Dear Hank & John - 436: The Kelce Green Brother Bowl Brawl

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Can one physically de-escalate? Are my hands actually colder than other parts of my body? Why can I see my veins so well? What would the internet look like if it was a 3D space? How do I know if I’m doing enough for my students? What would it feel like to be hit by a gravitational wave? How do we know the distance between the Earth and the Sun? Do squirrels get bored? …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. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers, answer your questions, give you to B's advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, do you know how you charge a plug-in, Hondra Accord? Hondra Accord? Did I say Hondra?

Yeah, I think so. Do you know how do you charge a plug-in Honda Accord? How? Accord. Oh. It just smacks at the kind of laziness that we can no longer afford, Hank. We can't afford that kind of writing laziness because Hank and I have just found out something shocking. We have.

I was telling Catherine about it last night. We have been under the impression. Yeah. And a completely understandable one. And with no worry about this, but we have been under the impression that Dear Hank and John has been shrinking in viewership for a number of years. Not just shrinking, to be fair. We have been under the impression that we essentially make this podcast for ourselves and eight to ten passionate letter writers. We definitely know that there's a lot of people who write letters.

So we know that it's not a tiny group of people. But we had thought that we were once a podcast that had like maybe 150,000 downloads. And now we were a podcast that, you know, was more at 50,000 and was headed to 25. Yeah. And we're not doing it. This was the impression we had. Obviously, we're not doing it for the likes and views since we didn't even know what the views were. We do this because we love it.

It's a chance to talk to people we find interesting about stuff we find interesting, et cetera. Or such bad Internet people. Such bad Internet entrepreneurs. We were just informed by the person who runs analytics at Complexly that, in fact, Dear Hank and John is more popular than our YouTube channel vlog brothers, which Hank and I think of as being very popular. Yeah, sort of the primary thing that we do. But apparently not, Hank, this is the primary thing that we do.

By a fairly wide margin, this is bigger. It's a lot of people here. Yeah, so thank you. Now we're going to do a better job. Yep. We're going to change the whole thing. We're professionalizing, dear Hank and John. We're going to turn it into sort of a white collar business podcast because that's where the best

CPMs are. John, what's your best hustle bro piece of advice for the world? I'll give you mine first. Okay, you give me yours first. Smooth Cs don't make great sailors or something like that. Okay, I like how you didn't nail the line. One thing about those

bro podcasts is they nail the lines because they're so hyper-confident in everything they say, and that's why you're like, oh yeah, I guess that's true. Like smooth sailing doesn't make for good sailors. That doesn't. And I was like, you know, what? I hate that, but also it's true. I guess mine is like, why work hard when you could work smart? Oh, I thought you're going to say smart. So it rhymes? Yeah. No, this is a serious podcast now.

We can't afford any of that business. We're just making slant rhymes. We can't afford any of that. Don't work harder. Work smarter. That's our new poster. It's us, two of us, with coffees and business. Smart workers. Smart workers. Hard turkers. Just a couple of smart workers trying to make their way in the world. Okay, let's answer some questions from our listeners. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What's a hard turker? Is that like a turkey? Is that a sculpted out of marble turkey? Can we get two sculpted out of marble turkeys? And we can say smart workers, hard turkers. And it's us in a photo shoe with turkeys? I don't like anything about this idea. I'd like to yes, Andrew, when possible, but I find this idea to be a real, waste of marble, if you will. But more to the point, Hank, now that we are a serious hit podcast, which we've been for some time, but now that we found out about it, we can't be making any jokes about hard turkers. But I think that's such a funny word. It doesn't matter how funny you find it, Hank.

This is a serious podcast now. I agree. I agree. It's a serious podcast, and I need you to say hard turkers as many times as you can in as serious a way as you can. All right. Not, you know, not right now, just in the next year of my life. Got it.

Mission accomplished in advance. This first question comes from Lorena who writes, Hi, John and Hank, my German boyfriend once called an escalator that descends a descalator. I know you can de-escalate a conflict or a dangerous situation, but can one physically de-escalate? Now, I can't get this word out of my head because why wouldn't we specify when an escalator is going up or down? Are the Germans just better at describing things than we are not a truck, Lori? First off, Lori, yes. The Germans are better at describing things than we are. Secondly, I like the idea of calling it when it's going down a decalator and calling it when it's going up an escalator, because that's what we're doing. We're descending or escalating. Well, yeah, one thing I know is that when I'm on an escalator going down, I'm not escalating. No, you're de-escalating. Things are descalating slowly. Well, unless you're in England, in which case, things descalated a pretty significant pace. Really? Are there descalators faster?

Like three or four times as fast. What? I've been to England several times and I've never been descalated rapidly. Not that I know of. Well, then you've never been on the tube? Oh, you mean the subway ones? The ones that go into the tube? Those ones are fast and it is a little unnerving.

And also they're very long. They make me think all kinds of crazy thoughts about how big the earth is. Yeah. No, and we're not even getting into the mantle yet. That's still crust. What should we call the standing desks that go up and down? I think you call an escalating desk. and a descalating desk. It does both.

Okay, it escalates and escalates? Yeah. Think about everything else that escalates and descalates. Why do we call an elevator, an elevator, an elevate, or, when it also descends? It's a descendator. It's a descalator. No, it's very obviously not a descalator. An escalator and an elevator are different things. That's why they have different names. At any rate, Hank, I think we have once again solved a linguistic problem because we are a serious

podcast that solves serious problems, and now we can move on to this question from Sophie, who writes, Dear John and Hank, when my cold hands touch my own leg or stomach, they feel very cold. Are they actually that much colder than my leg skin or stomach skin? Or is it a trick of the fleshy thing inside of my skull? Cold hands, Sophie. They're definitely colder. I mean, everything is a trick of the fleshy thing inside of your skull, Sophie.

Oh, that's so true. Like, cold itself is an idea that exists inside your head, Sophie. I mean, it exists to stop you from dying. It is doing important work, but it is a mind thing. Yeah, and so like it's really, it's about differential. So the question of like, hey, should it be five degrees that feels this cold or should it be two degrees that feels this cold? Is it a little bit of a sort of an overreaction for my stomach to be so freaked out by the fact that my hands are a mere, you know, five degrees colder? It's all just tricks that your flesh is playing on your flesh. That's so true. It's not a trick that your flesh is playing on you because arguably you are the flesh. I think that it's very important. and I could be wrong. I think it's very important to be people.

Oh, I mean, Hank, we don't talk about this enough. We are organisms. We're mammals. All of your friends are mammals. I don't know if it's possible that we don't talk about it enough. I feel like it comes up every episode, but yes. Well, I still don't think we talk about animals, except for the ones that are fish. Except for the reptiles and the fish and so on.

And, like, they are also your friends. I'm not trying to, I know whenever I talk about this, people write it in there like, that's turtle erasure. My best friend is a turtle. I'm sorry. All of your friends are organisms. Oh, God, whenever people say organism, I remember early in TikTok, I made a video that said, everything you've ever eaten was an organism.

And then someone stitched me in an accusing tone, she said, are Polly Pocket Shoes in organism? Which I thought was very funny. Remember when that kid who lived next door to us swallowed a penny and his parents completely freaked out and took him the emergency room, in the emergency room is like, what do you want us to do? Yeah, that's super fine. To search for you remove the penny or you want him to like poop it out and you like save the penny? Like, that's up to you.

That's not really an emergency room thing. Yeah, what we could do for you is tell you this is fine, which is great. You know, I often want people to tell me that it's fine. In fact, every day, every moment of every day, if only someone could tell me it was fine. and I could believe them. I was going to say, the key is actually being believable when you say it, which is hard. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. All right, Hank, let's answer another question.

This one from Anonymous, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm writing to you anonymously today because I want to reveal an insecurity I have, but I'm too scared to share with anyone in real life, and you guys are just on the Internet. Actually, Anonymous, get this. We are huge. On and off the Internet. I can see my veins really clearly. I know this is written slash audio, so just bear with me.

It's winter, and I'm noticing. I can see my veins really well, a little too well. Now all I can notice are the purple veins down my legs and little splotches of squiggles. Is this just because I'm getting older? And when you get older, your skin gets thinner and veins become more flashy. I don't think I'm dying, but I'm struggling to adjust in the shower to seeing all my veins in my legs. Pumpkin pie and penguins anonymous. Now, Hank, you give the medical answer and I'll give what I think is the answer.

Oh, you want to go first. I want you to go first. I was like, I was like, all right, perfect. I get a little time to prepare while John talking. out of his butt. Kelsey brothers never have this problem. I mean, the Kelsey brothers, their professional hit podcast would never do what we're doing. Yeah, but like, but who's doing it right? Because of course, our audience is bigger than the Kelsey brothers. So we have to be the ones that are better than them just by virtue of the size of audience. And don't you come at me

with no, no, Hank. They're actually much bigger. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. They're bigger both physically and, uh, in terms of podcasts. You don't think you could take a Kelsey? You don't think that Hank and John Green against Travis and John Kelsey would win. I was close for a guess. You were close for a guess. You don't think that Hank and John Green would win? In what contest exactly like Scholars Bowl? Maybe.

I think it would be about 50-50 on Scholars Bowl. What, American football? No, I think we would lose in a two-on-two American football match against them. I don't know. How big is Travis Kelsey? Big enough. I mean, he could definitely, he's bigger than you. I'm confident that Travis Kelsey could really obliterate me. Yeah. Hank, Travis Kelsey could tackle you, no problem. And then he could beat you up to his liking. I would become a condiment.

He wouldn't do it because he seems like a nice fellow. He seems like a nice guy. He absolutely could. Like, that's the reality that we've been living with since middle school. Yeah. Like if the world depended on it, And I was anti-world and Travis Kelsey was trying to save the world. I would lose. Yeah. Unless.

Unless. It was a Scholar's bowl competition. And then I think you'd have a chance. Yeah, much closer. Not guaranteeing anything, but much closer. No. No, because they got a lot of sports questions in those scholar bowls. And I bet those Kelsey boys are good at those.

We know nothing. So your skin does get like kind of, it gets paler, of course, in the wintertime. Yeah, but it does also thin out. over time, right? It thins in the winter, specifically, because there's less, like, your body pulls blood out. So, like, the warm blood, like, all those blood vessels are constricting because it's, that was the one of what, you don't want to lose heat to the air. You can be more pink in the summertime because your body is trying to lose heat, but you are more pale in the winter. So that's interesting.

That's actually, like, like a direct connection to cold. And so that's going to make your blue veins stand out a little more. Your skin also does thin as you get older. But I don't know if that's the thing. What I would like to say is that it's fine. And I wouldn't just like to say it. I am saying it. It's fine.

It's like eating a penny. It's a little different. But I think what's happening is that you probably, partly, there's seasonal changes. There's changes in your life, et cetera. But you're also partly noticing something that was maybe always there, that you're just noticing differently because your brain has decided to latch on to it and make it something that you're self-conscious about. I truly don't think this is something that you need to be self-conscious about.

There's not much you can do about it. I mean, if you have varicose veins, there are treatments if you really care about it, that stuff. But also, like, it's not something that other people are thinking about in all likelihood, because other people are too busy thinking about their own veins. It reminds me of that one time, Hank, and I don't know if this is for the podcast. You know what I'm going to tell you? No, not yet. Okay, so one time we had a meeting with a very high-level YouTube executive, and I did not understand the timing of the meeting.

And so I showed up to the meeting intoxicated. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple years later, I had another meeting with this person. And I was like, listen, it tortures me every day, so I just have to tell you, I didn't understand what time our meeting was. And so when I got there, I was intoxicated, and he was like, oh, I thought you were going to mention my sweating. Is sweating? Yeah, he was like, I was sweating so much. We're all caught in our own situations.

We're all caught in our own situations. Although you can rely on that a little too much, for sure. Don't over-rely on, don't worry they're not thinking about me, because then they will start thinking about you. Yeah, one thing that made me think that is one day, and I don't think this was about me, but one day I showed up at the gym. And there was a new sign that said, please wear deodorant. And it's hard to interpret that as being about anyone other than yourself. It's so strange to have a job where people do actually go on the internet and talk about me. Because that does make me feel like people are always thinking and talking about me.

Well, and I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to resist the urge to find out what people are saying. Because if in middle school you told me like not only are people talking about you, but you can easily access what they're saying, I would have been. completely unable to resist the urge to check. Now I am 48 years old, and so a little bit better at resisting the urge to check, but it's still there. Do you ever get the feeling that these systems are not built for humans? They're definitely not built for the benefit of most humans. Yeah. They're built to sort of utilize humans, for sure.

I guess I was going to say this whole thing has been great for Elon Musk, but then I paused and realized that actually this whole thing has not been great for Elon Musk. No. Depends on what you mean. Like he's wealthy, but I don't know that he's experiencing a lot of deep fulfillment from his relationships. Yeah, I got to make my, I don't know when this episode's going to came up, but I got to make my 2026 bingo card. Oh, yeah. I did it last year. I find it to be a lot of fun. Yeah. And that thing that you just said reminded me of the thing that I kind of want to put on my bingo card, which is a prediction of a true crash out by a top tier tech CEO. True crashout. I mean, what's a bigger crashout than accidentally buying Twitter for like $40 billion and then ruining it? That's a pretty big crash out. He was like, I'm going to do this. And he was like, no, no, no, no, I don't want to do this. And they were like, well, buddy, you're going to do it anyway.

He was like, no, it was a bit. Like, we would be. We would be like, oh, no, we were just kidding, Jack. Like, we're obviously not going to buy Twitter for $40 billion. Like, that was a bit. And Jack Dorsey was like, no, no, I think he's going to do a pretty good job. And he has done. a good job of I mean look it's not like Twitter was good before now Twitter is just worse at least there was a reason to leave at least there was a reason to leave okay this next question comes from ruby who asks dear hink and john while doing my daily jaunt of doom scrolling i stumbled upon a lovely and wholesome corner of the internet it got me thinking about that phrase corner of the internet and what would the internet look like if it was a 3d space it couldn't be a room as there are not

enough corners. Even oddly shaped rooms like churches only have so many corners. Is it a giant maze with riddles? Something I'm fathomable? I've really backed myself into a corner with this one, Pumpkins and Penguins, Ruby. I think of it as more like a 20-sided dye. Oh, yeah? Or even a hundred-sided die where there's a lot of corners, but it's basically a sphere. I don't know. Some of these corners are pretty inaccessible, and they're like very small, and some of them are bigger and more available. Like a Bismuth crystal where there's lots of little nooks and crannies.

I want to stay in a nook for the rest of my life. A little nook of the internet. I don't, what I'm realizing in my old age... You don't want to put a limit on that? You don't want to say, like, I'm going to nook it up for the next two years. But then... I don't want to... I don't think I ever want to go back. The whole thing, the whole teeming ocean of internet is just not for me, Hank. Like, I don't do well there. I get seasick.

It is a disorienting place. And if there could be a best thing, I would think that that thing would be occupying a few lovely little nooks so you can go from one to the other. Sure, but like the thing isn't to spend everyday doom scrolling. No, it definitely isn't. And yet I do a tremendous amount of that. Yeah, the thing is probably just be on it less in total. And I wish that there was any incentive to build systems that actually helped people use them in a more healthy way. way. Well, that's what Focus Friend is that hit the Google Play Store's 2025 app of the year.

That's true. And we also did win the Cultural Impact Award this year from Apple, not to brag. Tim Cook wrote you a little note. He signed a little note that someone wrote. I agree with you. Well, he signed it, though. I did. I got Tim Cook's signature. I'm somewhat confident that he will not crash out in the next year. Seems like a stable guy. I wouldn't be surprised if he quit. No, that would be the ultimate stable guy move. Yeah, that's a stable guy move. We spend too much time talking about billionaires, Hank, which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by regular people.

Regular people, that's who listens to this podcast. Unless we have a billionaire listener, in which case, buddy, do we add ideal for you? Yeah. This podcast is also brought to you by My Own Vanes. My own veins. Suddenly, they appear. And today's podcast is brought to you by the Kelsey Green Brothers Ball Ball. That's the Kelsey Green Brothers Bowl.

ball. Broll. Broll. Ball brawl. Bore brawl. Give me, give me, give me one more chance, think, and today's podcast is also brought to you by the Kelsey Green Brothers, Bull Brawl. The Kelsey Green Brothers bowl brawl, coming to theaters near you in 2027. It would be a hit. It would be a hit. We did a stream with the Kelsey's. Yeah, I mean, they would be like, this is charity. Like, we're only doing this to support these nice fellows, but little do they know, like, they would also get a big hit out of it, because it turns out our podcast is huge. Huge.

And speaking of this podcast is also brought to you by hard turkers. I'll tell you what, those Kelsey brothers, they're a couple of hard turkers. I'm going to make this happen, John. You're really working on it. This episode is brought to you by NoCD. So you may have once had a thought pop into your head that feels foreign and distressing, but if you've had a thought pop into your head that feels foreign and distressing that you just can't move on from it, That may be an issue.

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and 365-day returns now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-com slash Dear Hank, free shipping and 365-day returns. twins.com slash dear Hank. All right, Hank, let's answer a serious question from Laura, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been a nerd fighter since the days of giraffe sex and beyond. I started college in 2020 and graduated this year and was lucky enough to accept a job as a teacher at one of the schools where I did my student teaching. I now teach fifth grade math at a well-income inner city school

that unfortunately already had a reputation for poor math skills. We have a state coach for our math department, and she is lovely, but I can't help but feel this pressure to try and teach these kid's math. I know this isn't the most important thing they're going to learn in their lives, and so I try to include life lessons on topics like empathy and equitability and just give them overall safe spaces to be a kid. But how do I reconcile the fact that I'm attempting an almost impossible job that will have such monumental impact on their adult lives? Am I properly screwing them up? How do I know if I'm doing enough? Patients and pre-tests, Laura. So, Laura, I don't know how to answer the question around like teaching to the test or

or, you know, getting kids to learn math, certainly you're more of an expert in that than I am. But what I do know is that in life, it is incredibly, incredibly hard to feel like you are doing enough. Because there are so many problems and the closer you get to those problems and you're pretty close up to problems that are affecting a lot of kids in your community, the closer you get to those problems, the harder they are to solve, not the easier they are to solve. right? Like anybody can solve that problem from 30,000 feet up, but you're trying to solve it on the ground every day with the kids in your classroom. And that's a much different task. It's a much more important task, even though the progress that you will make will be incremental and insufficient and frustrating. And I guess the other thing I'd say is that you don't, like nobody ever gets to see the world that would have been without your work. You know, like you don't, like no one ever

gets to see the kid who would have disengaged if you hadn't, like, spent that extra effort on them, or the kid who hated math and stayed hating math, or would have hated math if you hadn't taken that extra effort or been extra gentle with them. That's, like, always, like a hard part about problem solving is that, you know, there's all these little things that happen and we never really understand all of the problems being solved because you're doing it. You're doing the work. And so it's hard, it's hard to imagine the impact when you, you never get to see the counterfactual. A lot of times, too, with teachers especially, you don't get to see the rewards because the rewards are reaped like decades later. Right. Like, I still think about my

elementary school teachers and my middle school teachers. But at the time, they had no reason to believe that they were positively impacting my life, not least because I was so unbearable to have in the classroom. So, like, it took death. decades for that work to pay off, but I think it did pay off in me. All right. This next question comes from Henry who asks, Dear Hank of John, when two black holes orbit each other, they create waves in space time called gravitational waves. What would it feel like to be hit by a gravitational wave? Would time slow down? Would I be pushed back? And most importantly, could I surf it?

Wave hello, wave goodbye. Henry, you are regularly hit by gravitational waves, in fact, and you do not notice. I feel it. I feel it every time. My life is nothing but being hit by gravitational waves, and people are like, why are you anxious? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. Maybe because I just got hit by a gravitational wave. The fabric of space and time has wobbles in it. Exactly.

I live with wibbly wobbly, timie-wimmy stuff all the time, literally. The part where time wobbles is really bad. Yeah. I'm like, you can know about, you can keep figuring this stuff out absolutely. But like, let me have times when it is not a part of my life, which for clarity is most of the times. But I, of course, do love the fact that we are exploring the stuff. And there's much that we will continue to learn from gravitational waves. But I do think that if you were really close up to two black holes that are colliding, if you were right up on it, it would, I think, definitely have an impact on your body that would be very negative.

But also, you would be experiencing other more negative impacts on. your body from the energy being released by the black holes. So why, Hank, whenever you talk about astronomy or geology or whatever, why is the bodily impact always negative? It's always, it's a very, I find that you're a somewhat negative person when it comes to the effect that space has on the human body. Well, are you saying that like maybe it might be like a good homeopathic treatment? Like, you know, if you got like a little bit of systemic inflammation, maybe you want to be

really near a black hole collision. That's what I'm wondering. Are there ways in which it's beneficial to the human body? I saw the Martian. What? Yeah. Did the Martian man, did he, I can't remember his name, Scott Watney? Yeah, I think his name was actually Matt Damon.

That definitely is true. Did Matt Damon come home stronger from Mars? Oh, for sure, emotionally. Smooth sailors don't make straight seas. That's what they say. That's what they say. I think that the Martian soil was quite bad for him. The thing is, John, what our bodies want and like is the typical situation?

And so when you ask, like, what would it be like for the bodies to be in an atypical situation? Mostly the answer is not great. All right. Counterpoint, we live in lots of different climates, and life expectancy is about the same regardless of what climate you live in. All those climates are so close to each other. They are almost identical. You can't say that living in Dubai is like living in Greenland. It's like much more like living in Greenland than living like in the ocean.

That's true. Or like inside of a volcano. That's true. Though inside of a volcano, very cool place to have a little house. I've heard that it's a very warm place to have a little house. Good point. They're always building supervillain layers inside of volcanoes, but they would just be sweaty all the time and potentially dead. Not worth it.

Not worth it. But then again, if supervillains acted rationally, Hank, we would live in a different world where Twitter had different ownership. Where would the best supervillain layer be? Would it be like the inside of the giant clock that Jeff Bezos built? That feels like a pretty good layer. What about Mark Zuckerberg's layer on Kauai? That's a good layer. That's what a villain actually would do.

Like, you put it in a cool spot. That is a volcano, though, I have to say. Yeah. No, he's doing both. I mean, he's... He looked and he said, why not both? If anything, it's a little cliche. It really is.

I can't believe. He built his layer in a volcano. I know. Oh, my God. He's a piece of work. He might crash out in 2026. It's possible. It's on my bingo card.

Fernando and Kalina ask, Dear John and Hank, it's 3 a.m. And we're driving across Texas. My husband and I were wondering, how do we know the distance from here to the sun? It's not like we sent a person or a probe to measure it. So is it some kind of math? Pumpkins and penguins,

Fernando and Kalina. It's always some kind of math, Fernando and Kalina. Always. Math and cleverness. So we had already figured out the ratios between a bunch of the bodies in the solar system. So we knew like the ratios of their orbits to each other, but we didn't have like the miles to put in there. So weirdly, the moment we figured out how far away the sun was, we also figured out how far away like a bunch of other planets were. You just had to like plug it into the ratios. But the way that we figured out how far away the sun is, very cool. You could do it yourself. Okay.

So two people in very different places on Earth. So imagine a person at the North Pole and a person of the South Pole, that this was not the case. You could do it from any two distant locations on Earth, are looking at the Sun through a telescope. And Venus moves in between us and the Sun and occludes the Sun a little bit. To the person who's at the very top of the Earth and the one at the very bottom of the Earth, they're actually going to see Venus at a different spot on the Sun. because they're like far enough away that from their perspective, Venus is on one point in the sun. And then you mark down exactly where, how it crosses the sun. And then from there, you can do math to determine based on how far away you are on Earth, how far away the sun is.

Okay. I mean, I'm going to believe that without really understanding it. I'm pretty sure that that's right. I could probably do a better job of explaining it. But that's, it was some kind of parallax thing like that. Parallax is like a big deal for us, for ways to figure out how far away things are. Okay. And then also, this does not work for the sun.

But we can tell though how far away stars are because the Earth is in different places throughout its orbit. Sometimes the Earth is in one place and sometimes it's like really far away from where it was. And so you can look out and see stars moving in relationship to each other. It is pretty mind-blowing to me that we know like how far away the stars. are from us in Orion, like Orion's belt, you know? Like, you know how far away those stars are? And the fascinating thing to me is that in addition to not being close to us, they're not close to each other.

No, no, no. It just appears that way to us. Yeah. Yeah, isn't that cool? They're just like one of them's like closer but smaller and the other. And they're all like similar brightnesses, but they are not. Yeah, but one of them is like 200 light years away from the other or whatever. Yeah.

More than that probably. It's wild. The universe is astonishing and a little bit terrifying, which I think is why this last question before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon is so important for us to answer, Hank, from Laura, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm an avid runner, although I live in a small city, so my route is almost exactly the same day in and day out. Because of this, I've gotten very familiar with the squirrels who live in the park near my house. And my many years are frequented in these furry little guys.

I've never seen a squirrel who looks anything but panicked and twitchy. Do squirrels get bored? Nuts about the pod, Laura. No, I think they're panicked and twitchy the whole time. No, I think that they get chill as long as they're feeling real safe, which they are not as long as they are on the ground. Maybe, maybe they have chill moments. Sometimes I see a squirrel in a tree with its little tail curled over just sitting there. Yeah.

You know, but definitely if I'm around, they're panicked and twitchy because I could eat them. Yeah, they should be panicked and twitchy. I mean, that would be my response. is like the reason squirrels look twitchy all the time is because, like, the world is out to get them and will succeed. The same reason we should kind of be anxious all the time. Now, I don't think it's actually helpful to us to be anxious all the time. But, like, I think on some level it's appropriate. I think that it was especially, like, used to be even more appropriate and we are still living with a body that evolved for that situation. Yeah, I mean, not only we're living with a body that evolved for that situation, you would argue that we are, in fact, that body. I don't know, man. It's all metaphors. I'll tell you that.

Oh, of course it's all metaphors, but you can't convince me that my whole self is contained in this bacterial colony. I just won't believe it. It doesn't resonate with me as a metaphor. I mean, look, I'll agree with you in that it doesn't exist in the bacterial colony, but only in that it doesn't exist. Well, I would argue, and I mean, not to get too metaphysical or theological about it, but I would argue that part of the human soul exists in relationship. So it exists outside. of the self in the sense or outside of the body in the sense that it exists in the space between people who share love. Yes, I would agree with you, but with different words. All right. Thanks. I win. Which is really a lot of how, how, how, why we get along so well, you know? Like, absolutely, that is correct. But that, that further to me emphasizes that it is an illusion. But, uh, but absolutely that is true. Like my self definitely extends outside of myself and to relationships which certainly exist in a non-physical way and in a metaphorical way, like in an imagined way.

But like imaginary things are real. Are real. Like lots of things that are imagined are real. Correct. Like human rights. Super real. Like most of the most important things. Yeah.

Love. Super real. Yeah. All right, Hank. Having established that you believe in a human soul, which is a surprise to all of us, let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. The news for Mars, John. These folks, so there's a body called the U.S. National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,

and they would like people to go to Mars, and they have put out a report talking about why people should go to Mars. And there's a bunch of reasons why people talk about why people should go to Mars so that we can set up a colony and become a multi-planetary species to prevent the extinction of humans, which I would argue and have argued is a little bit silly because we've got a really good planet right now. And I don't have any faith in a group of humans being able to survive long-term on Mars without us here on Earth. But the reason that they have cited as by far the most interesting and important reason to send people to Mars, I'm very interested in and kind of excited by, which is to see if there was once life on Mars. Very specifically that goal. Now, they also assessed some different possible crude campaigns. So how would that actually work? The highest ranked one would look for an exploration area with a near surface glacial ice that could have signs of life.

It would also send astronauts for 30 days, Martian days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery and then a 300 Martian Day long crude mission. So starting out with a quick one and then a long one. Other campaigns include building drilling rigs to find liquid water that might have life in it. But there's also a lot of not included stuff in the report, like what specific exploration zones would be or ideas for protocols that would keep people safe on those missions, which is going to be tricky. Yeah, I can imagine. It's harder than we thought it was going to be. and we thought it was going to be really hard.

There's just 300 days is a long time. It's very short. Well, it's a long time to live somewhere other than Earth. Yeah, no, it's a long time and not a very long time. But, I mean, a lot can happen to you in 300 days when you're on Mars. Yeah. Sounds stressful to me. I don't think I'm going to do it.

And it's looking less and less like it's going to happen by 2027. I'll tell you that. Seems unlikely. Now that we know that our podcast is such a hit, I don't think we should change the name. Oh, I completely disagree. I think that we should take a risk. See if we can rebuild an audience from scratch. Yeah, we'll put it on a new RSS feed. Be like, everybody join us over here. Now it's dear John and Hank. John wants to brand new podcast. We're going to re-nookify. We got too big and we're starting over. All right. The news from AFC Wimbledon is terrible.

Aw, I thought it was good. No, we just lost yesterday to Exeter City, arguably the worst team in League one. we're down in ninth place after 18 games. I'm starting to get a little worried, Hank, because we're in ninth place, which is comfortable, but like we don't look good. Now, the counter argument is that Johnny Jackson, Johnny Jackson, AFC Wimbledon's manager, said after the game that half the squad was really sick, and it was an unusual starting lineup, and it turns out that even some of the players who played were really sick, like there's a stomach bug or something going around the AFC Wimbledon locker room. And so maybe that's That's why we didn't play well, but we did not play well.

Now, in the previous game, which did not matter, because it's in something called the Vertu Trophy, which does not matter. It's a nothing trophy. Yeah. We won 5-1. Yeah, I saw that one in my app, and I was like, all right, but it doesn't matter. We had four goals scored by Academy graduate Aaron Sassu. He scored more goals that day than in his 85 other appearances combined. So, good run for Aaron.

We're not playing him right. Maybe we should play him differently. He didn't play at all on Tuesday, I suspect, because he was part of the group that had the stomach bug. But hopefully he'll be back on Saturday when we play Mansfield Town. All right, Mansfield Town. And everybody, wash your hands. Wash your hands for the full 20 seconds, y'all. Sing yourself the happy birthday song. Scrub those fingertips. See, this is an advice podcast, a proper, proper advice podcast about hand washing management. And hard turkers. This podcast is edited by Ben Swardout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halls, Rojas, and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Dubuqi Truck-Ravardi. 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 awesome.