Dear Hank & John - 428: Hard Pivot to Balls

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

If humanity is around long enough, could another species evolve to look like us to deter predators? What did people do when they woke up before the existence of phones? What’s your favorite replacement for a swear word? How do purple baby carrots exist? How do I cope with the end of childhood? …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. Yours 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 all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I had a police officer knock on my door. Oh. And I opened it up, and I said, oh my gosh, what's what going on?

And he said, we're looking for a man with one eye. And I said, well, you should probably use two. How's life? How's life? I've been in four states in the last five days and two countries in the last seven days. So I'm a little, I'm like jet lagged, but not in the technical sense, just in the soul sense. But I'm trying to embrace travel because I'm going to be doing a lot of it. So I'm just living my life. This is my life.

And I love my life. And I'm very grateful to be able to travel and to have my job. I miss my family a little bit, but I'm home right now. Look at, I'm in my office. So life is good. How are you? I'm good. I'm about to do some traveling myself. When I booked this thing, I was feeling really bad. And I was like, I have to believe, I'm going to be feeling better by the time this comes around. And I was right. And that is huge news. It's just, it's very good. Because it's going to be like a 12-hour shoot in Los Angeles. Like, I'm going to get there at 7.30 at night. Yeah. and be like a stylist waiting for me at my hotel room to, like, do my styling. And then I get up the next morning and have, like, go from, like, eight to, I don't know. Can you say what this shoot is for, Hank? I cannot right now. Is it for something hilarious?

It is for something very dumb. Yeah. It is not, it's not something that, like, you're excited that I'm going to be doing. No one's going to be like, oh, Hank did that. No. Some tiny percentage of people will be excited that you're doing it. But it is a pretty small. I know what it is.

And it is, in my opinion, actively hilarious. But listen, man, get your bag in a minimally unethical way is my feeling about that shoot. Yeah. When I got the email, I was like, is this a bad thing? And then I got the thing. I was like, I got to make sure this isn't like evil. You can say you got the mobile game because it's for a mobile game. Yeah, I got the app.

And then I was like, oh, no, this is fun. yeah it's pretty fun it's a pretty fun mobile game my son has it uh i don't allow him to make in-app purchases but he has it so he was like he was actually really excited when i was like so uncle hank's going to do this thing for this mobile game have you ever heard of it and he was like have i heard of it like it's all the rage apparently it's all the rage oh man it's a bit of a slog when you don't pay i'll say that as they all are yes no i mean look it's i'm not saying that it's the most ethical bag you've ever gotten i'm just saying that as bags go it's it's not the worst one right Like, it's not like you're keynoting for the NRA conference or something.

Yeah. The other thing is I just kind of like want to do it to see what it's like because it's going to be like a real shoot. Yeah. Fancy. You're essentially going to be in a movie, a real movie. It's just a movie that appears on people's six-inch screens on the phones. I have honestly have no idea how it will appear for anyone.

That wasn't part of my negotiation. I did recently, this is so frustrating to me. I get these deals, like I get these emails in there, like, we'd like to pay you. Oh, that sounds so frustrating. So far, so far I'm so frustrated on your behalf. To promote a social change of some kind that you, in fact, would like to see in the world. Sure. And I'm like, I can't take money for that.

Yeah, I try to donate the money back in that situation. But it's awkward because, like, I don't actually want to do it for free. Yeah, exactly. Like, I actually wouldn't make the video if you didn't pay me. but at the same time I can't make a video that's about like what I believe that you paid me for. Do you ever, do you get deals like this

where they're like, hey, we like this, you know, solar power or something like that where it's just like, yeah, I like solar power but I like can't be paid for that because then people would be like, you only like solar power because you paid for it. Yeah, I've definitely had that before. In fact, I've only ever done one brand deal, Hank,

so I don't really know that much about this world. I'm pretty actively envious of you and your constant fount of brain. grand deals, just showering in that rocket money, money. That rocket money, rocket money. I'm just saying they didn't ask me to star in one of the premier mobile game ads of our time. Anyway, that's what I'm getting ready for in my life, and I think it's going to be weird. John, I have a question from one of our listeners.

It's from Tegan who asks, hello brothers green. I was watching a video about biological mimicry, and it got me wondering, if humanity hangs around long enough, could another species evolve to look like us in order to deter predators. What a great question. Some other reason. How it is really good? How close do you think they'd have to get an appearance or behavior for that to work?

Imagine if they got really good and they were just walking around and you didn't know if it was a butterfly or a person? Yeah. I'm imagining, I don't know why I went straight to butterflies, because butterflies are a long way from biologically mimicking us. It would be tricky to get there. I guess the easiest one would be some kind of primate. But I love this idea because we are the ultimate like, well, steer clear of them. They're really weird animal. I guess. I feel more that way about a mountain lion. I feel like we used to be pretty scary, but now like pigeons and squirrels are like, yeah,

those guys are no problem. They're not a big deal. They don't eat us anymore. They stopped eating us. They hate us now. They just find us vaguely annoying. You should be close by. Sometimes they give you food. Yeah, it's true. Oh, that would mean maybe, maybe that would be the, So this is a thing called aggressive mimicry, I think, or aggression mimicry, where you mimic something that is non-threatening, and then it turns out that you are threatening. So what if mountain lions evolved to look like us? And then squirrels and pigeons were like, that's no big deal. And then it's like, we're humans, right? Like, imagine like a very human-shaped mountain lion walking down the street.

And then it's like, I would not like that. No, I wouldn't like that at all. I'd feel like they'd give it away pretty quick, you know? You only get one snack that way before the humans are like, actually, Steve's not a good guy. I would not, like, he called for a reference and be like, don't hire Steve. No, that's, he's a mountain lion. Steve. Steve is one of those, you know, he's one of those mountain lions masquerading as a human.

He eats warm flesh of humans. It's not cannibalism, though. He's not human. Yeah, no, it's allowed. It's just not cool. Yeah. It's not socially frowned upon. This is a good point.

Mountain lions aren't really breaking the law when they eat a person, but they are not allowed to do it. We do tend to stop them if we can. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely frowned upon. Yeah, you don't send them to jail. But you don't send them to Mountain Lion prison. I believe that instead you send them to Valhalla. Is that where they go?

I believe so. Yeah. They definitely go. to a place where you're no longer alive. Yeah. They go to where they were before they were born. No, the Hank Green theory of where we go when we die, to where we were before we were born. Oh, man.

It never gets old. You like to bring this up over and over again as a way of torturing me, and I don't like it. Okay. We go to a new exciting place where there are no mountain lions. No mountain lions. There's zero mountain lions. That's actually kind of the definition of heaven. Yeah, nothing can eat you there, unless you're into that.

Heaven, where nothing can eat you, unless, you know, you know. Because in heaven, we don't judge. The question, I look at it into this, and there's this very weird kind of example of this called hakey crabs. There's this, like, legend that the haiki people were attacked and there's salmon. were thrown into the sea, and their ghosts turned into these crabs. And the more like a samurai the crab looks like, the more fishermen would toss them back into the sea when they were harvesting. So they'd be like, oh, this one of the samurai, I'll put him back.

And I like this because there's like a vibe of like, you know, you keep the sustainable population by selecting some and not taking all of the crabs. Sure. But then over time, what you do is you select for crabs that look more and more like samurai. And eventually, the crabs really look like samurai. This is probably fake, which is a shame. Oh, that's disappointing, Hank. I know.

But it was like a really big thing. Carl Sagan talked about it. And he really popularized the story of the Hakey crabs. So it became a big thing. It totally could be. And also, they do sometimes really look like samurai. And sometimes they don't. But the biggest reason why it's probably fake is that, in fact, they are not good eaten.

So they would probably be thrown back regardless. But I don't know. So we could artificially select. I could see that, but I can't really see a raccoon slowly morphing into a person. It would be awesome. It would be really great if you would be like, I mean, forget about the mountain line. The raccoon is better, right? Because like then Steve's not a threat.

Steve's just a raccoon. They just like artificially select for being like kind of good at a job, like pretty good at their job. And, you know, and then he gets paid a salary. and then he gets food that he can buy at the store instead of having to eat out of the garbage. And then Steve is like, I can't believe I have to pay rent. How did I do this to myself?

I was living good as a raccoon and now I've got rent. They're like, oh man, now we've got metabolic disorder because I can get a Coke whenever I want. And like we've got all the diseases of old age to deal with instead of just dying exposed in the cold. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's upsides and downside, swings and roundabouts, Hank. That's absolutely the case. All right. We got another question from Kurt. You write, Dear John and Hank, is professional cigarettes, but also human beings born before the year 2000. I really like, I really like identifying as professional cigarettes. Oh, God. We are unfortunately professional cigarettes. Now, we try to be the good, healthy kind of cigarettes. Yeah, we've got really big filters, and it's like organic tobacco. You get almost no tar, I mean, from us. I get the tar. I'm the filter. That's all it here. The tar is all. That's the reason why I wake up at 5.30 every morning panicked.

In a blind panic? All right. As professional cigarettes, but also human beings born before the year 2000, I must ask of you, before the advent of waking up in the morning to the alarm on your phone and then scrolling social media for 10 minutes to two hours, what did you do after you woke up? Did you just lie there staring at the ceiling? Did you read a book? Some other bed-related activity I'm not aware of? Surely you didn't just immediately get out of bed. The sweet sirens call of Blanky and pillow is too. strong for that. Please respond with dubious advice. Short but hopefully not rude. Kurt. That's good. I like that. Yeah, that is good. I think that I remember what I did. So listen, I remember the last day I woke up, went to work, and didn't look at the news because it was September 11, 2001. That was the last day I didn't use the internet before going to work. So there must have been a number of years there between 1977 and 2001 where I did something. I know. exactly what I did. What did you do? I got up. Immediately? I got up. Like, unless there was someone else in the bed with me, what else is there to do? I don't stare into the middle distance and

contemplate the problem. I maybe, I maybe did that some. Yeah. I think I like had to pee. The problem, of course, being that we are temporary beings that can conceive of infinity. But yeah, yeah, that's what I did, I think. But I must have gotten up. I must have gotten up and brush my teeth and, like, started the day a little earlier, which also meant that I could sleep in a little more, right? Because I didn't have that 10 minutes to two hours of social media time before I got that's right. That's right.

This morning, I, you know, I was, I was having a hard time sleeping. And I, like, finally kind of, like, went in and out of sleep until around 6.30. And then I just looked at my phone for 40 minutes. Wild. Oof. How did that feel? Did it work? Yeah, it worked.

Depending on what works is. Yeah, it's just, like, waking up in the morning and smoking a bunch of cigarettes, which actually is what I used to do between the years of 1994 and 2001 for sure. First thing you do. Oh, I would wake up and smoke a cigarette every day, which is so gross, so gross. Well, for so much of my life, I had designed my life so that I could sleep in as much as possible. Yes. So that like when I woke up, if I didn't immediately get up, I was not going to be at work in time. Yes. Or at school in time. Yes. I would wake up at 7.40 so that I could get on the train. train at 7.52. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I optimized that length to be as short as possible.

Right. I think that's the answer to what we did. We slept instead of scrolling social media, which, by the way, is better for you. Oh, boy, sure is. This has really become an anti-social media podcast. I was looking back at like my body of work over the last couple of years because I have been feeling bad about my engagement with this system that I have increasingly believed to not be good. And so I have this bad feeling. And then I'm like, well, but like when we wrote the book of good times, that's what it was about. It was about, here's a book that is stuff to do that's not on the internet. And that's not like publicly like spoken of what it's about. And then it's like, me and Brea made this app that's like, here's an app that like you can tell yourself that you will

make the bean sad if you go on Twitter. Yeah. No, you have been working on. You have been working on ways to combat internet addiction. The problem is that internet addiction is so intense. It's so overwhelming for me anyway that like it's really hard to find ways to fight it. But you have been, we have both been interested in projects that involve some form of like engaging with physical space and the real world. So we are doing, we are doing something that isn't cigarettes. You know what I thought I had this morning and tell me how dumb this is? No, pitch it to me. The guy who owns the biggest ball of paint. Yeah, the guy, Mike, Michael Carmichael. He lives not super north of you. Yeah, he lives not too far for me. I think we should just buy that paint and that's

you want to buy the world's largest ball of paint from Michael Carmichael? Yeah, I want to buy his whole house and farm and ball. Okay, you just want to occupy his life where like people, you, you sit at the world's largest ball of paint and people come by throughout the day and you get to talk to them in real life instead of on social media where like, by the way, I've been traveling a lot, but I've also been, because I'm traveling a lot, I'm, like, visiting with college students and high school students who are reading everything as tuberculosis and other people who are reading everything as tuberculosis, and I'm visiting with them in real life, and I'm reminded that, like, people in real life are actually usually very nice. Yeah. Yeah. And

that actually we're capable of being incredibly kind to strangers and self-sacrificial and compassionate and empathetic and everything. But I kind of forget that when I'm online a lot. Anyway, beyond this, I think that the world is lacking for roadside attractions. I agree. And, And I think that we should just, we should please everybody, send us in the email ideas for roadside attraction. So there's like the thing. I don't know if you've been to see the thing, but the thing is a fake mummy that they tried to convince everybody was a real mummy. It's all right. It's not great.

It's not great. You want a world's largest in general. You want the world's largest ball of twine. You want the world's largest ball of stamps. You want something in that field. The thing about the paint is that like, and stamps is the same way, I assume. is that like everybody gets to add to it themselves. Like you go see the paint and you go paint.

You get to paint the ball. And not only are you making the world's largest ball of paint, you're making it permanently different because the next person will respond to your color with their color and so on forever. And so your participation affects ripples out through the next 10,000 layers of the ball of paint. It is a very beautiful metaphor.

And I think Mike Carmichael is an amazing guy. And I think that we should consider living in rural, Indiana and getting offline and just if people want to come hang out with us, they have to come paint the world's largest ball of paint. There's just like a piece of me that's like, what if nerd phytaria is the thing that like as the aging roadside attraction community nears retirement or death. Yeah. We're like, not only are we going to keep this going, we're going to take it up another level.

And like, this is this is a thing in the real world. Just send ideas for roadside attractions, is what I'm saying. Yeah, let us know what world's largest balls you would like us to get involved in. If I get paid to do a brand deal, I want to kick some of that towards big balls. What'd you do with all your rocket money, money? Oh, well, big balls. I made the world's largest ball of rubber bands. I mean, worth it.

That's what I want to tithe for, you know. I want to tithe to balls. Yeah. I want you to tie it to partners in health personally. That too. That's my AFC Wimbledon. I needed AFC Wimbledon. One that's fun. You need an AFC Wimbledon. And maybe that's the world's largest balls. You being deeply involved. And then like that'll be a great section of your Wikipedia page where it's like his hard vivid to balls. Because you have one that's like hard pivot to global health 2020 to 2025. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do have a section where it's like, like hard pivot to global health resulting in a book about global health. And you could have one that's like hard pivot to balls, like just got really into world's largest balls and decided to make that his thing. Instead of getting into global health, he was just like, balls.

Yeah, but it makes sense. It's about real life community, man. And it's about people contributing to something bigger than themselves. Like, I realize that this is a bit, but it's not a bad bit. I agree. All right. Let's answer another question. I think we got to the bottom of that one.

and what we did before 2000. This one's from Joe who says, Dear John and Hank, what's your favorite replacement for a swear? I have two young children, and I try not to swear around them, so I've started incorporating swears from the TV shows they watch,

such as up, biscuits and cheese and crackers and oopsie kitty, but I'm looking for more phrases to incorporate, Joe. I've been a big poop on a stick guy for a long time. A stick. That means, like, I'm very frustrated or something. Who on a stick? Poop on a stick.

I like poop on a stick because, like, a lot of traditional swears are things that we have made taboo that probably shouldn't be that taboo, you know? With body parts, you know, acts of love or passion. And then, but poop on a stick, actually bad. Right. Undesirable. You don't want that.

That's a weapon. Yeah, exactly. If somebody's waving a poop on a stick, a poopie stick at you, that's a problem. Yeah, poop is, you know, that's not great. But like, it's part of life. Poop on a stick, that's. that's a problem that's a problem mine is shut the front door nice shut the front door come on now surely you can't be serious surely you can't be serious i am serious and don't call me surely uh i also just the regular ones

you know they're kids they're not uh they like we just like there's grown-up words just like there's grown-up drinks sure dang it darn it yeah what are the real those are the swear words i use I never use the real ones. I don't like to defile my mouth that way. I tell you what, I put on a song the other day that, unbeknown to me, it was a Tom Cardi song. And, you know, some of Tom Cardi stuff is very child-friendly. And some of it definitely isn't. And Oren gave me this look like, we're doing something bad, aren't we?

And I was like, I guess that's where we're at now with the stage of development you are at. We're engaged in some naughtiness. We are doing a naughty with Tom Cardi. which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by cursing in front of your kids. Cursing in front of your kids. Hank does it. This podcast is also brought to you by Steve the Mountain Lion. Don't hire that guy. No, he's a big trouble. And, of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's hard pivot to balls.

Hank's hard pivot to balls. It's happening. And this podcast is brought to you by science fact myths. Science fact myths. I try so hard not to engage in them. But it's hard out there. Yeah, because they're so good, right? Like, that's the thing about a science fact myth is that it has attained mythical status for a reason,

which is that it has tremendous explanatory power. It just happens to not be true. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by NordVPN. Okay, everybody, we need to have a little talk about internet safety. Don't click on the free iPad links. Don't do that. But in addition to that, a VPN is a virtual private network. It's basically a tunnel for your data.

It hides your IP address and it encrypts your connections. You're basically putting your internet traffic inside a little secret invisibility quote. So the people receiving your traffic don't know where that traffic is coming from. It's very easy. You can one click to connect or you can turn on auto-connect for zero clicks. You're just always connected. There's 8,200 servers at NordVPN across 127 countries so you can change your virtual location anytime you like. It's also fast.

Like it is not a noticeable different. NordVPN is one of the quickest out there. Also, one account can cover up to 10 devices, Windows, iOS. Android, MacOS, Linux, even your Android TV. When you're traveling, don't let your paid subscriptions go to waste. You can access your home content while traveling regardless of where you're at. You can secure your location on public Wi-Fi in airports, hotels, cafes, anywhere you go. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, you can go to NordVPN.com slash Dear Hank.

That link will give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee, and also that link, NordVPN. n.com slash dear hank is in the podcast episode description box this episode of dear hang it's brought to you by factor fall it's here it's lovely it feels like a reset the kids back in school the days are getting shorter and unsurprisingly the calendar is still filling itself up suddenly is 630 p.m. standing in the kitchen wondering how is it dinner time and what am i going to do about that well that's why i love factor chef prepared dietitian approved meals that means one less stress and also fewer dishes, and still, something delicious and comforting for everybody to eat.

Every week at Factor, there's a wider selection than ever before. There's premium seafood like salmon and shrimp, included in no extra cost, which is great, because I am so bad at cooking salmon. I ruin it, and I'm embarrassed. I think that this is okay. I've got to outsourcing my willpower. If it's up to me, I might make some pretty bad decisions in that situation where I'm not sure what to do for dinner that night.

But if Factor is there, they've got me, because one of the factor is there, I'm on the app, I can decide what I want to eat. With that brain, instead of the, oh God, I need to eat now, and I'm so hungry, brain that I have at 6.30 p.m. Here's some upcoming meals. There's smoky gutta chicken with roasted red potatoes and parmesan green beans. Smoky pork, tenderloin, and chimmy, sauce with roasted potatoes, roasted red pepper, zucchini, and fennel.

Athenian-style fed a chicken with polenta roasted zucchini and grape tomatoes. That sounds delicious. Eat smart at factormeels.com slash Deerhank 50 off and use code Deerhank 50 off to get 50 off to get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for a year. That's code Deerhank50 off at factormeals.com for 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for one year. Get delicious, ready to eat meals delivered with Factor. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-newing subscription purchase.

Speaking of, John, this is from Abby, who says, since baby carrots are just whittled down regular carrots, how do multicolored baby carrots work? Yesterday at the farmer's market, I bought purple carrots that are still like normal carrots. I got them home. But beneath the purple skin, it was an orange carrot. So how do purple baby carrots exist? Purple pumpkins and orange penguins, Abby, great, sign off. There's so many different kinds of carrots, the answer to that question.

But first, since before the ad, we were talking about fake science facts, there's this fake fact that William of orange is the reason carrots are orange. Oh, I love this fake fact. I've almost repeated it several times in a variety of media. Yeah. So like to honor William of Orange's coronation or birthday or something, all of the Dutch farmers were like, let's make all the carrots orange and that's how it happened. But it's actually like that might be a thing that happened. But the sort of orangification of carrots is very unclear exactly what happened there. And it probably have more to do with taste and bigness of the carrots.

But carrots were originally not orange. They were mostly yellow and purple, which is cool, from sort of Eurasia generally, but like the first cultivation of carrots based in and around, like, Iran-Afghanistan area. And it turns out there's just like a tremendous variety of kinds of carrots. And we try to crossbreed them and like get better carrots for one reason or another. It turns out purple carrots are like more resistant to some soil nematodes, but orange carrots tend to be sweeter. Yeah, I think orange carrots taste better. We grow purple carrots and orange carrots in my garden, and I think that orange carrots just taste a little bit better.

But some purple carrots become orange when you start to peel them, but not all. Some are purple all the way down. Correct. And I think that is why the baby carrots are sometimes purple. Yes. Because they use that cultivar. I have always found, though, that when they put a bunch of yellow and pink and purple and orange baby carrots all together, that still the orange ones are better, it's just like the only reason that you buy, the rainbow pack of carrots, is that, like, there's something sort of compelling about it.

It's not taste-based. It's marketing-based. I mean, I say this. I'm growing purple carrots right now because I have myself bought in to the purple carrot legend that they just look kind of cool. I think, but also, like, it's, it can be good to have a variety, you know? It could, like, even if it's not about taste, it could be about, like, the chemicals you're ingesting. They might have more, more antioxidants, or they might have, you know, there might be some advantage there. And maybe sometimes going for sweet all the time isn't ideal. I'm going to put ranch on those babies anyway.

That's true. You are, which I find just reprehensible. I could live in a world without ranch, no problem. Wow. We're living in a world without ranch. You're not a raccoon. I'm not. That's one of the ways you can tell.

Wait, wait, in the future. Yeah, what, what? What if they're already walking among us? They're just the ranch people. No, the raccoon. Yeah, yeah. No, if you ever see a person with ranch on their fingers, that's a raccoon. Especially if you look closely at those fingers and there you're like, those are raccoon hands.

Hold on a second. Those fingernails are very thin. Wow. I just did something visual just for Hank and the Patreon supporters, I guess. Yeah, no, it could be. It could be. It's hard to tell with people these days. It is hard to tell.

I mean, we are so confident. We always talk about how, you know, We're just one species out here, but are we? Or are we, in fact, one species plus raccoons pretending to be that one species? Another thing Nurt Fiteria lacks is conspiracy theories. Oh, my God, that's such a good point. And it's really hard to be an internet community these days without a conspiracy theory. It's really, it's the fuel for most of it.

That's right. That's the sort of, that's the Elmer's glue behind the whole thing. Yeah. Donald Trump is a raccoon. I don't know about that. Donald Trump. He seems very human to me. It seems like one of the most human humans going off instinct a lot of the time. Just made out of id, man. Just a walking, breathing, slobbering id.

Oh, my God. Could you imagine having that much power and that little worry? No, no, no. I can't even imagine having no power in that little worry. Yeah. I saw a little kid walking down the street with his parent and sort of yanked on the parent's hand because he wanted to look at a flower. And I was like, man, that kid knows the purpose of life. Yep. And the purpose of life is to be. And I'm like so jealous of that kid right now.

The purpose of life is to be. Wow. The world is rich and full. And I am. and the reason I am is so that I am, so that I can be. Yes, I don't disagree with that, but I would add one thing, which is that I think the, I know, I know this is going to bug you, but I don't think you're going to, I don't think you're going to hate it. This will be interesting to see if you can get yourself behind this one, because it is, it's not theological, I promise, but I think the reason to be is to be and observe. Well, yeah. Can you be without observing? What that kid was doing was both being and paying attention.

And there's something in the paying attention that's actually important. I think that kid was being according to his psychology, you know, according to his biology. Like, you know, we are directed by what has been selected for as a communal species, you know? And that means like community and paying attention and interaction and seeking sensations and thinking. Figuring out, figuring stuff out. Yeah, thinking, could there be raccoon people? Yeah. You know, asking the question. I'm just asking questions.

I'm just asking the question, is Martha Stewart a raccoon? Yeah. It's just a question. Her hands are always dirty. And they're always hidden. You never see her hands. Yeah, you never see her hands. I've never seen her hands.

And then a bunch of pictures of her hands emerge and you're like, well, I mean, with AI, you never know. You never know. You never know. All right, let's answer another question. This is a more serious one from Maya Luna, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my name is Maya Luna. We get a lot of questions along this line, Hank. I'm 17 and from Los Angeles, California. I just started senior year of high school, and I'm struggling with the uncertainty of now and with this chapter of life coming to an end. How do we cope with the end of childhood and the uncertainty of the future? How do I get excited about college and everything else

that's coming, despite all the unknowns? Thanks, Maya Luna. I love the thanks. What do you think, Hank? I mean, we're just here to be, Maya Luna. So I just saw this little kid walking down the street with his parents, pulled on the parent's arm and just wanted to look at a flower. And it was like, stop walking. I got to look at this flower. Like that. But there is a feeling, I think, that Maya Luna has captured of time passing.

And there's something almost, there's something wondrous about time passing and also something almost unbearable about it, about losing that part of your life. and then losing the next part of your life and the next part after that. And, you know, you go through these chapters and it's hard to leave them behind. Yeah. But of course, it's also essential to leave them behind. I was just, I was like, I asked Oren, I like to ask him what he's thinking about when he's just like staring at the wall. Sure.

It's one of the best parts of parenthood is you're like, there's stuff going on in there. Tell me what it is. And he never does. Very rarely. And I pushed him on it. And finally he said, nostalgia. Mm-hmm. And I was like, what far?

And he was like, you know, years ago. And I was like, oh, tell me more about, you're, okay, you're eight, but okay. Like, yeah, I guess like you're thinking two years ago, that's like a quarter your life away. Right. And I was like, what about it? And he was like, all the books we used to read. And I was like, yeah. And I think nostalgia is an important human emotion.

It's like a grief almost. It's a grief, and what Maya Luna is experiencing is an anticipatory grief, a feeling of, like, this precious moment is slipping away and will inevitably slip away. And that's true. It will slip away. It will be replaced by something that will be also valuable and also, you know, interesting and rich and fulfilling in its own way. But not just replaced, also layered on, you know? Like, it's not gone. You're building on top of that.

You're a lasagna. You're a lasagna. You're a lasagna, and you're going to put another layer of lasagna on that. And nobody wants a lasagna that has one layer. No, no, you want to be able to look back on being six when you're eight and to look back on being, you know, 17 when you're 20 and so on. And I still look back at that time of my life with not mere fondness. As a friend of mine said about high school, that place saved my life, but it also did lots

of other things. But I look back on it with a lot of interest. And I look back on it with, you know, a feeling that that person is deeply traceable to the person I am now. The last thing I'll say here, things like this, it's so easy for the thing you're imagining to be everything where it's like, it's like, this is like what's about to happen is four years of school and social interaction and, you know, leaving stuff behind and learning like how to do my own, like doing all my own laundry and having all these responsibilities and maybe. making mistakes and having people, other people, make mistakes that affect me. All that stuff, like, if you imagine it all at once, like, there's no way to not hate that. Yeah. So, so shrink the frame.

Like, what's today about for making tomorrow easier and better? Right. That's very good at least. And, like, like, you know, what am I doing today? Yeah. That's not even dubious. That's high quality. Hank, we have to get to some corrections before we get to the all important news from Mars and

and AFC. We've made a number of mistakes recently. Okay, I'm going to catch the flack for this crab thing, probably, too. Well, not as much flack as we can't for this from Hope. Dear John and Hank, I'm writing to let you know that a keg of bubbly water is very possible, as my neighbor has one in his garage. He says that the soda maker did not provide him with enough soda water per day, so instead he has it on tap.

I'm not positive this would be a savings since you will still have to employ a person to sit a room away and yell pompomuse whenever you take a sip, but it is definitely a reduction in aluminum waste. Hope this helps from Hope. Andrew writes, as an IT professional, I feel compelled to correct your statement about printers. We may know them deeply, but it is certainly not as friends. Rather, we know their every weakness, like a mortal enemy. I haven't met a single person in this industry that doesn't despise those demon machines, best Andrew.

You know their weakness is like a mortal enemy. It's like the Sun Tzu for printers. Yes, the art of war. Ashley says, Dear John and Hank, I was recently listening to your newest episode and notice you talk about muscles pulling and pushing, but did you know that muscles only pull? I did actually know that. I'm a freshly licensed occupational therapist and was once an undergraduate kinesiology major, and I found it mind-blowing to learn in my education that your muscles can only pull. They can also not pull, which is important. Right.

They can pull or not pull. Those are their two main vibes. They can pull or do nothing. That's why you have both a tricep and a bicep. All right. You know what, like, kinesiologists. have tried to explain to me how do I how do my fingers move but the muscles controlling them are all down here that's wild I mean I get it I don't really get it this bending I'm bending my fingers now and I'm completely my mind is completely blown by it bending that like how how is this bend but there's no muscle in the whole hand that controls this bend is that true the muscles are not in the hand there's only the thumb muscle the thumb muscle the finger muscles are all the forearm. All the finger muscles are in the forearm. Whoa, man. I know. It's really upsetting.

I haven't gotten to the most important correction, by the way. Okay. Is it the next one? Yeah, it's from Alex, who writes, Dearest Brothers Green. In a recent episode, while deciding whether John should bequeath his name to a pea plant or a corn plant, you assume that multiple corn plants are needed for pollination. Despite my strongest efforts at restraint against pedantry, as a former agricultural worker and the grandchild of professional corn breeder, I find myself unable to resist correcting and you're frankly understandable misunderstanding on corn reproduction. Each corn plant has two reproductive parts, the tassel and the chute, which develops into the cob. The tassel sheds pollen, which, when in large fields of corn, is spread by pollinators in the wind to silks of shoots to pollinate the ear of corn.

Since each plant has both male and female parts, corn plants have no problems pollinating themselves. So, there you go. Wow. I mean, I will say some plants have both male and female parts and still can't pollinate themselves, but... Well, I mean, according to this person whose grandparent is a professional corn pollinator, it's possible. So I apologize to my friends, my family, and the entire community for being wrong about that and so much else in my life. You think you call yourself a Hoosier. You don't know how corn does sex. I really don't know how corn does it.

I don't know how corn does anything. I don't grow corn in my garden because if I find it very intimidating and also because there's no way I can compete with that sweet, sweet Indiana sweet corn. Oh, my God. Indiana's sweet corn is as good as corn gets, y'all. People can talk all the smack they want about Indiana, but we've got you beat on corn. I don't know. Montana's got great corn because it's like, is coal?

I don't know, something about the cold sweetens it up. So sweet. Well, our corn is better, hard stop. Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What's the news from Mars this week? Oh, gosh, it's cool. So Tumbleweeds is the news from Mars. They found Tumbleweeds on no.

So there is a new. Oh, you had to be first. second. I was like, that seems possible. That seems possible. I also big. I should have heard about that. But there's a group that's trying to design like weird ideas for rovers. So people are always doing this. I, you know, I've met people at colleges who are like, you know, part of your like robotics program is like, let's try to design something new for like a Mars rover design. But there's a group of international scientists working on a new, quote, rover design that involves just a spherical wireframe that has sails

that would be about 16 feet in diameter. And the idea is that these tumbleweed rovers would be able to cover a lot of ground using the winds of Mars. So they'd be like wind-powered rovers. It has not been adopted by any space agency or anything yet. It's just like people working on ideas. But they have been testing out smaller prototypes

like in a quarry in the Netherlands or at the planetary environmental facility in Denmark. These tests have kind of helped them figure out how that rover might perform on different surfaces, different wind conditions, and they're planning to head to the Otacama Desert in Chile soon for further testing of their weird tumbleweed rover design. That is a really cool idea

that you just sort of tumble your way across the entirety of Mars. You could circumnavigate the place if you waited long enough. Yeah, just put a bunch of them down there and let them go wherever. I love it. I love it. Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon is equally exciting, if not even more so. AFC Wimbledon cannot stop winning. I will remind you, we have the lowest budget in League 1 in the third tier of English football. And yet somehow we can't stop winning.

You know what it is, John? It's the power of you of that DFTBA on the back of the shorts. It's finally kicking in. It might be. There is something magical happening at AFC Wimbledon. I actually went to this game with a bunch of my friends. So I flew over to London to see AFC Wimbledon beat Wickham Wanderers, who have three times our budget, two to one. It was a game of two halves.

We scored two brilliant first half goals. One scored by Omar Bougill, the other scored by Steve Seddon. And they were both high class. As I said to Omar Bougal after the game, you played like you were actually on fire. You played so angry and brilliantly. And he was like, I know, thank you. It was incredible. It was an incredible game to watch.

And then in the second half, we had to defend for our lives and barely escaped with a two-one win. But it was absolutely magical. The stadium was rollicking, absolutely rollicking. And the vibes were immaculate. And in general, it was just awesome. I had so much freaking fun. And I hope my friends did too. I mean, I'm completely in love with this AFC Wimbledon team.

Hank, we're in sixth place, which is a playoff spot. I looked at the League One table and I was like, I can't find AFC Wimbledon on the list. It's because we're so high up near the top. Yeah. I haven't been looking for them there. Yeah, well, who would? It's just astonishing. I don't even know what to say about it.

We just can't stop playing brilliantly. Even when we lose, we're playing well. So I am completely, I mean, I'm always in love with every AFC Wimbledon team, but I am especially in love with this group of players and our coaches. Everybody's just doing an amazing job together and all pulling in the same direction, playing for the badge, as they say. And it's been a magical, magical season so far, still only less than a quarter of the way in. So lots of time for everything to fall apart, as things almost always do. But I mean, sixth place in league one, you have to be kidding. Yeah, I mean, and the teams you've lost to are good teams. Yeah, we've only lost to really good teams.

And a couple of those teams we should have beat. So this is, been, this season is bonkers. I don't even know what else to say about it. It's a delight. Well, that's the power. The power of belief. The power of DFTBA on the back of the shorts. That's right. And if you get up in that next league and then spend $0 the entire year just to take the money home. And then, you know, don't even feel the 11 players, you know, just show up every weekend. Just be like, everybody's fired with whatever children want to play for us. We're just going to send a goli out there. This is the money season. Exactly.

We've decided to make this the money season. We're going to intentionally lose all 46 of our games, and then we will go back to League 1 with some money. Some actual budget. That's wild. You really have the lowest budget in the whole league? Either lowest or second lowest. There's some debate, but yeah, very low.

So is there a worry that like at the mid-season trade that a lot of people will take these players away because they're better than expected? Maybe, but a lot of them, a lot of them really like playing for Wimbledon. Like, Omar Bougill is like, I want to play for Wimbledon as long as I can. Like, I love it here. I'm happy. And, you know, I mean, would you rather be happy or have an extra couple hundred pounds a week? I think, like, most people would rather be happy. So, so far, so good. Just got to make the town of AFC Wimbledon very nice for footballers to live in. Well, it is London. So it's pretty nice. Oh, okay. I like that you don't know where we play.

It's not quite London. It's not like downtown. There is no downtown London. There is like the tower. Okay. It's like where all the subway stations are. We don't play at the Tower of London, but we do play on a subway or like very near a subway stop. Okay.

Yeah. In London, I can't believe you've never been to a game. This is bonkers. I know I haven't been to Mars and so maybe I shouldn't complain. But you should really go to a game sometime. It's super fun. I completely agree. I would love to go to a game.

game sometime. When I was there, I met a few nerd fighters who were at their first game and it was really fun to meet with them and see them. So I just had a great time. I might be, I might have to be focused on my balls. Oh, that's right. You've got to really, you're going to have to use all of your extra resources around the collecting and distributing the world's largest balls of exciting new things. And there's so many things to make like balls out of nowadays. You know, there's all this stuff. We've got so much stuff. It's a great point. All those old AOL CDs. Yeah, the world's Or just Ball of AOL CDs. Just send me all year old, like, oh, man.

Like, send me every DVD that anyone has of a diehard movie. Yep. We're going to make the World's largest ball of diehard movies. Have you ever seen that guy who has an entire room of his house dedicated to VHS tapes of Titanic? Yeah. Yeah, things like that. That's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to do.

That's the new thing. Hank's taking us in a new direction. We're also going to do the world's largest ball of dollar bills. That'll be at my house. I'm going to use the world's largest ball. That'll be from my personal use, personal use. To buy more balls of other large balls. So you're getting into conspiracy theories and you're also turning this into a pyramid scheme.

I love it. If everybody sends me $1, then you have to get a bunch of other people that send you $1, but they also have to send me $1. It's not exactly clear why. Yeah, yeah. But trust me, it's going to lead to a very large ball of dollars for me. Have you ever been pitched on a pyramid scheme? Oh, yeah, many times. I remember the first time I was in high school, my girlfriend's dad tried to get me

buy into a pyramid scheme. And I was like, that's a pyramid scheme. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I remember being in grad school and having, like, people who worked at the university talking about their pyramid scheme. And I was like, that's a pyramid scheme. And it's just like, what you were describing to me is exactly what a pyramid scheme. I'm just like, this still happens?

Well, when you're in it, it doesn't feel like a pyramid scheme. Like the people who were selling that a athleisure on Facebook didn't feel like they're in a pyramid scheme. Well, these were like pure dollar. These weren't like even product. Oh, like you give a dollar up the money tree. Yeah. That's a pure pyramid scheme. Money trees.

Yeah. Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. And thank you to everybody for their questions. You can email us anytime at Hank and John at gmail.com about world's largest balls or other. This podcast is edited by Ben Sfordot, who has his work cut out for him this episode. Thank you, Ben. It's mixed by Joseph Tudameticit. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosiana Halso-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is to Buki Chakravardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be all.