Dear Hank & John - 391: High Priest of Beef Days

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Do we have the original copy of the declaration of independence? What animals would have been on Noah’s Ark?  What do I do if I accidentally walk into a fancy restaurant?  What do I do with an unused prom dress?  How do I know if I’m a boring person?  Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

INTRO MUSIC Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Doris, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions and give you dubious advice and also bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, what is it called when a bunch of sheep fall down a hill? What is it called? A lambslide.

Lambslide. Oh. Like that Fleetwood Mac song. Like that Fleetwood Mac song. Maybe it should have been a Fleetwood Mac song. The lamb slide brings you down. I heard that song in the grocery store the other day and I started to cry. You're just a different person post-cancer.

Your emotions are much closer to the edge of you. They really are. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird for me. Yeah, I was like, mmm, eggs. I called Hank a couple weeks ago, catastrophizing, as I usually do. Happens. And Hank was like, you're right. You're right. You should panic.

And I was like, that's not the role that you play in my life. panic. I was like, that's not, that's not the role that you play in my life. I am much more anxious now. Uh, I think I, I, it's interesting and this will not be news to you, but when I am nervous about one thing, I become suddenly much more able to be nervous about other things. And so I find that if I am having health anxiety, that then I have business anxiety, and then I have relationship anxiety,

or I have like child anxiety. And then, and they're all sort of, they all, like my brain doesn't know, like just, it's like I'm anxious, and so it doesn't know which thing to apply it to, so it just applies to all of them. Yeah, like I know there's a threat. Yeah.

But I don't exactly know what the threat is, but I know it's a very serious threat. Yeah, and my instinct is to get out my mental baseball bat and hit it with it. Yeah. And just like, like I get the meat tenderizing hammer that has the spikes on it that makes the chicken very flat. And I hit the anxiety with that,

but that it just makes it more mad. If mad. When I feel a lot of anxiety, the thing that I like to do is ruminate on it and try to solve it via thinking when of course it was caused by thinking. By thinking. Yeah. It's like the old strategy for curing illness where whatever's causing the illness must also be the solution to the illness. Listen, Hank. Should we talk about the fact that we're recording this on a video? We're doing video? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all new now. I mean, we're fancy. I don't know if you-

We're like the Kelsey brothers now. I mean, your corner is very nice. I love your little corner. Thank you. This is a painting of the American rapper MF Doom. Or at least two of his hands. That I've got here in the background. I've also got the classic Pizza John hot sauce back here somewhere. A typewriter.

Uh-huh, a POVAS. That's actually just for effect. That's Pizza John. I write on something called Google Docs. Which is cool. And then I've got a, what is this called? A needle point that somebody made me that says sneezing isn't normal, I never sneeze.

And a 3D printed DFTBA logo. Yeah, I've got it all back here. So I'm just in a corner of my basement. It's actually kitty corner to where I make the vlog brothers videos. And then you're in your usual vlog brothers video spot, but at a slightly different angle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is where I sit when I make content and also all the other times. Yeah, I don't ever come down here except when I'm making stuff. Really? Because, well, I've developed an intense fear of radon. Oh, have you not just had that checked? Oh, I've had a check tank.

That's not how it works. Could you just get get a permanent detector? No, it's expensive to have somebody come in and check for radon. You can't do it every week. It would be weird. Oh, it would be weird, but that wouldn't be the first weird thing you've ever done. Hey, speaking of weird stuff, I think it's confession time, which is to say that one thing we don't talk about much here is that we often talk when it's not on the podcast, like we talk to each other not for the podcast

because we're brothers. It's a real life thing. It's not just a bit. And we were just talking, and actually we were talking to an audience, but it was a smaller audience. It was the audience of our Patreon supporters at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John. We were just talking, you told me something that blew my mind and it's got my mind really roiling, which is that just beef, just eating beef, nothing else, bakes in just beef, just eating the meat of cows, bakes in 1.5 degrees of Celsius of warming. Yeah. 1.5 Celsius degrees of global warming over the next century. Just beef.

Yeah. So if we just stopped eating beef, we would be like part of the way there. But then you were like, no, we don't have to stop eating beef, Hank. You were calling me Hank. Well, I mean, it'd be, it's what we need. We definitely need way fewer cows, which is very hard.

It's a very hard thing to do. We need technological solutions to the beef problem, which a lot of technologists hear this, and they're like, OK, we'll make beef out of cells in machines, or we'll make impossible burgers. But I don't think that's the kind of technology we need. I think we need social and cultural technologies. This is such an underrated part of the conversation about everything, not just

about climate change. That like social norms are incredibly powerful. Like, I'll give you an example. 30 years ago when I was just a youngin, I remember this guy was like, I don't have a front lawn, I just have a garden in my front lawn where my front lawn would be and I grow food and flowers and that's what I do. And I was like, that's crazy, people have front lawns. Well, now I don't have a front lawn because that guy didn't have a front lawn and he was part of a slow mission to get rid of turf grass that has taken like 30 years to unfold. And will take another 30 years to get to the mainstream. But the power of changing norms is so big. The potential of it is so huge.

There are many, many technological changes. There are many things that we are working very hard to fix that if we just all collectively made different decisions, would have a bigger impact much faster. And one of these apparently is eating beef, which is great for me to know because that's not that hard for me to just go from not that much to none. But you said, it was very interesting, that actually we don't need to completely eliminate the eating of beef from a climate change perspective. I mean, from the cows perspectives, they probably would be in favor of that. Yeah, yeah. I think that different people are going to have different beef intakes,

but yeah. I think that a lot of people like it a lot and don't want to live. If you say you can never have beef anymore, you can't legislate. You can't say, no, beef is illegal now because there would be an uproar. We're talking about social norms, where you can still order beef in a restaurant, it the waiter is gonna look at you weird, right? It's like Or maybe it's not like I mean that would certainly Like it'd be like smoking indoors. Well, that is now illegal That's that's now legislated. Yeah, it'd be like smoking on a plane in 1992 Like I did it but our people looked at me. Yeah. They were like, wow, God, you jerk. How weird is that, by the way, that I lived in a

time where not only could one smoke on a plane, but I personally smoked on an airplane 30,000 feet above the surface of the earth. God, you're old. I had a fire in my hands. Are you joking? You actually smoked on planes? I smoked on planes. Was it like a French plane? It was a plane to Italy and from Italy for that matter. Okay, I was right though. That wasn't a domestic plane. And you could only smoke in the back two rows,

but like, it's not like there was some like magical divider between the back two rows and the rest of the plane. So we would just walk back to the back of the plane, have a cigarette and then walk back to our seats. What a crazy system. Now we look back on that and we're like, that's obviously absurd. People shouldn't have files on planes. I remember being in skeezy diners with dad and coming home and my nose would be burning from the cigarette smoke. Yeah. My nose would be twitching with joy even when I was like eight years old. I knew what I

wanted out of life. Oh, sorry that you're deprived. That is actually a better example, right? Because like part of it was legislation, but a lot of it is norms, right? Like even if it weren't illegal to smoke on a plane, if somebody was smoking on the back of a plane, like people would be like, hey, you've got a fire on an airplane. That's not cool. It's don't do it. It's so awful.

What I think we need to do is just kind of start to create norms around this stuff. Where we're like, eh, it's not for me. I think in general, we just need a lot. We just need a lot more. But I don't want it to just be like a negative thing. No, a positive thing. We need more like ceremony.

We need more like events in our because we have like these these things that have all been kind of I don't know, ultimately pretty co opted by like the candy industry and a lot of our holidays are about candy now. Valentine's Day and Easter and Halloween are all candy focused holidays. It's a lot of candy. It's weird to have three that are candy days. Then we've got Christmas and birthdays, which are gift giving days. We've got Thanksgiving, which is very nice. This is at least one holiday where the main thing, we put it in the name so you can't have it not be about that. It's for being grateful about stuff. So we've got that. That's nice.

That's a good holiday. Are you arguing that we should get rid of the other holidays? That's fascinating, aren't you? No, no, no, no. I think that we should add. I think it should be additive. I just think that we should have, because I mean, maybe. I do like Halloween for the reason everybody hates Halloween, which is that it gets you up out of your house and you have to go talk to your neighbors. You don't have to talk to them. You knock on the doors of strangers. It's a huge inversion of, like a lot of these devilish holidays or whatever, it's a huge inversion of social norms and expectations. And so we've become so much more insular, so much more focused on the sanctity of the home. Nobody visits the home without permission, which is of course a stark contrast to 14th

century France where somebody would literally lift up the roof of your house anytime they wanted and be like, hey, it's me from the village. Yeah. How's it going? I heard your wife wasn't well. Exactly. And so Halloween, did you just give me a thumbs up? No, I think you did it. Do the thumbs up again. Can you do a thumbs up? Oh, it gave me a thumbs up because I did the thumbs up. Oh, no, John doesn't like it. Oh, it's raining. It makes it rain. I don't think anyone can see this except for us because it's not on the camera. I don't know. I think that Zencast have recorded that. So the people who are watching the video

version of this are going to get to enjoy that. I have no idea. I don't think that mine does that. Hank, what we need are beef days. You remember in the old days how they had Saint days and unlike Saint days, there would be these big feasts and the rest of the time you'd sort of be fasting or whatever? Yeah, I don't remember that because I wasn't alive and also I don't know anything about history the way that you do. All right, just trust me. In Europe, there were these Saint days, but it wasn't exclusive to Europe. Other faiths also have their versions of Saint days. I'm just saying we should have days where we feast, where we eat beef and we should call them beef days. And each of these three or four beef days a year, once a season, should celebrate

something. Instead of celebrating individual saints who achieve miracles or whatever, I feel like they should celebrate collective achievements, not to sound overly communistic, but I feel like they should celebrate teachers. We should have a teacher's beef day. Maybe we can even vote every year on, that's probably too complicated, but maybe we can elect a high priest of beef days, or priestess, of beef days, and every year it's a different person, and that person chooses what the four beef days are about. And we all wait in hot anticipation

to learn what we're gonna be celebrating on our beef days every year. I don't think that, John, I'm gonna have way more faith in humanity. And I think that we should just pick a random person to be the high priest of beef days. It should not be elected. You should just select a person.

You should say, we have faith that you're gonna take this responsibility seriously, and you're not gonna be like, oh, it's gonna be like these years beef days are gonna be for like. Uncomfortablefortable IKEA couches, AR-15s and hot wheels that have broken axles. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people will take the responsibility seriously instead. I think they would. And I think actually we would find that we have more in common when it comes to beef days than we would think. That there is more that

we can share in a celebration of on our beef days. And so we don't eliminate beef. Obviously, lots of people on beef days won't eat beef. That's great. We encourage that. But you should eat whatever you love that feels rare and special to you. And we should have these three beef days a year. And then the other 362 days a year, people should be like, it's as weird to eat beef on a non-beef day as it is to like smoke cigarettes on an airplane. That's just weird.

Why would you do that? Well, we're not gonna, I mean, that's like 20 years from now. Like you've got to start out with just like, these are the people who do beef days. And like, these are beef day people. And you're like, oh, you do beef days? I do beef days too. And it's like kind of weird. It's like being a member of the Awesome Socks Club where you like spot socks that you recognize.

But like, we're not going to start out with it being weird. Wait a second, this could work. Like, you got to start with a small group of people. And like, only people who do beef days are eligible to become the high priestess of beef days. And... Is there a small chance that we're starting a cult? John, I think there's a small chance that we started a cult a long time ago.

So- Now that we're introducing holidays though, I do worry a little bit. Look, the McElroys have candle nights. We've got Esther Day. We've already done it. We've been in there. We've been in it. Maybe Esther Day is one of the beef days.

But the idea is that everyone agrees not to eat beef, either ever or else to only eat beef on beef days. Yeah. Now we have a version of this in my family actually, but it's a little bit different. It's called Shrimp Day. It's June 26th. It's the one day a year we force Alice to eat a shrimp. You got to just make sure to maintain the allergens.

She can pick. She can absolutely pick what kind of shrimp she wants to eat. She can pick if she wants to go to a restaurant, she wants home shrimp. She can have any kind. She can have it fried. She can have it grilled, whatever she needs, peeled, whatever, but she's got to eat a shrimp. We all just sit around the table and we all have a nice shrimp but she's got to eat a shrimp. We all just sit around the table and we all have a nice shrimp meal and we watch her eat the shrimp. Eat one shrimp. She hates it and it's great. We love it. It gets funnier every year. We've been doing it since she was six and she's 11 now. It's hilarious. Did you know that I came out of chemo allergic to shrimp?

No. Yeah. I went in allergic to scallops and oysters and clams. Man, first off, don't tell Alice about this because she might be willing to undergo that. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and grits. And I felt immediately super nauseous. And I was like, this is like my chemo coming, like just like you started still like off from chemo or we just like we're on a plane yesterday. I don't know. And then I had like one shrimp from somebody's plate because like I wanted to test it and I immediately got nauseous again. And I was like, oh my God, I'm allergic to shrimp. That sucks, man. Which is a thing that happens. Mostly because it means you can't participate in Shrimp Day,

the greatest holiday that ever was created until- I do. I like- Yeah. Beef days. I also have had a little bit of a reaction to crab and lobster too, which is a bummer. What if our greatest legacy doesn't turn out to be Crash Course or Dear Hank and John or Vlogbrothers or The Fault in Our Stars, but Beef Day. What if Beef Day is our gift to the world? Look, John, it doesn't have to be one thing. We can have many gifts that we give to the

world and one of them can be Beef Days. And I really like the idea of electing a high priestess of Beef Days every year, but for just like as a random selection and it's like it's on you. You have this weight on your shoulders now. I mean, I think you got a video topic for Friday. I've already got a video topic for Friday, John. All right. In that case, we'll just let this whole idea go. It's not worth it. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. John, this first question comes from Lucas who asks, I have a silly question about the Declaration of Independence. I know we have it on display in DC, but like, how do we get that? Is it a copy?

Did we send the original to the king? What happened when they actually wrote those documents? Did they write several copies and send it around? I hope I'm not independently declaring that I don't know how it worked, Lucas. I think that most people can independently declare that they do not know how it works. Yeah. Do you know how it works, John? Well, only from watching the film National Treasure, which is a great documentary made about 20 years ago with Nicholas Cage in it, where he sort of talks about the history of

the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. The original, it says at the top, this is the original Declaration of Independence, July 4, 776, 1776. That's how we know that it's the original because somebody wrote that at the top. And then they all signed it and that was the one. But they also printed a bunch of other ones. Yeah.

And they did send a copy to King George and it showed up later. He'd already heard about it by the time he got it. Takes a while, yeah, sure. But the copy they sent to him was only signed by two people because they didn't want him to know all the people who signed it. Smart.

Because that would be just a list of the people that you want to get. So it just had John Hancock and one other person, I don't know who else it was. But that copy- Of course, John Hancock, always looking to put a signature on anything. That's right. He was like, me. He signed every one of those declarations. Hancock always looking to put a signature on anything. That's right. He was like me.

He signed every one of those declarations. He signed declarations of whatever. He signed declarations of fief day. He signed declarations of dependance. He was like, just kidding, we are dependent upon England. We are so dependent. How are we going to get our tea, you guys? That one that was sent to King George has been lost. It is it no longer exists. Either he destroyed it because he was like, screw you guys. Or do you think he destroyed it the way like sometimes like I'll get something about taxes in the mail and I'll just like maybe like throw it in the trash just because like I'm like I can't deal with this right now.

Yeah, it's just like you just put it on the pile of stuff that's going in the trash and you're like, I won't throw it away. now. Yeah. It's just like, you just put it on the pile of stuff that's going in the trash and you're like, I won't throw it away. And then it gets thrown away. And you're like, oh, well, that's how he did it. Yeah. He just put it on the pile of stuff that goes in the fire. But it also may have been destroyed during the during World War II, like a third of King George's papers were destroyed in a bombing. So it was either destroyed then or just was mysteriously not kept, which would be strange because apparently King George was super into keeping things. He kept everything. Well, it makes sense that it could have been destroyed

in that bombing though. We lost a lot of stuff. We lose a lot of stuff from wars. We lose a lot of stuff from wars. Wars are not great. Oh God, they're the worst. I mean, it's one of the worst things people do. This next question comes from Carrie who writes, Dear Green Brothers, my niece was playing with a Noah's Ark toy at my in-laws house and it has an Ark and two people and two giraffes and two elephants and two sheep. Okay. And it comes to all the animals. What animals would have been on the ship? Like in artwork for Noah's Ark, there's always like safari animals, but do we know what animals would have been around at that time? Were there giraffes and zebras,

sheep, woolly mammoths? Evolutionarily curious? Carrie. John, I don't think we're going to be able to get into all of this question, but I am very curious. I just want to know if Noah had aquariums on the Ark, because if the flood was global, then that would make all of the fresh water into salt water temporarily. And that would of course- Which would be really bad for all the goldfish and whatnot. Yeah. So I want- Rainbow trout would have a terrible time of it.

So do you think NOAA had aquariums? Had to. Had to. Had to. I love that. It's just like a dentist office in there. Had to have insectariums, had to have stuff like soil just for soil bacteria and earthworms and whatnot. Had to have, what are those called? Terrariums? Mimitoads. Yeah, terrariums for the mimitoads.

A lot of ariums on the Ark. People say that. Yeah, it was itself an arium. Yeah, it was the ultimate arium. It was like a zoo, but with everything in it. The zoo with everything. That floated. It was sort of like the Carnival, you know that really big Carnival cruise ship? Uh-huh, whichever one, the Emperor of the Seas or whatever. The Emperor of the Seas, but instead of having 13,000 humans, it had like all the nematodes. Right. Well, I mean, it is nice all the nematodes. Right. Well, I mean, it is nice that Carnival

has built these ships for us, just in case we ever need a place to put all of the animals again. Right, great point. And maybe those crypto guys who wanted to create a nation on the ocean that didn't have laws, but that was just a cruise ship that was its own country, maybe they're like just the modern Noah.

I'm gonna push back against that a little bit. I want to yes and you. Okay. I want to. Okay. I'm quite fond of Noah. You think he had some things figured out? I think he had some abilities. I think he had some- No question. He had some gifts. He had some, let's put it this way, he had some outside support that I think those crypto bros might not have.

I think he'd be the first to admit that he was not a self-sufficient arc creator. Not doing it all on his own. He didn't pull himself up by his own bootstraps. Had some support. It's nice to have that level of support. That's the dream. I oftentimes feel as if I have a lot of support in my professional life. I got a lot of people I work with who are great. I got a lot of members of a community who are great foundation. But you don't have that omnipotent support.

But I don't have that omnipotent support. Man, that'd be nice. That omnipresent support. That support that's in all places and all times at once. Man, you could just float on that. Geez. Literally. Yeah. All right, Hank, let's answer another question from our listeners. This one comes from Dashiell, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just accidentally walked into a fancy restaurant. I thought it was a grocery store and I know I should leave, but they already seated me and gave me a menu. What

do I do? Do I stay or am I allowed to leave? Please help. Nothing rhymes with Dashiell. Lol. Oh, man. You're... Like, I'm sorry. You can absolutely leave, but you can't leave. No, you're having... What you're having, Dashiell, is a very expensive memory that will last a lifetime.

Yeah. Yeah, like, there's probably a way to get out of that place for less than 50 bucks. Have I ever told you about the time I ended up in the Versace mansion? Oh, what? So one time we were in Miami for an art show. This was when Sarah was working at a museum. Okay. And she was like, I have to meet this famous collector. They have this artwork that we want to get on loan for our show. I said, great, I love going to fancy places. She was like, they're at a dinner at the Versace mansion and they'll come out when they can. I was like, so what do we do? Just stand outside, wait for the people to come outside. She was like, so what do we do? Just like stand outside, wait for the people to come.

She was like, no, no, no, there's a champagne bar. And so we'll just go to the bar. And we'll have a drink. At the Versace Mansion? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll go to the, there's also a restaurant there, I guess. Oh, okay. We'll go to the bar. So there's like public spaces, not just like a man's house. I don't know. I don't, yeah, listen, I don't understand how any of this stuff works, Hank. Like I live a very comfortable life. This is on a whole different scale, right? These are places that-

I've brushed up against some of this too where I'm like, oh, I am a fish out of water, right? I'm like no is arium right now. Less I know about this stuff to better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So we go to this Versace mansion, which is very nice and well-appointed and everything. And we go in there and I look like a schlepp. You look like you look. You were in a turtle's neck. It always sticks in my mind where somebody said, it's so funny to think of Schleppie John Green walking around that nice house with all that art, referring to my house. Now imagine the same Schleppie John Green walking around

a famous mansion. Yeah. Right? Not in Indianapolis. In Miami during the biggest art show of the year. So very uncomfortable, very fish out of water. And they're like, can I help you? And we were like, yeah, we're supposed to meet some people here who can maybe loan an artwork to this museum show. And they were like- Yeah, you should have been like, look, this is a polo. It's named after an expensive sport. I don't know if you've heard of Ralph Lauren. Some people say he's among the greatest Ralphs.

So I will thank you to give me a seat at your champagne bar. So they sit us down and they give us the champagne bar menu. I understand that there's a markup when you go to a restaurant or a bar. It costs three to four times more to have a glass of wine at a restaurant. There's all kinds of good reasons for that, right? You got to pay staff. It's a lot of work. They've done a lot of curation for you, et cetera. I'm grateful for their expertise, grateful to pay more. I sit down at the champagne bar, the very least expensive bottle of champagne. You have to get a bottle? No, no, no, glass of champagne.

Oh, okay. Glass of champagne. The least expensive one is $92. I'm sitting there with Sarah. This is like 2008, okay? I'm not swimming in cash. Paper Towns hasn't come out yet. Yeah. And even after Paper Towns came out, I wasn't swimming in cash. She's a curatorial assistant. Paper Towns, the one that was famous sleep, the famous delivered dude. Yeah. It did change my life. I mean, I remember getting the first royalty check and being like, now that's a living. But anyway, we're sitting there.

We got this, and the waiter comes back, and he's like, what can I get you guys? And I was like, one singular glass of your Judas champagne. The glass is coming in halves. Can I get a glass of this one? I've done the math and $47 sounds reasonable. So we're sitting there sharing our $92, three and a half ounces of champagne. This guy doesn't come out for like 45 minutes. He can see us. There's like a glass thing. So he can see us, we can see him. I'm not afraid. I'm just staring him down. I'm like, please make this misery end. The worst case scenario is that even taking the smallest possible sips, we work our way through this 47 bucks a piece, three ounces of champagne.

Yeah. And finally comes out and they have a conversation, whatever, whatever. The artwork does end up in the show. So it worked. Man, that was expensive. So that's what you got to do, Dashiell. You're going to have that meal and you're going to fricking enjoy it. John, I've just looked at where the Versace Mansion is in Miami Beach. And one thing I can say is that if we don't institute beef days, it will not exist for long. Like I think the Versace Mansion should be a big sponsor of beef days. Spearheading the beef day movement. It's not in a great locale with respect to continuing to exist.

That's amazing. That's a worrying spot. I'd say that that's at three feet above sea level. Not a good one. Yeah. Welcome to a new holiday tradition, Beef Days brought to you by Miami Beach. Yeah. And Versace. Well, so you got to upscale it. You got to make it so it's a status thing. People only do Beef Days if they're high status people. Beef Days fancy. And that's how you can project that you're a good potential mate. Beef Days are aspirational. You want to be part of beef days. You got to wait to be invited to beef day. Oh, you've been invited to beef days. Yeah. Yeah. We identified you as a high net values

individual and that you- You bring enough to the table that you can participate in beef day and have a one in 1000 chance of being the person who decides what we're celebrating on the three beef days of 2025. Wow. I don't know, John. It sounds like it's going to... I don't hate it. I don't hate it. I don't hate it either. I mean, I usually hate your ideas. This was not my idea. That's why I like it. That either. I mean, I usually hate your ideas. This was not my idea. That's why I like it. That's why I like it. I usually hate your ideas, but this one was mine. Yeah, it's good. It reminds me of the other time I had a good idea for Crash Course.

It's not a bad idea, John, which reminds me that this video is brought to you by Crash Course. You can't get a Crash Course coin anymore. It's too late. But to all of the people who got Crash Course coins this year, thank you so much. You are the reason that that wonderful thing can exist in the world and it is deeply, deeply appreciated. You're the kind of high value individual who will be invited to Beef Day. You can sign up for Beef Day anytime. You can be a day one member of the Beef Day Club.

Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by Beef Day. Beef Days, the hit new holiday that everyone wants to be part of, but only a few people for now get to be because we're gatekeeping this thing. Yeah. And also this podcast is brought to you by, you guessed it, Noah's Arrium. Noah's Arrium, it's not just an ark. It's not just an ark, it's got freshwater aquarium in it. Where are the crawdads going to go? And today's podcast is, of course, brought to you by King George's burnt version of the Declaration of Independence. If it isn't sitting on the countertop anymore,

I don't have to worry about it. We also have a Project for Awesome message from Morrie. Hey, Saturday Sparklet peeps. Thanks for being an amazing sacred space during hard times and good. It's been fun to introduce some of you to Nerdfighteria and to share it with those already here. I love you all. Well, thank you so much, Maury. Thanks for being part of the Project for Awesome and part of Nerdfighteria. Okay, we've got another question. This one comes from Karina who asks, Dear John and Hank, I was packing up stuff left in my parents' house and I came across my prom dress from a few years ago. I bought it but didn't end up going to my senior prom. My question is, what do I do with the dress? My mom said I should

have one of those photo shoots where you walk into the sea with the dress on, but that might ruin it. I think I still want to donate it for someone else when I'm done. If you have any dubious advice, it would be greatly appreciated. Thankfully, not crying in my prom dress, Karina. I think the best thing to do, Hank, and I don't want to belabor this joke, but I think the best thing to do is to wear your prom dress every beef day for the next 10 years. You know, like make it special. I do. I like the idea of dressing up for beef day. If you're a vegetarian, by all means, you can still be part of beef day. Of course. The commitment that we're making is 362 days a year of no beef. Yeah. And if you want to take that to 365, amazing.

No harm, no foul. Yeah. But you could still wear your prom dress. You could and should. I like the idea of dressing up for beef days and I do not, I'm not saying dress up like and you can do whatever you want. It's going to be silly. I mean, you make your best effort to look nice on beef days. Yeah.

Is this wild? Am I turning into a conservative? Prom dress isn't silly. It's beautiful. I think that we, I think you should look up. I think we could look nice turning into a conservative? Prom dress isn't silly. It's beautiful. I think that we, I think you should look up, I think we could look nice three days a year for beef steaks. Yeah. So you're proposing this is a dress up day.

It's a dress up day. Just for dinner. It's like Thanksgiving, but it's even, is it dressier than Thanksgiving? I think at this point, Thanksgiving isn't dressy at all for most of us. I put on a collar, but I put on a collar most days. You are, you are only ever in polos. Is that what you mean by a collar? No, I wear a button down shirt some days.

Yeah, okay. But I always got a collar of some kind. It's my way of saying, I'm not like you youths. We do have to signal that nowadays, don't we? Otherwise people would mistake me for a young person. No, that's not the problem. They would mistake you for a person who's trying to be like a young person just because I'm doing stuff in young

people's face. Oh, it would be like a how do you do fellow kids issue. Yeah, I don't have the Steve Buscemi with the skateboard. You got to avoid this fate. I'm having a bit of a how do you do fellow kids issue right now, Hank. Oh, yeah. Which is that, as you know, I've been wearing Adidas sneakers every day for the last 22 years. You've been a Adidas boy. Because my friend Amy Cross-Rosenthal, the first time I ever gave a reading in public, she hosted it and she hired a professional complimenter and the professional complimenter said, I like your shoes, which were these brand

new Adidas Sambas. And I was like, oh my God, I've got to keep wearing these. The professional complimenter thinks they're cool and I've just been wearing them ever since. Well, as you may be aware, everyone else on earth, all the cool young people have discovered that Adidas, Sambas and Gazelles are the coolest shoes on earth. And suddenly people think that I'm hip, but I'm not hip. Yeah. Yeah. This happens where you have a static style and then other occasionally fashion will intersect with your style for a brief moment and you're like, ah, this is uncomfortable. But in two years, everybody's going to be like, oh, he still wears Sambas. That's so, no, I've been wearing them the whole time.

I don't know, John. Maybe I should make a polo shirt that's like a regular polo shirt, except it says, I've been wearing Adidas sneakers every day for the last 22 years. This is not a fashion statement. This is who I am. Or you could take what the world has given to you and accept that you need to get grown-up shoes. That's going to be a hard no for me. You need to get black Newbalances like a normal dad. You need to get, you need to wear Merrell's, you need to wear hiking shoes to walk around your house and. No, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't want to bring up the name and good reputation of my late friend, Amy Cross-Rosenthal, but she would not want me to do that. That'll be to play a trump card, but she's not here anymore. It wasn't even Amy who said this. It was just some stranger whose job was to say nice things. Who was hired by Amy. Are your shoes a true? Our conversation has come to an end. Okay. I didn't realize that your shoes were trip? And our conversation has come to an end. Okay.

I didn't realize that your shoes were more than shoes. I'm keeping my shoes. Karina, you should keep your prom dress. Yeah. I'm sorry. I completely forgot about Karina's prom dress situation. I think Karina should next beef day throw a prom rave. And it'll be like prom, but you should hire like a legit DJ who raves the kind of rave and it'll be like prom, but you should hire a legit DJ who raves the kind

of raves that you're not allowed to go to, but this one where you shouldn't go to, and this one you can because it's going to be more chill. Well, or it's just it's beef day. Nothing counts on beef day. Beef day rave. Nothing counts. It's like the purge, but for beef. Well, it's not quite like the purge. I don't think that we should introduce a holiday where

killing is legal. Just where eating beef is allowed for one day. Yeah. It's allowed but not required. John, this next question before we get to the news from Mars and ABC Wimbledon is from Cindy who asks, howdy Hank and John. How do I know if I'm a boring person? My fiance and I have been living together for two years now and I feel like we often don't have things to talk about even when we're planning a wedding, which is a wild experience to have so much you need to get done with someone and nothing fun to talk about. Even when it comes to hanging out with my friends, I often get nervous about what we will talk about and I'll plan hangouts no longer than two hours or that involve lots

of activities. I'm getting worried that I'm a boring person. What if my friends also notice that I don't have anything really to talk about? How would I even know? Pride and prejudice, Cindy. I think that most people who are really, first off, I don't think they're boring people. I think that all people are inherently fascinating. I don't agree with the idea that you're boring just because you need structure to come up with conversation topics. Lots of people need that. That's why people buy those big boxes full of conversation starters. Feel free to do that. Right? Don't necessarily bust them out,

but maybe you can have some of them in your head ready to go. Yeah. You can always ask Hank's classic question, what's your favorite bridge? What's your favorite bridge? That starts a conversation. The main conversation being, well, huh? I think it really gets you thinking. What's the last time you just got stuck in a restaurant? There's all kinds of just got stuck in a restaurant? There's all kinds of things that occur in a life. Yeah. And those conversations can often be freeform,

but I was sitting recently with a friend of mine and she said, if you could just get on a plane and go anywhere right now, where would it be? And I was like, you had that one ready to go. But regardless, great question. And I'd love to know your answer to it. And I'd love to know my ready to go. But regardless, great question. I'd love to know your answer to it, and I'd love to know my answer to it.

I hadn't thought about it before. What is your answer to it? I don't know. I had a hard time answering. I've got a lot of places I like to go. I gave Catherine, I was like, Catherine really wants to go to Prince Edward Island, and I'm going to want to do whatever Catherine wants to do. Yeah.

But I'd like to go to Morocco. I'd like to go to the Southern hemisphere again somewhere. There's a lot of it that I haven't been to. I'd like to go to- I don't really want to get on a plane right now. Right. That is a thing. I'm like, maybe Seattle because it's close.

I'm still going to get on one tomorrow and a couple of times next week. I don't really want to. Yeah. Well, maybe if it were a better place than wherever you're going. There's lots of places. I'm going to Portland. Portland's nice. Portland's so nice. We had such a good time. We went up to the Oregon coast is what we did, which is absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. Sounds lovely.

Yeah. Much to recommend. Anyway, the point is you're not a boring person, but I understand worrying about it. When it comes to having conversations in your core relationships, I actually think that's more of a concern than struggling with conversation topics with friends. I don't know about you, Hank, but 90% of the conversations I have with my core relationships are about when we're going to pick someone up from functional, logistical questions. Yeah, logistical. when we're gonna pick someone up from softball practice. Yeah, functional, logistical questions. Yeah, logistical questions.

It's a lot of logistics. Yeah. And so it's to be expected that you're having a lot of logistical conversations around the wedding. In terms of the deeper conversations, I think you have to make space for it. We do a thing called having a dialogue where one person holds a rock or something and the rock means that you're listening instead of talking. Do you really do a rock? You do a talking stick thing? Uh-huh. And you listen and listen and listen and then you hand the rock over and you say,

well, that makes me feel or that makes me think about or this is what that's like from my perspective. And I do find that when you do that in a very intentional way, you get pretty deep pretty fast. You uncover layers really quickly. But that's a very intentional way of having a conversation. That's not a casual conversation that you're going to have over breakfast or whatever. And so I think if you want to dig deeper, there's always opportunities to do that. But the conversations over breakfast a whatever. And so I think if you wanna dig deeper, there's always opportunities to do that, but the conversations over breakfast a lot of times are pretty boring and that's fine.

Yeah, the other thing I'll say is that being interesting has two halves. There's being interesting and there's being interested. Catherine is, whether it's actually there or not, she does a good job of pretending that she is interested and all of my weird stuff that I suddenly want to tell her about and I am interested in all of her weird stuff that she wants to tell me about.

And that I think makes us both feel like we are not boring people because we are interested in each other. wanted to tell me about. And that, I think, makes us both feel like we are not boring people because we are interested in each other. And sometimes when there's just a lot going on, there's not space for being interested or for being interesting. But I do think that that is an important part of a relationship,

that you have a person who is not just interesting to you but also seems interested in you. And also if there's like a gap between the amount of interested that you want and the amount of interested that there is, then that's also a thing to address, a conversation to have. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with all that. A lot of conversations come from listening, not from talking. Oh, man. Yes. A lot of my thoughts too. Yeah. I learn more from listening than I do from talking, but I still talk a lot. Too much, some would argue. Hey, so listen. You may remember that there was a glorious past where AFC Wimbledon were blessed with the company for three long beautiful years of the messy for Montserrat,

Montserratian international Lyle Taylor, arguably the greatest striker in the history of the AFC Wimbledon era with his mop of blonde hair. He was a hero to many of us. I saw him score a goal at Wembley to send Wimbledon up to League One. He's now 34 years old, Hank. He's not a young man. And the reports are he wants to come home. He wants to come home. According to the South London press, he wants to come home to AFC Wimbledon. How does wanting turn into occurring? Big question. Big question. So, Lyle Taylor went from Wimbledon to Nottingham Forest where he made it all the way up to the Premier League. He never actually played in a Premier League game, but he had a contract with the Premier League club which is more lucrative than playing for AFC Wimbledon,

just to state the obvious. And now he's 34 and he wants to come home at least according to the South London press. The fans want him, of course. we want him back. He's an amazing player. The question is, could we ever afford to even have 34-year-old Lyle Taylor, right? I think he's got to want to come back. He's a man who cares about charity. He's done a lot of charity work in our community and for the club. This would be another charity engagement. But he's at the end of his career. Wouldn't you want to spend the last two years of your career in a place where you are absolutely beloved, where you will be remembered for a generation to come, where you can probably work for the club after you retire. I think it makes sense. But of course, I'm hugely biased. So this is all the drama right now in the AFC

Wimbledon fan community. Is Lyle Taylor coming home? And if so, will he still be, I mean, obviously he's not going to be 27-year-old L Taylor. But will he still be the person we all remember him as which is a guy who knows exactly where the goal is? The dream is alive. That was a good thing about Lyle Taylor, John. He knew where the goal was. I mean, one thing about Lyle Taylor, you got a lot of complaints about Lyle Taylor, but he always knew where the goal was. And one thing we struggled with since losing Ali Alhamedi is having a lot of players who know exactly where the goal is. I mean, you all did pretty well this season, ultimately, but you're not in the league you'd like to be in. We're not where we'd like to be. We're not where we ought to be.

In fact, statistics just released today again showed that in terms of the size of our club, we have enough support to be in League One or even the championship. Out of all the teams in League Two, I think we have the second most Instagram followers. Out of all the teams in League Two, we have the third or fourth highest attendance, second or third percentage of the stadium sold out every weekend. So we're getting there in terms of the support base. It's just, can we get there on the field with our current budget, not spending into astonishing amounts of debt like so many other League Two clubs? Right. Right.

So hopefully Lyle Taylor will come home. It'd be great. I love that guy. I love that guy. It's big news, John. It's big news. That will be fun. I don't see why he wouldn't. Yeah, it's just money. I mean, it's hard. I would never say to somebody like, hey, you should take a 50% pay cut because of loyalty. But at the same time, yeah, I wish you would take a 50% pay cut because of loyalty. Well, in Mars news, they did a fancy simulation to figure out how often Mars gets hit by asteroids. Now you might think you could just tell this by all the asteroid impacts that are on Mars, but it can be hard to date those. There's a lot of them. But it actually turns out that Mars gets hit by more rocks than Earth for a few different reasons, even though it's smaller. So Earth, you'd think maybe we'd get hit by more rocks because it's

bigger, because it would suck more rocks in. But it's actually sort of closer to the asteroid belt than we are. Also- Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Also, it actually more reached the surface because the atmosphere is thinner. But they did this simulation where they ran like 100 million years of the planets orbiting and then just like 10,000 randomly selected asteroids. And they looked at asteroids that were potentially

hazardous asteroids by tracking where there were close gaps, by tracking where there were like times when the asteroids could potentially leave the belt and come and get Mars. They found that each Earth year around 2.6 times more big asteroids got close to Mars compared to Earth. The researchers also noted that while these asteroids could become a more important consideration just to humans who are actually on Mars, in the meantime, they might provide us with more of a chance to learn more about Mars. Because when Mars gets hit by asteroids, we learn things about it.

For example, when we've got a seismometer on Mars and an asteroid hits Mars, then we can find out about the interior of Mars by how the waves from that impact reverberate around Mars. Like ringing a bell or something. Like ringing a bell. It's like ringing a big old bell. So you're saying that in addition to being inferior to Earth in terms of atmosphere and Oh gosh, John. biological diversity, it's also inferior to earth in terms of asteroid risk. I mean, that's like on the outside of the things that are problems even. Like that's bad,

but like it's not as bad as the surface being poisonous. Right. Yeah. Like the dust being bad for you. Yeah. Yeah. And yet Dr. Katie Mack wants to spend the rest of her life there. I know. I feel like she doesn't know about the dust. She knows. She 100%. There's a 0% chance she doesn't know. I've done this podcast with her for a few weeks now and she knows. She knows everything that we know and then a whole other category of things. So some people are just built differently, you know? Yeah.

I think it's beautiful. I think that the diversity of human experience is wonderful, even when that human experience is such that you're willing to fly airplanes. Somebody's got to do it. Thank goodness somebody's set up for that. All right. Well, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. I hope you've enjoyed our fancy new video. Yeah, I don't know what we're going to do with this video, John, but maybe something. It's going on the Patreon, and then there's some clips of it, although we didn't really have any good clips today.

We'll be on TikTok and whatnot. Thank you for sending us your questions. You can send them to hankandjohn at gmail.com. That's where, without that, we don't have a podcast. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It was mixed by Joseph Tunamettish, our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. I was produced by Rosianna Hals-Rohas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Taboki Troc-Rivardi. The music you're hearing now and the beginning of the podcast by The Great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to beef awesome. Beef day. Beef day. Beef day. Did you, don't forget to be awesome. Beef day.

Did you say don't forget to be awesome?