Dear Hank & John - 471: Letters From Florida

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Why is every saucepan round? Do authors get any influence over the physical properties of their books? How do animals change as they age? How do I deal with job rejection emails? Do other mammals experience morning sickness? …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. Nor is I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a comedy 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 A.F.U. Wimbled and John, you know why you haven't seen much of the Energizer Bunny lately? Why? It's actually kind of a sad story.

He's in prison because he was charged with battery. Oh, not assault, just battery. Now, Hank, let me ask you a serious question. Do you know what battery is? I think it's the part where you hit the person. I think it's, you can do assault without actually doing any physical damage. But battery is when the, when the flesh meets the flesh or the bat. It's great, Hank.

You did a great job summarizing that. I almost feel like you should be a defense lawyer. That would have worked in front of a jury anytime. Did the flesh meet the flesh? Yeah. Where the flesh meets the flesh is not a terrible name for a novel. I would not for me, though. No, I wouldn't write that one.

No. It's not a Hank Green novel. It's not a John Green novel, either, to be fair. We've got to be careful with that. But I think it is a novel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're writing all kinds of books these days out there.

Used to be. In my day, we only had two kinds of books, regular and science fiction. Yeah. Yeah, now, yeah, now they're doing, they're like, what if romance and fantasy were one thing? Yeah, it's great. It's good stuff. I love a good romanticie. Speaking of, I got to say, I apologize for my chair.

I'm getting a new chair. It's so squeaky. I'm trying to keep the hinge that squeaks from moving, but it will squeak, and it's not the greatest noise. Have you tried to grease it with like WD40 or anything? Are you just throwing it away? I have. I have tried to grease it. something about this hinge is ungraceable, apparently.

Send your tips to Hank and John at gmail.com. Well, Hank, I am on the road. I am still on the road. I will always be on the road. I live in a different hotel room every night. We had an interesting conversation earlier where you told me that you've never once thought about the fact that your hotel room

has been slept in by thousands of people. Yeah. You think that like the hotel room just appears sui generis. That's the illusion that they are trying to give me. And I accept the illusion. I know that it's true. I've known that it's true for, you know, not the whole time. I think for a little while I actually just straight never even considered the possibility.

Now I am aware rationally that that's the situation. It just doesn't enter my mind. I let the illusion wash over me. Oh, I don't. I'm able, I love a hotel, and I'm very grateful to everybody who makes my hotel experiences so, so relatively pleasant. But I do rather miss, and you're not going to hear this sentence very often in human history, but I do miss Indianapolis. Yeah, I bet. I'm sure that you would like to be home. I hope that the touring is fun. There's a line in Hollywood ending that is taken from my real life where I said to somebody in Hollywood, they said, are you in

LA or New York, which is what people in Hollywood say. They said, do you live in L.A. or New York? Because there literally is no third place to them. And I said, I'm from Indianapolis. And without pausing, they said, my condolences. Wow. That's funny. I have a similar experience where they say, are you from New York or L.A.?

And I say, I live in Montana. And they say, oh, I love Whitefish. What's that? Which if you're from Montana, that you're like, oh, I like you less now. Whitefish is like a resort. It's like the what's the one in Wyoming where everybody goes?

You got me, buddy. Jackson Hole? Jackson Hole, that's the one. It's like the Jackson Hole of Montana. Okay. It's like the fancy. I'm not a skier. So I tried to ski twice

and the second time I had a panic attack near the top of the mountain and my poor wife had to get me down the mountain and I'm sure I've told this story on the pod before Because at one point I fell down and Sarah looked at me and I was drenched in sweat and fear. And Sarah said, I think this might be the first time that the ski patrol is going to be called over a mental health issue. It's scary.

It's horrible. What a horrible sport. You can't, you get up there. And then it's like, okay, you got to do it now. You really do. You got to do it. And you can get like a quarter of the way down and be like, freaking done with this, but you're not. No, it ain't up to you. It's up to the mountain. Yeah.

You can't go back up to the lift. You can if you're up there. You might be able to get back on the lift and go down. But once you're a quarter of the way down, down's where you're going. I do not. Which is also true of the life. Great. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. Let's start with this one from Heidi, who writes, Dear John and Hank, why is every saucepan always round. Why not square something even cooler? Heidi 11. Heidi 11, this is so, I love the answer to this question. So many times things are the way that they are so that they will be optimally useful. And it's true that this is a useful shape for a pan. It can make it easier to clean if it doesn't have any corners. The heat evenly distributes out from the middle to the edges. And if you've got a square,

you're going to have corners that don't get very hot. Also, isn't there an issue where, it's just stronger? Like cylinders are stronger than squares? Yeah, but I don't know that this is a huge deal for a metal pan. But the real root reason is that things are also the shape they are based on how hard or easy it is to make those things. It is way harder to make a square pan than a round pan. You can kind of imagine a pan being made similarly to a pot where it's going to be on a wheel and there's like the person shaping the thing as it spins.

And this is like makes it way easier to make that shape, except instead of, you know, being wet clay, it's molten metal. Like it's hot metal that can be shaped. And so there's a whole sort of situation happening where, you could watch people making pots and pans where the hot metal is being shaped as it spins. And so that is the,

that is the only way to, you can only make things circular if it's being. made in that way. You know how every time a new boss comes into an organization, they're like, I can see things from the outside. Like, I can, you know, I can see efficiencies that you've never glimpsed. And then eventually they learn that, like, everything is the way that it is for a reason. Yeah.

Uh-huh. And their efficiencies inevitably turn into, like, microefficiencies at best. Yeah. I mean, there are rarely times when, you know, it's usually when, like, some new technology has happened. But, yeah. Pretty much, though, in my experience, I haven't had that many executive bosses, but I've had a few. And every time they'd come in and they'd be like, publishing is fundamentally broken and here's how we're going to fix it.

And then eventually, like, six months later, they're like, actually publishing is a pretty mature business where a lot of the innovation has already happened. Yeah. And there's a bunch of constraints that we can't all change at the same time, unfortunately. And thus, we will continue to do this because fixing any of these problems would be marginal improvements at best. Yeah, and fixing the problems would create new problems. This is something people, especially in technology, underappreciate about solving problems, is that solving problems create new problems, and you have to ask yourself, do I prefer the new problems or the old problems? Yeah. Man, I love to create a problem by solving a problem. I know, but you sometimes forget about how, and sometimes that's really good, right? Like solving the antibiotic problem caused lots more adults, which created a lot of a problem. Yeah. But like that was a great problem to have, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh man, what are we going to do about? Yeah. It's such a shame that antibiotics created antibiotic resistance. And it's like, well, that's actually, it was, it was a, but a bunch of problems got solved on the way to antibiotic resistance that we should all be very happy got solved. Yeah. I'm just saying that like the CEO of electromagnetic corp and saucepan delivery company.

Yeah. Has ideas that are that are not as good as they think they are. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really cool to see like things being in, like the way that they are based on things that aren't visible to us. You know? Yeah, it's beautiful. A good example is that a great number of LED lights do not have, have no reason to be the shape that they are,

but they are the shape that they are because there were really good reasons for incandescent lights to be. the shape that they were. And now LED lights just kind of have to fit into that form factor because that's the, that's like the sockets and the lamps and the holes in the ceiling are designed for those older light bulbs. And now we're making new sockets that are designed for the LED lamps that are designed to fit into the old sockets. And we're just going to be stuck that way forever. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. We've got another question that comes from Kat who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm reading Hollywood ending available for purchase at your local bookstore in a tiny coffee shop and really loving how the book feels in my hands,

which is big for me. I generally prefer soft covers, but I make exceptions if I really love the author or the general hand feel of a book. Now, Hank, I just have to tell you before I get to the rest of this question, cat is my type of reader, okay? I need more readers in the world who use the phrase hand feel. Hand feel. Yeah. It got me wondering, I know authors get to say over things like the font and the cover design. Oh, cat, I've got terrible news. But do you get influence over all the physical properties of the book as an object. Are you out here feeling different weights or types of paper? Do you get to sample different book prototypes and choose between various dimensions and shapes and weights? If yes, how do you as the author think about those things? If no, have you ever

gotten an early copy of one of your books and been like, this feels awful? Pumpkins and Penguins cat. Hank, did you have control over your covers in the font? I got my first cover. I've told this story before and I was like, you guys, I see what you did there, but you can't make it look like a John green book. I see where you're going for and I hate it. Yeah. I get it. I get it. I appreciate it. I understand that it's probably the best thing to do, but let's not have a handwritten font. Yeah. I am very lucky that I get quite a bit of say in my covers. Like I essentially have veto power. It's not in my contract or anything, but I functionally have veto power. And I think more and more authors have veto power. When I was started out, you had no control. Like, I actively disliked some of the covers for my early books,

and I had absolutely no ability to change them. Oh, man. An abundance of Catharines. Well, we don't have to talk about it, but it had a cover. And now it has a different cover, which was designed by a nerd fighter named Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, I got a very similar cover to the abundance of Catherine's cover for one of my international editions. And I was like, look, if you're going to use a few different silhouette cutouts, I need you to know. not repeat one of them. Like, good God. Well, I have, I will say, I have no control over my foreign covers. And when they come, I am surprised every time. I am surprised by the title, which they often change, like the title in Norway of the fault in our stars is bad word fate. Like, like, I can't,

I can't say the title on this podcast because of, because there are 11 year olds listening. It's a great, it's a great title for a book. It's a great title for a book, but it's a old title for a children's book. You know, we're prudes over here in America. We are. We clearly are. My favorite title, though, is the Swedish title of the Fault in Our Stars. Sooner or later, I will explode.

That's so good. It's a really different direction to go in. It's so good. Do you know, do you have any good Hollywood ending titles yet? All the titles are Hollywood ending. they're not even they're not like i think the uh the the the the the only one that's not using the english words hollywood ending is in brazil so yeah and all the covers look the same now because

they're using the english english words okay yeah and all all the covers are designed similarly now are the same because there's so much internationalization of overall culture that like it makes sense because french readers are going to see the english edition and vice versa right and so might which will have more impressions of the same cover. I'm looking at the Italian edition, and it says Hollywood ending John Green, but there's a subtitle. Amore, Floree, copione.

I think that means... I'm looking it up. Ooh, cute. Do you know what it means? What's it mean? It means love off script. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll take it. Yeah. That's a little pun, a little extra pun. Yeah. That's great stuff. I mean, I'm so grateful. that I have foreign editions. Look, I'm grateful to be published at all.

But the answer to your question is the vast majority of authors get absolutely no say in whether or not the book is matte or glossy on the dust jacket, whether or not what the font is, whether or not the paper is of a certain quality. I get some saying that stuff, and it's really, really important to me because I share your love of hand feel. That sounded not quite like I wanted it to say. It's okay. Okay.

You sure? Yeah. Because I'm consumed with regret. Well, I think that that's something everyone should know about you. Do you ever see people say, like, I recently saw an interview with Madonna where she was like, I don't regret any of it because it gave me the life I have today and I love my life. And I was like, what is that like? Yeah, I've seen this and I just don't believe it. I cannot accept it.

It's like when I see people who say that they like the taste of olives, I'm like, you're right. You're just lying. It tastes so bad. I think Sylvester Stallone in a recent interview, he's on a press junket for something, and he said, I could build a palace with my regrets. Yeah. And he's like, and I can.

And I have. It's in Hawaii. It's on the water. It's lovely. I shouldn't have done that much. movie, but I said, have another house. I made, I call this one Rocky 4. So I, to authors out there, I was shocked by this. I couldn't change much about the book, but I said, hey, can I make a change to the cover? And they were like, no. And I was like,

okay, but here's the change. And I showed them the change. And they were like, yeah, sure, actually. What was the change? And I don't think anyone in the wild has ever noticed this change. Wow. But if you look real close, you might find it. Okay. Let's, let's open the thoughts. But only in the hardcover, original hardcover edition.

Hank and John at gmail.com. Tell us if you find the change and Hank will reveal it in the next episode. But I think this is a very cool, cool thing. I also added Carl's eyes in that book. I was like, I'd like him to have eyes. So I added the eyes. And, and, but, but I was like, so, so two authors of the world, you know, I do think that I am weird for sure.

And so this might not be the case. But if you do a little something that's unnoticeable, they might let you get away with it. So readers of Hollywood ending have figured out that there are different colors to the cases underneath the, uh, dust jacket. Mm-hmm. It depends just on whether you got a signed edition, where you bought it, whatever. there's four different case color combinations. When they initially were like, hey, is this something you'd be interested in?

I said, yes, I would like there to be 632 different color combinations. Like there are 632 different color combinations in Andy Warhol's sunset series. And they were like, great, our counteroffer is four. Which is a bit of a bummer. But it's something. I love that, John. It's so cool. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know what the, I don't know what the, I don't know what the limitations are here. Um, so there were. There are some limitations. Yeah. So perhaps this would not be a possible thing to do. But as a reference and a project, um, I think that's a fantastic idea. But I was delighted to find that that, that the moment when people realized that there were different colors. Yeah, I didn't want to spoil that for them. I wanted them to figure it out on their own. It was a great joy. Yeah.

All right, let's answer another question, Hank. This one's from Ruth, who writes, Dear John and Hank, the other day I was walking and I saw a squirrel that was going gray, not a gray squirrel, a brown one graying. Oh, like me? Yeah. I'd never notice this before. Do squirrels grow old in the same way that humans do? In what ways do other mammals age differently than humans?

I've seen my dog get slower in her later years, but she's also not getting wrinkly or forgetful. Hmm. When repeated a bark, Ruth. Ruth, Ruth, Ruth. Both. Nice. Yeah. No, I would never have realized. Me neither until just now. I mean, I really had to act it out. I had to bring it to life.

So there's a lot here. Okay. But I think actually animals do get wrinklier as they get older. We just don't tend to notice as much because they're covered in hair. So that's one thing. Animals do gray. And there's something very interesting about graying in that it appears that it happens more, though not only. in social species than in species that are not social. And so that's an indication that maybe it's a signal. It's so like that it's definitely a signal in the case of like a silverback gorilla. So the gorilla is going gray as it matures and it like takes on a new social role in its community. And that may also be the case for humans where to some extent it is signaling that this person has entered into a different phase of life and it should be treated or respected differently.

Now tell me more about how I should be treated and respected, please. I think that you should be. I think that we've messed this up. We've messed this up by like praising youth too much. But I think that in a proper society, people would look at me and be like, what's wrong with him? Why doesn't he have gray hair or and is not bald? I just like, I'm like stuck in youth. I need to, I need to move past.

I'm 46 years old. What's going on? And the Steve Martins of the world. would just be respected earlier. But clearly, socially, we now have, we obsess over youth. And so we are oftentimes hiding the signs of aging where otherwise we would not. But it does seem like that to some extent that it probably plays some kind of social role. But it also shows up in other animals that are not super social, just less so.

And so there's probably also a component that's about senescence to some extent. And all animals age. I don't know that all animals get forgetful. It seems likely that they would because the brain is really hard to figure out and maintain. But certainly all animals age and squirrels are no different. And they will be less physically capable. They do get gray hairs. And they are social animals, super social.

You wouldn't necessarily think of them that way. I would. God, they won't shut up. We'd have a lot of interactions with each other. That reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by social animals. Social animals, more likely to be gray foxes, if you will. And this podcast is brought to you just asking if you can make a little change. Just ask for fun, just like a fun little change. Something nobody's kind of noticed.

Literally nobody noticed, apparently. Yeah, as far as I can tell. Today's podcast is also brought to you by round sauce pans. Round sauce pans. I was going to talk about the rectangular saucepan we have, but we didn't get to it, Heidi. And this podcast is brought to you by that bed that's behind John. Let's not think about it too much. It's fine.

It's clean. People work hard to keep it clean. That's what I tell myself. That's right. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Wayfair. There are a number of objects in my home. home that I have been extraordinarily well served by, maybe for 15 or 20 years. Like a pair of fake leather upholstered stools that I've had forever. But they've seen better days. They maybe

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Dear Hank, 50 off at factor meals.com. See the website for more details. All right, John, we got another question. It's from Alyssa who asks, Dear Hank and John. I am an economics and policy researcher looking for a job. Unfortunately, as an economics and policy researcher, I know about the economy. My email fills up daily full of rejection emails, some of which are from jobs I applied for in March. Every time I receive an email, I know it's another rejection, and I feel my body fill with dread and sadness. Like I'm 15 again listening to angsty music. What should I do?

Should I sign up for lots of marketing and spam emails to hide the rejections? Should I ask employers to call me so my email is. isn't a depressing place. Pumpkins and penguins, Alyssa. Oh, I know this feeling of like almost wanting to avoid the inbox because it only contains bad news after bad news after bad news. So I don't particularly, obviously, know your situation, but I know that situation.

I don't think that you should do either of those things. I think you should stay the course, as they say. Although it might make sense to, you know, follow up, try to get advice from people when they, They do reject you. This is something my dad taught me that I find physically painful, but I still do. When I get rejections for writing stuff, I still follow up and say, can you give me any advice? I ask for advice, not assistance, because people are more willing to give advice than assistance.

And so I still do that, and I recommend doing that. Because sometimes you learn something important. I remember once, I don't know how to tell this story generously, Hank, so I'm just going to tell it. Okay. once I interviewed someone and I said, have you ever been through a difficult thing and how did you get through it? It was one of standard questions from the, that I was told to ask in the interview. And the person said, yeah, yeah, I've definitely had some struggles. I took a really hard class my senior year of college in chemistry.

And I said, and how did you get through that obstacle? And they said, oh, I dropped it. That's a bad answer to that question. Yeah, I mean, it's an honest answer. It's way too honest. Yeah. Now, I do think it's important to try and have the email not be an old, an only desperate place. Yeah.

So I would. I would want to maybe recruit some friends. Maybe use email the way that it was once used where we would write. This is a crazy idea. Letters to each other. Mail. Yeah. I have not used.

email that way in so long. But I did. I did too. And I've written some good emails. Most of the good emails I write now are business emails. And I will occasionally write a good business email. But I never write a good social email. No.

No, that period of the internet seems to have passed along with the period of the internet that wasn't run by personalized algorithms. I miss those receiving those kinds of emails. Occasionally I'll get an update email from a friend that I really enjoy reading, but not that often. I'll get, well, I mean, most of my emails are very functional. And like that's, I think, what makes the inbox such a bummer is that people are either telling you information that you need to know about, you know, middle school volleyball games or whatever. Or they're asking you for something. They need something from you. We have done this to ourselves.

But I think also it has been done to us by the sort of tragedy of the commons. Like the email got treated like a commons in the same way that the mail did. Right. But also we've outsourced so much of our communication into the group chat or the text message or I guess the Instagram DMs here. I saw this reel and thought of you. I don't know. It makes me feel like a good activity would be to write a letter once in a while, even if it doesn't get sent through the mail. Yeah, I've been writing letters on tour, and it's been really helpful for me.

I need to do things that just ground me in the world. But I'm sorry you're going through it. There are a lot of people in the inbox who are going through hard times with employment. And, you know, people keep talking about the K-shaped economy that, like, it's working for a few people and not working for. the vast majority of people. And I don't know if that's, I'm not an economist, but we see it in the inbox. So at least I hope that it helps to know that you're not alone. It probably doesn't help much because the truth is it just sucks having to like go after job, after job, after job and not getting them. It's really hard. Yeah. All right. We've got to get to one more question and a

major important correction before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbled. And this question is from Lauren who writes, Dear John and Hank, I find myself preparing to welcome our second child, we waited a bit between kids because despite having a very low risk and uneventful pregnancy for baby number one, I found the experience of being pregnant so woefully unpleasant that I could not fathom going through it again until recently. While things have been somewhat better this time around, it did have me pretty down and out for about 16 straight weeks. My question is, do other mammals experience this or is morning sickness a uniquely human phenomenon, pumpkins and pregnant, Lauren, Lauren, I just want to encourage you by saying you are not alone. I do not know

that there are, I don't know about the other mammals question, that's more of a Hank and Toboki question, but the John part of the question is, is that like, it's, pregnancy is so profoundly unfair, Hank. We don't get into this enough. It's wild. Yeah. It's, it's a body horror movie that happens routinely in real life. A new human being invades your body and grows inside of you. Mm-hmm.

It's upsetting. If you pitched it to aliens, they would be horrified. Yeah. And the crazy thing is, lots of animals just lay eggs. Yeah, of course they do. That works. And the placental mammals were like, what if we made this so messed up? Yeah.

And it was, it turned out to be really good for the babies. So we do it that way. I mean, it solved a problem and it created a problem. That's right. was important, but the problem it created is called morning sickness. Hank, do other placental mammals get morning sick? We think so. But isn't it wild, but I'm saying we think so.

Yeah, that's just the indication that we don't do enough research. Yeah, so it looks like particularly in primates, there's a lot of like food rejection that goes on early. Like, zookeepers will notice this that when like a marmoset is pregnant, they will not eat as much early in pregnancy. See, this also, we also have noticed this with dogs where they might vomit more often or reject food more often when they are early in pregnancy. It doesn't seem like anybody gets it quite as bad as us, though. You keep finding ways in which, like, we have, like, weird stuff about us. Yeah. And they're always kind of bad.

And often, like, pregnancy in particular, it seems like is, like, we are among the worst at giving birth. Yeah, I believe it. We have a very weird evolutionary circumstance. Yeah. Of maternal death, really high compared to other animals. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So. Sarah found out she was pregnant right before we went on a trip to Australia, like 30 minutes before. Mm-hmm. And we called the doctor, and we were like, Sarah has got this trip to Australia where we were going together,

should we go? And he was like, I mean, there's no reason not to go, except that it's going to suck. And it did. It did. It did. She was like,

she was jet lagged and sick, which is a pretty brutal combo. Yeah. There is, there was a study, this is weird, but there's a study looking at rats versus primates.

And there's this particular hormone that seems to be tied maybe to morning sickness. And primates had like a 15x increase in it while rats during pregnancy had like a 2x increase. So there's simply something particularly about our family tree that might make this worse. Yeah. Which is, I don't know, man.

Devokey wants to write a whole, is like always talking about this book that she will someday wants to write about pregnancy and also more specifically miscarriage. and it's just the rabbit hole goes down forever and there's so much that we don't know and have not done the work to figure out. Right. Right. Wow. Well, I hope Duboki writes that book someday. Yeah.

Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars, Nancy Wimbledon, we have to address the 200 emails that we received on correcting us on a topic that people feel very, very strongly about, especially people in the southeastern corner of the United States. Okay. I don't really know which of these 200 emails to read, not least because they are all very long. Turns out people are still writing letters.

Yes. They're writing letters into our inbox. It's all coming to us. So, Hank, in episode 467, you said, I'm quoting directly here, Florida hates us. and people really took that personally. They felt that this was utterly unfair to us and to them as Floridians.

That, in fact, Florida loves us, and they reminded us of many times when we have been to Florida, including my recent trip to Gainesville last week, where we played sold-out shows to Floridians. So Florida does not hate us. However, when we look at the per capita numbers of people who fill out the nerd fataria census.

Yeah. So, so, like, the places. Florida loves us the least. Yeah. Yeah.

No. So we could, I could tell you, I can tell you that, that when, when, when, you know,

there's plenty of people in Florida who want to see us, but per, like, if you divide that by the number of people who live in Florida, the number is lower than it is in other places. No, we do well in Florida. I'm not saying, I don't totally agree with that.

We do fine in Florida. I had an amazing show in Gainesville. I enjoyed being with Patriots on stage so much. Yeah, I bet it's, I bet Gainesville and Tallahassee are going to be great places for us because there's... Orlando will be good because Orlando is a happening town. It's our hometown, et cetera. Miami's a great town to play because it's an amazing city. Florida is a lovely place.

Here's the thing, though, Hank. We genuinely received over 200 emails about this Florida thing. And the original bit was about how we were. went to Seaside, Florida, and nobody recognized us for like 10 days. There were all people in our core demographic age-wise who had no idea who we were. We received 200 emails from Floridians. None of them were people from Seaside, Florida. Not a single person went into our email inbox to defend Seaside, Florida. So I think we've identified the issue. It's not that Florida hates us. It's that Seaside hates us. Yeah, or as indifferent to us, which is fine. It's fine. We don't

By the way, we're going to get 200 emails from people in seaside. There's going to be a petition. I'm okay with Seaside Floor being indifferent to us because, to be honest with you, I'm indifferent to Seaside, Florida. Yeah. Well, and the other thing I'll say about this per capita measure that we're doing here is that you look at the demographics of Florida, and there's going to be some things waiting it against us. It's a little older than your average state, and our audience is a little younger than your average person. Yeah. All right, Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

I'll start because I have really sad, very unfortunate news from AFC Wimbledon. Mikey T. Michael Tadouros, the longtime AFC Wimbledon commentator who had an encyclopedic memory of every AFC Wimbledon and Wimbledon-FC game ever played. You could tell him any date, and he could tell you every game he'd ever played. Mikey T who went to over 2,000 consecutive AFC Wimbledon games over 38 years, never missed a game for 38 years, passed away a couple days ago. He was at the game commentating,

as he always has been our play-by-play commentator for the radio and TV broadcast of the games for the last 20 years. He was at the game 10 days ago, passed away yesterday as we're recording this. And I just have to say on a personal note, like Michael made art. He put art into the world.

His art was his commentary and it was very funny and full of wordplay and, you know, astonishingly good, so much better than the football on the pitch, to be honest with you. And that's so important. Like, it's, you know, ultimately sports is entertainment. Yeah, it's what makes the game great is the art that he put into the world. And, you know, a lot of weeks he was putting in that art for the, the few hundred people who were listening or watching. And it's a reminder that you don't have to make art

for a really broad audience to have a really deep impact. I just, it breaks my heart. He was Mr. Wimbledon. He was the person that the rest of us look to and still will be. So I was lucky to know him a little bit and count him as a friend, and I will miss him very, very much. John, in Mars News, it's regular old Mars News. It's good Mars News, though.

I like it when Mars News happens and it's just science being done, especially when it's still being done in the United States of America. So there's a bunch of water ice at the North Pole of Mars. This is good news because water is, you know, interesting, chemically and also useful. And we used to think that it was like 25% dust. So it was like snow mixed with dust. and then it would get compressed into this dusty ice mixture. Gross.

I've walked on that in Chicago and it's disgusting. Yeah. Yeah, it's that stuff. So the dust in the ice is an insulator. It can also absorb sunlight and cause the ice to warm up enough that it will sublime away. So on Mars, things don't melt because the pressure is so low. Instead, it just turns straight into a vapor. And, but it seems that new methods have changed the way that we do this estimate.

And it looks like it's like 3% dust, which means that the water ice is actually quite clean. That would be more useful for us. It might actually reflect away a lot more of the sunlight into space than we thought. And so as the more sunlight gets reflected, it warms the planet up less and you lose less of that ice to sublimation. And it also means that the water ice could have absorbed enough sunlight to melt parts of the ice, creating little pockets of liquid water that might actually stick around for a little while. And could be, who knows? A place where life would live.

Some liquid water that sometimes is on the surface of Mars. Wow, liquid water on the surface of Mars, maybe. Sometimes. Now, Hank, I have a follow-up question about this. I assume Martian dirt is really bad dirt in terms of ingesting it. Extremely bad. So we would have to very carefully filter out the dirt from the water. I actually don't know.

So I don't know if the dust, well, first of all, this would be easy. So even if it was very bad, I'm not 100% sure that the bad parts of the dust are also in the ice parts. but it's very easy to filter water out from dust because you just melt the water. You could even boil the water and then recollect it. You just distillation would do all of the work of getting out of the stuff that would be bad about the water. That's going to take a lot of energy, but, you know, so will everything. Right, right, right. So I'm not particularly worried about that.

But I am worried in general when it comes to human exploration of Mars, a thing that I did not know when I made a bed. that I once made many years ago. That I did not know is how potentially hazardous to human health the chemical makeup of Martian dust is. So that could be a real drag on human exploration of the red planet. Wow. Well, I'm happy to have humans go to Mars on or after January 1, 2028. It's going to be so weird, John.

It's not going to be weird. It's going to be so cool. This podcast is going to be called Dear John and Hank. I get to do the intro and then you say, or as I like to think of it, dear Hank and John. It's going to be great. People are going to love it. Will you do the dad jokes? No, no, no, you'll still do the dad jokes.

I can't deliver that kind of high quality content. It's going to be weird. It's got to be a little bit off balance, but we'll figure it out. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Everybody can experience us stutter through it the first time we have to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we still got like a year in a little bit.

So, yeah. And who knows, John? Maybe, maybe we will hit the singularity and there will be humans on Enceladus. Maybe. Maybe. But in the meantime, all I can tell you for sure is that it's a joy to pod with you and that I appreciate the opportunity and that people can send us their questions at Hank and John at gmail.com. Today's podcast was edited by Linus Open House mixed by Joseph Tuna Meddish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. We're produced by Rosiana Hoss Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth. Bradley, our editorial assistant is the Boki Chakabardi. 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.