Dear Hank & John - 308: No More Dongles

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Wouldn't it be easier to genetically engineer a martian than terraform Mars? How do mirrors represent distance? Should I wear my Pizza John mask to jury duty? How do you get good at being bad? Why do goalies have different uniforms? 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. Who is 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 way to the news from both Mars and ifs to Wimbledon, John. It's that time of year, but you gotta make sure you don't let your kids eat too much pumpkin pie, you know why? Why? Because they might get autumn niek.

Oh, you know it's funny about that, nothing, but you know what, what it reminds me of. It reminds me of the fact that Alice is actually allergic to pumpkin pie. Oh, no. And, yeah, so Alice will love that joke because it does give her a automy and it makes her a vomit. So try to avoid the pumpkin pie in our house as well, just possible these days. Hank, yes, yes. Important news of the week. I know it's so important. It's for us. Such a difficult two years. There is no getting around it. But at last, It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's for us. It's. It's for us I think it's been like four or five years, and the computer I'm using right now

is really not built to do what I'm doing with it. Yeah. And it has been, it needs to be sort of let out into the field where someone will not treat it as poorly as I do. John, we bought this computer so fast. Yeah. Hey, good to you. And I both, John called me and I was buying the computer

while he was buying the computer We're like those Apple fanboys who are Trying to be one of the first six people to purchase the new Macbook. I was so excited Except I'm not excited at all about the computer. I am excited for them to give me back something I had before Oh, yeah, no, no, no, the computer seems fine But all I care about is that SD slot card reader. That's the business. I've, John, I have a friend who just bought the computer

and hers is being delivered in December. We got in good. Wow. We did, we did. We got there right at the very beginning. I, I, essentially, everyone who does what we do for a living. Like everybody who edits video, but like not great, you know, like everybody who edits video at the sort of vlog brothers

level has been waiting for the Mac notebooks to put an SD card slot reader back. And so this is a huge deal. No more dongles. I've spent the last five years walking around my house saying to Sarah, Hey, have you seen one of the dongles? Because at this point, I have like seven of them. Yeah. But even having seven of them, I somehow am never able to find one when I need one, which is every single Tuesday. Yeah, no, John even bought a PC. I bought a PC laptop. I did. I have a Windows of a Windows device like it was 1987. Look, there's nothing wrong with Windows devices.

And I almost did it. But instead, I just bought a used MacBook. I actually really like this Windows machine. But that said, I'm really excited. So there's a phrase in the world of keyboards, key action. This is the sound and the travel that is evolved in pressing a key. Yeah. As you know, Hank, it's extremely important to me. I can't play the piano, but I can play the keyboard. And I like it to sound a certain way. I like to type at a certain speed and I like to hear a certain rhythm to it. There's like, by the way, if I sound weird,

it's because I'm on my camera microphone this week because I'm traveling. I'm in Alabama with my in-laws. And so right now, Hank, just to paint you a picture, I'm seated behind my wife's childhood bed, which is a double. And I am looking into this camera, but I'm very back with it. So I don't look good, but that doesn't matter because it's not a video podcast. We're not like retinue link out here trying to make YouTube podcasts. Just strictly, this is strictly ear phenomenon.

I, you know, I've thought about whether we should have a video podcast we do after all have our roots in the moving image. It's true. But it would be really hard. Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah. Part of the charm of our podcast is that you can tell

in a deep way that it's just us in tune. Yeah. Yeah. I think setting up like a multi-cam like high quality with like lighting on me and then like cutting back and forth between us. That would that would be so far beyond my capabilities both technically and in terms of the amount of available time I have. Yeah, although I will say Hank, with this new Superfast MacBook Pro or day and hours of every week back, I've been wondering like, when am I going to have time to write a novel? And the answer is with the computing power of it was just one thing.

There was just one thing standing in between. Yeah, you always know that when you feel like there's one tool standing between you and great creative endeavor, that is actually the thing holding you back. That's the truth. Not any like mental block or anything like that. Exactly. It's always the tool. I will say that I have not been doing delete this because my laptop has gotten so slow that

it is a real bear to edit on that computer. So I am very excited about this. I know that it's the stupidest, nerdiest thing to be excited about. And also like, but like everybody, everybody we know has been taught. Yeah. Yeah. Behind this, the talk about this for years, the talk of the town, our particular town. Yeah. It is the talk of the town. I've gotten to the point with my current computer where I have to, when I'm editing

a vlog, but there's video, the way, the way that the playback is, it's so slow that I have to, I just know that I have to edit two frames earlier than the sound because there's like a disconnect between the, with the sound play and the video playback. Oh my god. And so nobody else could edit on this machine because you have to, you have to be carefully tuned to the difference between the video and the audio. Yeah, it's like you weren't gonna play guitar on like a guitar that no one else owns in the whole world. Yeah, yeah, you'd like two of the strings switched. Yeah, it's just a little behind the scenes.

All hey, could I ever talk about in real life is like complaining about how difficult it is to edit video. You would think it's not easy. You think that after 15 years of doing something as a job, I would be good at it. But I actually, I have, you know, this really flies in the face of the 10,000 hours rule because I've spent 10,000 hours editing video. And I'm exactly as good as I was in 2011. Yeah, you got better. But then you stopped getting better.

I plateaued really early. You haven't been like trying to do new things with video editing? Like I remember there was a time when I, like I'm gonna make a kinetic typography music video for the quark song. Yeah. And I like learn how to do that. But we are done with that.

At this point, I am better at like going to story blocks and finding a bunch of clips to use than you are. But that's about it. Like I don't. Yeah. There isn't much difference between how we edit videos because we're not, we're not video editors, John. We are video writers. That's so true. It's all time.

I feel like we have gotten better at that. Like I look at our old videos and like I think that they're not bad. They're just a lot of, a lot of oversimplification, I think, at a lot of points. I think that's a generous way of putting it. And I like it. I like it when you review our work generously. Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners beginning with this one from Nage, who writes, dear John and Hank, it seems like a lot of work to terraform a planet. Nage, before I get to the rest of your question, I just want to acknowledge the deep profound truth of this. Like, we're having trouble terraforming this planet, which our bodies were just made for. Doing it by accident. Yeah. And so given how I would say so far, the results of the

human terraforming of the human planet have been mixed. I wouldn't call what we're doing here terraforming. It's more like we are attempting to terra maintain. Yeah. And we can't even do that. Yeah, we are struggling. We can't even keep earth earth. Yeah, it's not like we're planting new turf.

We're just trying to mow the lawn every now and again, and we can't even do that. So I share your concerns here. Yes. Okay. Wouldn't it be better? What's the rest of the question? Nage asks to bioengineer a human who is specially adapted to Mars rather than to engineer

the whole stinking planet just to support our silly human bodies. Check my badge, Nedge. I don't hate it. And there has been talk about this with regards to like in space living, more than on Mars living. So like there are a number of challenges to in space living. Like, you know, you got a lot of cosmic radiation. It's kind of like make you much more cancer prone. You've got the whole situation regarding weightlessness and how that affects bone density and your eyes and your blood and your blood pressure and all this stuff. So there's a lot of different health consequences.

And so if we're going to have people living in weightlessness, we are going to have to engineer them to be good at that. There are ways to create artificial gravity in space, though, which is actually a lot easier than terraforming a planet. The problem with, like, genetically engineering a human to live on Mars is that like, maybe you could genetically engineer a human to live in a colder place, but you can't genetically engineer a human to not need oxygen and to not need like air pressure

to force the oxygen into their blood so that they can metabolize. Like we, we are not, there is not a way of doing this without an, like at least, you know, good hunk, like 20% of an atmosphere of oxygen. Yeah, we need to map this fear. You need at least 10% of an of our atmosphere of oxygen. Just like a good restaurant. You know, like, you're never going to succeed as a restaurant unless you have some atmosphere. You got it. Let's like, Aberdeez has that whole sort of, we have a lot of things on the wall vibe. And the cheesecake factory has that whole vibe of like, you know, you're sitting on a, in a nice bank head in the menu's 72 pages long.

Like, you got to have some kind of atmosphere, some kind of vibe that works and Mars ain't got it. Just to be clear, when I say 10% of the atmosphere, I'm not saying 10% of the oxygen we're breathing now, but 10% of the unit of measurement of an atmosphere. Are we still talking about whether Applebee's has a good vibe or are we talking about whether we can live on Mars, which is irrelevant. Like it's not like we're super close to being able to have create an atmosphere around Mars that has all of the oxygen. Yeah. That, we're not, we're not, there's a number of challenges.

We are not in the neighborhood. So when you say, oh, I don't think we could ever genetically engineer human beings to not need oxygen, like maybe either, but we're not, we're not in the other neighborhood, like we're not in the neighborhood of terraforming Mars or in the neighborhood of, oh, can't you either, the engineering humans. No, you could, you could imagine a Mars on which there is a little more atmospheric pressure and you walk around with a breather

instead of walking around in a whole suit. And that would be better. But the idea, like the Terraforming Mars project, requires a outlook that is not on a human's lifetime scale. Like you have to be thinking about the human experiment scale where there have been humans for 200,000 years. On the scale of 200,000 years, if we have 200,000 years to Terraform Mars,

we could probably do it. But that's what we're looking at. It's gonna be a thousands of years long process if we decide to Terraform a planet, I think. But I'm saying, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a way to do it that is based on technology that we don't really understand yet. But what are you saying, John?

I'm saying that if we're taking a 200,000 year time horizon, then I think Nage's question is completely legit. Like Nage, we don't know which of these things that we cannot do and that will take many thousands of years to even consider doing in any serious way is better. Like we don't know. Yeah, what here's what I, we don't know. We don't know that like what's essential to humans is our ability to make oxygenate blood. Like it's definitely essential to me. I would be bummed out in a really significant way. If my body lost the ability to do that, but 150,000 years from now, Hank, for all I know that we, the humans of the future could be the size of my thumbnail. It's true.

It's true, and they could maybe just speak like colonized by photosynthetic bacteria that generate all the oxygen we need. It may be. Just with sunlight. Speaking of that, Hank, and I think we have finally answered Nudge's questions. We can begin to transition away from it. I have a question for you, which is, would you rather be one of these photosynthetic beings that just has green skin? Or would you rather be a photosynthetic being that's colonized by green algae,

like covered in green algae, like the swamp thing? Well, I don't, yeah, when you said colonized, I've pictured like inside of all of everything, not like dripping off of us, but here the two options. You can either have green skin or you can have your entire body be full of photosynthetic algae. I'm going to have green skin. Which they did recently, John, to tadpoles. They put photosynthetic cyanobacteria into the tadpoles, and they found that in a zero oxygen environment, they were able to survive when a light was shining on them.

So we're not that far away, who knows? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we just have to create photosynthetic people. Maybe there is enough light on Mars, but instead you just create giant, extremely like super bright lights that shine onto your chest all the time.

And you can't see them because they're just like a patch that's there. And it's just generating oxygen in your blood without you having to breathe. We don't need breathing anymore. The future is now. Well, the future is still the future. So just to summarize, you started out saying there's no way we can genetically engineer you. I know. I know. summarize, you started out saying there's no way we can genetically engineer you was not need oxygen and you ended in this is probably much better than terraforming Mars.

That's a good party. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for inviting me. It would be hard to create that much oxygen. It's all going to be hard, dude. I mean, what do you talk? We can barely fly a helicopter there. Like, of course, it's going to be hard to create that much oxygen. It's all gonna be hard, dude. I mean, what, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? We can barely fly a helicopter there.

Like, of course it's gonna be hard. It's true. John, this next question comes from Annie who asks, Dear Hank and John, I am near sighted. I have terrible vision. The other day I was doing my makeup in front of a large living room mirror without my glasses and I realized objects far away from me in the room

are still blurry when I look at them through the mirror. When my nose is two inches away from something, as it was to the mirror, I have 2020 vision. So therefore, the mirror must be reflecting the image of objects and the room and the distance of those. How is that possible? How do mirrors work? If you don't know the answer, can we please still talk about this because I'm kind of freaked out? But I'm also okay. Mirrors, John, can I explain to you, I will try to explain this in as few words as possible? Yeah, because I have often wondered this myself. I mean, I think I have an idea of why, but explain it to me in fewer than 100 words.

Okay. I'm going to do it in less than 10. Mirrors are not pictures. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna do it in less than 10. Mirrors are not pictures. Okay, so you're telling me that a mirror is not a photograph that my eye sees. If yes, if the mirror took a picture of you, like if it was a video, like if the mirror took a video

and we just reprojected the video, then you would be able to see everything, if it was like a retina display, if everything was perfect, you'd be able to see everything as if it was like a retina display, if everything was perfect, you'd be able to see everything as if it weren't blurry. But that's not what is happening. The light is bouncing off the mirror and then spending all of that photon time

to have those different wavelengths separate out from themselves because your lens is not perfect in your eye. And they all get fuzzy the same way that it would if it was actually far away from you because the light is actually traveling, which is why mirrors are so like important mythologically, you know, they are kind of like portals into another world. It's just that the other world is happens to be what is directly behind you. Yeah, they're magical. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So basically mirrors are not photographs

and if they were, then I could see everything crisply, but they aren't, so I can't. What would you see in the mirror of Erisette? Oh, I think in the mirror of Erisette, I would probably see me holding my next book that I have finished instead of not even started. That's really interesting though. I would have thought something else.

I would have thought you are holding some prize or some diamond play button or something, but no, you have a literary, your deepest ambition is literary. May, I don't know. That's what I spend most of my time thinking about when I have time to think. Yeah. Well, it's my preferred hobby. I mean, if I could only do one thing with the rest of my life, it would definitely be right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I did recently, this is, so this is weird, John. I don't know if this was, I don't know. I don't know if this is weird or not. I recently wrote a song. I wrote a chorus to a song. And then I looked at it and I was like, this isn't really a Hank Green song. And so I sent it to a band that I like. I was like, here, if you want this, that it seems more like your, a U-song than it does a Mee song. And they, they wrote back and they said, yeah, interesting. We'll see. But I have no, but I like, I liked that so much where I was like, I wrote this. And now I've let it loop free. And if they want it, then they can use it. And if not, then, but like, if they like recorded that song they can use it. And if not, then, but like,

if they like recorded that song, it would make me very happy. Yeah. Well, so I think what you're saying is that you would like to write a book, but you don't want to publish it under your name. You're just going to give it to me and let me make all the royalties. And I, I say, yes, Hank, I say yes. People would be like, wow, this guy discovered plot. Where did that come from? Oh my god. I'm reading a book right now that has such a good plot. And I'm like, I'm just very, I feel very inadequate. Oh, I mean, I'm with reading really good books. Yeah. Well, I guess when I read really good books, I don't, I used to get that feeling of like, authorial jealousy where you think, like,

oh, I wish I could do that. And now I don't. Now I'm just like, I mean, what are you going to do? Like, some people are just better. And there are probably things that I can do, at least in a small way that they can't do. But also, yeah, you know I've come to, as I've gotten older, or this is where I've landed for the moment anyway, is a feeling that different works of art serve different purposes in people's lives. And a big part of my jealousy, especially when I was younger, was about thinking that art was one thing, and there was one continuum, and the continuum started at bad and ended at genius. And that everything fit on the exact same continuum in the exact same way. And that's just not how art works.

Yep. Yeah, which is why I only like get, get that feeling when somebody is doing something I'm trying to do better than I can do it. Yeah. Whereas a lot of times I read a book and I'm like, well, I'm not trying to do any of these things. And so I can just enjoy it as a viewer. A viewer. Yeah. A reader.

All right. We have a vitally important question to get to from Jennifer who writes, dear John and Hank, I've been summoned for jury duty. I plan to double mask to reduce the risk of exposing my family to COVID. Now, if I wear my pizza mess mask from last year over my N95 mask, am I sending the wrong message about whether or not the lawyers should select me for the jury mask, the mitigation Jennifer? A little bit of context for people who did not see this mask. It was a mask that essentially tried to recreate

my moustacheo face at scale so that when you wear the mask, it appears that you have my face and my mustache, at least in your, just the bottom half in the mask area. Yeah. But because the scale was slightly off, I would say, um, what it actually, depending on your size, yeah, I guess it depends on your size. For most of us, what it actually looks like is like a very slight kind of joker, a moustacheo joker mask. Like it is, I'll tell you what Jennifer, I think you didn't answer the most important question inside of your question, which is, do you want a message? Are you trying

to send one of the auditory? Look think I think that jury's need diverse candidate pools and you are sending a message, I am, you know, maybe not your average Jennifer, you know, nothing that's okay. I think you should do it. I think you should do it too. But I am also in no, and I should say that I think serving on a jury is a real privilege and it's also one of the great responsibilities of being a citizen of the United States and other countries where these things happen and I think it's

I think it's a real honor and that you should take it seriously. I'm a big believer in answering the questions honestly and If you're chosen to serve on the jury in performing that service but none of that has anything to do with whether you should wear a pizza john mask. And if you like your pizza john mask and it's the kind of thing that you might wear sometimes, I think you should wear it. Absolutely. And who knows maybe one of the lawyers is a nerd fighter. Like, we're old now. It's true. People have been around.

We're old now. It's true. People have been around. Pizza John is going to be a teenager soon. Yeah. Yeah, no, we have people who watch our videos who are younger than pizza John. Oh, this is, man, usually it doesn't get me anymore. Usually I'm like, out of place where I've accepted that we are both old and have been doing this for a long time. But occasionally there's some frames that just

do make me. The one that gets me is that we are making YouTube videos before there was an iPhone. Like, I just... What the hell was going on with this? Sometimes I think about this too. What was going on with us in 2007? Where like how were we in a position professionally or personally to make 230 YouTube videos in a year when the first 150 of them were only watched by like 400 people each? Like I don't know, especially me. Like you had books out, right?

You were getting book royalties? Yeah, and I was making a living by traveling. So I'd like to go to Europe and make some money for a few weeks, like talking to schools and stuff. But yeah, what were you doing? Where was your money coming from? I actually, so sometimes when you do your taxes, you can see your income for like the last 10 years. Oh yeah.

And so, in 2017 or something, I actually was able to see what my income was in 2007. And I made $17,000 that year and I think I made it mostly doing freelance graphic design and web design and and making money from my blog and I think I just you know scraped by and and you know I'm pretty sure that I dipped into savings john Yeah, you did I never thought about it was so exciting. I knew it was valuable Yeah, that's how I felt too. I could tell that it was a lot cooler than

The world was recognizing. Like I remember going into like Hollywood meetings, you know, and they would want to talk about adapting my books or whatever. And I would talk to them about adapting my books, but then the whole time I would be thinking, you know, there's this other thing happening that is very, very interesting. And frankly, a lot cooler than any of my books. And if anything, you should be like thinking about how to make an abundance of Catherine's as a YouTube series.

But yeah, then it turned out that we were able to ride that wave. And it's been fun and strange. And I'm really lucky to still be doing it 15 years later. Yeah and I want to say what a great pizza mess because we haven't had a video since or a podcast since pizza mess. Right. We're making it everybody who was up who bought some pizza mess merch but also I just love making a video every three days I just love making a video every three days. But I just, and also I just love making a video all the time and to like being constantly

needing to be in that space of like, what the heck am I gonna talk about? Yeah. It's really inspiring. And also it lets me take a work break from my work, which I need. Yeah, I loved it too. And I think what 2007 had for us that no time since has had was a sense of profound clarity in the sense that every other day we were making a video.

And so the question of what I want to do today, always have the same answer, which in some ways gets old for sure, but yeah, it was really clarifying. And so I think it's fun to go back to that for a couple of weeks. We both think it would be fun to go back to that longer, but I suspect it would get old in real life. Yeah, I think I think we maybe I could go to two, two a week. Yeah, I think I think we maybe I could go to two two a week, but I don't think I could have that third that third one Doesn't make it a lot. I Don't know I think it'd get old Yeah, yeah, I'm glad I'm glad to have it for two weeks a year. Yeah sure Which which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by Pete's amus pizza mess

It's no longer happening so you, so you can't buy anything. It's your cannot participate. Just 50 short weeks away, though. Mark your calendars. This podcast is also brought to you by mirrors. They are not pictures and light hits them and continues to travel to wherever it's is going. And of course today's podcast is most importantly brought

to you by Hank's journey from terraforming a planet to microengineering new humans. Hank's journey, we all witnessed it earlier today. I don't know what I'm doing. None of us do, Hank. And of course this podcast is brought to you by the new 2021 MacBook Pro. It has a little place where you can put a SD card and that's all we wanted. It's all we wanted Apple.

Hey, can I make a lot of people excited? Take it. I wouldn't take a sponsorship from Apple until now, but now we will. Now we would be open to an Apple, but we just give us a call. Give us a call. We felt like we could not take money from you because it was impossible to put a memory card inside of your computers, but now we've forgiven you. We also have a project for awesome message from Michelle Brenhog to my daughters, Lily and

Mira. I've been a nerd fighter since 2009, and I think it's cool that I've been part of this community for your whole lives. I remember watching the P.F.A. livestream in 2010 when I was very pregnant with Lily, Lily meeting John at Assigning at the Festival of Books in LA. I love that now you girls enjoy watching Hank Science TikToks and listening to the podcast with me and Daddy.

I feel so blessed to get to watch you girls growing into thoughtful, creative and kind human beings. Every day you both make me feel so lucky. I get to be your mom. I also wanted to say to John and Hank that seeing your kids be part of P-Fra this year was really special to our family. It made it feel like a big party

that we were all having together. Thank you, Michelle. Yeah. I felt that way for us too. John, this next question comes from Ren who asks, Dear Hank and John, how do you get good at being bad? When I first read this, I thought that it was like just like, you know, breaking the rules. Yeah, how do you get good at being a nerd? Well, but no, in fact, that's not it. I know conceptually that you need to be bad at things before you learn how to be good at them

later. But every time I try something new, it is hard for me to keep going. I know conceptually that you need to be bad at things before you learn how to be good at them later, but every time I try something new, it is hard for me to keep going if I don't get better quickly. This is normally fine, but I'll be student teaching next semester and real teaching after that, and I am really, really scared that it's going to be hard for me to knock it all torn up at not having the hang of it immediately. Do you have any tips for getting through the beginning stages of learning something? Not Kylo, but Ren. The research seems to say that the thing that drives people through the parts where you are bad at something is the process and the recognition of getting better.

The time that you spend noticing that you are getting better at something is very important to the process of going from bad to not bad at something. Right, that's an interesting observation. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, so focusing on the fact that everybody's bad when they start isn't actually that helpful. Yeah, so focusing on the fact that everybody's bad when they start isn't actually that helpful. What you need to focus on is that you're getting better. And there have to be thinking about how bad you are at the beginning, right? So that you remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

And then you're also motivated to continue to see that progress if you focus on the progress. There's an exercise that, so I do Pilates because I'm a big nerd. And there's an exercise in Pilates that the first time I did it, I couldn't do one without getting a cramp, like an immediate cramp. And I just wasn't strong enough to really do it. And now, whenever I'm doing that particular exercise, and I'm like better at that exercise than almost anything else, because I remember that I couldn't,

I used to not be able to do it at all, and now I can do like 20 of them. And I feel like part of the reason I can do 20 of them is because I'm like, I'm good at this one. Whereas I'm good at all of them, I just didn't have that experience of like literally not being able to do it when I first tried other exercises. And this is the same thing with like learning a language

where I always feel completely out of my depth in Spanish. But if I go and I like take the lessons that I took when I was first learning, I'm like, oh, I know all of this, back and forth. None of this is confusing to me at all. And that is always true of the stuff that I learned like two months ago. I just have to keep remembering it

because I always feel like I don't know anything, but I know much more than I did. Yeah, I think for me part of the motivation to get better is also the, that there is a feeling of joy or satisfaction or something when things start to click in together. And you have to have the feeling of frustration, right? Like this is perfectly captured in video games where you have to get frustrated by not being able to finish the level in Super Mario Brothers in order to experience pleasure

when you finish the level in Super Mario Brothers. And so while I used to get frustrated and then I would stop when it came to writing or when it came to other things. If I'm able to work well now, it's usually that I'm able to work through the frustration and recognize that like the point of frustration is often or the point of intense frustration overwhelming frustration is often the point right before something clicks in. This is especially true with writing, where I will feel, especially if I'm working on an essay

or something or a vlog writer's script or even a novel, I'll feel like this isn't gonna work. I can't find a way through this. And then I'll stand up and I'll get mad and I'll get frustrated and I'll walk around a little bit and then I'll think, oh, oh, I'm not really writing about orbital sunrises, I'm really writing about why we make art and what we sacrifice to make it.

So the ending doesn't have to be about orbital sunrises, it can be about what I'm actually writing about. And those moments of understanding, and I think you have them in teaching, I've had them in chaplaincy, I've had them in every career that I've had, those moments are so fulfilling that they make the frustration that comes before worth it.

So that is another thing I look for, is have I had any of those moments of things clicking into place and feeling that satisfaction. And if so, then I can remind myself, well, there are probably other ones that await me if I keep working. Yeah, yeah, and I don't like, I've never, I've never done this in a normal teaching

environment, but public speaking is absolutely this way, where you just get better at it when you do it. And teaching is, it's wild that like we have an entire profession of like public speaking, it's scary. That is the number one fear that people have. And it is very, very necessary for teaching. And I think it's totally normal to feel intimidated by it.

So, but you get better. And like, I'm so much better at it than I used to be. You are so much better at it than you used to be. So am I. But I feel like I've seen more progress than you. I don't know. I look at like, that's how it works. Yeah.

Yeah. I look at speeches I made in like 2006. Like the speech I made to after I won the Prince Award, like I wasn't able to stand. I was so nervous. And then also, like, I don't know, the speech was the speech of a much younger person who has, oh, what, you know, Hank, unshakable beliefs. So what, you know, Hank, unshakable beliefs. Now, now I have nothing but shaken beliefs. I'm just a collection of highly shook up beliefs. All right, Hank, before we get to the important news from Marzen A.F.C. Wimbledon, how about one more question?

All right. This is a question I have for you because I don't know the answer. It's from K2S, dear Hank and John, but mostly John, why do football goalies wear such different costumes from the rest of their team? And why don't the colors even have a loose relationship whatsoever to the team's colors? Cordially yours, Kate. Yeah. So this reminds me of something that happened when I was first pitching the AFC Wimbledon

movie, which is I was trying to get people excited about the prospect of making this movie, and it all culminates in a penalty shootout, where, you know, AFC Wimbledon and Lutentown are in a penalty shootout, and the only one can go to the football league, and Wimbledon wins, said Brown's AFC Wimbledon penalties,

that's the big moment in the movie. And it's the moment where you feel all the movie. And it's the moment where you feel all the feelings. And one of the producers said, I don't understand why there are four teams. And I said, what? And she said, there's the blue team. There's the white team. And then there is this pink team and this green team. And I am confused. Then I was like, oh, no, the goalkeepers just wear different colored uniforms. But then as I am confused and I was like, oh no, the goalkeeper is just where different colored uniforms, but then as I was saying that I was like, which is weird. Now that I mention it, I get why you are confused.

So the idea, and it's usually a very bright color, right? Yeah. So the idea is that they need to be easily identifiable to a lot of different people. They need to be easily identifiable to their own defenders who need to know, need to be able to glance back and see where the goalkeeper is to maybe make a pass to the goalkeeper. But they also need to be like easily identifiable by referees and everything, right? Like if they had the exact same uniforms on and they picked up the ball because they're the only player who can pick up the ball as long as they're inside of their goalkeeper box. And they picked up the ball like the referee might be like below the whistle and be like, you can't do that. Oh, wait, sorry, that was the goalie. So

that is the basic reason. And goalkeeper kits tend to be very loud and very easy to see in your peripheral vision for that reason. So the word is kit not costume. Yeah, or jersey, but the whole kit and caboodle is called a kit like with the shorts and everything. Okay. So yeah, and you can buy, like, you know, you can go to aFCwimbleton.co.uk and buy Nick Zaniv's goalkeeping outfit and wear it in your house. I know I do. Good for you, John. That's adorable.

We're all happy for you. We're all happy for you. So does that mean you want to tell us the news from AFC Wimble this week? Yeah, let's talk about Nick Xaniv. You know, AFC Wimble then, over the weekend, went down 2-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday as they like to do. And then, as they like to do, they came back and tied the game to two. This is, I think,

the fourth time we have come from two-nil down to tie a football game. Almost all of our overall points this season have come from losing positions. AFC World that are actually more likely to win a game so far this season if we don't score the first goal than if we do, which is weird. It's a topsy-turvy, wild and woolly season. And, you know, these two draws that we've just had in a row have been not great. Obviously, like, it would be better to be winning games, but I've been encouraged. better to be winning games, but I've been encouraged. I think there are encouraging signs. I think on the whole, we still look a lot better than we did this time last season. And so on the whole, I am still feeling optimistic.

Ayubasal continues to be a problem that no League One defense can solve. We are getting goals from lots of different players. Rudy Rudoni, his is really coming into his own. He's an academy graduate who's been playing for Wimbledon and he's had a great season so far. So I am feeling hopeful at the moment, even though we have slipped down to 17th place after 12 games, although to be fair, I would be overjoyed to finish in 17th place. Yeah, that would be... Well, it's great. It sounds... Yeah, it sounds like this is a... I don't know. You weren't going to stay up as high as you were.

Probably not. And like, it's a long season. I feel like we've gone through a difficult period. We've got some injuries. Will Nightingale, unfortunately, has a very serious injury in his out for three or four months. And he's not just one of our best central defenders. He's also somebody who understands the club so deeply because he's played there since he was nine years old. And that's a bummer.

So some of the injuries are worrisome. Ollie Palmer is injured again, but at the same time, if we're getting results with against good teams, with things not going our way, I feel like, okay, I can feel, I don't know, hopeful. Yeah, I hear that. How's Mars? Mars is good. One of the great things about Mars is it's just really hard for it to have a exceptionally bad day as a planet since, you know, the swings aren't very broad, but. I don't know, man, those sandstorms, it seems like Mars has some rough days when like,

the seven year sandstorm attacks. Yeah, that's fine. For the 7.6 Mars quake. I mean, I feel like somebody, just like somebody tussling your hair. His a planet. Mars is fine. But as for our work on Mars, so when perseverance landed in, in, in Jezero creator and started to do all this research, one of the first things we heard was like, we think this is a lake bed.

And then when we landed, it was like, this is a lake bed. Now the, you can look at these rocks and like, say, these are sedimentary rocks. You can see channels where water flowed. And so like the, the people talking about we're like, this is the lake bed. But then the process of science is, then you actually go through and you write papers and you document like specific clues as to how it is the way that it is. And one of those papers got published this weekend science. It is the first paper that was published using data from Perseverance. And it's catalogs of a bunch of different images that are taken.

So some of them are like wider images and some of them are like micro images. There's actually something called the Robote Micro-Imager. And the rover took pictures of long, steep slopes in escarpments or scarps. And using all those images, they could see how the rocks in the scarps was layered. And found how that they were inclined horizontally. And they found, and that they found that the horizontal layering was very similar to what we see in Delta's on

Earth. So like, we are looking at a river delta of sorts. That was probably formed by repeated flash floods rather than like a long sort of Mississippi river kind of situation. So it's not like New Orleans River Delta or the Nile River Delta. It's like a river delta closer to somewhere in the American West say that doesn't get a lot of water or consistent water flow but then has really high volumes of water going through it occasionally. Yeah, and there are, you know, there are lots of different stories of how Mars could have been, but one of the things seems likely is that it was sort of like warm and wet, and then as time went on, you had sort of these periods of freezing, but then like these giant glaciers melting,

and that glacier melt often creates big dams of ice that then break, and you have flashlight situations like this. But I don't know. The research is continuing, and it is a complicated story that covers hundreds of millions of years. But we now have the paper that actually says the thing that we've been saying for a long time,

which is, this is a lake bed. And there was a lot of water here and that did a lot of things over a long period of time. Is there a chance, and I think I've probably asked you this before, but is there a chance that like 800 million years ago Mars was a better place for life than Earth and that maybe complex life flourished and then went extinct on Mars? I mean, yeah, there is definitely a chance.

I don't know exactly what would make Mars a better place than Earth, but you know, one of the things that will be very exciting if we ever find ancient or current, you know, single-celled life on Mars is we will then be able to check very easily to see whether it is closely, whether it is related at all to Earth life. And there is a lot of thought that that is sort of as likely as not. Yeah. That life, even if we have it multiple times in our solar system, still only evolved once and was able to jump from place to place once it did.

Yeah, I mean, that might be- We could all be Martians. It could have happened on Mars first. Right, like, I don't know, I don't know which would be more astonishing to me I guess it would be more astonishing to see a whole different path for life to evolve and be able to imagine a different model of life Like which we kind of can't even do now because yeah, it's so there are so many unknown unknowns about it, but It would also be very cool to find out that we're all Martians. Yeah, I guess that would be the more disappointing outcome, but it would still be a really interesting

Tuesday, you know, if NASA made the announcement. And they were like, yeah, we think this is older than all the Earth life. So we think that we're Martians. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. All right, Hank, well thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're off to record our Patreon-only podcast this week in stuff at patreon.com-deer-hank-n-jom.

This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Metash. It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trock-Ravardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast, is by the great Gunnarola and as they say on our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.