Dear Hank & John - 409: The No Bummer Sleep Spectacular

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Whatever happened to Ecogeek? If humans colonized Mars, would there be a pope of Mars? Are certain types of protein more effective for humans? Did AFC Wimbledon get… good? How do elephants walk around on their squishy feet? What are the godly hours? …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

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I've been thinking, my friend goes to this book club that I think you should get in on. And here's the deal. They've been doing the same book for years. And I think that if they did your book for the same amount of time, that would be really good.

They call it church. And I thought maybe you could get in to the weekly book club where they stay on every the same week every single week and the same book for as far as I've known that it existed. Yeah, no, they've been doing the same book for like 2000 years. Two thousand. Oh, that's a good one. That's to be fair. Good book. A little bit, probably a little bit better than everything is tuberculosis. The hit book available now wherever books are sold. But thank you for that But thank you for that intro to promo, Hank, because it's true. My book Everything is Tuberculosis is out in the world as of today. I'm so grateful and excited,

but we're recording this in the past. So right now I'm actually just mostly nervous and a little bit sick. Yeah, I'm also a little bit sick. You probably have the same thing I had. I gave it to you. I probably do. We were hanging out. You I gave it to you when we were hanging out. You probably gave it to me when we were on vacation. There's a couple of things we need to acknowledge right up here at the top, Hank. Number one is some people watch this visually and they're going to know that our shirts are weirdly matching.

Yeah, well, that is the way of being us and our age. You've got a rack right behind you. You could have put on a blazer behind me. There's a whole rack of clothing. Those are the clothes that I'm wearing on tour. I'm not allowed to wear them until I'm on tour. But that's that's all my tour stuff. Well, I have injured my neck, so I'm being very stable.

You look you look like somebody who has a hurt neck. Yeah. Yep. It's not good. It's so frustrating because I'm also traveling. I'm going to be on a plane tomorrow for like 12 hours and I'm looking forward to it with a hurt neck. Yeah. It's not ideal, but you are going to get to go on a wonderful vacation. That also means that you have no obligations related to my hit new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. You don't have to spend the next three weeks on the road, no complaining. But actually I'm not complaining because it's an incredible privilege and one that I'm very excited about. The tour is sold out unless you live in Philadelphia, in which case come see me.

All right. What's up, Philadelphia? Is that a big room or just people? It's like a 3,000 person room. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a big room. Hank, the other thing we need to talk about is the literal hundreds of people who wrote us questions in the last week about how they listen to this podcast as their sleep podcast. I don't know if we need to take it down a notch or take it down two notches, but I'm concerned that we're not a good sleep podcast. AC Well, if it's working, it's working. That's right. Say about that. OK. But secondarily, I can take it down some notches. Yeah.

And look, it's a new it's a new era for dear Hank and John. Oh, that was good. That was great. I almost fell asleep between Hank and John. We got we got a bunch of questions that we could we could get into and we can just take them real easy. I'm into having like themed episodes. Yeah, and the theme of this episode is no bummers. We specifically requested Rosianna deliver us a set of questions that had no bummers in it, which Rosianna said was hard and required going back several months. in it, which Rosianna said was hard and required going back several months. I was I was walking down the street and I saw

like a colleague, somebody who I know professionally. And I was like, how's it going? She was like, oh, not good. Been a bad month. And I was like, yeah, you know, all the situation. And she I know she works for some like like she does, like science for a living. So like probably a job's not in a great position and it was like, so yeah, it has that situation. She's like, job situation is not great. Also just got diagnosed with cancer.

And I was like, oh, well, that's bad, man. Yeah, Hank, I don't wanna criticize you or your friend, but if this is the no bummers episode, we started out on perhaps the wrong note. I did hit with some immediate bummers, but that's okay. I was like, I can't really empathize with the job situation, but I can tell you, we can chat about cancer all day long. So we did a bit. A lot of people on tour, as I'm doing like a press junket, so I've been talking to reporters all day today and also all day for the last couple weeks. And a lot of them ask me about how you're doing. And I don't know how to tell them because the

answer is like, he's doing great in terms of the cancer, but I don't know that he's doing great overall. CB I'm very, I don't know. I am frenetic for sure. I mean, I'm going, we're going on vacation. So I'm like trying to do a bunch of stuff really fast right now. Yeah. Which maybe has something to do with the neck. Also, I promise you, I promise you 100 percent. I would not have this neck situation if not for daylight savings time.

Oh, interesting. I was having a hard time falling asleep. And interesting. I was having a hard time falling asleep and then Orin was having a hard time falling asleep. Everybody was all wrong. And then Orin came into our bed and he kicked me out. And I want to sleep on his bed. And I woke up with this fricking neck problem. It is Benjamin Franklin's fault.

Well, like this, I would argue that Benjamin Franklin isn't responsible for the current scourge of daylight savings. That's probably a good point. I would argue that it's a shared it's a shared failure and not the only one. But again, no bummers, no bars, no bummers. People have enough bummers. We got well, and you know what? Next week, we will be back with bummers. We'll be back to bummers. Don have enough bummers. Bummers. We're all aware of the- And you know what? Next week, we will be back with bummers.

We'll be back to bummers. Don't you worry about us. Mm-hmm. But for today- Will we be doing it next week? I feel like we probably gotta take a little break since you're on tour. No, no, no. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna force you to cut your vacation short

for the joy of being with me here at Dear Hank and John. Bring my mic over to the London. I like it. We are kind of low energy, which I think is suitable. Yeah, I feel like I was invited into this space. Yeah, yeah, well we're very grateful to everybody who uses this as a sleep podcast. We want this to be the special sleep episode

where you can always go back to this one, number 409, and tell yourself, well, if I'm not tired yet, I will be when I'm done listening to these nerds. Hank. Yeah. This is a question from Kayla and I swear Kayla wrote in to ask this question. Hey, John and Hank, whatever happened to EcoGeek? So just a little bit of context, Hank started a blog in 2005 called EcoGeek. It was like his project when he was graduating from graduate school.

It charted the intersection between technology and the environment. It was a great blog. It almost got bought by a big media company, but then the global economy collapsed in mid-2008, which turned out to be sort of a blessing because Hank doubled down on Vlogbrothers and thank God he did. It's true. It's true. I don't know what would have happened if that like I would have had that I would have had a day job like a job I had to really do. Yeah. And that where I worked for other people. So that might have might have ruined everything. So thanks mortgage backed securities.

Thanks credit default swaps. Yeah. Hank, one of the big winners of the 2008 financial crisis alongside those guys in the big short. Yep. Yep. Them and me. Just the guy from the office and me. Yep. Steve Carell, I think is his name. Sure. That sounds right. He's also probably a penguin sometimes or something like that. I think of him mostly as the guy from that wrestling movie who doesn't do the wrestling. Because I think about that movie sometimes in the context of my own love and support of AFC Wimbledon. Am I the star of that wrestling movie? Which I will remind you ends, I believe, in a triple homicide. Am I? I do not know what you're talking about. It won six Academy Awards.

It's called the wrestling movie with Steve Carell. You can Google it. He's grew. That's what I'm thinking of. He's also grew. But mostly he's the wrestler. He's the guy who doesn't wrestle in that wrestling movie. So I had this blog.

It was called EcoGeek. And I started it specifically because I was in an environmental studies master's program and everything was bummers all the time. And I was like, well, certainly somebody has to be working on solving these problems. And certainly there are people doing that in policy ways and people doing that in rhetorical and conversational ways, science ways, but also there's people doing it in technology ways. People are trying to figure out

how to make solar panels cheaper. People are trying to figure out how to do electric cars. And back then, all that stuff was very far away from being big mass market stuff, and now it's like mass market stuff. So that did happen. It is certainly not going to be the only part of our fixing of this problem, which is very big,

and still a very tough nut. But I did do that for a long time. Now, I got close. I did the deal for a long time. And then I just sort of tapered off as Vlogbrothers got bigger, as all of our other work got bigger, I just started doing it less and less. The other income started to replace that income.

And then, then I've always wanted to do eco-friendly cleaning supplies. Yeah. Because I don't like the idea that we ship all this water around all the time when we could just ship the ingredients out. I didn't know about this until you told me about it, but basically we ship a lot of water needlessly in the form of tide. And then not only do we ship a lot of water needlessly in the form of tide and other cleaning supplies, but we also have to ship them in very thick plastics so that they don't break and the water doesn't spill everywhere. And so this turns out to be inefficient on two levels. There's just the weight of the water,

which has a large carbon footprint associated with it, but also the manufacturing of these thick plastic bottles. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't weighed a Tide jug, but I bet it's a lot more than a bottle of water. And also, like I was looking at one the other day, and the big Tide jugs are like a complicated affair. I bet they got like four or five different types

of plastic in them. So we realized that we wouldn't have to actually develop all these products ourselves. There was a bunch of small businesses making really great products. We could just partner with them and bring them to a new audience and also donate all of the profit

to the Coral Reef Alliance to help protect the, you know, one of the most important ecosystems here on planet Earth that is, you know, under a lot of stressors right now. And that is what that, and it is wild that you asked that question because a week ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you about it. Yeah, no, it's good timing. Also credit Rosianna for identifying it. But yeah, I'm really excited about EcoGeek. The response to it has been overwhelming. It's weird to have two things coming out at the same time, one Hank thing, one John thing, but I'm very excited about the Hank thing. It's very cool.

Hank, I got another question. It's from Gracie who says, hey, I was wondering, if humans colonize Mars, would there be a pope of Mars or would the pope in Rome remain the spiritual father of Catholics across the solar system? Asking the importance questions. Gracie. Well, I think that the Catholic Church is going to say the Rome pope stays pope, but the Catholic Church on Mars is going to say, no, we need a Mars pope. Oh, you think eventually there's going to be a schism. A schism. That's got to happen. Well, we've had two pop. Oh, you think eventually there's going to be a schism? A schism? That's got to happen.

Well, we've had two popes before. We had competing popes back in the day. We have two popes now. Well, no, we don't. But I know what you mean. We had two Roman Catholic popes back in the day is what I mean. Hmm. I don't actually know what I mean. I just was I was just needling.

I think there was probably you were just you were just trying says they're Pope. Well, I'm sure there's. Alexander Pope. Yeah. He claims the title. But there's got to be somebody who says they're Pope, who's not Pope. Yeah. But the point is that they aren't Pope. That's a key, that's a key facet of this whole conversation. Anti-Pope. It's like, it's like if the Pope and the anti-Pope ever meet, then they will annihilate each other and produce enough energy to power the whole Roman Catholic Church. You know that the antipope is a thing, right?

No, yeah, I Googled it. Okay. Okay. Usually we get questions about science that I don't know anything about, so it's fascinating to hear you speculate on the Roman Catholic Church and who would be the Pope of Mars. I think you're not wrong. There could be a schism as a result of it, but the Pope is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, which extends to all parts of the Roman Catholic Church on Earth and beyond. So he would remain the Pope. John, how long until the Pope is immortal? And by that, I mean an artificial intelligence that is imbued with all of the Pope-like properties that the best Pope could possibly be imbued with or that the current Pope somehow

downloads his brain into a computer and then says, that's the Pope now. And then that's when the schism happens because they're like, that's not the real Pope. The real Pope has to be a living guy. And then the Pope is like, no, no, no, I'm inside of this computer and I'm going to be Pope forever. Given the Roman Catholic Church is somewhat a leisurely pace of change. I think it might be a while. Though they do now pay the Pope through PayPal. Yes, that's right. They've really gotten with the times when it comes to digital PayPal alternatives that only pay Popes.

PayPal. Thanks, John. I appreciate that. I've heard that the pope is sick. I think that he may have gotten bird flu because he spends all of his time hanging out with cardinals. CB Oh my God. Do these just come to you or is that what you want? AC No, no. No, I looked that one up. CB Okay. Yeah, I mean, the pope does spend a lot of his time with cardinals, but he also spends his time with many other people. This is's this is this is why I could never be Pope, aside from the other reasons is that it's it's an extrovert's job. I mean, you just have to do so much all the time. Yeah, yeah.

And cardinals are dangerous these days. Are they because of the. I think that they used to be more dangerous than they are now, actually. When were cardinals dangerous? The birds or the people? Because the people, I feel like there's been a lot of infighting over the years. Oh yeah, no, that's fair enough. I meant the birds. The birds are fairly safe. I don't encounter Roman Catholic cardinals that often,

whereas the Northern cardinal I see on a regular basis. So if I have a reason to be concerned about cardinals, let me know. Okay, that's great though. No, I think that you should be concerned about cardinals, let me know. OK. That's great, though. No, I think that you should be enthusiastic about seeing cardinals. Don't cuddle with any, just generally, birds at all. Don't worry about that, buddy. I am duly afraid of birds. OK, great. This next question comes from Aiden who asks, Hi, Hank and John.

I just recently watched Veritasium's video about protein and how we are identifying the shape of more than ever before. I had a general understanding of how different protein types work, but then I realized, I don't really know what protein in food is. Like when I eat my yogurt, it has 10 grams of protein in it. What type of protein is that? Is that the same as like 10 grams of chicken or steak? Are certain types of protein more effective for humans? Not Braden or Caden or Hayden or Jaden or Raiden or Zaden. Not Graydon, but Aiden.

It's Aiden, everybody. Oh, long time fan of the pod. Yeah. So you are eating different kinds of protein when you're eating different proteins. So the protein in like a like a dairy is going to be a lot of the whey protein, which which is what comes out when you make cheese. It's one of the things that you separate out. But generally that protein is specifically made to be like food for baby cows or other mammals.

Then when you're eating meat, you're mostly eating the muscle proteins. When you're eating plant proteins, those are different kind of sets of proteins. But in general, all of these proteins break down into the amino acids. There are 29 of them? No, 20 of them? Something like that. There's a bunch of them. And the individual amino acids are what actually make a protein into the protein and in the the order that they are and some Proteins are actually different because there are certain amino acids that our bodies can't make

And so we have to eat them we have to consume them and And like up make milk or meat is going to be a complete protein source so it'll have all nine of the nine essential amino acids. And then some proteins are not gonna have all of the essential amino acids. So you wanna make sure that if you are not eating meat, you have sources of all of the essential amino acids.

You know what's interesting, Hank, is that you said there were 29 or maybe 20 common amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins. Yeah. Interestingly, there are 20, but nine of them are the building blocks of proteins. Yeah. Interestingly, there are 20, but nine of them are considered essential to the body. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I, that's, yes, that is where my head was.

So that's where you got the number from. You were thinking you knew something. You just didn't, you weren't able to. I knew that there were nine essential amino acids and I couldn't remember if there were 20 non-essential amino acids were nine essential amino acids and I couldn't remember if there were 20 non-essential amino acids and nine essential amino acids or if there were 20 total with nine essentials. It's just fascinating to me how the brain works. That's something artificial intelligence

can never be the pope and artificial intelligence will never be able to think like that. And I find that kind of thinking so interesting. I do. I like that we're humans. I'm just going to come out and say it. I know that this is controversial, especially in 2025, but I'm so strongly in favor of humans. And not just humans in the person's sense, but humans in the biological sense. I think we are cool biology and I think we should allow ourselves to continue being biological. Well, my neck hurts though. I know. Listen, man, I don't feel great, okay?

My biology has had a runny nose for like three days in a row and slept for 12 hours last night because it wasn't feeling well. But I still think it's preferable to not having a biology. Yeah, it's an interesting moment that we're having that conversation at all in that. Yeah. You can go ahead and have a conversation with

non biological people. Oh, yeah, they're not people, obviously, but the vibes. They have like people I asked Chachi Petit to do calculus the other day, and it got so mad at itself. They kept doing it and being like, this is wrong. Oh, wow. I'm going to try it a different way. This is also wrong. Oh, we're trying it a different way. This is also wrong. Oh, wow. Try a different third way. And this is also wrong. I keep doing it wrong. And I'm just going to not do it with calculus. I'm going to pretend I'm going to make some fudging and I'm going to just do it with normal math.

And I was like, wow, Chachi Buti, be easier on yourself. Yeah, exactly. Get to make sure you're taking care of yourself. Take those baths or whatever artificial intelligences do. Yeah. All right, Hank, we have another question from Abigail who writes, dear John and Hank, among the other more important questions in life, I have a smaller one.

Did AFC Wimbledon get good? I thought they were terrible. Did we get better? If so, yay, I don't have abs Abigail. Yes, you do Abigail. They may not be visible, but they're abs. Yeah, you can stand up and stuff. You're holding yourself up. You're

doing great. Yeah. We got well, John, they're they got better, but you're getting you're getting, I feel like are you getting worse? I guess we'll talk about that later. Yeah, we'll talk about the recent results at the end of the podcast during during the section. But we have gotten better as a club and largely because of one person, I think. I mean, we have a good manager, Johnny Jackson. Johnny Jackson! By the way, I met and hung out for a while with Johnny Jackson and the whole time I was thinking, God, I hope he doesn't know that I do this bit about him. Because he definitely knew that I thought he made substitutions too late. So part of it is that we have a great coach and part of it is that we've had really good player recruitment thanks to this guy, Craig Cope,

who is like our head of football operations and the guy who picks all the players and he's incredible. He's like a moneyball guy who can identify players in lower tiers and players who aren't playing and give them an opportunity. He's a big part of the reason for the success as well. I think a lot goes into it, but we have been getting better year over year. It used to be we would really, really worry about dropping out of the football league and not being a professional team anymore and all the crises that would come with that. Now we're looking up the table instead of looking down, which is a good feeling. It just is a reminder too that a club that runs financially stable or any organization

that runs financially stable probably can't grow as fast as the organizations that have tons of capital pumped into them. But there's an upside to growing in a stable way, which is that you can slowly improve. Admittedly, we got relegated a couple of seasons ago, but we have nonetheless slowly been improving, I think. Yes. You were in League One and aren't anymore. Yeah, we're now in League Two, which isn't as good, but I'll remind you, when we were in League One, we were very, very bad. Yeah. Which would happen again if you went to League One again.

Probably, but I think actually we'd be a little bit better suited for it now. I think we have a slightly, because we have the new stadium, the stadium's full almost every week, so we just, we have a slightly better situation financially. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's the situation with sports teams.

Sometimes they're bad and then sometimes they're good. Yeah. No, that's very true. Oftentimes you'll start a season and be like, we really got it this year. We got everything we need. And then you'll just eat dirt. You know, yeah. No, there's a lot of eating dirt in sports, for sure. A lot of heartbreak.

But, oh, those moments of wonder. Those moments that you cling to, they're just so special. Well, John, I have another question. It's a related question, and it is from Emma, who asks, dear Hank and John, recently I learned that elephants have squishy foot soles. And this is related because, of course, football players also usually have feet.

Yeah. I guess we all have kinda squishy soles of our feet, but theirs look like waterpets. If you popped them, would they explode? Oh, and how do they walk around on them without exploding their feet? What happens if they step on a rock? Pumpkins and penguins. Emma, we actually looked into this to Bokeh and I will get into elephant feet a little bit. If you pop them, they would not explode.

If an elephant steps on a nail, it wouldn't. It wouldn't be like it wouldn't be like a water balloon. It would be bad, just like if you did. But they have like a whole complex collagen lipid hydrogel thing going on in there. And of course, it has to be very both squishy and very interconnected and strong because there's an elephant standing on it. Yeah. They got to have like Reebok pump sneakers, but they already have to be attached to their feet. Yeah.

It's very cool. And apparently, they're also very sensitive. Like they can feel down there and like know what they're standing on and stuff. So they're careful about how they walk. So they do, in fact, know when they step on a mouse. Yeah, they do. They would definitely know if they stepped on a mouse. And elephants' feet, just the way that human backs are a point of problem for us, you know?

Yeah. Like we just, this is so recent that we went upright and maybe we haven't devolved all of the structures we need to not have back problems. Right. Elephants are like their Achilles heel that are much closer to their actual heel. And elephants very often have foot problems and it can be a big deal for them. So they have strong evolutionary pressure

to have good foot situation because they're so big. Did I ever tell you about the time I stepped on a nail? Did you step on a nail? Jeez. Yeah, I was in Marfa, Texas and I just finished a draft of turtles all the way down and I went outside. It was dark. Sarah was out somewhere doing art stuff and I went outside and I was walking in the grass just looking up at the stars. So many stars in Marfa, Texas. I realized that it's actually the same number of stars. It's just that more of them are visible. You don't have to correct me, Mr. Science Man. But like, just looking up at the stars and feeling the smallness of me and everything. And then I had one of those experiences where the nail, I don't know if it was upright or if

I somehow turned it upright, but man, that thing went right into my foot. AC Were you wearing shoes? RW I did have shoes on, but it went right into my foot, foot foot. It was a big nail. It didn't even hurt that much. It just felt really weird. I wonder if it's like that for elephants. I wonder if it's not a source of constant pain, just a weirdness. I bet that it hurt later though. Oh, it did hurt later. Yeah, the next day it was a stinger. That's my guess is that this more chronic foot problem is probably pretty uncomfortable for one of these poor biggies.

It's kind of sad to think that other animals also have chronic pain. Yeah, oh, they definitely do. It's a bummer, because I find chronic pain to be one of, and this is a no bummer episode, so we're not going to talk about it anymore, but I find it to be one of the bigger bummers. Yeah, for sure.

I hope that my neck feels better soon. I hope so, too, Hank. But in the meantime, it's just a gentle reminder that today's podcast is brought to you by the Mars Pope, the Mars Pope. He will only be a cardinal, actually, but he will be a he. As well as that's going to change slower than interplanetary travel. Oh, boy. This podcast is also brought to you by the 20 or possibly 29 amino acids.

They're all that. That's what does almost all of the work in there. Is that all there is to life? Yeah, kind of. It's a lot of what there is to life. Yeah, kind of. It's a it's a lot of what there is to elephant feet. Of course, today's podcast also brought to you by elephant feet. Elephant feet. They squish and they squash, but they don't pop open.

And this podcast is also, of course, brought to you by EcoGeek, eco-friendly cleaning supplies available at good.store. You can go there. Well, why are we promoting your thing and not the new hit book? Everything is tuberculosis, the world's best-selling book about tuberculosis. And that book, John, is available wherever books are sold, which is not at Good.store. Not currently selling books. No, not currently.

But maybe at some point, on your book, is your name a bigger font than the title? Hold on, I'm actually using the book as a little stand for my microphone. It's the exact same size, literally to the nano inch, I think. Maybe the author name is slightly bigger than the title, but it's very close. Interesting. I think the reason the title might be a slightly smaller font is because it's very hard to get the word tuberculosis on one line. It's quite a word. It's quite a word. It looks the same to me now that I'm looking at it. Yeah. I think Grace Hahn did an amazing job with the cover design. Can I tell you my favorite

part about the book, which has nothing to do with the book itself? So you know the end papers, when you open up a book, you see the end papers. At the beginning of the book, the end papers are bacteria, some of which are surrounded by the tubercles that are the clumps of white blood cells that surround tuberculosis bacteria. And then at the end of the book, the end papers are medication, the medication used to treat tuberculosis. But I love the fact that the medication is separated from the disease by the book itself, just like in real life, we have done a poor job of getting the drugs to the places where the disease is. And so the disease is where the drugs are not and the drugs are where the disease is not as the great Dr. Peter Mugene put it. And I just think it's lovely

that the book itself is also a metaphor. That's great. So shout out to Anna Booth for being an amazing book designer and agreeing to lay out my book in Bembo, my favorite font. It's got a good name. Big Bembo nerd. Big Bembo energy. I actually put a little note about the font on the copyright page, Hank. You want me to read it to you? Oh, oh my God. Yes. This book is laid out in Bembo, a typeface name for Cardinal Pietro Bembo. This is our Catholic episode. We didn't see it coming. In 1496, Bembo, the person, wrote the first book to be laid out in Bembo the font. It's a short book, a dialogue with his father about

climbing Mount Etna. At one point in the story, Bembo asks his father, one of my favorite lines in literature, where do these fires come from? And once they've come into being, how do they keep going? These questions are about the volcanic fires of Mount Etna, but it seems to me they are also about the overall human situation. I've tried to write here about where the fire of tuberculosis came from and once it came into being, how it kept going. And so Bembo felt like the right font. That's a little bit of a spoiler for my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, available in bookstores now. Well, I don't know that anybody was going to read the font page, so that's great that people get to find out about the Easter eggs.

Love an Easter egg. Yeah. We have another question from Kevin and it's on topic because we're talking a lot about the Lord. Huh? Kevin writes, Dear John and Hank, people always say things like, I got up at the ungodly hour of six and my question is, what are the godly hours? Thinking about time in heaven, Kevin. Who am I, the Pope? Sorry, a bunch of people just woke up.

Yeah, Hank, you got to keep it nice and chill, man. Or else somebody had the Pope inserted into their dream. Here comes the Pope suddenly out of nowhere into the dream. It was Jerry Seinfeld saying, who am I, the Pope? Who am I, the Pope? Yeah, so I think the godly hours, my guess would be the godly hours are the daylight hours, right? Originally the ungodly hours were the hours of the night when things are ungovernable. And the godly hours are the ones where we can see. AC I think this is very recent. I think this is a recent phenomenon and that we just say ungodly when we mean something that is bad and shouldn't be experienced and that we applied it to not wanting

to be awake too early in the morning. Well, it comes from Middle English. Ungodly? Yeah. Well, sure. Let's see when it was first used. Yeah. It's either a very early or late time of day, according to Wikipedia, which sounds to me like night. Yeah, for sure. Okay. It comes from the 14th century.

Ungodly hour. The slanger colloquial sense of extremely annoying is recorded by 1840 in Ungodly Hour. Oh, wow. Before that, it was called Unearthly, an Unearthly Hour, which is even more beautiful, I think. That's strange because it's definitely of the Earth. An Unearthly Hour implies that this is outside of the planet entirely, these hours. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. 1840. 1840.

1840. Sorry, I don't know how lucky will we be to be alive in the year 1840. And I don't mean you and me, I mean anybody. Yeah. Someone recently asked me how long will it be until the day is exactly 365 days and we won't need leap years. It's about two and a half million years, which is not that long from now. It's not impossible, but I'm still going to take the under. Yeah, that's a long time. Well, it's 10 times as long as we've been here. And the idea that we're in the first 10% of human, well, sorry, caught myself mid bummer. We've got a really good chance of making it two and a half million years. That's right. Will we be on Earth? Probably not.

Yeah, we will. Oh, 100%. You think we're gonna find a better planet? No way. No, I think that I think that we're to build giant structures in space to live in. Why would we do that when we have a good planet? That's okay. Oh my god, y'all science fiction nerds totally underestimate how great life is. No, it's very good. It's way better than any of the other planets. Don't get me wrong.

Then why would we leave it? It's the best. It's almost like we were designed for it. Yes, well, it's almost like we evolved for it. Well, that's what I obviously mean, Hank. Okay. We're not about to have a fight. This is no bummers episode.

If you told me that you had to wake up at the ungodly hour of six, I would say like six feels pretty reasonable. No, six is at this point godly because of how I think that that's honestly, that's when God wants you to get be getting up. You know, it's like get get on with it. Do all the do all the stuff you need to do have engage with your community. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like does God want me to be productive? I feel like American God does. I like that you're asking the question, man. It's great to hear you questioning what God wants from you. You really are on a journey of meaning. It's been incredible to witness. I ask myself

all the time what God wants of me and people are like, but what if God doesn't exist? And I'm like, that doesn't matter at all to me. And, and I know that that drives people crazy. It just it is a completely irrelevant question to me. The question is not what does the God who exists want from me? The question is what does God want from me? But but is God is your God? Is your good American because I feel like I feel like most of the God I hear about is American God. My God is definitely not American. My God has a different perspective

than I would say the dominant ideas of God in the United States. You know what I mean though. You feel like there's a fair amount of American God out there? American God is a phrase I'm familiar with and it's like Antipope. You think you invented it, but no it's been around. Okay

I got I'm gonna invent theology from scratch. Let's go Hank's gonna be like one of those artists and outsider artists who never trained in art academy but for theology yeah, yeah, yeah, so I've been thinking about angels and what if you could imagine the head of a pin? How many of them fit on there? How many would fit on there? None? Six? A hundred? An infinite number? That's my favorite thing that medieval theologians did was debate how many angels could fit on the head of a pin while like meanwhile

suffering Universal And and like and I don't want to be like an armchair theologian here, but like obviously none I mean come on Like I couldn't fit on the head of a fin. I mean maybe one. Okay, I'll give you one. I don't know about one. I'm gonna say zero. I'm gonna say zero angels can fit on the head of a pin. I couldn't fit on the head of a pin. And I don't think angels are that much bigger

or smaller than me because they were imagined in my image. I feel like I could fit on the head of a pin. If I could just balance on there, does that count as fitting on it? Hank, if you could balance on the head of a pin, I will personally give you a million dollars. If you try to balance on a head of a pin, you know what's going to happen?

Your squishy foot is going to be enveloped by a pin. You're going to have to get a tetanus shot and that's the best case scenario. That would mean that your balancing is so perfect. Yeah, yeah, that actually happened. Yeah, but what's actually gonna happen is that the pins just gonna fall over because I've seen you try to stand on one leg. I'm not the best balancer, it's true.

But I feel like angels will be good balancers and probably don't weigh anything. Oh, that's a great point. They might be my size, but not my density. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that they don't weigh very much. They probably don't have to worry as much about about blood pumping as I do. I would imagine that there's somewhat and then there's the biblically accurate angel, which is just a collection of eyes. Yeah, they they angels have hemolymph. They don't have blood. Oh, yeah.

That's a fact I didn't know that I think you made up. Well, I am inventing theology from scratch. Oh, yeah. Right. Okay. So you've got to invent angels from scratch. Yeah. Yeah. So they have they have a single lymphatic blood that is both lymph and blood. AC What caused an angel to get its wings that happened all the time? Was it the tinkling of a bell? AC Yeah, every time a bell rings. AC Okay, yeah. Well, look at that. Do you believe in that? AC Well, I think that they start out with wings, but then when a bell rings, they get more. AC Actually, they don't like it when bells ring too much because they don't need like six

set of wings. It's actually. Oh my God. I got to cut another pair of wings off. It's like they're just pruning constantly. Stop ringing the bells. Oh, my back hurts. All right.

This is great. This is when I get to heaven. At St. Peter's at the gate, he's going to say, what about episode 409? I'll say, I know, man, I know. Send me down. Look, here's what's going on. And then I'm going to get up there and they're going to be like, look. Poof. And they'll make me stop existing because whatever happens, whatever you believe is what happens.

That's my next theology point. Okay, that's a good theology point. Then I believe that I'm going to get to heaven and St. Peter's going to be like, poof, you almost had it. But there was episode 409 and then there was also a lot of La Croix that you drank. And we both know that was inefficient. Yeah, but you believe I'm going to go to heaven. I do. And so I'm going to go to heaven even though I don't believe it. I maybe have created a bit of a... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, I won't be there, so we won't get to hang out, but you're going to have a great time.

Because I don't believe you're going to go to heaven. Oh, no. Yeah, no, I'm not going to. But I bet a bunch of people do. You'll make it. You've got a great chance. By the way, I don't really believe in heaven. I just find it a useful rubric for examining how I'm doing. AC Yeah.

AC Your theology is a mystery to me even after all these years. AC Well, to be fair, it's a bit heterodox as they say. AC Well, I don't want to feel as if I'm debating you. So I don't like ask the questions. Yeah, no, you're not debating me by asking questions. That's just being curious. I like to go to church. I believe in God.

But you do think that you have a soul and the soul is separate from the body and the soul will continue existing outside, like after the body? Well, the soul is, I mean, I don't think that I don't think that it's like inside your pancreas if that's what you're asking. Yeah, yeah. Do I think the soul will exist after the body? Yeah, he said questioningly without any confidence. Gotcha. But you're gonna hear you're gonna hear a lot of that. I'm going to have to narrate my answers, you know, because like there's so much nuance to me. But I do think that there is an essentiality of humanness that is different from the essentiality of like a rock. Not that different, because

I think a rock also has an essentiality. But like I think there's something to humanness that is important and distinct. Yeah. And it's kept in the canine teeth, and when you lose it, the teeth grow strong and long because now you're a vampire. Something like that. You're not that far off. It's just that the thing is a product of consciousness rather than being a product of the body. Gotcha. Whereas I am fairly confident that consciousness is just a product of the body. Yeah. Yeah, no, so am I. It's just one of the things the body produces is a soul that isn't physical. But yeah. Okay. All right. All right. And it just, it can, it like oozes out afterward and just sort of. It survives death. Yes. Okay. In the sense

that like Papa is dead, but he's still my, my grandfather. Gotcha. Oh, well what happens after you died? The ones who love us will miss us. I mean, that's one of the things that happens after we die. Yeah. That's the main thing. Yeah. Thank you, Keanu. The greatest theologian of our time, Keanu Reeves, said that. Yeah. It hit me pretty hard. I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, I mean, in that sense, love is stronger than death, as it says in the scripture. Love does survive death. We all know that because we all love people who've died. AC E E C 1222. RL Nope, but good effort. AC Is that one of the books?

RL That is a book here. You want to know what E E C 1222 says? AC Oh, no. Is it going to be a real thing? RL Oh, yeah. No, that's a real thing. Let me see. Oh no, it only goes to 14. Okay, well, what's 14? For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. Oh no! Yep.

The LaCroix is real, John. I know. That's the LaCroix verse. I've read my Bible. The banger of Ecclesiastes 12 is Ecclesiastes 12 eight. Meaningless, meaningless says the teacher. Everything is meaningless. I get that one tattooed on me.

What's that Bible verse? Oh, it just means that like nothing matters. I don't know if you knew the Bible said that. Just a little bit of nihilism for you. That's what keeps keeping me afloat these days. Yeah, it's a good book club. It's a great book club. It meets every week. I love that idea that it's a book club that meets weekly and never finishes. Hank, we got to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Okay. You want to go first? Mine has bummers. Okay. Mine also has bummers. Sorry. It failed so much. As everybody might currently know, you can't fix the news.

So one thing you might know is that various government agencies are losing a lot of employees right now. NASA has in part been spared, like, the weird thing where they just let everyone who is in their, like, probationary period, like, just fire everybody in their probationary period, because they can more easily. Right. So for whatever reason, that hasn't happened at NASA, but on March 10th, NASA did, or the government closed three NASA offices.

So about 23 people lost their jobs. We lost the Office of the Chief Scientist, the Office of Technology, Politics and Strategy, and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility branch of the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity at NASA. So things are up in the air everywhere. So if you have been wondering, that

is how NASA has been hit thus far. Who knows what will keep happening? The chief scientist was Catherine Calvin, who was an expert on climate science. And it's been involved a lot in the open science initiative I was also put together analysis and reports on projects like Mars sample return project And NASA does a lot of earth science people mostly think about the planetary science stuff there's a huge amount of earth science that NASA does and

That Feels like it might be the area that is more under threat here, which feels a little silly because that is- That is our only home? In terms of the actual impacts on the people, the earth science is pretty important. Yeah. Remember your creator in the days of your youth before the days of trouble come, and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. It's Ecclesiastes 12, that's how it starts. It's a bit of a bummer. Wow, Ecclesiastes, are they all this good,

John? Can I pick another random one? Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark and the clouds return after the rain, when the keepers of the house tremble and the strongmen stoop, when the keepers of the house tremble and the strongmen stoop when the grinders cease because they are few and those looking through the windows grow dim when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades when people rise up at the sound of birds but all their songs grow faint when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets, when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire no longer is stirred, the people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets. Jesus, literally. What is Ecclesiastes? Is that like a bunch of letters to some people who are Ecclesiastes?

No. Are you sure? Like one of Paul's letters to the Romans or whatever? Yeah, that was one of them. No, it's from the Hebrew Bible. It's a book of the Old Testament. Okay. Yeah, that's funny though. All right, Hank, I can't get distracted. We got to get to the news from AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon have won some football games. They've lost some football games, but they lost their most recent football game very infuriatingly to Chilternham 2-1. Arguably, James Tilly, maybe Nerdfighteria's own Marcus Brown scored the one AFC Wimbledon goal. It was tied 1-1 going into halftime and then lost in the second half. Very frustratingly. I thought played well enough to win, but as the Academy graduate Isaac Okundera put it, we now have a 10-game

mini-season to try to get promoted. Wimbledon currently in fifth place. Four through seven go to the playoffs. One through three get automatically promoted. So 10 game season, I think if we win five of those games, we probably go up, but we got to win five of them. Well, sports that I looked at the table just now and in a weird situation, almost all of the teams on the top half had lost their most recent game. Yeah. And almost all the teams in the bottom half had won their most recent game, which is not how it's supposed to be.

No, but it tends to happen at the end of the season. The bad teams get good because they get really desperate because the thought of going down is such a threat to your whole club solvency that sometimes they spend more, sometimes they just play hard. So yeah, there's no easy games in League 2. Wimbledon have to find a way to win five of their last 10 games and that's not going to be easy, but I do think it's possible. Yeah. Well, I think that they're going to score in every way that they possibly can and ways that people haven't ever imagined before. That's my hope because we have not been scoring enough goals. So it'd be fun to see a score in ways that people have never imagined before.

Yeah. Football is very, very cool, especially in highlights. Yes, it's good in highlights, but it's also good. I think it's a great live watch personally. I'm sure it's a great live watch. I wish that AFC Wimbledon were playing while you're going to be on vacation, but alas, they will not be so you don't get to go to a game. Oh, well. But thank you to everybody for listening. Thank you for being here. I hope we kept it pretty chill here in episode 409, the No Bummer sleep spectacular and thank you for all your notes

Especially all your notes about how? compression works File compression. Oh, yeah people were people were up in my mentions about that. Oh, yeah No, we we didn't do a great job of explaining it But I actually want to read one email that I thought was the best explanation for it and is only about one line long Okay, it's from Mike dear John and Hank I want to read one email that I thought was the best explanation for it and is only about one line long. Oh, yeah. Okay. It's from Mike.

Dear John and Hank, you know how on printed song lyrics the chorus might only be there once and later it'll just say, repeat chorus to save space on the page? That's file compression. Okay. I like that. This episode of Dear Hank and John was edited by Linus Obenhaus. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It was produced by Rosianna Halsrow, Hassan Hannah West. Our executive producer

is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. Don't forget to be awesome.