Dear Hank & John - 467: An Octopolis of Octopui

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

How did John approach writing dual narrators? Is there more air or water on Earth? How do book tours choose their stops? How late is too late to send a thank you card? Why do people say “it” when talking about weather? Why don’t Americans look at how other countries deal with the same problems? What is the symbol in the Dear Hank and John logo? …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/dearhankandjohnProduced for Hank and John Green by ComplexlySee 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 be as advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, do you know why dinosaurs don't make good pets? Extinction? Because they're dead!

Oh, I was right. You were right. You were right. but also the joke is technically wrong. Because actually, many dinosaurs do make good pets. I had a pet. I had several pet dinosaurs as I was growing up. You loved having a pet bird.

We had those finches. I had a conier, RICO. Your fascination with pet birds is almost repulsive to me. I really should have stayed at finches. The conier was too smart to be in that. in that situation. Yeah, that was a... I felt guilty about it my whole life.

Oh, I wouldn't feel guilty about it your whole life, but yeah, that bird could have had probably a slightly better life in the wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas potato, my dog would not have a better life in the wild. Like, there's no question that potato's life is better in captivity. I wonder, because we keep the cats inside, but one of our cats really wants to be outside. And I wonder if Gummy Bear just would be happier, not with us.

I feel like he'd go ahead and come back. But like, I'm not 100% sure. You know? I think it would be a prodigal son story. Gummy Bear would be interested to know what's out there and then would find out and be like, all right, that was good. That's enough. Reminds me of my all-time favorite movie, Big Bird Comes Home, which I've never actually

seen the end of because my son got so upset when Big Bird left home. Yeah. Yeah, there's a similar one where Big Bird gets lost at Christmas that Orrin also really didn't like. And I was like, I bet this is going to work out. Well, it's not just that it's going to work out. As I kept trying to explain, the film is called Big Bird Comes Home. There is no way for the film to accomplish its stated goal other than for Big Bird to leave home. Camia was actually a stray cat. Our previous cat was stray, lived in like a stray colony on the north side of Missoula. And man, she did not. want to go back to that lifestyle. She was like, this is great. I lost a bunch of teeth somehow doing that, and nobody liked that. I got diseases. Yeah. She was very happy. Well, this is my big argument with people who think that, including Kurt Vonnegut, a writer I admire deeply, you know, Kurt Vonnegut near the end of his life was big on the idea that we should have stayed hunter-gatherers or maybe we should

go back to it. And I just couldn't disagree more. I don't want to be an outside cat. No, no, this is definitely better. Yeah, I like potting with my brother. Now, there are pieces of stuff that we have lost that I think that we should be discovered. But yeah, I do think that we can cause problems for ourselves. So when we think that the goal of everything is to make everything as convenient as possible and to eliminate all struggle, like we got to not do that, there's reasons why doing stuff is good. But, man, I tell you what, I'm glad that that's that. there are dentists.

I'm glad there are dentists. I'm glad there's medicine. I'm grateful for all kinds. I'm grateful for the ability to talk with my brother, even though he lives far away from me. Admittedly, in a hunter-gatherer society, you would live next door. So that would be kind of convenient.

Yeah, but we wouldn't have Snickers or Pop-Tarts. Not just that. I mean, we wouldn't have blueberries in January. Like, and not just that, we wouldn't have an infant mortality rate hovering below 1%. That is a crazy thing. The, you know, this sort of like moment when we crossed globally, the infant mortality rate that we had had the whole time, you know, just like they stayed pretty steady there for, you know, 100,000 plus years. Yeah.

Yeah. This is my big argument with people who are like, how can you bring a baby into this broken world? I'm like, this broken world is very bad. Don't get me wrong. It is a complete catastrophe. It is. Yeah. really worrisome in many important ways. But the idea that this broken world is somehow more

broken than the previous broken worlds is ludicrous. Like, would I bring them into a world of absolute monarchy where they would, where they would, you know, live on subsistence wages as agricultural workers until they were 30 and died of tuberculosis? Yeah. A really interesting thing, I would shoot you. I want you to do this. Can you? make a video about the like average age at death thing where everybody's like the average people died when they were 30 and it's like well no the infant mortality rate dragged it way down but then there's the opposite version so if you like take that myth and and you're like no people people didn't die when they were 35 they died you know when they were older and but then the the the further myth gets created

that if you made it through childhood you die when you were 70 which is also not true the the the of death was high the whole time. Every age was an age at which you were more likely to die than you are today until you reach, you know, the 80s, and then it starts to even out some. But people were dying in

their 40s, in their 20s, in their 50s, in their 60s. They were dying the whole time. Yeah, the biggest reason why overall life expectancy was so low was certainly child mortality, but it wasn't the only reason. Yeah. But there was no like cliff

at any point? No, there was no cliff. You were, you did, I think the most common decade of death if you made it past the age of 10 was in your 70s. But you still had an elevated risk versus today of dying in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, et cetera. Right, right.

Your most, the most common decade of death was the 70s, but at the same time, you were unlikely to make it, like you had a less than 50% chance. of making it to your 70s. Well, a much less than 50% chance because you had a less than 50% chance of making it to 10. The children, yeah.

Even if you are only looking at people who make it to 10. Because there's just like, people had a high rate of death at every year of their lives. Oh, they died from accidents all the time. Oh, yeah. Accident death rate was high.

And the infection death rate was high. Poisoning. Infectious, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we just had so little understanding of what was causing human suffering and so little ability to alleviate it. I think what makes this century unique and interesting and devastating in some ways is that we have more knowledge that we don't implement. And so I think people are heartbroken.

And the injustice, we're more alive to the injustice because we understand it as injustice, which we didn't always have passed. Well, and also, like, people, wealthy people did have more opportunity. to not die, but also, you know, kings would have eight children and two would survive to adulthood. Right. It wasn't a, that was a shared burden. In some ways, the kings would have it worse off because there would be all these doctors giving advice. There was bad advice. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe. You know, like, have you tried rubbing a frog on it? Worse than that, I think. Yeah. But don't, but don't rub frogs on it. I'll tell you that. That's not good. Oh, I should mention my book Hollywood ending comes out in six days as you're listening to this.

Six days. Six days. When we make the next podcast, it will be out. I know. This is the last one. You should come see me on tour. I should say that. Birmingham, Alabama, New York City, Tucson, Arizona, Portland, Maine. Come see me on tour.

The other ones are sold out, except for Nashville. I don't think Nashville's sold out. Los Angeles is not sold out. Gainesville, Florida, as of recording anyway, is not sold out. out. So check it out. Hollywoodendingbook.com. You can also pre-order a signed copy, although those are harder to come by, Hank. Amazon is out of their allotment. Yeah, this book is got some buzz behind it. People are saying good things. Booklist magazine called it a triumph. And what else could you want to read a triumph? What's wrong with you? Well, I mean, mostly, I want to have written a triumph.

All right, John, well, this first question is from Emily, who has read the book. I don't know how they got. I don't know how she got one. There's a few arcs out there. The dual narration in Hollywood ending must have been a bear to write. How did you approach writing dual narrators? And what were the biggest challenges? Voice, continuity, even plot structure?

Do you have advice for writers who might also be writing for multiple narrators? I was so bad at this. I shouldn't say that, but I hated it. I had the great advantage of taking four years between narrators. And so in those four years, I became a different person and writer. And that allowed me. So Kai, who narrates about a little over half the book, is a guy who is on his first movie set, really. He doesn't have a lot of experience.

He's very charismatic, but very raw. and Juniper, the girl in the book, has been, I mean, the woman, she's 22, has been working on sets since she was six years old, and she's extremely ambitious and hardworking and dedicated and kind of has a reputation for being difficult. The reason she has that reputation is because she's a perfectionist and like, why shouldn't you be? Why shouldn't you want to create art that's better, that's the best art you can possibly make? And I wrote from Kai's perspective first, and I thought the whole novel was going to be from Kai's perspective with sort of looking at Juniper, you know. Yeah. And then I realized a couple years in that I needed to turn the camera around. And I was like, oh, that seems like a big challenge. So I just put it to the side and wrote the Anthropocene reviewed. So it feels like more than four years then.

Well, maybe four years later, I was like, all right, time to turn this camera around, see if we can write from Juniper's perspective. and I found that I could, but only because so much time had passed that I was like, I'd done something else, you know? Yeah. I was getting a bunch of outside feedback for writing as myself, for writing nonfiction, and I felt like, I don't know, I just felt like I could do it suddenly.

And Juniper's voice was harder for me, but also more fun to write. Sometimes, like, we get confused about something fundamental about the human experience, Hank, which is that we think, and I did this when I was in high school, I still do it sometimes. We think that the opposite of fun is hard. But in fact, hard work is often also very fun. It's just difficult. Yeah, there's like this thing where if it's hard, but you still feel good at it.

You still feel like you're making some kind of progress. Maybe not good at it, but like getting better or like creating something that feels, I don't know, like satisfying in some way. It can be any kind of satisfying. That that hard is really good. And that might be climbing up a mountain or it might be learning to play the piano or it might be writing a character who's outside of your comfort zone. Right. Right. Exactly.

It's not easy, but it's fun. It's fun because it's difficult. Easy is boring. It can be. Easy can be boring. That said, I do a lot of things that are easy. Like, I spend a lot of time on Instagram, and Instagram's pretty easy for me.

Yeah, and it's not boring. It's really designed to not be boring. If the one thing that they would like it to not be, anything but boring. Yeah. All right, Hank, I want to ask you a science question. Most of our questions this week are about Hollywood ending. Thank you, Rosiana. But we're going to ask one science question. Okay. Ayumi writes, hi, John and Hank. I'm Ayumi, exclamation point. My boyfriend and I got into a heated discussion about whether there is more air or water by volume, assuming air pressure is the pressure at sea level. I think there is more air, but my boyfriend thinks there is more water. His logic is that the air gets thinner, higher up. So when it gets compressed down to the air pressure at sea level, it wouldn't take up as much space. Could you help us? settled this one.

Am I you or eh? Am I you or I you me? Nice. Good pronunciation guide there. There's more air. Look, there's going to be

I would have thought there's more water. There's so much water. If you're talking about volume, if you're talking about volume, it's air. I'm talking about volume. Okay. Yeah, I mean, so certainly if you're talking about volume of

of the atmosphere, There's way more of it because this is the thing about a gas. It takes up the size of its container and the Earth doesn't have a container. And so it gets real fluffy up there and kind of extends, you know, depending on how you count, maybe forever. So like the atmosphere, like the top of the atmosphere is a line that is arbitrarily drawn by us making decisions, not by where the gas actually stops existing. Oh, really? You're telling me that there's air all the way to the sun? that doesn't not make sense to me.

Well, there's certainly stuff in the space all the way out to the sun. So there's more stuff per unit, like even if you're just looking at the space, like that there's nothing in there. There's more stuff per unit of volume inside the solar system, like inside the orbit of Pluto, than outside the orbit of Pluto.

Oh. So it's just like it is more stuff. And one of the things that makes up that stuff is gas that's, being tossed off of planets into the space. So you're telling me that when like a satellite is in orbit, it's really still on Earth in some ways. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely still inside of the area where there's more particles because of the Earth's atmosphere. And in fact, like most like things in low Earth orbit, unless they just are going to de-orbit, they actually have to be able to boost themselves.

Like the International Space Station is always doing boosts because the atmosphere is slowing it down. I think it's super high up. That becomes less of an effect, but still a little bit of one, except instead of like being a situation where you might crash down to Earth in like 50 years, it would be like 50,000, but still fewer than like a billion years. But Ayumi's boyfriend is correct to say, you can't really count that. What if you just like smushed it all down to standard pressure? So if you just like made it all, all of the atmosphere pushed it down into one atmosphere of pressure, then, uh, and, and have there be like a sharp cut off. In that case, there would still be more atmosphere, but not as much as I was actually expecting.

Like I was expecting to be orders of magnitude and it's like three times more. Okay. So, so there is more air than water, but only by three X if you're counting. Yeah. If you're equalizing for pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you, if you, if you like made Earth like equally, like entirely smooth. Yeah. Then the Earth's water would make a layer about 2.7 kilometers deep,

and the compressed atmosphere would make a layer about eight kilometers deep. That sounds like a cool planet, actually. Yeah, well, very wet. Not one that I'd like. As we said last episode, Ocean Bad. That's true. Ocean does not belong to us. It belongs to the others.

Mm-hmm. You could still have cool life, though. You could still have really cool life. You could have advanced dolphins. advanced octopodes, et cetera. Doing stuff, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't believe I got away with saying octopodes as a plural for octopus, but I did. You can do whatever you want. Like at this point, if somebody pluralized octopuses in a way that I'd never heard before, I'd be like, okay. I just am going to accept that we don't know how to do this one. What's a good, there's octopuses, there's octopodes, there's octopi. Octopi. Octopi.

Of course. What about octopoe? Octopi. Yeah, we should start doing that. Yeah. We should see, we should see inserted into a script in Hank's channel and see if you can get away with it. It'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. You guys don't understand. The technical pluralization of octopuses, it's octopoe. I've done the research. Yeah. I did the math. It goes all the way back to the 13th century, octopoe. It's yes. And just lie. The Pope said so. As you can see from this recent encyclical on AI, he mentions in a footnote that the plural of octopus is octopoe.

No, it was an old encyclical from the 12th century. Oh, okay, an old encyclical, yes. Yeah, yeah, he was defining the fishes. I only trust the current Pope when it comes to encyclicals. All right, we got another question from Lillian who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was looking up tour dates for John's new book, Hollywood ending, available for pre-order now. This joke is going to die, Hank. This is the last episode where that joke exists. It's the only reason we could get away with it right now.

I live in Texas, and I'm sad you're not stopping in Texas. On the one hand, come to Texas. We're the second biggest state population-wise, and we've got great cities. So surely lots of people would come to the show. You're so right, Lillian. I'm so annoyed that I'm not going to Texas, and I'll tell you why in a minute. On the other hand, Texas has no shortage of problems. Well, Lillian, that's not a deal breaker for me, obviously. I'm going to a lot of states that have problems, including where I live. If I was going to go to places with fewer problems, I would only go to Canada. All right, I don't generally sing its praises, so I can't really fault you.

What's your reason for not coming to Texas? More generally, how do you decide where to go on tour? Are there special analytics? Do you throw darts on a board? Is it based on dream vacation spots? Pumpkins and penguins. I have no idea what that means. Lillian, nobody does, Lillian.

You're good. I've forgotten its origin even. Hank, do you know why you went on tour to the places you went on tour? Yeah, yeah. I think that it's just sort of like we're trying to make things work. Well, there is an element of we're trying to make things work with flights and whatnot, but it's not all that. So this is actually a really interesting, complicated thing in the world of publishing. A lot has to be considered. Yes, whether or not flights will work. But a big thing that has to be

considered is, especially for authors that have a large following who will sell a lot of books, is two questions. One, has the bookstore in question been adequately supported by large events already this year by that publisher? Like, is Rebecca Yaros going to that store or that town? and if she is, maybe they don't also need a Lee Bardugo event. Oh, wow, okay. Also. So the publishing industry is looking at like the favors they've done for bookstores previously. It's not really favors necessarily.

It's more like we want all of these bookstores all around the United States to thrive. Okay. And events are an important, big events are an important way that they thrive. Interesting. Jeez. This is complicated. And then another consideration. It's funny because when you, when you ask me, when I went on tour, I was imagining comedy and music, not my book tour, which I don't remember at all. The comedy and music is very much like, whatever we can make work.

We have to call the venues and grind this out until we're not driving through the middle of the night and are killing ourselves. And to be fair, that was the case for our book tours for a long time, right? Like before the fault in our stars, like our book tours were grinding it out, driving in the middle of the night. in a minivan. So, I mean, I say our book tours, my book tours, that you graciously went on out of the kindness of your heart. But the other consideration is if the author publishes a book every year, does the author want to go to all the same cities?

Now, I don't want to go to all the same cities, right? Because I want to meet new people. I want to have opportunities to talk to people from different newspapers, whatever, whatever, whatever. Yeah. And so I had a tour last year for everything as tuberculosis where I did go to Texas, where I did go to the Pacific Northwest. And so the thought was, well, this year we won't go to those places because we went there last year. Instead, we'll go to places like Boise, Idaho and Tucson, Arizona, and Portland, Maine that you've never been to or haven't been to in a long time. And that's the thinking. Now, would I prefer to go to Austin or Houston every year? Yeah, I love Austin. I love Houston. Like those places, I do great in those places. I do amazing in the Pacific Northwest.

Like I would sell a Pacific Northwest show, no problem. But I also want to meet new nerd fighters. Like I want to have different people, give different people an opportunity to see me to experience like what it's like to be in a room full of people who like the same thing, who may not have an opportunity to be in that room very often, et cetera. So all of that factors in, I'm sorry that I'm not going to Texas. I do feel really bad about it. John.

But I could not extend the tour by another week. Are you going to Florida at all? Yeah, I'm going to Gainesville. Okay. So this is a thing about, can I say, and I know that there are people in Florida who are listening to me talk right now. Tens of millions of them.

I just feel, well, I don't. Oh, listening. It's a top podcast for Florida teens. Is there anyone listening outside of Florida? Hold on a second. Are there tens? If there are tens of millions of people listen to this podcast, we are under-production value.

So, but, but like, I just think that we, like, of the states, we are tiny and, like, Florida hates us. It's just, like, there's just our vibe in Florida's vibe of a hard time overlapping. Which is funny because we're from Florida. We are Florida boys. But you mean that we don't draw well in Florida. We don't draw well in Florida. well in Florida when I've gone to Florida to do stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think that the show in Gainesville

will sell out because it's in a big college town. Like being in a big college town is a huge, huge advantage for me. And this bookstore, The Links, is amazing. It's owned by Lauren Groff. They do an amazing job of hosting events. And that's the other thing, right, is that you've got to consider, like, do bookstores do an amazing job of hosting events and have a lot of experience hosting big events and getting their customers excited about events, like, things like that. There's so many things to consider. Anyway, point being, we do not do well in Florida. I remember we were in seaside Florida for like a week in 2012, right when the fault and our stars came out.

And we called it the world capital of teenagers who don't know who we are. Yeah. Like everywhere we went, we would be with teenagers. And usually back in 2012, when we were with teenagers, we'd be like, oh, boy, here we go. They're going to want selfies. but the ones in Seaside, Florida were like, who the hell are you? I did a planetarium in Miami, which is like the coolest thing. You played a planetarium?

Hank Green at a planetarium, and it had like 50 seats, and it was not half full. You didn't sell it out. No. You know the worst place I ever drew? My worst draw ever. I mean, obviously, like, when I was starting out, like, my first, like, three books, I never had more than six people at an event. So that was my worst draw ever.

But like my worst draw after the Fultner Stars, by far the World Economic Forum in Davos. Oh, John. That place was empty. How did you get to do? Those billionaires were not interested in my feedback. Yeah. But that makes sense. Richard Branson had other plans.

I can't believe you did that. It's so funny. They asked me. to say, it would never occur to me to say yes to that. I don't know why I said yes. I mean, look, I haven't said yes since. But like, I felt like, I was like, oh, I remember what I thought. I thought, oh, this is a great opportunity to talk about global health to powerful people.

But it turns out it was a great opportunity to talk about global health to an empty room. Oh, boy. Well, you know, I will say that planetarium show kicked ass. It was great. Yeah. Well, in fact, today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's podcast. Planetarium Show in Miami in 2017. Hank's Planetarium Show in Miami, it kicked ass. This podcast is also brought to you by rubbing a frog on it. Rubbing a frog on it, you never know. And today's podcast is

brought to you by a flat planet with 2.7 kilometers of ocean covering it entirely. A flat planet with 2.7 kilometers of ocean covering it entirely. It doesn't sound that bad. Doesn't sound that bad. As long as you're a dolphin. It's great news if you're a dolphin. And this podcast is brought to you by Octopoe. The all of the octopoe of the world gathering to say, look, this is how it's pronounced. What do you call a gathering of octopoe? Careful. I know.

I almost made a mistake there. All going to Google it of Octop. Of Juggalo's was the... That's it. Why was that? A gathering of octa, it's called a consortium. A consortium. I love it.

The most commonly suggested name. A tangle, a knot or an arm load also. No, it's a consortium. You can call it an octopolis. An octopolis of octoply. An octopolis of octoply. This episode of Dear Hankajon is brought to you by Wayfair. Here's something that I've never told anybody about before.

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See the website for more details. All right. We've got to answer more questions, Hank. We've been going real slow today. I got one. This next question comes from Zofia, who asks, dear Hank and John, what is the statute of limitations for thank you cards? I had every intention of writing a thank you card to a family who gave me a campus tour of the university they work out, but I never ended up writing one. This was a year ago.

Can I still send them a thank you card? Thank you, Sophia. No. Yes. Okay, well, it's our first ever brotherly argument. I think we should cancel the entire podcast. It's never happened before. a year?

A year. Yeah. There's several ways that you can do this. They're not the normal ways, though. You can't just send them a thank you card anymore. Correct. Way number one, you got to recognize that you, like, every day that you haven't thanked them, you are accruing interest on the gratitude.

So you're not less grateful now, which is how you feel. You feel a little less grateful now. It's just like not as big of a deal in your life as it is right afterward, which is why it's good to get the thank you cards. quickly. But you got to put how you feel to the side because actually your gratitude must be higher. So there is interest accruing. And so you have to be more grateful. And so maybe instead of just a card, it's a card with some, a little bag of tea from Keatsonko or something. Or I think the better way to go is you send a thank you card. But before it leaves your house, it looks like it has been

to hell and back. It's got like return to send her on it 16 times. It's been all over the world. It's been stepped on. It's got Zambian postage on it. It was stuck in a machine for months. Yeah. No, I think what you do is you, you, you, you, get the person a book from your library, from your existing collection of books. And you said, I read this book and thought of you. And I was reminded how grateful I am for that campus tour you gave me all those many months ago. John, I can't help but have had Zofia. I can't help but have had an legitimate business idea here, which is to create a whole new kind of card.

greeting cards. They're called vintage thank you cards. And their thank yous for things that happened a long time ago. It's a good idea. It's not a bad idea. They're like, yeah, yeah. Or maybe, look, maybe this, hold on, maybe it's not a product. It's just a movement.

I was going to say, why does everything have to be a business? Why can it just be a movement? A business. Maybe we just start doing this. Yeah. If anybody sends a vintage thank you card, let me know. Don't tell John

let us know in the dear Hangejohn inbox. I would love to know if people send little vintage thank you cards to people. I should do that too. The things that I'm grateful for that I never thanked people for officially. All right, Hank, we got another question from Winnie. Winnie writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm nine.

My name's Winnie. I've noticed that when people talk about the weather, they say it. What does this mean? What is the it in it? It rained. Seriously, though, I don't know. She's not windy. She's winnie. Yeah, but it is windy. Wendy. I have no idea. I looked into this once. Somebody has asked me this question or I have this thought, because I have gone down this research rabbit hole before. And it is just it.

Well, it is the weather, right? Like, it is a shorthand for the weather. and when you say like, so you say it is cold outside, you're saying the weather is cold outside. Yeah, and there are other times when you do this. Not a lot of them, but there are other times. Like what, Mr. I know so much? It looks like I'm going to die today. It looks, it looks like I'm going to die today. It's the situation at large.

Because I don't think it is the weather. You're right. It's the situation at the day. at large. The situation at large is cold. The situation at large looks like I'm going to die today. Winnie, I'm sorry I brought death into this conversation. I know you're only nine. It's okay.

I got a nine-year-old. He thinks about death. Yeah, I like this because it is like the whole considerable censorium. Yes. The whole considerable censorium looks like it's going to die today. No, no, no. The whole considerable sense. Makes me feel like I'm going to die today. It doesn't look like it's going to die today.

But the thing that I remember is that like there are languages where you don't have to do this, but we need a pronoun in the sentence. So we like have to force a pronoun into the sentence for the sentence to make sense. And so we like grab the most generic one out and use that. if we said she looks like I'm going to die today, it would be very confusing. For sure, unless she was doing something very specific. She looks like I'm going to die today is not a good sentence. It is if, I think it's a lovely sentence if, like, you are being encountered by a person who looks like they're going to kill you.

She looks, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so. She looks like I'm going to die today. That's true. Yeah, I looked in her eyes and she looked like I'm going to die today. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's a cool turn.

That's not bad. I'm going to use that in my next book. It's like probably in Kill Bill, you know? Probably is. All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask you one more question from Manuel, who writes, Dear John and Hank, and this is a brutal question, Hank. Just prepare yourself.

I'm from Spain. Manuel, as we've established many times on this podcast, you're not allowed to brag about where you're from. Okay? Not allowed to brag about your EU passport, your social health care. Oh, is it sunny? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. It only rains in the planes, yada, yada, yada.

Can you get on a train and then go to Paris? Can you get on a train? Actually, cancel that. Can you get on a train? Oh, ooh. Wow, Mr. Fancy Pants over here has public transport. How's the sun every day? Yeah.

All right. I've noticed something that genuinely puzzles me. Whenever we have a problem here in Spain, again, Manuel, you don't have to bring it up. I think they have problems. We instinctively look abroad. How does Finland run its schools? How does Switzerland run its democracy? It's reflexive. The news does it. Politicians do it. Everyone does it. But I listen to the daily from the New York Times every single day. And I almost never hear Americans ask, how does another country handle this? There are other countries. They do. Manuel, there is an answer to this, but you're not going to lie. On the rare occasions they do, it's always Canada or the UK, because we only read in English, Manuel. So my question is, why? Is it size? Is it self-confidence? Is it something in the water? What does a country lose when it stops looking outward and is America losing it? Lots and yes, always reading everyone else's manual, Manuel from Madrid. Oh, great. He's not even just from Spain. He's from the best part of Spain. Oh, how's your great soccer team?

Congratulations on your 15 champions leagues. All right. It is precisely because, and I think about this all the time, I think it is a larger problem. In the United States, when they do the weather, okay, like on the Today Show in the morning, which is a national show shown all around the country, when they do the weather in the morning,

they do the weather in America. Yeah. The weather has to be so bad somewhere else. for them to mention the existence of weather elsewhere? Yeah, yeah. It has to be like hundreds of people dying. Catastrophic. It's like dozens of people die.

Nah. It has to be catastrophic to even get a mention. And so you never think about the fact that it's dry or raining in Sierra Leone or in Madrid. You never think about the fact that it's hot or cold or on fire or whatever. We simply don't know. We simply don't know. And so we are not exposed to the way other countries. do things. And then there is an element of American exceptionalism here, I think, Hank,

and you can confirm or deny this, where we also think that we are the leaders of the world and so have nothing to learn from the world. And when people bring up the fact that, in fact, we're not leaders in the world and lots of countries have higher life expectancy than we do or higher average income or less poverty or whatever metric you want, fewer gun deaths, whatever metric you want to use, people get very brusk and briskly about that. And they feel like, well, that wouldn't be possible in a country the size of the United States or that wouldn't be possible in the United States. And it's a real problem.

And I think you've identified something really important about American political discourse. Yeah, I think in particular in politics, like you can't as a person running for office in America be like, but like they do it this way in the, Nordics. And it's like, yeah, what are you saying that like we'd be better if we weren't America? Boo. And it's very hard to sort of imagine that we could take advice from other places. I will say at the same time, two things. First, we have states to compare between. So that's what we do a lot is we're like, here's how they do it in California. And like every state has its own freaking rules and laws. We have relatively powerful states here relative to like most European countries. And then second,

We do do this. We just don't do it in like the broad political discourse. Like in the gun control debate, Australia is brought up a lot as a country that once had guns and changed its laws. In the health care debate, it is very often brought up that we're the only one like this. We're the only one. That's very common to be like there's only one country where it developed rich country that does not have universal health care. And it's us. There are lots of different ways to do that universal health care, but it is, I think, in my circles

anyway, frequently discussed. We're also the only country that spends 18% of its GDP on health care. So in addition to getting really bad outcomes, we spend way more money. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We get great outcomes for the very rich, though. We do. We do.

To be fair, we get pretty good outcomes for the really rich. We don't actually get universally good outcomes for the really rich, because we still have a lot of chronic illness. But yeah, we get we get pretty good outcomes for, you know, yeah, that's true. And I guess that's our priority, John. All right, John, this next question is from Ali who asks, Dear Hank and John, I was just listening to your podcast that I've been listening to for three years now. And I went to go pause. And I noticed that the yellow circle in your logo is not just a yellow circle. There's a symbol of some kind within slash behind it. What is this? And why is it there. And has it always been there? Sincerely questioning everything I see, Ali. Boy, I love the

idea that we just snuck this in one day. We should just keep changing it. It should be different all the time. What is it? I don't even know. Do you know what it is? Yeah. Let me look. Let me look real quick. I mean, I've never looked at our logo before in a meaningful way. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's just a circle. No, look at it. Click on it. Oh, there's a little something back. there. It's the Nerdfighteria logo. Yeah, it's the NerdFiteria crest. When did we insert that? By Vondel Swain, I think, is who designed that? Yeah, Von Del Swayne designed that. When was that? And when was that added? I've been there the whole time. I made this logo and I put it there. Oh, I had no idea. I thought it was just a circle. Yeah, it's there. Wow, cool. Good job. Good logo design.

No, thanks. It's a little unbalanced now that I'm looking at it, but it's fine. You did your best. Speaking of doing your best, AFC Wimbledon are about to play as I speak to you, Hank. Okay. Get it. Get it, AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon will be playing Burton. Burton.

I mean, these team names, they just, they feel fictional. It's Burton, Al, B, and FC. The owls? The owls? No, I think they're the, I think they're the, they're the Brewers because Burton, upon Trent was the brewing area of England. Yeah. Good.

They play them yellow and black. I do like a yellow and black kit. I like a yellow and black logo, I got to say. You know who plays for Burton Albion? Joe Lewis, former me of AFC Wimbledon, the guy who I helped pay for to bring into the football club left us for Burton Albuyan. And he was like, boo, I want to go brew. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do, man?

He went to go live his best life in Burton. Yeah. Do they move? Do they go live in different places? Oh, yeah. No, they don't just like, you can't like take the train every morning to, you know, from London to Burton in order to enjoy your training session or whatever. I'm honestly just assumed that you could. That's how unfamiliar I am with trains.

Yeah, I know. We're far removed from trains. But I believe, if I'm not mistaken, let me look up where Burton is real quick. Burton is, in my opinion, not close to London. It looks like it's in the Midlands. I just assume that England is like kind of walkable, the whole thing. Right. It does feel that way, doesn't it?

Like Scotland's only probably like two days away. By foot. By foot. That's got to be right. No, it's both a big country and a small island. I did say in a script recently in a video that Wales is three days walk from London and everybody gave me a hard time about it. But like, it's technically true as long as you do not rest.

Right. You just got to walk the whole time. Yeah. Like that Stephen King story. The walk? I think it's called the long walk. Oh, wow. I did good.

I was really a guess. You've got to walk at four miles an hour consistently or you get shot. Oh, that's bad. It's a reality TV show featuring youths. Oh. Oh, I think I've seen clips of this turned into a TV show or movie. Correct. Because that's how I consume media now. Oh, God. God help us.

What's the news from Mars, Hank? In Mars News, Blue Origin has won the NASA contract for telecommunications on Mars. This is important. We must telecommunicate with Mars. So this is a deal worth potentially $700 million. You're creating just a telecommunications orbiter that will be in use by 2028. I think that the- Just in time for there to be people on Mars. I think that literally the date where the contract says it has to be thereby is the last day of 2028.

So it's the day before the podcast changes names. I have to do a new logo. You do. Oh, no. I definitely don't have the source files for that. But I think I know what font it is. So you'll figure it out. I can do it.

And one of the things that we're running into as we do all of this great space stuff is that we're running, like, we're bandwidth constrained. So, for example, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is going out to where the web telescope is. And so they're going to be out there together. And the Roman is going to be sending like 10 times more data back because it's just a much. it's better at gathering a lot of data. And you have to be able to get all of that to Earth. And if that breaks, it doesn't matter how good the pictures are if we can't see them. And then you think about Voyager, so like all the way out there past the edge of the solar system,

still sending information back. Voyager is mostly a satellite dish for sending high energy radio waves to Earth. And so like you have to figure this stuff out. And there's actually a big, One of the fun ideas is, boy, wouldn't it be cool if we could send a lot of cheaper stuff out into the solar system or to Mars? That doesn't matter if you don't have the bandwidth to send the data back and to send the commands there to make the things all do things. So we need these telecommunication systems to handle that bandwidth and be able to get it back to us and also figure stuff out for when, you know, Mars might be behind the sun and we can't talk to it or the various. Orbiters are in various places and they're sending data between them, et cetera.

Well, congrats to Jeff Bezos on his big win. Blue origin. I actually never thought about the origin of that name. Is it because we came from the ocean? Everything is really blue-origined, especially Octopoe. I don't like that he now owns part of my childhood football club. But fortunately, I'm an AFC Wimbledon fan and they're owned by their fans. That's right.

he bought a children's sports team no no no he bought a grown-up sports team that I rooted for as a child and still root for Liverpool okay I am going to go now to do the Patreon live stream that we do once a month Hank is going to go there as well so if you want to be part of that you can join us at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John thank you for your emails at Hank and John at gmail.com and Hank thank you for potting with me

of course I'm happy to and if you send any Vintage thank you cards, please let us know. Indeed. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhouse. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Meddish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrowas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Tobuki Trukervardi. 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.