beginning of the podcast is by the great gunorola, and as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome. Don't forget to be awesome.