Dear Hank & John - 410: Too Weird to Fail

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Are the geese in Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” Canada Geese?  Why are there taglines on movie posters? Does footballer Joe Lewis have special shorts?  How was the alphabetical order decided?  Are lone geese searching for the rest of their flock? Should Canada become the 51st US state? …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. Whereas I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers offer you dubious advice and answer your questions and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and Nancy Wimbledon. Hank, I'm in a very echoey space because I'm in a concrete- You're a very echoey space because I'm in a concrete box right now on vacation with my family, but I took the day off because they were going on a long boat ride and I

just got done with the tour for everything is tuberculosis and there were a lot of planes, trains and automobiles, but blessedly there were no boats. Didn't need any more jiggles. I don't need another method of transportation this week. I've had too many. Yeah. Recently, Katherine wanted to go on vacation and I wanted to go on more of like a staycation, so we did a compromise and had an altercation.

That's pretty funny. That's not bad. You just got back from vacation as well. I did actually. In fact, both of us very much wanted to go from vacation as well. I did actually, just give, and we, in fact, both of us very much wanted to go on vacation. Yeah, yeah. Well, the big news in my world, the big news in my world is that my book,

Everything is Tuberculosis is out in the world. It's gotten great reviews. It's the number one New York Times bestseller. It's the first book, Hank, to be at the top of the New York Times bestseller list about tuberculosis in some time. You know, previously you mostly launched books aimed at teenagers, but you had to stop because you kept hitting them.

Nope, nope. We only get one of those per week, buddy. Because you're just pelting teenagers with books. And then if you try to do a second one, it's never as good. Your aim got too good. Your aim. See, this is the problem with you is that you tell a joke and if it doesn't land, you double down on it.

And if it does land, you also double down on it. It's one of the things you need to learn as a young comedian. I guess. You always got to have another joke. Yeah. How are you doing in general, man? Yeah. I think, I mean, vacation was really good. I'm good.

I'm, of course, when you do go and don't work for a while, you come back and then there's a bunch of work that you didn't do. This is the problem with working for yourself is that your bosses... Yeah, I think a lot of people have that experience, but- Yeah, I mean, ideally somebody steps into your shoes, right? The ideal situation is you're, say, a managing director at a firm that moves the pile of money around. I assume that seems like the best job in the world.

Somebody else is moving the piles of money around while you're gone and then you just step back in. gone. Exactly. And you get back and they're like, exactly. You get back from your vacation and they're like, hey, the piles of money have been moved left, right, center, front. They are larger as a result of the movement and you're welcome. Yeah. Whereas I get back and they're like, Hank, it turns out that only you are the one who can record this advertisement and the future Hank segments for Ask Hank Anything and also do the review to make sure that you said all the things

that you wanted to say in this episode of This Thing. And that's just like, those things is what I'm doing right now. It's a lot of work, your job. My job is a little less work, but also a lot of work. I was very grateful to be on tour for the last few weeks. I thought that I would be exhausted, because it was a different city every day, a different plane every day.

And that is kind of tiring. But I wasn't exhausted. I was really energized, actually, because I got to see 14,000 people in our community. And I got to be with people who are very active in the fight against tuberculosis and other diseases of injustice. Instead of getting tired, I came away from... I mean, I did get tired. I'm on vacation now, and I didn't get to sleep in my bed, and I missed my bed.

I haven't been in my bed in over three weeks. I am a little tired, but at the same time, it was very encouraging. And encouragement is a little hard for me to come by right now, but I was very encouraged by this. Yes. I've been thinking a lot about how we are both, I don't know, we're lucky to have found the sort of space that we have. I was in your podcast with Chris Hayes.

And just sort of like talking talking to an MSNBC anchor and just sort of offhandedly mentioning our community and the work that we have done to build this, to help build this hospital in Sierra Leone. And that is such a weird thing that I don't think like, like, to like the average Chris Hayes viewer, like, like, what would they even think that meant? But it's such like a concrete foundational thing in my life. Right.

And the way, and the way that it happened was just so organic and, but also with an eye toward was just so organic and, but also with an eye toward actually trying to be constructive and live in a society. Yeah, and in a long-term open-ended commitment kind of way. Yeah. That like you will never not live in the society. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like we sort of like swung, like the pendulum has swung a little bit,

like pretty far away from living in a society here for a moment. And I think maybe hopefully there actually is a swing back where like certain really anti-social behaviors are taboo again. Right. Yeah. That'd be great to see. Anyway, let's answer some questions from our listeners. Okay. John, this first question comes from Lydia. Dear Honk and John, Honk, so here's the thing. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver is my favorite poem. And I've considered getting a tattoo to represent it, but this has led me to wonder, do you think the eponymous wild geese are Canada geese? That's certainly the only type of wild goose I see in my Midwestern city. John, I have a relatively low opinion of Canada geese, which does interfere somewhat with my interpretation of the poem. For example,

I have a hard time reconciling the aggression of a Canada goose with, quote, the soft animal of my body. You do not have to be good, but you do have to answer me, Lydia. What do you think, John? Are they Canada geese? I've always assumed so, and I've always assumed that they're sort of the great poem that tries to rehabilitate the Canada goose, right? Yes. Do you know the poem in question? I don't. Is it in the public domain?

It is today, buddy. It is today. It goes like this. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the

landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. So what we know about the geese is that they fly very high in the clean blue air and that they are headed home again. So they are definitely migratory geese. Now, most Canada geese are migratory, although

some now just live full time in Indianapolis, crapping in my backyard. Yeah. The other thing we know about them is that like the wild geese, the call is harsh and exciting. Now, harsh, certainly. Exciting, I would say, marginally. Yeah, I'm going to go, having listened to it, and living in a place where I hear two different types of geese, I would probably say that this could definitely be Canada geese, but it could also be snow geese, which also have a harsh and exciting call. And look, I think that on average, if you ask the average person, what's the better goose, Canada goose or snow goose, they'd say snow goose.

But they're not spending time up close with snow geese. If snow geese were in the park all the time, pooping their little logs of half-digested grass, and defending their territory to you. You'd also hate snow geese. I don't get why we don't like Canada geese except that they are successful. Right. Well, they're successful, but they also remind us of the fact that they are successful because we've built the world for them, which reminds us that we're terraformers of Earth, which is a horrifying reality that we have to confront

that we don't like to confront. I think some people probably are having that reaction. I think a lot of people are just like, I'd really rather there not be little logs of half-digested grass all over the place. Yeah, there's that as well. So here's the thing. Probably the average person.

Mary Oliver lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Canada geese. Almost certainly Canada geese, although there are occasional ocean-going geese that make their way to Provincetown and do fly high in the blue sky. And so it's possible. But I think it's almost certainly Canada geese. Yeah. And I think that we should love them

for the successful species that they are. We're successful, they're successful, we're sharing a little bit of space. We have a soft animal part of our bodies, they have a soft animal part of their bodies. They have that belly that's exposed just like we have an exposed belly. And they are vulnerable and fragile creatures just like us.

I guess the main difference is that we know what's keeping the stars apart, and they don't. Yeah, as far as we know, they do have that glint of intelligence sometimes. They don't. They absolutely do not have that glint of intelligence. I love a bird. I'm a bird enthusiast, but you're

going to have a hard time making the case to me that birds other than like crows and ravens have that glint of intelligence. They do seem to have little families though, so that's nice and cute. Yeah, yeah, no, it's great. All right, Hank, I have a question for you. It comes from Ani who asks, Dear John and Hank, given the extensive nature of movie promo nowadays, well, I don't know, Ani, it really depends on the movie. Some movies don't get extensive promo, but I know what you mean.

In addition to several iterations of strategically released trailers, what purpose do movie taglines on posters serve? Are they remnants of a bygone era? What do you think they add to the movie going experience? Also, what would the tagline for your biopic be? In a world, Ani. So Hank, you may not know this, but The Fault in Our Stars originally had a tagline that they ended up scrapping. It was on the movie poster, but

it was only on the first run of the movie posters, and then they took it off the movie poster because everybody hated it except for me, who found it hilarious. Oh, God. Who wrote this? Do you know? Somebody at a movie studio. And the tagline was one sick love story. Oh, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I've like seen an old movie poster

that didn't get released. Do you have one with it? I think you probably did. I have one downstairs, so you probably see it when you come stay at my house. They didn't use that? They didn't use that. And it totally makes sense that they didn't use it because it's a very earnest, you know,

and I want to make art that's earnest. So, like, I don't want to use that layer of irony to protect against the expectations of people. But I also wanted the movie to be funny, and I think it is funny in parts. Obviously, it's not a comedy, but like it has its funny moments. And like, because I, what I really wanted for that movie and for that book was for Hazel and Gus to be people with full, rich, complex lives that contained everything that a life can contain, you know, including lots of humor. Like I worked at a children's hospital and it was one of the funniest places I've ever worked. It was also by far the saddest place I've ever worked.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Like people can be funny and sad even at the same time. And yes. So anyway, it did have a tagline but then they cut it, which was the right call. And I can't remember if Paper Towns had, I think Paper Towns had a call, had a tagline as well. It was get lost, get found. Which is not really the moral of the story. No, that's not what the book or the movie is about.

But you know, there is some getting lost in it. And I guess there's not really but like, whatever. It seems like a movie tagline, you know? I don't know why they do them now, because it seems like totally irrelevant to the contemporary movie experience, unless it's like, unless it like feeds into socials the way that like the Avengers and game most ambitious crossover of all time, tagline fed into socials where people are like, No, the most ambitious crossover of all time tagline fed into socials where people were like no the most ambitious crossover of all time is Hank Green and Dan Howell making content together or whatever. So are we supposed to try and figure out like our life story tagline?

Yeah what would your bio what would the tagline be for your biopic? He came he saw he forgot why he came saw, and then had to walk back to the other room to remember what he was doing in that room. That's pretty good. I mean, it's not succinct. That would be my only criticism of it. Well, this is a difficult copywriting task. Mine, I think, would be something definitely hypochondriacal. Does my eye look funny?

Oh, really? Yeah. Does my eye look funny? Yeah. Something in that category. Something where it's like, this guy is clearly struggling with his mental and his physical health. That's what I'd want to communicate in my tagline.

I want to communicate like just that special combination of just like haphazard energy, like an ambition but for nothing in particular? Right. Not like ambition to take over the world, but ambition to do weird stuff. Like the real ambition that you and I have is an ambition to do weird stuff. Part of that is, and there's ways in which that's cool and super productive, like building a maternal hospital in Sierra Leone is the greatest example of that, right? Like that happened in part because you and I had ambition

to do something weird and different. But then like there are other ways in which our ambition to do something weird and different is not at all productive. Like for instance, if you have an ambition to see AFC Wimbledon become a third tier English soccer team and you devote resources to that, like that's a weird ambition, you know, and like people will be like,

oh, that's kind of weird and cool, but they won't be like, oh, that's a good use of resources. Yeah. Uh huh. Yes. Too weird to fail. Too weird to fail. That's a great tagline you got there. Because that's great, because it actually makes sense. Because if you're just trying to be weird, you kind of can't fail. Yeah.

Yeah. Everybody's like, well, that's weird. Right. If it succeeded in being weird, it succeeded. Right? Yeah. Like having a podcast for the last eight years where we literally, unironically share the news from AFC Wimbledon and Mars

Yeah, and the podcast is still kind of a hit is proper weird. Yeah Yeah, we got a lot of that. You remember when we for like like eight months Only titled our videos lines from a smashmouths all-star and our views didn't go down at all We were like, you know what YouTube everybody, everybody's taught like a timeout title optimization. What if we can prove that thumbnails and titles don't matter? What do we prove that you can really do it a different way? I'm Yeah, I mean, they matter for like, but they don't. But like, what if you can prove that there's another way?

This is what I this is what I want everyone to be doing. Honestly, there's just not enough experimentation, not This is what I want everyone to be doing, honestly. There's just not enough experimentation, not enough weird. Yeah, I agree. We need to lean harder into weird, especially weird stuff that doesn't hurt anybody. Because we've got a fair amount of weird stuff that does hurt people.

Yeah. But that's not the kind of weird we're looking for. In fact, this reminds me of our next question, Hank, from Taylor, who writes, Dear John and Hank, does Joe Lewis, who I helped pay for, he was a real life AFC Wimbledon player, get specially made shorts? Does he take them to a Taylor or do the normal shorts that the rest of them wear just look like that on him? Taylor.

I think that that's just, I think his body does it to the shorts. I don't think the shorts do it to his body. That is correct. He gets the same shorts. Yeah. But his body does that to the shorts. And what his body does to the shorts is magnificent. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I know Joe listens to the podcast. So hi, Joe. Oh, wow. The other day we couldn't, a friend of mine and I couldn't think of the name of the band, Greta Van Fleet. Mm-hmm. And so we are asking a friend, and I said, you know, the cute little guy with the weird voice. And he was like, oh, Greta Van Fleet.

So you just do what the first thing, and you put ideas into other people's heads. I don't think, though, that I've ever done anything very special to a pair of shorts. No. No, nothing worth repeating on a podcast anywhere. For the immediate response. Well, I just know you have colitis. Oh, man. I don't I have I basically don't own shorts.

It's it's been a long process for me with the with the visible legs. Yeah, I'm wearing shorts right now, but they always make me uncomfortable. I always feel like I'm performing first, like I'm performing as someone else. Like I'm cosplaying a middle aged man who's on vacation. That's so weird, isn't it? That sort of like like the personas that. a middle-aged man who's on vacation. That's so weird, isn't it? It is. The sort of like, the personas that, and we of course think about this

like way more than anyone else, but we're, so we, on our vacation, we were in Ireland, we did a bunch of cool stuff, and Catherine was like, you should get a flat cap, like a wool Ireland style, and I put it on, and I was like, that looks pretty good, and Catherine was like, I love that, and I was like, no, but I can't wear it.

Right. I can't buy an Irish style hat and wear it around Ireland. What is, what's next? That I start speaking in a very good Irish accent all of the time? Yes, you and your Irish brogue, I'm sure it would impress me. The fact that you were able to go to Ireland for two weeks and come back not with an Irish Brogue is impressive actually very proud of you. You've matured a lot But yeah, I think we are probably more hyper aware of

performance than most people that like all identity is performative because We've been performing our identities and living our identities for a long time. I think everybody's kind of like that though. Here's what I think. I think you can go into a store and you can see a shirt and be like, I could never pull that shirt off. And then you could put that shirt on and no one would even think for a second about that shirt. Well, they wouldn't think that you can't pull it off. They would think the fact that you're wearing it indicates that you can pull it off. Yeah. I honestly would think about the shirt. I honestly think that for the most part, they kind of wouldn't think about the shirt. I think that the shirt probably wouldn't even be that weird.

It depends on how good the shirt is. If the shirt. It depends on the shirt. For example, we have another question from Sarah who has a pot, who has a bumper sticker that says, "'Honk, if you're letting the small animal of your body "'love what it loves.'" I guess this is the Mary Oliver special. And that, if you put that on a t-shirt, right, like everybody would look at the t-shirt and

be like, I love your Mary Oliver t-shirt. So people would notice it, but they wouldn't think like, oh, you can't pull off a Mary Oliver t-shirt. The mere fact that you're wearing it means that you can pull it off. Yeah, that's my contention. And I experienced this when I go to a casino, Hank. You can be a person other than who you are. What, what? You know?

Yeah, like I go to a casino and I have a made up name and a made up identity. I've never told you this before. Wow, maybe you have, but it, you know, we've had a lot of conversations. It's true. But that's just a weird way to say that, but you only do it in casinos?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'd be weird to do it anywhere else. Who are you? What's the name? Is it like Bennigan's McShane? No, no, it depends. So Sarah and I will create a character. Like one time we created this character who made research beyond meat, like meat alternatives for salmon.

And so when I got into a conversation about it at the Blackjack table, I was just like, yeah, you know, the texture is really challenging. That's one of the things that's really hard about it. The flavor profile is relatively straightforward, but the flaky texture of salmon is hard to recreate with a vegetable-based protein. And I mean, I had a whole conversation where I was this guy and then the money part of it was at the end, at the end of the night when I was wrapping up at the blackjack table, the dealer came up to me and said,

it's nice to meet you, Mr. Green. Now, this is why this is why they're not recruiting you to be in the CIA. No, no, but I think I had the other table mates trick to the people who were in their 70s and 80s. I love that. I love that. I love that for that person.

Can I tell you a little story about a little thing that happened to me today? Please. I got a burrito, but in a bowl, because I didn't wanna have the whole burrito part. And the guy who made the burrito, as he was handing me the burrito bowl, he said, I would try to make this one look like

it was good enough to go on the website. And I was like, I love that. This is the greatest little, this is a great little moment. I'm going to really enjoy looking at this burrito bowl. Yeah, that's lovely. I'm going to really enjoy looking at this burrito bowl. Yeah, that's lovely. I'm like, that's, thanks for, you might say that to all the guys, but like. It still matters though. It, it, it, yeah.

Just like I, some care and attention went into the making of this. Yeah. Hank, that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the burrito bowl on the website, the burrito Bowl on the website getting recreated in Missoula, Montana every single day. This podcast is also brought to you by The Fault in Our Stars. The Fault in Our Stars, one sick love story. Because we always do taglines, but now I get to do the tagline. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Joe Louis's Shorts. Joe Louis's Shorts, it

ain't the shorts, it's the man. And this podcast is brought to you by the soft animal body of the goose, the Canada Goose. All right, John, another question comes from George who asks, Dear Hank and John, how do people come up with alphabetical order? Why is A, B, C, D, E, F the order and not like B, Y, F, L, K, M, W? Rhymes with orange, Jorange. Sorry, I mispronounced your nameW rhymes with orange, George. Sorry, I mispronounced your name at the beginning there, George. We do not know, of course, why the original people put the alphabet

into alphabetical order, but it was done a very long time ago and we have been using it in the same order for a long, long time. There isn't a sense to it. All the vowels are mixed in. There's a sense to some of it. U and W and V are all close to each other because they came from the same letter.

So we didn't used to have all those letters. And so those are all descendants of the same letter. What? That's the letter. Oh, yeah. I thought you were just making an upset noise. No, no, no. That's how people express their dissatisfaction with this.

All those letters when you put them together. I think I got there. Yeah. That was the original letter. It was the drink too much letter. And I can't stop. People are not going to like that.-hmm. And I can't stop. I can't. People are not going to like that.

I know, but I can't stop. I want to, believe me. You think I want to be doing this? All right, we're going to move on then. I was talking to Deboki about this before, because we have a little call where we talk about the sciencey stuff. And she was like, she told me that in Bengali, which her mother speaks, and she speaks a little bit of,

that alphabetical order actually has an order. Oh. So it like, and I like, of course, cannot tell you the order, but basically- It's based on a logic. There's a logic to it, yes. And like she did it for me and I was like, oh, that like, that sounds very logical.

So there's a rhythm to the sort of beginning of each letter and then the sound after the letter. And so you do all of those in order and then you start with a new beginning and then the same sounds and then a new beginning and then same sounds. That's smart. I like that more than just random, let's separate out the vowels. But we don't separate out the vowels by like the same number. There's no consistency at all about our alphabet. Yeah, we do have A-E-I-O-U. Like we have a separate order for vowels, which is, is it the alphabetic order of the vowels? It's the alphabetic order of the vowels,

but like again, the alphabet doesn't matter. So it could be U-O-I-E-A, it wouldn't be any different. Yeah, right, right. Except we have to keep the U, the W, and the V together. We do, we could, I don't know how we'd do it. I'll be, here, maybe I could figure out if we took the English alphabet and we did it more the way that Bengali does it, what would it be like?

I can't do that for you right now, but I bet I could with a little bit of time. So let me work on it. Okay, Hank, come back to us. You don't seem busy enough. So please work on recreating alphabetical order, which is exactly the kind of weird, highly specific project that I love for you

in your retirement. Like I really hope that you retire someday and you call me and you're like, yeah, so listen man, it starts with D. Who knew? Who knew? I didn't expect it either. Yeah.

Well, it also is inconsistent in how the letters work, right? So like W is just a word. It doesn't have anything to do with the sound of W. Right? Like in Bengali, it would be like WU. Like you'd make the, and then like D would be duh, and t would be tuh, and like, but instead we have like a bunch of different ways of doing it. Well in other languages. A lot of them are like c, t, but then we have f, which is, we should be phi. In other languages a lot of the, a lot of the letters are pronounced differently, so

like that is in no way consistent, even in languages that use the Latin alphabet and put it in the same order that we put it in. No Hank, the only solution and I've been saying this for years is for you to retire and devote yourself full-time to coming up with a new order to the alphabet that is based on reason and logic. I'm gonna standardize everything and I'm gonna do it with an iron fist after taking over everything. Like Robespierre in the French Revolution. You'll be like, this is year one. You heard me year one. How do I know? Because it's because I'm doing it. And there's going to be a hundred seconds in a

minute. It's year one of what turned out to be three. Hey, look, that's a last. He lasted a while. Yeah. I don't know that he was alive for that entire three, but the calendar was. Oh, man. It was a bad time to be a politically powerful person in France, or really anybody in France come to think of it.

Avoid the French Revolution. Maybe that'll be the tagline for my biopic. That's my recommendation for you. Just trying to avoid the French Revolution. Don't go full French Revolution. That's my world historical advice as a student of world history. This next question comes from Bella who writes,

Dear John and Hank, I live in the Northeast of the United States and I always take great joy in watching the migrating Canada geese. This is our geese episode, Hank. That's goose's. In the spring and fall. Whenever I see a lone Canada goose flying by itself, I always experience some amount of worry about its fate.

Will it just find another flock to latch onto? Does it need to find its original flock? Do geese have families? Are we ultimately all alone on this cosmic journey between Canada and slightly south of Canada? It's great, Bella. That is our preferred designation these days, South Canada.

Be geese and goslings, Bella. They're gonna have so many provinces. They're not going to know what to do with all their provinces when they take over America. Oh, man, they're going to have so many problems. They're going to have a North Dakotan province and a South Dakotan province. I bet the I bet the logic up and make one Dakota province, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're going to first still do the alphabet. Then all of the north, south, east, west, that's just gonna be one state each. There's just one Virginia. There's just one Carolina. Yeah. And then they're gonna make Tulsa the capital of Oklahoma. Yep. Each one of the Hawaiian Islands is a different state now. Oh, really? Yep. That's what Canada is gonna do that to. Even the one that Larry Ellison owns? Can we have one not owned by a person? Yeah, that one's going to be...

We're going to kick him off though. Oh, great. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually just going to be beavers now. But can they vote? Yeah, of course. They vote by whether or not they come out of their little huts.

Oh, they vote like Poxitone Phil. Yes, exactly. I love it. You know, like the face of each prime minister candidate to a tree and then whichever one they nibble on. And actually, that decides it for the whole country. We're getting out of the humans voting business. We're getting into the the humans voting business. We're getting into the beaver voting business.

And it's year one of the era of beaver. But anyway, as for the geese, they do. I love the idea that humans can do all the steps. We nominate the candidates. We have the political parties. We do all the steps up to the last step, and then we're like, listen, we can't be trusted with the last vote. That's why we give it to the beavers.

Uh-huh. I mean, one of the real problems is that there are times when it does feel like it's just a beaver. Yeah, it does. It does. It feels like... I want fewer 50-50s going on in American politics because I just feel like... Yeah, we need more 80-20s in American politics. We need more 80-20s. And right now we don't

have a lot of 80-20s. But anyway, Hank, should we worry about the lone Canada goose? Probably not. So, Canada geese are certainly very social. They travel in family groups. It isn't like they're just like sort of flying around and glomming on to whatever group of geese they see. They hang out with a specific group that are often, you know, in some way have like family, familial relations. And they also mate for life. So if you do see a lone goose, it may be that they are in a situation where they've lost their mate, but it could also very easily be a situation where their group has settled down and they are doing something specific. Or they might have like a partner who is nesting and they're off flying to do goose work. Sure. Yeah, doing the work of the geese. But you do often see them together and that is why.

So there is a potential that if you see a goose all by itself and it's sort of like always by itself, that is a sad situation for that goose. It's a lonely goose. But oftentimes when you see a lonely goose, in fact, there will be other geese that it is going, either going away from or coming back to. And it will return and reconnect with them.

Because these family units, they tend to be self-perpetuating. And so they don't die out. But there also might be a young male thing, which is often a thing in social species, is that young males will sort of head off into their own and maybe pick up a new start in the new world. 40 nights in the wilderness and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask you one more question, and believe it or not, it is a goose question. It comes from Kelsey, who writes, Dear John and Hank, your CBC interview with Matt Galloway this morning was fantastic. My pre-ordered copy of everything is Tuberculosis is arriving Monday and I can't wait. That's great. Thank you for listening. And I should also mention, Hank, I was on another podcast that I really enjoyed.

Is Matt Galloway a goose? Is that why this is looped back to the goose thing? Hold on a second. Okay. It was Wildcard with Rachel Martin and it was probably the best single best interview I've ever done I love that Chris Hayes podcast. I had so many great interviews on this tour, but That Rachel Martin podcast was incredible. She just like gave me so many gifts in that conversation

But anyway, yeah Kelsey goes on to say however I am also reeling from listening to your podcast episode 259 infinite bird where you suggested that Canada is secretly part of the US Given the current political situation. are you sure about that? Take it back! And just checking in as a non-51st state or Kelsey. So Hank, I had never realized that I would have to be in this position. Yes. But I would like to state for the record that I was 100% serious. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha No, John, the 51st state is a maple leaf. They get that. That's all they get. Put that on the, they're going to be 50, 51 stars on the flag, but actually just 50 because

one of them is a maple leaf. Yeah. Anyway, right. 50 stars and one maple leaf. That's how we're going to settle this thing. I'm sorry, Kelsey. We are honoring you with one single make-believe. I'm sorry if my joke about the United States and Canada having a deeper than usual relationship was misinterpreted into a political movement where Canada becomes the 51st state, which

obviously it shouldn't become. Okay. Are we good now? And now we know that Donald Trump is a listener to the pod. Yeah, a long-time friend of the pod. Unfortunately, we seem to have given him the wrong idea. And we just like to say, Don, we think that there's a number of mistakes you've made.

Yeah, and also just like, how did you listen to the podcast and take that away, but not the values of the podcast? That the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, and the meek shall inherit the earth and etc., Don. Anyway, moving on, Hank. God, I watched three football games while I was on vacation and they were all infuriating. That's not good.

Oh my God. Is this the news from AFC Wimbledon? The last six goals that AFC Wimbledon have given up have been given up in the 85th 90th 95th 90th and 96th minute what? We were winning that's why they created that that letter We were winning another game 1-0 We are winning another game 1-0 and in all those in two of those occasions We tied the game and in one of those occasions we managed to lose the game so we went from a potential

nine points down to two points and this is the run-in this is this is when we have to be good because the teams around us are good and it's just been devastating so right now we're still in the playoff hunt we are still in I believe fifth place and so fifth place sixth place and seventh place they all go to the they all Go to the the playoffs, but I don't want to go to the playoffs Hank I wanted to go up through through the automatic promotion ranks So we don't have to worry about the playoffs, but that looks like a distant dream now We're five points off the automatic promotions spots with only six games to go

So it's not looking It's not looking perfect if I not looking perfect, if I'm being honest. Just win all those games. Well if we won all those games, if we won all six of those games, we would indeed be promoted. In fact, if we won four of them, I think we would be promoted. But I don't Are they against bad teams? It's a mix. It's a mix. There are some bad teams. So the next team we play, Harrogate Town, is not very good. So there's some hope there.

And then I'm going to see us play. They're like Hank Green and shorts. Not very good. They're like Hank Green and shorts. They don't fill out the uniform, if you will. Not like Joe Louis does. Then you've got Don Castor, who are promotion candidates, Chesterfield, Gillingham, or Gillingham, depending on your worldview, Port Vale, and our last game is against Grimsby Town.

So that game against Port Vale could be huge. They're currently in the playoff spots. And then that game against Grimsby Town on May 4th is going to be huge. I'm going to be at the game on April 18th. If anybody's there, please say hi. But in the meantime, it's looking tense for AFC Wimbledon. Only one win in our last five games. Well, the news from Mars, the Curiosity Rover has found the largest organic molecules on Mars ever found.

Now, what does that mean? Does that mean life? No, not necessarily. There are ways that these molecules can be made geologically. So, but they are made in interesting ways geologically when they are made geologically. So it was analyzing a rock sample called Cumberland. Remember Cumberland Firearms Show when we were growing up?

Sure, of course. It was the one that I was a little bit more worried to go to. Yeah. Rather than 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven felt safer than the Cumberland Farms. 7-Eleven felt like Cumberland Farms was across the street, and so you actually had to cross the busy road twice

to get to Cumberland Farms, whereas 7-Eleven, you didn't have to cross the busy street at all. Yeah, but it also just... It was like literally safer. But also it felt a little... There was a vibe. There was a vibe at Cumberland Farms where you'd be like, don't drink the milk from there. You know?

Yeah, it was a little more cigarette-centric of a store. It was more of a cigarette shop than a than a convenient store in the old-fashioned sense Uh-huh. Do you know that there's still Cumberland Farms out there? Look at that. It's colloquially known as... Where's the nearest one to me? Cumbies is its colloquial name, which I do not love No, that's terrible. There are no more in Orlando. There's three in the state of Florida. They are almost entirely in, looks like, New England area. Yeah, they're on the beach out there in Florida. You know, there's one, like, if you drive straight from Orlando to the beach.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a there's a combi in Rockledge. That's the kind of vibe. Oh, boy. Combies. I wish I didn't know that. I've got a logic complaint against... I'd love to go back in time to before I knew that. That's the kind of vibe. Oh, boy. Cumbies. I got a lot to go back in time to before I knew that.

I look against Dear Hank and John, Cumbies edition. All right. What's the news from Mars? Right. So we don't know that these are living organisms. These aren't living organisms, but they're large organic. They're large organic molecules. And the rock is called Cumberland, and I don't know why.

But they were looking for amino acids and They did not find any but they found small bits of decade undecane and dodecane which are basically just 10 11 and 12 carbon long carbon chains and They hypothesized that these are actually fragments of fatty acids and they so they so what they did is they mixed some fatty acid with, I think, an 11-carbon chain with Mars-like clay and then heated it up and found that decane was released from that. They did that here on Earth to see if, indeed, it was probably these fatty acids.

Fatty acids are very important for life. Your cell membranes are made out of them. And we think that when they are made geologically on Earth, they are made when water mixes with minerals from hydrothermal vents. So we are continuing our little trek down the journey of early Mars being more and more Earth-like in its infancy. Yeah, because we had hydrothermal vents, right? And that's probably where life first emerged. That's what we think, yeah. That's the leading candidate. That's where I'm at.

So the idea that they also had hydrothermal vents means that probably life would inevitably emerge there. We don't know. The thing about life is that it happened one time, and so you can't actually learn very much from it happening one time. You know, if it happened twice, you can say something about how common it is, but when something only happens once, you can't say anything about how common it is. So life has only emerged on Earth once, we think? As far as we know. That's why. No, if it emerged a separate time, then the version of it that we have now consumed

and outcompeted the other forms to extinction. Okay, okay. That's wild though, that like, I mean, first off, it's wild that life emerged here. I mean, I guess it's probably common. Life is very strange. We don't, we have no idea. And we do not, we still do not have a chemical explanation

for how it happened, like a physical explanation for how it happened. We're working on it. We're closer than we were when I was in school. Don't we sort of not fully understand even what life is? Like, don't we not really have a strong definition of life? Because, you know, I think there's lots of things that challenge it, like viruses and whatnot.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, there's different ways you can draw the line. But like, life is definitely a thing. And we have we have an understanding of what that thing is. Like, there isn't like a fuzzy line between like a rock and you. Like you are definitely alive. And so we know that like life exists and is a thing. And there are just like several different, in different disciplines,

there are different ways to draw that line. And some of them kind of do draw it where virus is included and some don't. Right. Okay. But that doesn't mean that we don't know whether life is a thing or what thing life is. Because it's like some of it is vibes-based, but some of it is pretty unambiguous. Like viruses might be vibes-based, but the rest of it's kind of unambiguous. Yeah, my opinion is that, like, the fuzziness of a border between things, like, there's fairly, really fuzzy borders between some things.

Like, there's a really fuzzy border between, like, what's a shrub and what's a tree. Like, so that's very fuzzy. But there's a little bit of fuzz when it comes to life, but it is not, but like there's fuzz everywhere. It's always a little fuzzy, but it's pretty, it's actually sharper than maybe you might imagine. Okay. Well, I just imagine it is fuzzy because I imagine like all human built language categories

as fuzzy. Yeah. So like I imagine the category of fish is fuzzy. Different amounts of fuzzy. Well fish is extremely fuzzy. Yeah there's different amounts of fuzzy. Well, fish is extremely fuzzy. Yeah. Fish basically doesn't exist. Fish don't exist.

I read a book about it called Life Fish Don't Exist. Fish only exists in the sense of, like, you look at it and, like, that looks like a fish, which is also, like, a fine categorization system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. This is helpful for me. There might be life on Mars, but we don't know. Life has only evolved once that we know of,

and so it could be common or it could be rare. We just don't know yet. Yeah, I mean, the big question, I think that when we end up on Mars doing science, the thing that will probably answer, well, if we answered, it will be answered in the positive. Otherwise, we'll just keep searching and not know for sure, is whether life existed in the distant past there. And there's probably, you know, based on how, based on the fact that like Mars isn't geologically active,

so it's not like chewing up its own crust all the time, like Earth is, then we'll probably actually be able to figure that out because the old stuff is still there. The evidence is probably still around. Right. We just need to dig down and get those sweet Martian skeletons. Yeah. Or probably like fossilized bacterial mats. Yeah. That's not going to be quite as exciting for me, but it'll still be cool. Yeah. I mean, based on how life went on Earth, there's a really, really low chance of a skeleton, of any kind of like hard multicellular organism.

It took so long to get from one cell to two. It took a huge amount of time. It took more time to get from one cell to two than it took to get from two cells to humans by a wide margin. Basically, yeah. So, pretty mind blowing. You hear about life on Earth at the outside, maybe four billion years old, and every time you look up how old something that you think of as a life form, it's never more than a

billion. No. Because before that, it's just not much going on. Yeah. I know. We are very unlikely and very valuable as a result. That is something to remember about humans. It could be that life is quite common, but life like us is quite rare.

I don't know. I was never hit with this as a young, interested in science kid, but it's really wild that it took almost a third of the life of the universe for life to go from existing to capable of making a hat. Right. Or capable of understanding what a star is. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wild. That's a long time for life to need to exist uninterrupted. Yeah, and we are one of the only life forms in the history of the known universe that knows what a star is. Yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to know if there are any, I mean, I think it seems like other

animals can appreciate beauty in a way. Yeah, no, I believe that they can look at the stars, but they can't know that the stars are suns in another part of the galaxy. We're the only currently existing life form that is capable of knowing that, I think. Yeah, maybe Neanderthals could have known that. But almost definitely, yeah. But they don't know it now. They didn't know it.

Because we killed them. Or maybe. Maybe. Yeah. There's been some... There's some good debate about that one. Yeah, for sure. I just don't trust us personally.

Anyway, we gotta stop the podcast. I feel like it would be really unusual. Like, we got to stop the podcast. That is how I feel. I feel like it would be really unusual. We have a pretty big impact on most environments we exist in. It would be weird for us to not have played a part. Yeah, that's how I feel too. But we'll see. We'll see.

That's something that we'll figure out in the future too, I think. I hope so, yeah. All right. Good podcast, John. Thank you for hanging out with me. This was fun. Thank you, Hank. Thanks for the Goose Spectacular.

So many geese. If you want to send us your questions, that's at hankandjohnatgmail.com. This podcast is edited by Linus Ovenhouse. It's mixed by Joseph Tunamanish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halserojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Devoky 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.