Dear Hank & John - 423: Everything Old Is New Again

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

What is a nerdfighter? How do scabs work? How do I make my house feel like my home? Did John soft launch Keats & Co.? How much does the surface of the moon change over time? Do snakes take more time to digest their food if they’re bigger? How long is an era? …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.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to dear Hank and John. Words, I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be advice, and bring you news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon sometimes. And today, I wanted to tell John the new goal of mine, which is to become a buoyant air. Ooh, where you have a billion, bullions? I've been investing in a lot of stocks.

Chicken, beef, vegetable, all the major stocks. Yeah, yeah. You're becoming a billionaire. I like it. Now, the idea of this particular podcast, Hank, this particular episode, we're just going to let you peek behind the curtain everybody. Yeah, the idea here is that this is a podcast that we, now that we're going to be a weekly podcast again, we need to bank some episodes because Hank and I travel a lot.

We get overwhelmed by work. We're easily overwhelmed people. And so the concept here is that this is one of those bonus episodes, but we're not supposed to reveal that. The producers went to all these like extravagant lengths to make it look like this is a regular episode. But now we're pulling back the curtain. And they were like, hey, just don't do note news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

But no, I'm going to do some evergreen news from AFC Wimbledon. I'm sure there's some evergreen news from Mars. I mean, Mars literally never changes. You could just be like Mars continues to not have much of an atmosphere. One thing I'm confident of is that no one's heard this week's news from Mars or AFC Wimbledon until they listen to the podcast. So it's going to be news to them. Exactly. It's not like people are like, well, it's Monday.

Time to check in on my favorite third tier football club. Hank, I'm excited to do this one-off secret episode that nobody knows. We should have a term for it. We should have people should know. have a term for it. Because we're going to have to do it. We're going to do it. It's just a regular podcast episode. It's just that we can't do timely things. I can't tell you what's going on in the news today because that would be weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, also because I'm not in that mood

right now. I've thought about it enough. How about the timeless episodes? I'm feeling timeless today, John. I'm feeling like someone didn't just say to me this morning. I saw a picture of you, but it was it was such a young picture of you that I was a little thrown off and then I looked at it and it was me as a 35 year old. Yeah, well, you're not 35 anymore. When you were 35, you had never had cancer. No, he was a, he was, I still have that jacket. One of the pleasures of adulthood is that you can say I still have that jacket. Yeah, I'm still that guy. I've got the same clothes that he had. We got an important question. It's from Felix. Felix, It's dear John and Hank.

I've heard you mention the term nerd fighter on the pod more times than I can count. Wow. What is a nerd fighter? And if I wish to, how do I become one? Memento vivimus, Felix. I believe that means live in the moment. We live in a moment. Felix.

I assume that Memento Mori means like, remember you must die. Memento vivimus would mean remember you are alive or some. No, no, no. I think it means we live in a moment. Okay. No, it does. It means remember you must die. live. Oh, that's nice. That's basically like saying a yolo, but in Latin.

Okay. A nerd fighter is not one who fights nerds, but a nerd who fights. And if you would like to be one, then you are one. These are the things that we would say in 2009 and 10 when Nerd Viteria was just becoming a thing. Yeah. So the long backstory, Felix, is that in 2007, I was playing a video game at an arcade inside of an airport because there were arcades inside of airports in 2007. And I played a video game called Arrow Fighters, but the thought made it look like nerd fighters. And I made a little joke about that. And then people who watched our videos started calling themselves nerd fighters. And so if you came to this podcast via your podcast app instead of via the Vlog Brothers YouTube channel, you have no idea what a nerd fighter is,

just like you don't have any idea what we look like. We're just voices to you. And to that, I would say, stay golden, pony boy. You know, Dawn goes down today and nothing gold can stay except for you, Felix. You can stay golden. Do not get on the social internet. Do not find out about our YouTube channel. Do not follow Hank on Twitter. Well, that's not going to do any good.

But we also got to recognize that lots of people who watch vlog brothers probably don't know what nerd fighters are. Because it's not like we redefine the terms all the time. That's true. It's a mess. It's a mess out here. They figure it out from context, but it is true that it is a mess. It is hard to manage old viewers and new viewers constantly intersecting and interacting. And it's amazing to me that community can emerge out of such weirdness, but community nonetheless does emerge.

Indeed. This next question comes from Elle, who asks, dear Jankan, how do scabs work? Is that something I'm supposed to know by now? I never watch them close enough to understand how it turns back into skin. like, am I layers? Not M-N-O- or P-L. It's from L. John, do you know what a scab is? It's layers, man. Our skin has layers. It actually is like a pretty specific thing, which is just like a dried-up blood clot. Yeah. Which is gross, but that's what it is. I wanted to talk about this question because I have a theory that I want to run by you. Oh, great. I love it when you have theories about biology.

Well, I have a hypothesis that I don't know how to test. It goes like this. You know how you like to pick scabs? Love it. But they tell you not to pick scabs. They do, but they're full of it. They also tell you all kinds of things that don't make any sense. Well, sometimes I've done it before, like where I pick a scab too soon, and then I'm like,

oh, now I have to grow another scab. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but like, why did I want to do that? Why am I compelled to do this thing that is, I think, not advantageous? Right. Well, I mean, buddy, when you find out that humans behave in ways that aren't always advantageous to them, your mind is going to be blown. Yeah, but like there's some, there's some reason, right?

There's like a reason why we act in all these unadvantages ways. I don't know. I don't know that there's always a reason. Put me at a blackjack table and there's not always a reason. Sure, there's not always a reason. Oh, man, that reminds me of a video I want to do. And another hypothesis I have about how gambling hacks masculinity, but we're not going to I'm going to get into that right now. I don't want to go there right now. This is another one. This is,

I was hanging out with Dr. Pimple Popper at VidCon. Wait, you hung out with Dr. Pimple Popper at VidCon? I hung out with the real Dr. Pimple Popper. Sarah, Hank met Dr. Pimple Popper. Was she popping pimples? Sarah wants to know if she was popping pimples. She was not. Dr. Sandra Lee was not currently popping pimples, but we were talking about being on YouTube for a very long time. She took a break from popping pimples to talk to Hank about being on YouTube for a very long time. I can't just keep repeating the conversation. So we'll catch up on this later. Yeah. Sarah is very impressed that you met the actual real life, IRL, Dr. Pimple Popper. Yeah. Yeah. She was fun to hang out with. You know, I ran, I was like, why do you think people like popping, the Pimple Popin? She was like, it's

just satisfying, you know, it's just a very satisfying thing. And I was like, I don't know. I found this thing and people like and I get to do my job and I get to, you know, I'm still a dermatologist as my main gig and I also have this weird side thing. And here's my theory, though, pimple popping, scab picking. I think that they're even booger picking, picking the burgers of your children. Some people find that very satisfying. I think that this all comes down to parasites. So parasites traditionally, like skin parasites.

for primates, very big deal, very big part of your life, trying to get them off. This is why we have itch, like why itch is such a huge thing. You don't think about it. But we have like a whole system for pain, which makes sense. We have a whole system for itch that doesn't do any good except maybe for parasites. Yeah. And so I think like all of itch exists to help you with parasites. And I think that also the scab picking reflex and the satisfaction of pulling out a big

booger or picking off a piece of scab or popping a pimple is all deeply tied back into the sort of evolutionary imperative to remove parasites from yourself and others. Like hookworms? Well, mostly I think bugs. Okay. Ticks and lice and... Sure, sure, sure. Like, it's about nitpicking.

Yeah. We pick each other's knits. It brings us joy. And other primates do it too. I'm going to ask you a follow-up question, which is, does this perhaps a explain why every night around 10.30 p.m. when I should be like getting ready for bed, the Instagram, because I don't use TikTok anymore, it's too hard of a drug. I use the slightly softer drug of Instagram. Yep. The Instagram algorithm is like, hey, it's 1030. Time to show you

some earwax removal videos. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because that's what you'd be doing normally at 1030 right before bed is you'd be like making sure that your partner doesn't have any bugs on them and they'd be doing the same to you. And I think this is also why when we're falling asleep, it's like suddenly, ooh, itch. I have an itch. I have a sudden itch. Because you're very sensitive to itch when you're falling asleep because you don't want a bug to be in there. I mean, it's a good theory. Again, I do not know how to test this hypothesis, but it's high quality. This question comes from Anon who writes, Dear John and Hank, in two weeks we'll be moving into the house my boyfriend inherited from his father. We've done some renovations, but it's still the same house

his dad died in. More even than that, it's the house his dad lived in. There are so many memories and feelings. Do you have any advice for moving into our house, not the ghost of his dad's house? Thanks for getting me through this hard time. Anonymous. Hit me with this, John. I think that it's time for wallpaper to come back big. Oh, wallpaper is back. I mean, among the, whatever the interior design version of Litterati is, wallpaper is all the way back. I was just visiting our cousin Grace, who is a brilliant designer. And Grace had all kinds of wallpaper. And it looked great. And I commented to Grace, I was like, you know, when I was a kid, wallpaper was on its way out.

And now wallpaper is coming back in. And she said, everything old is new again. Everything. So, yes. So go old. You think you want to make this place look new? No. Shag carpet.

You need one of those living rooms that you have to step down into for some reason. I do love those sunken living rooms. Sunk in living room. You need some wood-paneled wall. with the vertical panels, not the horizontal panels. That was cool in 2000. No, vertical panels. We're going back to vertical panels.

I'm going to push back on all of those recommendations. And I'm going to say white walls, gallery style, like you're in a museum with lots and lots of art. Now, it doesn't have to be expensive art. You can go to student art shows, get art for $12. Yes, but you still have to frame them. So you have to give a frame tip, John. and that frame tip is always by standard-sized art.

Do not ever need to get someone to frame something unless you got the budget for it because you do not know how expensive that is until the first time you walk into a frame shop and you walk out with a look in your eyes like you just saw God. Yeah, it's true. It's intense. It's true. You don't have to frame all your art. If you get a painting a lot of times, you don't frame that.

So, you know, you don't have to frame everything you get. If you get your Hanquifish painting at the Project For On, awesome every year. And then you don't have to frame that necessarily because that's a painting. It looks good just hanging on the wall. It is good to get standard art size frames. However, you can also have some mat, you know, like if it's not a standard size, you can just have a frame that's bigger than the artwork and has some background paper. Anyway, I think that you should like, because once you put up your own art, the walls stop being your boyfriend's dad's walls and they start being your walls. This is what I believe. Also, you can frame things that aren't.

Art. You do this. I was inspired by this. You have records. You have like old notes from people that mean a lot to you. You have just photographs of things that happened. Like not necessarily like beautiful artistic photographs, but like things that mean something. And this is the thing. Yeah, or photographs that you took. We all, yeah, exactly. We have like a billion pictures on our phones. And it turns out that turning those into big like physical objects is not that hard. No. So this is what I would invest in. if I were you is like stuff on the walls because stuff on the walls changes the walls in a way that like changing the walls doesn't. How do you lay it out? Do you just like put one up and then start building around it or do you like lay it out on the floor? Because Catherine's a big layer out around the floor person and she doesn't like my vibe of being like, I don't know, let's just see what happens. If we have to do a second nail, we do a second nail. Yeah, I mean, my number one recommendation on that front anonymous is to marry a noted American museum curator. Yeah, that's. That's worked that well for you.

So I don't know if there's another way. And Dr. Pimple Popper enthusiast. I mean, Sarah contains multitudes. I don't know if there's another way, but that's the way I do it. So, like, I have very little say. I mean, sometimes Sarah will ask me, like, do you think this looks good here? And I'll be like, yeah, it does. But, yeah, I don't know how to do that stuff.

But you can figure it out together. You figure out what looks good to you. Or you could always, like, go watch old episodes of trading spaces. because everything old is new again, and those episodes are now very old, and then you're going to watch this interior designer like spackle hay to the wall for some reason. Worst thing I've ever seen. But that's going to really not remind you of anything to do with anybody but like the mistakes that you have made. Some of those little episodes of trading spaces where they're like, we have a budget of $1,200.

So what we've done is we've bought $1,200 worth of hay and we're now spackling it to the walls. and I'm like, well, who paid for the spackle? So, like, I don't even trust the, I don't even trust the budget, let alone the, anyway. We're getting, we're getting off track here, Hank. We got to get to this question from Emily. Okay. Emily writes, Dear John and Hank, I like listening to old episodes of your podcast. Thank you, Emily.

They're great. And we play new ads, so it's all the same to us. Everything old is new again. In fact, the episodes from 10 years ago, solid gold. I mean, some of those... My God, 10 years ago. Back in the day, we were so funny, so much funnier than we are now. Now we've become jaded old men.

I got to remind everybody, John's been on book tour for three straight months. He does not remember how to make a good podcast for getting back into it. Yeah. He's doing great. How long ago was that? Who knows? It's a timeless episode. It's funny.

Wherever and whenever I am, I've been on book tour for three straight months. I'll probably get up with this like next week. Like, that's how soon we have. I'm going to need a break, Hank. To be honest with you, just halfway through this episode, I feel like I don't know if I can do another. All right, I was listening to old episodes of the podcast, and in it, John pitches a million-dollar idea for a T-subscription service. One, is Keats & Co. a million-dollar idea yet? And two, was it already in the works?

And this was some kind of soft launch or a subtle way to gauge community interest. The episode came out February 17, 2020. Now, Hank, on February 17, 2020, there was a lot we didn't. know that we were about to find out. Indeed. But one of the things that we definitely, in my opinion, did not know is that we were going to watch a tea company, right? No, no, no, we did not.

No. So I just had that idea. You just had that idea. And is it a million dollars? If you count all of Keats and Coe, if you count the coffee, it's definitely a million dollar idea. It's a million dollar idea in sales. It's not yet a million dollar idea in donations.

No, no. Just the tea. The coffee and tea combined are. It's important to recognize the difference between, uh, gross and net, which I always forget the difference between, even though I'm a 45-year-old businessman. I'll grant you that you're a 45-year-old men, but I don't know that you're a 45-year-old businessman. I'm really glad you picked up on the schwa there. Yeah, I love a good schwa.

For whatever reason, businessman sounds wrong to me, but businessman's correct. Yeah. It reminds me of one of the all-time great Jay-Z. lines. I'm not a businessman. I'm a businessman. You could have to the fraud both. I could have, but I didn't. I'm not a businessman. I'm a businessman. Ever since you said that I don't know how to pod anymore, I've decided to get funny again. Okay. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I didn't hurt my. I don't have any, I don't have any feelings left after three months on book tour. There's nothing. There's nothing in me. Good. It was, I was at VidCon at some point in the past. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be, could have been six months ago. Who knows? And really, we always make the podcast in the past. That is the nature of time. It's true. It's true. It's true. We don't, it's not like we upload the day after we record. And everybody was like, where's John? Why aren't you doing a live tearing and John of the VidCon? And luckily, we had the book tour as a very good excuse. The first time when someone asked, I was like, I don't know, I don't think he wanted to go.

I would have loved to go. I'm just so tired. The second time I was like, oh, right, he did just finish the book tour. So I can say, oh, he just finished his book tour. He's so tired. And then they're all like, was it like two weeks? And I'm like, no. John was at the UN on his book tour.

He was in Lima, Peru, touring tuberculosis hospitals on his book tour. Like, it was a weird book tour. It was a multi-continent book tour. And usually when you have one of those, you don't have a book about tuberculosis. But, yeah. Yeah, it was cool. I mean, it was a really cool experience. I'm really grateful for it, but I'm mostly grateful for the fact that I actually came

up with the idea for Keats & Co. T's subscription, not you. Good for you, John. I could have sworn it was you. I think at this point in our brotherhood, there's no idea that isn't both of us. That's so true. We probably had talked about it the week before as like a vague concept to go along with the Awesome Sox Club and then, you know, then I pitched it or something. Who knows?

point being, Keats & Co makes the world's best tea, and you can get it right now by Googling Keats and Co. Now, if you're driving, pull over, okay? Don't look at your phone right now, okay? It's so good. It's great tea. But it is really good tea. Like, it's worth pulling over for as long as you're in a safe spot. Until I have to have to have the kind of tea that they sell at the grocery store because it's like at the hotel or it's at a friend's house.

I always forget how good Keats and Co is. And then I'm like, oh, man. Now I'm drinking this. Yeah, it's pretty good. It reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is, in fact, brought to you by Keats and Co. Keats & Co. 100% of profit to charity and 100% of tea into your mouth. This podcast is also brought to you by Haywalls. Hey walls.

Where did they get that spackle? And today's podcast is additionally brought to you by Nerd Fighters, Nerd Fighters. Felix, just for future reference, it's all one word. And finally, this podcast is brought to you by the scab. The humble scab upon your arm, flaky and brown, reminding your ancient brain of some kind of infectious parasite that you must remove. It's beautiful. This is beautiful, beautiful, sponsor read there, Hank. Well, that's, I mean, that's how they wrote it.

Just doing what I was told to do. You have to read parts of the ads verbatim, and that was one of the verbatim parts. Yeah, they asked that you trail off in the middle of your sentence and then recover. It's written there in italics. Trail off and then in italics recover. This episode of Dear Hankajon is brought to you by Factor. There's so much going on. And if there is a strategy available to you so that maybe you can outsource a little bit of the labor to somebody else,

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When there's no atmosphere, there's no wind. That's right. I was just outside today. It's like, well, I can't tell you what the temperature is because this could be any time. It had a temperature. Outside had a temperature. Outside had a temperature. And the temperature was improved by the wind.

And I thought to myself, man, without the wind, life would be unbearable. Anyway, life would be unbearable on the moon. I think we all already know that. This podcast brought you by the wind. Without the wind, life would be unbearable. It's true. How much would you pay for the wind? Exactly. If wind were commodified, right? We would all pay taxes for wind. We would all agree that

wind is worth investing in. Anyway, I figure the surface must stay basically static. When I look at the moon, am I seeing mostly the same exact atoms up there as people did a thousand years ago, Kieran? Yeah. A thousand years ago, yeah. I mean, things move around. Adams change. like things get like it's like the solar wind hits the moon and and that can ionize stuff but that's mostly already happened to the top layers it's pretty static situation now things have changed of course the first time we like we changed the moon so we crash stuff into it fairly regularly the first like human-made crater on the moon is from the 50s oh wow and we've crashed a number of rovers on the moon in an attempt to not crash them yeah it's always a little bit

delightful to watch those moon buggy videos. Is that what you're talking about? No, no, no. I was talking about all the probes. Oh, yeah, the more recent rover. Yeah, the actual rover. So certainly every time you land something on the moon, it changes the moon, we will occasionally be like, well, we don't want this thing sort of hanging around in space forever.

And also, if we can just like toss some dust up, we can do spectroscopy on that dust, and then we can learn something about the moon that way. So we intentionally crash things. So we'll intentionally crash stuff into the moon? Yeah. Wow. Humans are wild, man. I know.

But then also other things crash into the moon. So just like meteors hit Earth, they hit the moon. Sure, sure. But it's mostly the same atoms as it was about. Mostly, yeah, yeah, very little change. This is something I think about a lot because I live in a part of Indianapolis that's near a floodplain and as a result has a small forest that has been around for 12,000 consecutive years since the last glacier retreated from this part of the world. in the last Ice Age. And I think about it because, like, there's a continuous story of trees and shrubs going back 12,000 years, which, of course, is a blink of time in the history of life on Earth.

But it's a very long time in the context of, like, the United States, right? Like, it's 60 times longer than the United States has been around or something like that. Yeah, no, it's about half the time. time maybe that humans have been in North America. Yeah, there have been trees on this land for a very, very long time, including like oaks and maples and like similar trees to the trees that are around now. And that just blows my mind. That like I am a very temporary visitor to a very old forest that hopefully, and like probably because of just geographic realities, will be around for a very long time after I'm gone. And so really, I'm not the like, and I realize this is a comedy

podcast. I apologize for going in an existential direction, but like, it is me. I'm not really the, like, owner of those trees. I am the, like, I am a temporary participant in their very long story. Yeah, yeah, especially because they're not going anywhere because it's all floodplain. Yeah, they're not going anywhere. You can't, I mean, you could cut them down, but like, why would you do that. Yeah, nobody's going to want to. Yeah. Hopefully. That would be a weird thing to do. So, yeah, it's beautiful.

It's beautiful, man. Makes me so happy to know that there are forests that have been around for 12,000 straight years. But also, like, there's something crazy about that in that, you know, we think about the moon as being very stable and the Earth as being very dynamic, both because of wind and water and

plate tectonics, and also because of life. Life changes Earth a lot. Right. But there's also something very stable, like wildly stable about life as a system that is just sort of like been perpetuating itself for billions of years for three or four billion years. I don't know, man. I just feel like nobody thinks about it. This is a handgrine mind blower. Like that really the story of life is one continuous story that goes back, you know, billions of years. Yeah, like a substantial portion of the life

of the universe. Right. And that there's this like sort of film on earth. Earth, near the surface of Earth, that is life, and we are part of that film, but like a relatively insignificant part. And I would make the case that life is going to outlast, like, you can, it may, it may not, but you could make the case that life will outlast the sun. Shut the front door. I'm looking forward to making that video. No.

Yeah. Respectfully, how can life outlast the sun? Well, hit me with why it can't. Because the sun is going to consume the Earth. It might not. It probably will, we think. We're not sure how big the red dwarf is going to get. Now, if it does actually, like if we're inside of the photosphere of the sun, that's going to sterilize the planet.

Thank you. Thank you for that basic. You're like, I mean, the oceans are going to boil for sure. But like, I guess if we're inside the sun, that will be bad for love. That is literally my position. So I think the oceans could boil and there be no water left on the surface and there still be life on the planet because we keep finding life deeper in the earth. And that life feeds on radioactive decay that is going to be continuing to happen for many more

billions of years than the lifetime of the sun. Is it possible that Edmund Haley was right when he thought that there were little people in an earth inside of the earth? No. We just haven't dug down deep enough. But bacteria, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, and I was going to say no disrespect to bacteria, but actually lots of disrespect to them.

Well, they're good at that. What about the helpful bacteria? Well, also, like, what about, you know, everything is descended from single-celled organisms, so come on, lay off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the point being, everything interesting is descended from. uninteresting life, and bacteria are... That doesn't mean that they are uninteresting, and they are kind of uninteresting.

They're a little less interesting. Like, these bacteria replicate, like, once every 200 years. They're very slow livers. Wow. That's kind of mind-blowing. Anyway, point being, I didn't mean all the bacteriologists are going to write in and say, actually, bacteria are very interesting. I'm sure that they are.

And listen, I wrote a whole book about a bacterium called Everything is Tuberculosis. I can't tell you when it came out, but it came out in the past. It's still out, presumably, depending on when this is uploaded. Maybe this is being uploaded in the distant, distant future, and all the Earth's oceans have boiled. And tuberculosis is no longer a relevant fact. I have definitely made banked Vlog Brothers videos that have never been released, where I was like, I'll just have this one just in case, and then I forget about it. Are you serious?

There's like videos on the Vlog Brothers channel, unlisted, that will never be released, that will never be released and that I will never remember. You make so many videos. Like, I make a video on Tuesday, every Tuesday, and just barely get it out. And you make so many videos. I've recorded eight videos this week, and it's Wednesday. Jesus, man. Which Wednesday?

Who knows? So, point being. A bunch of a more shy shows, just so everybody knows. But point be it. That's a relief. Point being, the interesting thing about what? life. I mean, there's a lot that's interesting about life, but one of the interesting things about life is life finding a way to make itself known to itself through analysis, through the

scientific method, through human consciousness, whatever. And like, that won't survive the oceans boiling. I don't think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that it's really, uh, it is important for, for me, um, to help, to help, uh, spread the word. Yeah. Um, um, as they say. that that life isn't only one kind of thing. Right. One, that life isn't only one kind of thing. And two, that life has proved extraordinarily adaptive over billions of years. And, like, I think that we are probably quite temporary.

Like, we are a brand new species. There's very little, there's no evidence that we will live to become an old one. But, like, we're a tiny part of the story of life. The idea that, like, life itself is going to collapse as a concept due to human intervention is just wrong. Right. Like, it's, I understand. It gives us too much power.

And I think we need to, like, acknowledge that we are very, very powerful, but also acknowledge the many, many ways in which we just aren't that powerful. This should be the last chapter of our book. But also because this is a thing we disagree on, like, where you think that we are going to be pretty temporary and I think that we're going to be pretty long-lived. Oh, man. I mean, I wish there was a way to make money on that bet. Like, I can get this podcast renamed to Dear John and Hank.

And there really isn't. There really isn't. It only pays out if I win. It only pays out if you win. And it doesn't pay out to either of us, but to our distant, distant descendants. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I love that idea, though, that like, it's like, all right, well, it's $100 and people will be like,

what's $100? bucks. Totally. Totally. If we last a while, money definitely won't be a thing anymore. No. I can't wait for money to not be a thing, but I know that it won't happen in my life. Well, we don't know what's going to replace it. We don't know. The Star Trek predictions for how life is going to go have not all proved correct so far. No, Irish reunification was supposed to happen last year. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, let's stay out of that one. In Ireland, you know what I learned about Irish reunification? I don't want to participate in this conversation.

Here's, well, everybody's got an opinion and nobody has the same one. Okay. Let's answer another question from our listeners before our dad calls us. This next question comes from Callie, who asks Dear Hank and John, my partner is getting a snake soon. And there's one question. My condolences. He has not been able to answer for me. Do snakes take more time to digest their food if they are bigger and longer?

Does it take longer to move through or does the tummy just get faster? This is dire, Callie. It is dire because if this person is buying a snake, they should be able to answer this question. Well, I don't know. I mean, I could, we had a snake when we were kids, blue green. We did, and we should have taken better care of it. Oh, he lived a good one. life, not a long life, but a good life.

Yeah, well, possibly because we were feeding it too much. Snakes are wild, and indeed, they, it's, I think, probably less a function of the length of the snake than it is the size of the meal, but in general, longer snakes. Jesus Christ, I mean, it's almost impossible not to that's what she said, just what you said. You're doing great, John. I had no idea I was doing it, just for clarity. Okay. The size of the meal.

And so a large meal will take a very long time to digest and that's usually consumed by a bigger, longer snake. So bigger, longer snakes tend to eat far less. In fact, they can eat like a large female anaconda can eat as little as like two or three meals a year, which is wild because, I mean, that sounds miserable. I love eating meals. Yeah, I mean, there's also a lot of other things about being an anaconda that I don't understand how I would feel about, right? Yeah. Sly. When I try to slither, I mean, you should see.

I bet I would love slithering. That sounds awesome. Through the swampy swamps, that sounds amazing. I'd love that. Oh, that sounds like just a contamination nightmare. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, but if I was a snake, I wouldn't be myself.

Instead of having all that anxiety, I would just be like, I'm a snake. Yeah, I think they'd probably get worried. probably around like month five of between meals. Yeah. Listen, man, I do not, like, just in case God is listening, I do not wish to be reborn as a snake. Is that how God works? Oh, yeah. No, God's a huge reincarnation nerd.

Okay. That's great. I love the idea that you get reincarnated as a snake and then you, like, do a good enough job and then you go to heaven, and then you're just like, I'm a snake for eternity. Why did I do such a bad job as a person and such a good job? There's a snake. You get invited up to heaven and, like, at the pearly gates instead of St. Peter, it's just a bunch of rats. And they're like, eat us.

Or it's like snake St. Peter and snake St. Peter is like, you did such a good job. You did such a good job. Which is all we want to hear in the end. You know, like, all I want to. I actually. That's heaven. Heaven is just an authority figure saying good work. Heaven is hearing that you did a good job.

I don't even need it to be from an authority figure. I just need somebody to tell me I did a good job. Isn't that what Peyton told you when you told her that you had cancer and everything? She was like, you're doing a really good job of this. And that's all you needed to hear. Uh-huh. Yeah. No.

Broke me in half. Oh, yeah. Let's not do that again. Okay. This next question comes from Harriet, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm listening to the radio while driving and the presenters are having a very long chat about what era they are in. Collars are phoning in to share their eras. One caller is in a shorts era and another is in a mushroom era.

My question is, how long is an era? How long will the shorts wearing and the mushroom eating have to last to qualify? And what era are you both currently in? Swing low, sweet, Harriet. Minimum length of era is. Say it on three? Yeah. One, two, three, three months. Okay.

You said six months? I said six. I think, like, that's not that different for me. Yeah, I think, like, as long as my era lasts a full season. Yeah. Because, like, I don't want to be in my shorts wearing era in January. Yeah. Although I know some kids who are.

Do you remember, like, did you have a kid like that at your school? We had a kid who always wore shorts no matter how cold it was. And like there's like a whole vibe in Montana where it's like which kid can handle the cold best. Yeah. And they're always like, like some of them I feel like are like trying to brag and be like strong and just grin and bear it. And some of them I think are just snakes. They just, they're just cold and they don't like. I was like like bringing a bunch of kids over to the house.

and there's this kid, he's got all of his coat and his gloves with him. It's cold. It's middle of winter. He could put it on. He just is not. Yeah. We're in Crox. Yeah.

I'm in my Crox era, by the way. Wow. That's an era. Yeah. It's gone on at least for six months. It has. That's great. It may be approaching a year now.

Don't you have a sponsored relationship with Crocs? I was sponsored by Crocs. I no longer am, but it stuck. It stuck. I got him on right now. I try not to have any of those brand relationships, but then sometimes I do, I do eventually have them. Yeah, you'd never want to have a Dr. Pepper brand deal.

In fact, right now, I'm wearing, this is not actually Hope Plumbing, our local plumbing company, I'm wearing a shirt that says Hope Plumbing on it. So obviously, I'm willing to be sponsored for nothing. I'm willing to support Hope Plumbing just because I know one of the plumbers there. You like to be plumbed? Wait, no. Hey, yo. It's like a word for like having someone ask you a lot of questions and learn a lot about you.

I understand what the word means. Okay. What era are you in, John? I'm in my Hank's channel era, that's for sure. Oh my God, you love making a video right now. You're in your YouTube era. Yeah. To a remarkable degree.

I've left my TikTok era. Yes. I've left my Twitter era. I'm leaving behind my micro blogging era in total. That's great. And entering back into your YouTube era, it's 2007 all over again when you didn't in micro blog or post on Instagram. I went to VidCon, I hung out with Tyler Oakley.

I'm in my YouTube era. You're in your YouTube era. I like it. I am in my fiction writing era. Oh, whoa. After years and years of writing nonfiction, I am writing stories again. Just like I'm making YouTube again. Exactly.

Everything old is new again. Everything old is new again. Title of the timeless episode. Wow, that's weird. That actually is about timelessness. It is about timelessness. Whoa. I mean, we just.

We didn't even do that our purpose. We intentionally created a beautiful arc in this podcast that we knew about from the beginning. That's right. Nothing was improvised and everything was building toward this moment where we transition to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. All right. Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon is that AFC Wimbledon is fundraising. You'll be surprised to learn because as a fan-owned club, we have no other way to pay for players. So, AFC Wimbledon has released a video.

and a series of other things that say we are fundraising and we need to come together to become members of the Don's trust to support AFC Wimbledon in any way possible. And if you're in a position to co-own this football club with me, you should go to aFCwimbledon.com.uker slash membership and learn more. All right. Well, in timeless news from Mars, everybody always is like they've, this isn't so much a thing anymore. But for so many years, people, People would be like, they found water on Mars. We've found water on Mars a long time ago. We've always known that there's water, not always, but we've known that there's water on Mars for a long time.

There's water ice. And there are even what are like hydrated minerals where you have like a clay that is bound up with water molecules. And those water molecules can't freeze, but they aren't so liquid. They're just in there. But they are available if you would try to like do a number of things to try and get them out if you wanted that water. And then there's also probably some massive subsurface lakes that we're not entirely sure. And then there's also these like weird streaks that occasionally appear seasonally that some people think might be sort of salty, like very salty water streaks that happen on steep slopes. And so there's all these different ways that we think that we both know that there is water and also think there might be more flowing water features on Mars.

And that's very cool. And I think is under, like the kinds of variety that you can have of water is where the interest is rather than whether or not there is water on Mars, which there definitely very much is. The question is like, what kinds of water are there? Yeah. How good are those for making chemistry? Right. And big, big questions about subsurface lakes, about like water that might be near active volcanic areas because it seems like the. the sort of Olympus Mons region was volcanically active not that long ago,

so not like billions of years ago, but millions of years ago. So like long enough that it's almost certainly still hot stuff down there. And if there's hot stuff next to water, that's, you know, that's the good stuff. Yeah, that's what we, that's where we came from, probably. I was talking to Astro Alexandria about this and she was like, look, there's like three places where there could very well be life in the solar system. And one of them is Mars. What's the other one?

Earth? Sorry, four. The Titan, Enceladus, watery moons of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn. Cool. Hope we get out there someday. But in the meantime, I hope we get to Mars on January 1st, 2028. Because, Hank, one last note in our timeless episode such that we never have to mention it again. Thanks to hardworking listeners of this very podcast, who went back and listened

to our original bet that we made nine long years ago. We bet that there would be humans, whether there would be humans on Mars by the end of 2027.

Ah, okay. That's not great for me. Thanks for going back and deep, digging deep and listening, everybody. That's not great for me, though. It's not great for you. And lots of people in response were like, I bet they'll only do one episode in 2028 and then retire.

I think you underestimate both how much we enjoy making this podcast and also critically how little we need to make it. That's not why we're doing it. Yeah. No, we just love it. This is fun, good stuff. Let's keep rolling. Let's do another one.

As long as it's still fun. I have a meeting. As long as it's still fun. We're going to keep doing it. I do have a meeting, unfortunately, so read the credits. All right. This podcast is edited by I don't know and I don't have them. Actually, I'll read the credits.

You know, it's a timeless episode, Hank, and we can switch things up. This podcast is edited by Chaiton Whaley, mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. We're produced by Roseanne Hollis Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. The editorial assistant is Toboki Chakabardi. And the music that you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarola, finally, as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.

Thank you.