Dear Hank & John - 300: Robocalling Ryans

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

What's the easiest way to look like you're working? What do I do when my family watches a movie I don't want to watch? Will I test positive for COVID-19 if I'm vaccinated? What is storm oil? How do I deal with the end of the Earth? When do I have to start answering calls from numbers I don't know? 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

You gone I'm going three two one start. We were just feeling each other then we did we did it from the three That's almost impossible I thought there was something weird about it, but I didn't really how did we do it from the three? I don't know this should be in the podcast because that just proved that there is such a thing as telepathy just in a very limited way I mean in the but in the way that this works, it only synced for you because for me, it wasn't synced. I started a little bit before you, but you, so it was only, so you were telepathic.

I was not. All right, go ahead for yet, and let's just start with the podcast. Okay. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Gorgeous, I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be a advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John.

Yeah, a grizzly bear. He walked into a restaurant and he says to the waiter. I don't, he didn't even sit down first. He walks straight up to the waiter and he said, can I get a grilled cheese? And the waiter said, why the big paws? Oh. Oh. I love the idea that in your story, for no reason,

the Grizzly Bear is rude. Oh. Oh. But so is the waiter. There's no, yeah, because then like it makes more sense that the waiter can be rude It's not necessary to the joke for the grizzly bear to be aggressive. He could have sat down Sad at the table waited his turn and the waiter comes over. It says how can I help you it's same joke

I feel that you've unjustly maligned grizzly bears as being aggressive when I feel like they're mostly aggressive only when they're hungry Or yeah or tired or Protecting their children. Also, I'm sure with the case with you, John, I recently found out that six percent of Americans believe that they could win a unarmed, so an unarmed fight with a grizzly bear. So as you and a grizzly bear and six percent of Americans think that they are going to come out victorious. Okay, I have a couple questions here because I might be in the 6%. Oh my goodness. All right.

Okay. Well, I'm so glad because I thought I would never meet one of you. Here's my question. Do I have to kill the grizzly bear? You have to win the fight. I guess you could be unconscious at the end. Are you gonna put it in the headlock? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

because I, listen, I'm not gonna say that there's a 100% chance, but I think there is a reasonable chance that if you put me in an arena with a well-fed content grizzly bear. Okay. That I could make the case to that grizzly bear, that the best outcome for all of us is for both of us to walk out of that arena a lot. So, John has turned the fight into a debate. I believe it's what has occurred. Not a debate. A brief discussion where it's like, look, and you may say, oh, John, you didn't win the fight if you and the Grizzly Bear are equally well walking out of that arena.

And I totally disagree. I want to fight. I would definitely call it a win if, if, regardless, if you walk out of the arena, but is it a win if regardless if you walk out of the arena. But is it a fight? Because I'm imagining like a boxing match. It wouldn't be much of a fight. Like maybe both of you could live. There might be some verbal sparring.

But like the judge, the judge, is there a judge in boxing? Would have to say like, yes, you landed more punches in the grizzly bear, like the technical winner of the match. No, no, no, no. No, I'm acutely aware that in any kind of physical altercation, I'm going to come out on bottom. Right.

Well, what I know, zero percent chance of defeating a grizzly bear in an actual fight. What I'm saying is that I think I've got a chance that we both survive. So here's my strategy. So if we are in a boxing match and there are boxing rules, I have heard, I know that there are boxing rules. Can I get the bear to break one of the boxing rules enough times that the bear is disqualified? John, what is a boxing rule?

Oh, for sure. For, I mean, low blows, you only have to have two or three of those before you get to school. You have it. If I have three low blows from the Grizzly Bear. I'm in very serious peril. Okay. There are other rules that I think we could maybe make work for the situation. What if... So the Grizzly Bear has to be able to like touch gloves at the beginning of the flight

and then go back to its corner before the bell rings. And I'm not totally confident. We just need a poorly trained grizzly bear. That's right. That's right. I'm not totally confident that Grizzly Bear could follow all those instructions perfectly.

Yeah, we need a poorly trained welfare grizzly bear who is just content. And also, ideally, there's a bunch of salmon around, but not in the corner, just to make sure he doesn't go back to the corner. Right. Yeah, so the long and short of it is that I don't think that either of us could beat a grizzly bear in a fight, but I do have some level of hope that we could avoid the fight, which is an, I would argue an under-appreciated 21st century strategy.

Just in general. You know, I go about my day and I avoid fights with every, every animal, every species on Earth except for humans every day. That's so true. So I feel like I can do it I'll even avoid a fight. I know I can win like if a squirrel gets aggressive with me I'll be like oh no, but whatever man. This is your space cool. I got it. I'll back off No worries. You're but on my ass. I'm not trying to get rabies. Yeah, and yet if a human a human stranger something mean to me on Twitter

I'm like mm-hmm. Here we go Here we go. Here we go. Time to throw down. Cracked the knuckles. I wrote a couple tweets this morning that I didn't send. It's always a good policy. Which is potentially, you know what I should do with all of them.

I was gonna say, you know, it's an even better policy. Yeah, well, it's just not making your Twitter drafts your Twitter. It's just for you. Yeah. Sometimes I send John my tweets. That's, I almost sent you one this morning that was a real doozy.

Oh, you should have. You should have. I wish you had. Let me tell you what it is. Okay. Um, I think it was a great call not to tweet it. That's for sure.

Oh my God. Okay, let's do some questions from our last year. What even is this podcast? Just take a joke. I'll tell you who wins. Don't man yells at cloud. Yeah. I mean, I'd say that the Grizzly Bears would win, but we are winning against them by any

objective measure. This first question comes from my who asks, dear Hank and John, I work at a movie theater with many security cameras. We always have to be doing something because the owner checks the cameras and yells at us if we're doing nothing. Most of the stuff we do is just making up work or doing things really slowly to kill time when it's slow. You work at a movie, there's got, oh my God,

my question is what is a good way to not do anything while looking like you are working, but not something difficult. But Friedman Freddensmeyer. Oh my God. So before we answer the question, can we just acknowledge that the worst possible business strategy is to spend all of your time at home watching security cameras of your business and then yelling at people when they aren't busy

because the appropriate business strategy is to try to make the business busier. Right? Well, but here's the thing, it's a movie theater. They have start times and the start times align, and then there are down times. And during the down times, you clean up, and you do, I'm sure, important movie theater things

that don't take the full two hours. Yeah. And that's just a, well, that's the model. Well, I don't know the details of the movie theater business. I've never worked in a movie theater, but I will say that in general, it infuriates me when bosses are angry

with their employees for like the business not having enough business, because that is their job. The boss should be focused on that, that is literally their whole job. So you can't make that argument to your boss because of the power structures and this person is obviously kind of a jerk. So it's a hard thing to figure out what to do.

And so I think it is probably a good policy to figure out some things that are easy and look like work. Yeah, so I don't, do you remember these John when we were a kid? And I don't think they exist anymore. They were like human powered vacuum cleaners and you would like rub them over the ground.

There was a pole. Oh, yeah. And they had these fast food restaurants and they'd go, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do you're basically just going for a walk. And so maybe get one of those. Yeah, looks like you're sweeping. Yeah, yeah, you step in, listen to a podcast. That's a good idea. The baccaroids in there. We're us.

I guess you felt fan of this podcast. I like that your first thought was the baccaroids. I like that when you're like, what am I gonna do to listen to something during a downtime? I know. I'll listen, we're a podcast, Hank. Advertise this podcast. You're like that boss who doesn't know how to build the business.

Yeah, it's okay. We don't have anybody standing around not doing anything luckily. It's true. It's definitely not the problem. The other thing that I was thinking about is I find that I can look busy if I'm listening to something. Like I can just sort of like walk from one stand to another. I can kind of walk from one place to another

and appear busy. Because think about this, because I read the question this morning and then I spent a bunch of the morning in the garden picking beans. And I was like, I probably look busy right now. But in fact, like I am doing this as slowly as I possibly can to enjoy being outside for as long as possible. Yeah, I realize I realize this isn't practical

advice, but I'm just going to tell you like what I would fantasize about doing as opposed to what I would actually do, because I don't know what I would actually do other than be frustrated. But what I would fantasize about doing is doing nothing and waiting for the boss to call and picking up the phone and then saying, what are you doing? What are you doing for the business right now, buddy? That's the great tweet, John. Thank you. That, like, Gah, it's all right, John. Do you want another question for us? Sure, let's stick with the movie theme.

Allison writes, Dear John and Hank, my family sometimes watches movies that I don't want to watch. While they watch the movie, what should I do? Should I sleep? Should I do something else?

Please help me out when this happens. Pumpkins and penguins, Allison. I have this problem almost every time my family watches a movie. Well, I can tell you what I do, John. What do you do? I work on my project for Awesome Perks. Yeah, that's what I was going to suggest, actually, is like make some art. Yeah.

Yeah, I just, I spent the last week drawing 50 monsters during while there were various YouTube videos that were not, let's say, designed for 41-year-olds. Right. And I found a very gratifying and I was amazed by how many different monsters my brain could produce. I did occasionally run up against moments when I didn't think that I could go any further or do any like there was no other way for a monster to exist, but it turns out there's all kinds of ways for monsters to exist. They can have big heads, they can have small heads, they can have snake bodies, they can have slug bodies, they can have bird bodies, they can have brontosaurus bodies. It's great.

I had a good, I had a good old time. And, so I, and like, I will say that it was not an, a, a, because of the structure of the project, there was a significant cost investment as I was using thick cardstock paper and silver sharpies, but I think that I could have found cheaper ways to do it and been gratified. Yeah, I mean, what I do is just draw circles over and over again, which you can do with any pen and any piece of paper. And I, yeah, you could do it on the same piece of paper forever. You can, actually.

And I find that wildly fulfilling. And the thing about it is, like, when I'm watching a movie, I don't want to watch. Mostly what I don't want is I don't want to be deeply engaged in the movie. And sometimes that's because it's kind of a stupid movie. And sometimes that's because like, it's just a little much for me, for whatever reason. Like a lot of horror movies are a little much for me. They are like a little too close to home or whatever. But if I'm doodling, then it's

like I can kind of zone in and zone out so I can still have an opinion about the movie and I'm not distracting other people by like being on TikTok or whatever or like looking at my phone constantly. And I'm still enough of a participant in the family moment that I can talk about it when it's over. but without the like stress of like having to watch something you really don't wanna watch, which is for me anyway, actively unpleasant. Yeah, yeah, especially if it's not the first time. Yeah, and in the case of the movies watched in our household, it's never the first time,

ever the first time. I cannot get Orrin to try new movies. Which is a difficult, he's like, no, it's too much. And I get it, it's a lot. And he's four, and so it is a lot. But boy, I love Emma Daughter's Jug band Christmas, but I've seen it enough times. Right now.

Yeah. Yeah, we have the same issue in our household and it's fascinating to me that we like Yeah, we have the same issue in our household and the case I try to make is Y'all can't rewatch movies over and over again until you've seen them for the first time So maybe today is the day that we add by one to the number of movies that we can endlessly rewatch. Well, that would be nice. Because if we can get it up to like 30, then I won't be so miserable.

Yeah, I think ours might be at 30 and I'm still like, all right, yeah, that's all right. Let's watch the Will Smith vehicle spies in disguise for the seventh time. Let's do it. I'm in. Yeah, great. Oh, wow. I've never heard of that. He turns into a pigeon. Wow. Oh, my gosh. There's so many jokes about pigeon pigeon poop. Wow. Geez. I haven't heard this many poop jokes since we rewatched the emoji movie for the 17th time. watch the emoji movie for the 17th time. No. Oh, ho, ho, ho. I'm not looking forward to that stage of movie watching. I should be happy.

Emma Dott has jugged in Christmas and cars over and over again. Sounds great. I've kind of come around to the emoji movie. I don't know what it is, but it gets better on rewatches. Oh. Well, that is not what I would have expected. John, do you have any more advice or should I move on to this question from Andrew? I think we killed it. Okay. Just like a killer grizzly bear in a fight.

Andrew asks, dear Hank, a John, as I understand it, getting a COVID vaccine means that you get a deactivated form of the virus, not really. No, that creates antibodies that fight an active virus. That second part is true. Mostly in the case of the current vaccines, you get a little chunk of instructions for building a part of the virus. Then your body built a very small part of the virus, and then you develop antibodies to that small part of the virus, which has been extraordinarily effective,

which is very exciting, because it didn't have to be. But Andrew continues. Also, as I understand it, COVID tests detect antibodies for COVID. So now that I have the vaccine, will I test positive for COVID if I'm asked to take a test, punctures and penguins, Andrew, good sign off. No.

So you will test positive if you take an antibody test, which is a specific kind of test that all throughout the pandemic has either told you whether you are like have been infected with COVID or have COVID. So in antibody test, even if you had COVID like eight months ago, you can test positive with an antibody test.

And if you have a COVID vaccine, you will also test positive with an antibody test and that will tell you that you have the antibodies. But antibody tests don't tell you whether you have COVID right now. Those tests test for the presence of the virus. And those ones are the ones that you generally are getting when you get COVID tests. Yeah, I just had a COVID test by the way. I'm fully vaccinated, but I had a really bad cold. Yep. And I got a, and I don't have COVID, thankfully, but I did have to spend just to be sick

because the kids are starting school, the kids are in fact, and they did. Yeah, I just didn't wanna ruin the kids first day of school. So I spent the weekend in the basement, and there's nothing to recommend about anything about the pandemic. Yeah, no, it isn't great.

I just gave Orrin over the counter-COVID tests because he had a cold and it has gotten harder to get tests because I guess we feel better. So we got the over-the- the counter one and it was very easy. He's good. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how it works. And it should be said that just as the vaccines are very effective PCR tests are extremely sensitive. Yeah. And do a good job of detecting COVID when you have it, but hopefully you won't have it, or at least you won't get very sick because you'll have the opportunity to get vaccinated. Yay! All right, Hank, we have a question that sort of melds our interests, and also I don't

know the answer to it, so I thought I would ask you. This is from Chelsea who writes, Steer John and Hank, I read somewhere that ancient Greeks used to use oil to calm the waves. Now, not to stereotype, but I assume that this meant olive oil. So I have to say Chelsea, I assume it doesn't mean olive oil, because olive oil was pretty expensive and hard to make in large quantities, but I also might be wrong because I have read in ancient Greek texts about this calming of the waves, but I always kind of assume that it was figurative or something. I just didn't think very hard about it. Anyway, it got me to wondering, does petroleum have the same properties that can help calm

waves? And if so, will all of these oil spills actually help reduce the volatility of the ocean and reduce the severity of hurricanes and other climate change related catastrophes. Chelsea, I'll tell you what I love. I love your optimism. It's like, oh, so if we can have enough oil spills, yeah, maybe we should just spill all the oil and just calm the ocean right down.

I mean, in that case, we're not burning it at least. But it is a really interesting intellectual exercise. And I love the question. She signs off not out of AFC Wimbledon's league Chelsea. Well, you're out of our league at the moment, but maybe not forever. That Chelsea is the name of a football team. It is.

The rest of us. Thank you, Hank. I don't know if it was olive oil or not. It may have been fish oil. So oil that you get from rendering fish, You hate? You hate? You hate? You hate? You hate? You hate? You hate? You hate? I don't know if it was olive oil or not. It may have been fish oil. So oil that you get from rendering fish, because that was probably cheaper.

Yeah. And you wouldn't want to use fish oil in a lamp, which was what olive oil or in cooking as much, which is what olive oil was used for, because it is less pleasant to be around. But I don't know for sure what kind of oil they used. But this is a thing to the extent to which this was done in our lifetimes. And the mechanism of action is not entirely clear, but if you have a bag, so not like a huge amount,

if you have like a, imagine like a five pound bag of oil, you can pour it around a ship and that can decrease waves around a ship. Really? Yeah, at the extent to which this works is not entirely clear, and there hasn't been a lot of modern science done in it. But Benjamin Franklin was super into it,

and he did a bunch of research on it and showed that on a small scale, like a teaspoon of oil would spread out over several yards and it would have a significant calming effect on water. Wow. To the point where people would still carry around storm, it's called storm oil, still carry around storm oil, probably like unusually castor oil,

probably because of its just superstition these days. But until the 1990s, it was required on English ships. Wow. So that's wild. Wow. Now, I didn't know about any of that. So you, John, having read the Odyssey or whatever, knew more about this than I did.

But the answer to the Chelsea's question, it would have to be a lot of oil. And I think especially in a hurricane type environment, it wouldn't have a huge effect. Though there seems to be sort of a double effect happening. One is that it interferes with the winds ability to catch on the wave and have the wind produce a wave, and the second being that it just adds friction to the movement of the water, and so the water is not able to move this much. So, now, could it work? Sure.

Would we need to spill a whole heck of a lot of oil and cause a whole set of other problems? Yeah, we would. And it also, it doesn't tend to be the waves that cause the big problems anyway. It's more that the water level increases with a storm surge that I don't think would stop with storm oil. But who knows?

But also, what's not explored too much because I don't want that to be the solution. Yeah, it's not going to be a great solution. But it is still a really fascinating intellectual exercise. So thank you, Chelsea. And thank you for introducing me to an idea that I had no no knowledge of what's so at home. Oh knowledge. Yeah. I've apparently extended into the 1990s and even into today. I enjoyed reading about storm oil. Hank, I wonder if I can ask you a question that we got like 200 times this week but we got

different versions of and so I'm just going to ask you like the overarching question. Many, many people wrote in to say some version of, how can I be happy when Earth is going to be dead in the 30 years, referencing the recent, very disturbing, extremely well researched report put together by the UN. Yeah. And I think this is a really important question, and I understand why people are asking it. But I also feel like I have a responsibility to tell people that the Earth is not going to die in 30 years or in 300 or 3,000 or 3 million years.

And I also feel like I have a responsibility to tell people that in some ways it's much worse than that. Because if the earth was gonna die in 30 years and there was nothing we could do, then whatever, despair, nihilism, hopelessness, let's just give up on everything and enjoy what pleasures while we may. But the truth is a lot more complicated than that and kind of less, both like less horrible

and more horrible, which is that we are going to make decisions, we are making decisions today and we are going to make decisions over the next 30 years that do profoundly shape the kind of alive world that is going to exist in 300 or 3,000 and potentially even in 3 million years. Yeah, I mean, so I've been a really active and engaged in this conversation for over 20 years now. My master's degree is an environmental studies. And obviously this was a big deal.

When I was getting that degree, it was a big deal. When I was getting my chemistry degree, it's been a big deal my entire life. And our dad worked in the environmental movement when we were growing up. And so did our mom. Yeah, I remember being a little kid and our dad talking to us about climate change.

And we knew all of that in the 80s. And by we, I mean, like as a species. We knew it. Yeah. What that has given me is a perspective on progress that I think a lot of people who are in their 20s don't or especially their teens don't have. And that very much comes in the form of seeing the pie charts change substantially in terms of our energy mix. Now, that's not the only series of problems that we need to solve, but it is like a

needle that I keep watching move. And so the thing that the IPCC report says to me is not not we are doomed. It is, we know what we have to do. Now that is very different from actually doing it, but that is actually a really, like, that's a powerful thing that, like, this is going to cost trillions of dollars, but there are trillions of dollars to spend. We've figured out how to generate a lot of economic activity to leverage a huge amount of human potential and problem solving ability toward this problem, toward the problem of

clean energy, toward the problem of decreasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but also toward the problem of how do we deal with the climate change that we are going to experience? Because we are going to experience it. Like, there isn't a world in which we don't experience negative impacts of climate change. I'm sitting here in Montana where we've had 45 days over 90 degrees this summer, which is not a thing that happens. And the fires are very bad, and we've had like two days where the air quality has not been

unhealthy. And like, this is a situation that we're going to live through. And we're going to live with. It's going to be different. And that is part of being alive, though. And also, we, and so there, and so we have to leverage technology for how do we handle the world as it's going to exist in the future. How do we mitigate the impacts that it's going to have on, you know, humans and other organisms?

And you know, I think that there are a lot of people that are going to be turning their minds to those problems. And those people are exceptional. And I am impressed every day by the solutions that are being created and rolled out and that are really affecting the bottom line here. And I think that some people think that the right rhetoric is the thing that makes people the most afraid. But science shows that that is not the case, that when people get, you know, it will be told that it is hopeless with a day loose hope. And I also think that that is bad rhetoric because it's not true.

I think that there are going to be really significant negative impacts of climate change. It's going to affect people who have the least the most. And those are the people who are least responsible and it's going to affect them the most. And that is a justice problem that we will also have to interface with. But the power of humans to overcome difficult problems is a little bit what I got into this way is a little bit what got us into this mess in the first place. But it is also something that I really believe in and that I see no sign of anything standing in the way of it. Yeah, I completely agree.

And so I think the proper response is not hopelessness. It's not to shut down. It's not to say, well, it doesn't matter anyway because there's nothing we can do because the world is ending. The proper response is activism. It's in how we press our governments to change, but it is also in personal choices. I mean, it is. And that's something that Hank has really brought home to me in the last year,

that like my previously held idea that this was a problem of big systems and big institutions and big corporations that I wasn't meaningfully participating in because my personal carbon emissions are, you know, some tiny fraction, you know, 100 millionth of the whatever. That doesn't actually help because what helps the research is very clear on this as Hank has pointed out, what helps is when you become more engaged in your own personal, your families' emissions, your families' contributions to the overall size of our carbon footprint as humanity. When you become more personally invested in that, you also become a better advocate for

the systemic change that we need. And so people ask me all the time, like, what's one thing that you're doing, or what's a few things that you're doing? And number one is we are working very hard to electrify everything and then to make our grid clean. That's number one for us. And then number two is making the case everywhere, every time we can, that this needs to be a priority for our governments, state, local, federal, and for our communities. Yeah. Yeah. It is, people don't think that it's an emergency unless people are acting

like it's an emergency. And so one of the things that like I talk about is eating less meat for no reason other than the impact on the climate. It's not about, like it is like obviously there are lots of good reasons to not eat meat. But for me, the reason that I eat less and less meat every year is because I am focused on the impact that comes from that, especially from beef, which just is a completely unnecessary luxury. I understand enjoying it, absolutely understand enjoying it, but that is a thing that I have carved out of my diet. And people are like, why have you done that? My answer is there's only one reason why I have done it

is because I don't feel right about creating that amount of carbon for that level of experience. Yeah, McDonald's hamburger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we're all going to have to sort of expand the way that we think about cost to include carbon cost. And that's honestly, that's something our dad has been talking about since we were like 10. Yeah, so we knew the word externality a little early, I think, for the average person.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're fortunate to have the parents. Anyway, anyway, I just felt like we needed to talk about it, hey, because we get so many questions about it. And I understand the despair and I understand the fear. I absolutely do. I just don't believe that despair is productive.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's, it is an emotion that we often feel not because we are trying to feel productive. We're feeling it because the news is bad. Oh, yeah, no, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm... So stop feeling feelings. I'm not...

Yeah, okay. Thank you. I'm not telling people to not feel their feelings. I am telling people that I don't think despair tells the whole story. I think despair almost never tells the whole story. Occasionally it does, but not usually. Well, I also think that rhetoric that seems to be intended to inspire despair is a problem. And I think that some people indulge in that and create that very intentionally and think

that it is effective, but it's not effective. It's better at getting attention that it isn't creating change. Oh, man, you just like so much. Thanks for coming. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for coming to Hank and John hosted an intervention with each other to try to talk themselves out of despair, which reminds me, of course, that today's podcast is brought to you by despair, despair.

Despite having an advertising budget of zero dollars, it has done incredibly well on the internet in the last five years. Yeah, they're doing so well, now they can do some real paid marketing here at Dear Hank and John. But yes, there's also brought to you by that manual sweeper broom that you used to see in restaurants in the

1990s. Do they still exist? I found one on the internet. This 10.5-inch manual sweeper has two corner brushes and a dual direction cleaning path for ease of use, an ideal solution for low-pile carpet and hard surfaces, dual corner brushes, ensure thorough edge cleaning, commercial grade construction for quick cleanup in lobbies and restaurants. You know that they didn't actually pay us, right? That felt very much like that. I just thought that that was an amazing little paragraph. That felt very much like an actual

ad. But you're right, a human being wrote those words. They are good words. Yeah. And they deserve to be read out loud. Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by the 6% of Americans who believe that they could defeat a grizzly bear in an unarmed battle. The 6% of Americans who believe that they can defeat a grizzly bear, important to remember when considering that 20% of people believe X or Y. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,

we can just carve those ones out. And just exactly a third of those people are, I could beat a grizzly bear people. So, you know, I think we could kind of dismiss a third of the 20% off the top. And also this podcast is brought to you by Benjamin Franklin Stormoy. Benjamin Franklin Stormoy. What was it made of? We don't know. Fish probably.

I would not at all be surprised if Benjamin Franklin had a storm oil concern at some point. It seems extremely in character. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Hank, we have another question. It's from Ryan, which is always suspicious, right? Like, here at Dear Hank and John, we occasionally get emails from Ryan's and we always are dubious of their provenance because years and years ago, I'm not sure that there are any actual Ryan's. Well, one of my closest friends is named Ryan and I think he exists.

Are you sure? I mean, we just tongue out and it felt really real. You know, like we were together. That's how they get ya. I know. That's how they they that is exactly how they how they get you is that they make an experience feel so real that you're like, uh-huh. I'm pretty sure this person. You know,

it's possible that Ryan. Yeah, that's how they get you. Anyway, we have an email from Ryan. Right. So dear John and Hank, I'm 15 years old and I regularly get calls now Ryan, I have it's dear John and Hank, I'm 15 years old, and I regularly get calls, now Ryan, I have to stop you. Unfortunately, I believe that there are some Ryan's. I'm not convinced there are any who are 15.

Yeah, I'm not convinced. How did we stop this? I'm not, first of all, I think Ryan is a great name. It's just that it's a name with a lot of dear Hank and John history. Yeah. So if you haven't listened to like 300 episodes, oh my God, this is our 300th episode. It is, oh my God. It's the Ryan's spectacular.

Only questions from Ryan's. We're starting over. They were all named Ryan. We were messing with you. That's right. Everyone was named Ryan. The Grizzly Bear was named Ryan. Yep.

Benjamin Franklin's name is Ryan. Chelsea's name is Ryan. The fish that got turned into that storm oil, its name was Ryan. It's all Ryan's all the time. Everything was a Ryan. Every word you heard was the word Ryan mispronounced. That's all we've talked about.

Climate change is Ryan. Everything is a Ryan. Okay, okay. That's all we've talked about. Climate changes, Ryan. Everything is a Ryan. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. It's the Ryan's spectacular. It's our 300th episode. I cannot believe that we have made 300 episodes of this podcast. Me either. I also can't believe we've I really can't we only do it once a week. Jesus Christ. Oh, we do it for a long time, Hank. Oh, we don't even let's let's be frank, we don't do it once a week. We do it like once every 10 days on average. So okay. It's impressive. Ryan is purportedly 15 years old. And Ryan says, I regularly get calls from numbers. I don't have saved in my phone. Sure. And whether this is a number from the same area code I live in or not, I do not answer these calls.

Because I figure that I know the numbers of the people who are going to call me. Ryan, you are wise beyond your years. However, when my parents and other old people around me get calls from numbers, they do not have saved. They almost always answer them. This is the line. My question is, at what age am I expected to answer these calls from strangers? Oh my God, Ryan, what a great question. Never! I mean, as far as I can tell, for a question, I don't.

I do not answer calls from strangers. No, of course not. It's a ludicrous idea. No. I will deal with it after you leave a voicemail. Like, yeah, I don't trust you. And also, when I call strangers, I don't expect them to answer because why would they? There's a 99.97% chance it is a robo call.

Yeah, no, the only time I ever answer the phone when it is a number that I don't recognize is when I am expecting a phone call from someone I don't know. Yes, that is a hundred percent the case. Yes, and Ryan, you should live by that for as long as you can. Now, there will come a day inevitably where old age overtakes you and you start answering the phone every time it rings, and that's part of the aging process. But hold on Ryan. Hold on for as long as you can. We'll hold on to go gentle into that good night. Rage rage against the dying of ignoring phone calls. Yes. Pumpkins and penguins. You know, is calling now? It's almost definitely.

The fact that Ryan signed off Pumpkins and penguins Ryan is highly suspicious. Because I mean that Ryan is a long time dear Hank John listener. Highly suspicious Ryan. I'd like to see a birth certificate and two forms of ID and also your social security number and your mother's made a name. Okay. This is a robot call Ryan. This is a robot call.. This is a robot call.

I robot called you Ryan. Yeah, you know who's Ryan now? Me, I'm Ryan. And I have access to Ryan's bank account. We're all Ryan. I am, I am exhausted, John. Or I got up like 4 30 last night because he was cold and then I couldn't fall back asleep Oh, because I was worried about my sinus infection in my head hurt. Oh, I hate that. I hate that feeling

It's fine. I'm sorry that you're not well rested Although I will say that for someone who is tired You've been a wonderful host of the 300th episode of dear Hank and John the Ryan Spectacular and Hank What better way to celebrate? Yeah our 300th episode of Dear Hank and John, the Ryan Spectacular. And Hank, what better way to celebrate? Yeah. Our 300th episode. Uh-huh. Then with AFC Wimmelden's first game of the 2021, 2022, third tier English football season, Hank. Yeah. You'll remember last season, AFC Wimbledon had a terrible habit where they would score a goal And then they would immediately allow the other team to score a goal And then they would lose two one. It's happened like 17 times out of 46 possible. Yes

So I'm watching their first game of the season We had a terrible preseason. You'll remember, we lost six of our seven games. We only scored like one goal. Watching the first half and I'm like, we look pretty good considering how young this team is the youngest team in all of the professional ranks of English football. We're looking pretty good. I'm enjoying watching AFC Wimbledon, we're kind of playing beautiful football, which is a little weird, to be honest. But we're probably going to do that thing where we're going to score, and then the other team's going to score, and then we're going to lose 2-1. We're playing a pretty good team, too.

What happened instead is that about 20 seconds into the second half, we gave up a goal. And I was like, oh God, we've picked a whole new way of losing for this season. A much more common way to involve a scoring. I like this way even less than the other way. But then something extraordinary happened. 19 year old Ayuba Saul, my hero,

I you Brian, I you Brian a Saul. That's what they call him. He scored to make it one one. And then one of the new kids, Luke McCormick, Luke Ryan McCormick, on a, Luke Ryan McCormick scored on a free kick. Oh wow. To make it two to one, a free kick outside the, I don't think we scored a free kick outside the box. It all of last season, but we scored one in our first game. And then we, and then we kind of tenaciously

and heroically and courageously clung to that two one lead and won the game. And AFC Wimbledon, one game into the league one season are in second place. I mean, they're technically tied for like second place with six other people. Yeah, that's fair enough, but because of the alphabetical order, we are in second place, which is technically an automatic promotion spot to head up to the second tier of English football. And I believe that we should stop the count. I think it is time to say enough football has been played. We don't need, we, we all know who won. Yeah. This season. Roderham and AFC Wimbledon. Roderham and AFC Wimbledon.

Roderham, by the way, Roderham are going to go up, but like, Roderham and AFC Wimbledon, that's it. It's done. We're up to the championship. And from there, the heights of the Premier League are only a few moments away. I I loved every second of it. I love Ayuba Saul. I love the way Mark Robinson has these young kids playing. I just it is unbelievably fun to watch. Like if you ever want to get into AFC Wimbledon, right now feels like the time. You can download the iFollow AFC Wimbledon app. It's not free to watch the games, but you can watch a

really lovely high quality broadcast of them with commentary and everything. And I mean, I don't even know what to do with myself. We seem admittedly we're one forty six with the way into the season, but we seem good. Okay. Or at least after all the games you've made last in the preseason, every single one. Yeah, but those don't really count. Oh, no, they don't count at all. Right.

Yeah. This is only the second time that we've won our first game of the season in like the last 11 seasons. So you'll forgive me for being a little bit optimistic. I just, I felt like this team could easily maybe finish like 14th. All right. I like it. John's covenant 14th. Oh, God, I would love to finish 14th. I would love. I think I've told you this before, Hank, but AFC Wimbledon have only played two games in the last four seasons where they were not at risk of relegation. And I would love to see that number double. Yeah.

All right, John, we have some news from Mars, which is that the ingenuity helicopter has now traveled over a mile over the surface of Mars. Wow. It just had its highest flight. And it's it recently flew over a sort of rockier area and it's done a pretty good job and it's starting to send back some of the video that it's taken as it travels over these places,

which is just, I don't know, it's just very cool to see like what it can do and to like watch it. Yeah, like drone video from Mars, going over some sand dunes, going over some rocks. Yeah, it's so cool. It is doing everything that we hoped it would do and more. And in the future, we're gonna, I think, obviously, if everything goes as planned,

do this again with even more sophisticated, capable helicopters and what a bonus to this mission, I am so happy. What do you think is the over under on how many helicopters there will be on Mars before there is a human on Mars? Like is it three? Is it 17? I, you know, my guess would be, well, it depends. If there is an element of the human,

of the sort of construction of the base that is like better achieved with drones, so like a lot of the base construction, ideally like a lot of the stuff will be there before the humans arrive. And so there, if like it can be helped along by it, like if the manned mission can be helped along by drones, then you probably talk about more up in the 15 to 20 area. But my guess would be, in terms of, like, robotic mission, not associated with humans, I'd

guess probably just three or four. Okay. Maybe even less than that, especially if you get there by 20 to 20. That's what I'm gonna ask. Like, how exactly are we gonna get all these like drones, building space modules by 2027? That seems like a stretch to me. Yeah.

I'll tell you with each passing hundred episodes of Dear Hank and John, it does become kind of more possible in my imagination that there actually will be a day when that bet comes due. And I know right. We will have to rename the podcast, dear John and A. It's like, wait. It's like, okay, so we've been making the fact ask for how long?

I mean, 2028 is close. It is. It is. I mean, we're not quite halfway there, but like we're, yeah. I mean, maybe we, no, we're not, we're not, we're not, I mean, we're not quite yet. Yeah, it is. I mean, we're not quite halfway there not, we're not, I mean, we're not quite, yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, we're not quite halfway there, but we're like almost halfway there,

and I still enjoy this. So yeah, it seems very plausible to me. I don't see why not. Oh gosh, I have to say, when we started this podcast, I thought it would Peter out within like a year, and then when we started vlog brothers in 2007, I also thought that would Peter out after a year. So yeah, what I've learned from this is trouble. Don't say yes to Hank unless you're ready to make a lifelong commitment. That's right. Correct. Correct.

Oh God, it's going to be such a bummer when one of us dies. Yeah. I mean, let's try to avoid it for at least till 2028. That's the, that's John's other prediction. We're gonna, the AFC almost gonna finish in 14th and we are gonna make it to 2028 as humans. Fingers crossed, man, I've debumbed out if it happened before then. Oh yeah, that, now let's suck a lot. John, thank you for making a podcast with me.

This podcast is edited by Joseph Ryan Metish. It's produced by Rosiana Ryan Rojas. Our communications coordinator is Julia Ryan Blum, our editorial assistant is Deboki Ryan Chuck-Ravardi. The music you're hearing now is by the great Gunnar Ryan Rola. And as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome. you