Dear Hank & John - 61: Tiny Acts of Kindness

Episode Date: September 6, 2016

How do gas planets work? What is proper door etiquette? Is Hank going to put the lime in the coconut and drink it all together? And more!

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Gorsard for a thing of it, dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast where me, Hank Green and John Green, that other guy, answer your questions and give you to be a advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and of course AFC Wimbledon. John, how you do it? I'm doing terribly. Thank you for asking.

I broke my rib almost a week ago. It is extremely painful. Everything hurts. It hurts to stay hand. It hurts to sit. It hurts to lie down. I can't sleep at night. It just sucks.

I don't even really want to talk about it. But I also can't think about anything else. So just tell me how you're doing. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. You know, paying, is a sign that you're not dead. So there's that going for you. I find that to be extraordinarily cold comfort. I think that pain is the stupidest

of all the human experiences. It is the one that I have found the least meaningful. But I am admittedly a little bit biased right now. Hank, we need to get to an important topic in re last week's podcast, which is that. Oh, is it the spelling and pronunciation of use? It is the spelling and pronunciation of use. We have never experienced quite the day-luge

of emails, tweets, et cetera, in-ree, the spelling of use. What I found most fascinating, this is how to shorten the word usual, what I found most fascinating is how many people were completely convinced that they knew the correct spelling of use and that all the other spellings were stupid. Yeah, specifically the ones who were clearly wrong. And yet everybody's spelling disagreed with everyone else is except for the one person who was an actual linguist. Oh yeah, we had several.

I felt as if we had several linguists commenting on the matter, and indeed, cringing at our armchair linguistness. What is the linguist version of philosophy? I believe it's linguist-ity. I believe that's correct. Armchair linguistics, I did it, I remembered. So somebody wrote in with a link

to an extensive linguist conversation on this topic, and I just wanna read a little bit of it. We'll link to it on our Patreon, patreon.com slash dear Hank and John. The reason this problem arises is that the consonant in the middle of usual, which phoneticistions call the voiced palatuvialar fricative, and which is written in the international phonetic alphabet as this thing that isn't a letter, doesn't have a fixed representation in the English writing system.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that most of the linguists I heard from think that it should be you, Z, H, or you, Z, H, E. Use. Yeah, I guess I'd probably pronounce that use, you, Z, H, E. But I will say that on this website, there are lots of linguists, proper linguists fighting this out about how to best represent Yuge in Latin letters. So we are not alone in feeling, you know, kind of lost in this conversation. I also have to say that Catherine, I walked, I got home from work, I walked into my house

and I hear my own voice and yours coming from upstairs. And Catherine is listening to this section of the podcast and she's sitting on the couch and on her lap as her laptop and she's looking at Urban Dictionary to see what the most common spellings on Urban Dictionary for use are. And indeed, there are a number of different spellings of use on urban dictionary. Use-e-h-e is one of them, but the most common one is the one that I suggested, which was just u-j-e. And so that was, that seemed to be in terms of the colloquial, not necessarily the phonetic hishids, or the linguists the correct spelling but the colloquial spelling might just be you J.E. and I will say that was my call. Yeah, I'm gonna just stop you right there and point out that when you're trying to use urban dictionary to back up your arguments, you're in trouble already.

One more correction in the form of a short poem, Hank, before we start the proper podcast. A couple of weeks ago, you talked about the Martian Rover singing itself Happy Birthday alone on Mars. And I've written a short poem in response. Six light minutes from Earth, alone on a red planet, which incidentally is not a shade of brown, a Martian Rover does not sing itself happy birthday. Oh, is this my, this is the correction that we received from-

This is the correction, Hank. The Martian Rover is saying itself happy birthday once on its first birthday. Since then, it has not sung itself happy birthday. This is an urban legend that you have propagated. My bad. This is a urban legend that you have propagated. My bad. This is a correction sent to us by Michelle, who has a friend who works on the curiosity rover, and also linked to us to an actual article that from the tweet from the curiosity rover confirming that

it does not do this every year, but only on the first year. John, do you want to do any questions? Yeah, sure. Let's get to some questions from our listeners. This first one is from Charlene, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my husband and I were discussing what we would do with lottery winnings of multiple billions of dollars. I said that amount of money was too much for a single person to hold on to and that I would give away the majority of it. My husband said he would never want to give any of it away. I mean, Charlene, any of it, really?

I'm concerned that your husband might be a terrible person. Anyway, I asked incredulously what he would do with all that money and he said he always wanted to swim in a vault of money like Scrooge McDuck. I want to know what denominations of money would be best for swimming and how big of a room would you need to store the denominations of money so that it equaled just one of the billions he wants to keep swimming in. Hank, I thought this was an interesting question because if I were to win a billion dollars or get a billion dollars, however, in whatever way, I have to tell you, I would give almost all of it away immediately.

Just because you don't want to have that hanging over you and have everyone know that about you. That, I don't think that it's good for your kids really to inherit huge sums of money. I think that it can be very distorting in their lives and not allow them to have their own lives that are independent of their parents. I feel like it would be a weird amount of pressure.

And I just, I don't feel like it would in any way make my life better. Now like there are lots of sums of money that would make my life better, but I don't think a billion dollars is one of them. Well, in that case, like you might as well just fill a vault up with it. But I have to say that if you fill a vault with coins and you jump into it from a diving board, that is, you know, any more than a few feet above the surface of the coins, you're gonna die. Like you're gonna hit that.

Yeah, you're about to die. Like your neck. Like coins do not make a liquid. Scrooge McDuck had special superpowers that allowed him to swim in money. And indeed, I remember an episode of the Ducktails where Scrooge was swimming around, and the boys, Huey-Duey and Luey, jumped in and were unable to

and were unpleasantly surprised by how they had run into a solid wall of metal. So you would have to mix together, I think, some have some kind of system to mix together paper currency as well as maybe a little bit of coinage to give density, but you would have to have a system to constantly mix it because they would fall out. Or you could create maybe some kind of origami shape where you were putting some currency inside of a bill and then

folding the bill up in a certain way that would create a density more suitable to swimming around in. I think that it's not impossible to figure out a way to make this work, but it's not simple either. Yeah, no, here's what I would say, Hank. I would say that Charlene's husband is genuinely risking death by inheriting a billion dollars, or winning a billion dollars,

and turning it into a pool full of coins, which I think is pretty metaphorically resonant in re what it would be actually like to suddenly have a billion dollars. Yes, I would take a billion dollars though because I'd have a lot of fun giving it away. We've got another question. It's from Catherine who asks, dear Hank and John, I was in my backyard spray painting, and I accidentally spray painted a part of a bush blue while making some lovely squid art. I tried spray painting the bush green, but the shades of green don't match. What do I do?

Hey, I don't know if we're gonna have the same response to this one, but you want to just say on three what we think Catherine should do? Yes. One, two, three, move. Burn your entire house down. Yeah, okay, so we're in the same direction here. This is a crisis, and the only way to deal with it is to run screaming from this property. This should not be your house anymore. You're never going to be able to get that bush back the correct shade of green. You need to just probably move to a whole different city.

Yeah, I mean, I'd go to Mars if you could. Well, you can't, fortunately. But I don't think you need to go to Mars. But I think you need to like, you need to reinvent your whole life. You need it just you and that one work of squid art need to walk out that door with no other belongings and just find a new life for yourself. In fact, Catherine, don't even name yourself Catherine.

In this new life, you can have no connection to the person that spray painted that bush blue. You've got to be a completely different person, except you'll always know that you're still you when you look up and you see that squid art. All right. Well, I think we've covered that one pretty well. John, do you have any other questions for us? No, that was it. That was the end of the podcast. Alright, I got one though. If you want me to keep going, it's from Parker who asks, dear Hank and John, what the heck even is accounting? I know it's important and there are a lot of really smart people who are great at it, but it is just not click in my brain. Why do I have to take accounting for my management major?

Can't I just check a box that says, I will hire an accountant? Can't I just take an accounting vocabulary class? So I understand what my accountant is talking about. Best wishes Parker. Oh, it hurts to laugh, but the idea that you can check a box. It's just the problem with checking the box, Parker, is that you could check a box, it's just the problem with the checking the box, Parker, is that if you check a box saying, I will hire an accountant,

you're essentially checking a box that says, I'm going to give someone free reign to steal from me because I will have no idea whether they are telling me the truth. And there's that. And in general, as a business person, it is always good to understand what all of the people in your organization are doing, even if you aren't doing it. As far as the question, what the heck even is accounting?

I think you could Google that one, but it's keeping account of what all the money is doing. That's why they call it accounting. Yeah, I mean, it turns out to be really important to know whether your business is losing money or making money. And like for a long time in Hank and I's career, we did not pay attention to that question. And it turns out like to be a deeply interesting and important question.

And we sort of missed the boat by not giving it a little more attention early on. Maybe also I think that I enjoyed the way that we did it. But I, you know, there, there is, there are managers who don't know how to do accounting and, and I certainly, I'm not an accountant or anything. But like, I think that you're in school to learn stuff and you should learn stuff even if you don't like learning it. Is that okay to say? Yeah, also it's helpful in your, I would argue it's helpful in your everyday life.

For many, many years, I did not know how to read an Excel spreadsheet, I did not know how to balance my checkbook and that stuff was really stressful for me. It caused me a lot of stress and anxiety. It turns out that in the end, it isn't that hard. I just had to do the work to learn how to be able to do those things. Once I could, I suddenly felt like I had a little bit of control over my financial life.

Instead of it being something that was happening to me, you know, my bank occasionally writing to say that I had overdrawn my account and then I'm just like thrown into a panic. Like I was, I was instead in a situation where I felt like, okay, I'm in, I have some control over this. I know why this happened. I know why that happened.

And it's really empowering for me. So I actually, I think it's worth it to learn some basic accounting no matter what you're going to do it. Yeah, I'm going to I'm sure that Parker's accounting class is more advanced than that, and that is why he's finding it particularly annoying. But, but those, yeah, it's valuable. I'm going to just say it's valuable, And that's gonna be, and in general, I feel like if you're enjoying more than 50% of your work,

then you're good. And so maybe this is just part of the 50% that you don't love. What percentage of your work do you enjoy, do you think? I probably enjoy 80 to 90% of my work. That's interesting. I think I'm in a similar, I think I'm probably like 75%,

but I feel really good about that. I didn't, there hasn't been a time in my life when I've enjoyed as high a percentage of my work as I do right now. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because there's a difference between what I enjoy doing and what I enjoy thinking about doing and what I enjoy thinking about doing and what I dread.

So there are things that I dread that I enjoy doing. I don't know if that sounds insane, but I'm like, oh, I have to do that thing. And then once I'm doing it, I'm like, this is fine and great and I actually quite like it. But before I'm doing it, I'm like, this is fine and great and I actually quite like it. But before I'm doing it, I spend a lot of time being stressed out about the fact that I have to do it. The big distinction in my life is there are some things I enjoy doing and there are some things I enjoy having done. So I definitely enjoy having written much more than I enjoy writing, but that said, I like writing enough to consider it in the 75% of stuff that I like doing.

The 25% of stuff is mostly paperwork and emails. Yeah, yeah, it's mostly, it's a lot of email for me. It's also like just when things go wrong, you know? It's like that's the stuff. And I feel like that percentage could increase dramatically if it's a month where things are going wrong more. But that always makes stuff much harder when it's not going well. And we're very, I've been very lucky to have things go very well, you know, for the most part.

Yeah, things are going pretty well these days. Hank, failure is unpleasant. As much as I try to say that it is just part of process and of course everybody fails and it's just part of, it's the thing that is going to be a part of your life, but it is unpleasant. And I don't like it. It is unpleasant, but man, do you learn a lot more from failure than you learn from success in my experience? Definitely true.

The problem with success is that it tells you that like, you know, things are always going to be easy and you're a special snowflake and there's nobody like you and That's why you're gonna always succeed everywhere you go and then failure teaches you a lot Yep All right, this question is from Hannah Hank who writes dear John and Hank I'm kind of very confused about how gas planets work. Are they just like really big clouds? How do they maintain a uniform shape? How do they have an orbit? Do they have a surface or gravity?

How dense are they? Okay, actually ignore all those questions and just answer this one. If an airplane can fly through a cloud, could a rocket ship hypothetically fly through Jupiter? They don't teach these things in my public school. Hannah, that's a fantastic questions that I've never even paused to consider.

Well, first of all, I'll say that if a airplane is going fast enough, it actually can't fly through air. There comes a point at which air is dense enough, gas is dense enough, that it will tear the plane apart. You see this as meteors are coming through our atmosphere at a very high speed. They get very hot because the gases in front of them are being compressed and all of that energy is being turned into heat. They break apart, they're ripped into pieces,

and they explode. And that is one of the crazy things about gases. They seem like they're hardly there at all, but if you're moving fast enough, they're basically a brick wall, just like Scrooge McDux coins. So a rocket ship could fly into Jupiter if it was going slow enough, it was going the speed that a rocket ship normally goes, it would totally be ripped apart by the gas. But the way that it works is basically, all gas has mass. It's the gasses matter, and it has a mass, and it has a weight. And so it creates gravity. And all of that gas all together pulls itself together into this giant thing. And at the

very middle, it's very dense because there's so much gas that there's all this pressure being pushed down on it by gravity. And down there in the center of Jupiter, we do not know what is there. We don't know if that, like, probably what's there is, it's like, it's under so much pressure that the gas becomes metallic. It like, it goes from being a gas to being a solid or a liquid.

And you've got this like metallic hydrogen core of Jupiter. We're not sure, though, because it is a giant planet, and we will never be able to go into the middle of it, because whatever we would send down there would totally get crushed by that tremendous pressure. So it's a collection of gas in a sphere that is being held together in a sphere just like a liquid wood or just like a solid wood,

our planet being solid, has been crushed into this spherical shape by the gravity, by the density of its own mass, and that's also what's happening with Jupiter. I find something about that just astonishingly beautiful, the idea that we'll never know what the center of Jupiter looks like, and we have to like live in a universe knowing

that that's something that we can never know. Well, John, we don't even know what the, like the center of have to like, live in a universe knowing that that's something that we can never know. Well, John, we don't even know what the center of Earth looks like. We have some ideas, but those ideas continue progressing and changing, and yeah, we know. I know, I don't like to correct you on science stuff, but I am going to have to just ask you to hit the pause button on that one, because in fact, I don't know if you've read Journey to the Center of the Earth, but Jules Verne has explored that in really exciting details. So if you haven't read that book, I truly recommend it because it tells you exactly what the Center of the Earth is like, and it's awesome.

Do you want to do another science question, John? Sure, yeah, no, the less I have to talk, the better. All right, this one's from Andrew who asks, dear Hank and John, according to a SciShow video that I saw recently, Salt of the Ocean is just a mix of minerals picked up over thousands of years and not sodium chloride like table salt. So what is the sea salt they put on my Wendy's fries? Is that less healthy than table salt? Actually, I don't know if we misspoke in that side show episode or if you miss heard, but it is a

mix of minerals, the primary one being sodium chloride. So the sea salt that they put on your fries at Wendy's is mostly sodium chloride, but sea salt also has a bunch of other stuff in it like magnesium chloride and just whatever other salts, which is what we call these ionic compounds in chemistry. Whatever other salts got picked up as rivers flow down to the sea. And so that table salt is mostly salt. Well, table salt is all sodium chloride. Sea salt is mostly sodium chloride with some other stuff thrown in.

And that other stuff might be beneficial. You probably get another ways, though, in addition to getting it in sea salt, which is why sea salt is mostly, let's be honest, it's just salt. Yeah, I very rarely hear of people who aren't getting enough salt here in, at least in the United States. We don't have a huge sodium shortage. No, it's the other stuff that's in the sea salt that they think maybe you should be getting like magnesium or phosphorus or whatever. But do you get that stuff out of the blue? I will say on the topic of salts, as you know Hank, I am a committed bather.

I do not believe in showers, which are essentially just getting attacked by millions of pellets of water, very kind of sort of liquefied bullets shooting you millions at a time. And so I take baths and I enjoy nothing more than bath salts when I am bathing. What, what a pleasure. Is that the whole story? Is that just the thing you wanted to tell me? Yeah.

What are bath salts? Well, as far as I can tell, there's smelly salts, but there is a drug called bath salts, like a recreational drug. I know about this because I was the TSA, took my bath salts from my carry on bag once when I was trying to get on an airplane, and they were like, what is this?

And I was like, that's my bath salts. I'm a committed banger. And I'm gonna be out of town for two days, and I looked up the hotel room this? And I was like, that's my bath salts. I'm a committed banger. And I'm gonna be out of town for two days. And I looked up the hotel room that I'm gonna be in and I got a picture of its bathtub and everything. It looks like it's gonna be a great bathtub. I'm very excited. And they were like, why are you taking bath salts

to New York City? And I was like, because I like to bathe in hotel rooms and I use bath salts. Doesn't everyone who takes baths? And anyway, it was a big miscommunication because apparently bath salts are also a drug. But I genuinely don't know if the bath salts that are the recreational drug are also the bath salts that you buy at bed bath and beyond. But if they are, I might accidentally be addicted to bath salts.

Well, I think you might be addicted to bath salts, but only the kind that go in your bath, which are definitely different from the kind that people use as recreational drugs. Though I imagine they look somewhat similar, which is why they got that name, but yeah, not the same thing. I mean, I wouldn't say that my use of bath salts rises to the level of a recreational drug, but I will say that I really like it.

It's probably especially helpful to soothe that aching pain of having a rib in several pieces. Oh, it's just, so the kind of rib fracture I have is, it's not what's called a simple rib fracture, it's called a displaced rib fracture, which means the two parts of my rib don't line up perfectly. Oh. But they're always trying to get back together.

Uh-huh. And so when I move, they're like moving against each other and it hurts so freaking bad. That sounds awful. Uh, and what I know about, because I recently separated some cartilage from a rib, which is a very different,

but still painful thing. And the doctor was like, yeah, there's not really anything you can do. It's a rib. Just don't hurt it. Yeah, my doctor was great in the ER. She was like, you're so lucky, you didn't last her at your liver. And I was like, you're so lucky, you didn't last-erate your liver.

And I was like, I don't feel lucky. Like, that's a very specific definition of luck. Like, do you wake up every morning, doctor, and say, pff, I won the lottery today, didn't last-erate my liver. Yeah, I would argue that I was incredibly unlucky. Yeah, well, you know, some of somebody who has at worst, my doctor, when I first was diagnosed

with ulcerative colitis was like, if you're gonna be diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, this is the kind you want. And I was like, well, that's something, that's something to look for. No, no, I'm not a big fan of that, that particular bedside manner of like, you won't believe you're good fortune Here's all the things that aren't wrong with you

It works for some people not for others it works okay for me. All right, Hank Let's move on to another question this question is from Natalie who writes dear John and Hank I'm a first time emailer a new listener after my hair stylist recommended your podcast first off I just want to thank America's hair stylists for being such consistent supporters of the pod. Secondly, I will now read the rest of the question. The question that has been the ban of my existence for quite some time is what is proper door etiquette?

How long do I hold the door open for someone? When you open the door and someone is standing on the other side also looking at you with the deer and head of that expression, who goes first? I really don't understand. These are great questions. They're two, it's two distinct questions, Hank. There's the first, when you open the door and you look behind you and someone is coming, but they are in that middle distance where they are not about to be there, but they also aren't like far away. Do you hold the door open and for how long?

And then the second question, when you open a door and you see that there is someone about to come out of the door as you are about to go in it, who goes first? John, I was at a very weird situation. So in Montana, of course, we have double doors. So there's a vestibule to keep the hot air inside and the winter. I was at a very weird situation where I was walking up to the Bagel Place.

Someone opened the door to go into the Bagel Place. Then I was coming in behind them, and they were kind of holding the door for me, though they weren't sure if I was going into the Bagel Place, or if I was just walking abnormally close to the building headed somewhere else. And then inside, so they were looking at me, but inside there was a person who had opened the other vestibule door and was holding the door open for the person who was holding the door maybe open for me but maybe not. And everybody, and then like, and suddenly everybody got very confused and they all just

scattered. And people like dropped doors started running. It was very straight and I don't know that there was any way to do it except for the way that we ended up doing it, which was just every man for himself, the rules have broken and we just have to deal with the situation as it comes to us.

It was basically the purge, you know? Like there were no more wrongs. The door holding purge. Now it's just people on their own as animals just trying to get through the day. Yeah, and I was just like, well, and now, like, now, but also the problem that I hate this, when you hold the door open for someone and then they go in front of you,

but then they're in front of you and line. And you're like, hey, I wanted to hold the door for you, but I wasn't giving you my spot in line. I hate that. So you gotta walk in. You know, I disagree with you on that one. I think if you hold the door open for someone, that is a statement.

I am now putting myself in a position where you shall be ahead of me in all the future interactions that we have. The thing I don't like is the double door situation where you hold the door open for someone in the double door situation. And then they, of course, are the first to the next door. And then they hold the door open for you.

And you end up winning by trying to be generous. You end up being in first place. I love that. I think that that's the wonderful thing about the double door, is that I can hold the door open for you, but then I still get my proper spot in love. No, see, for me, I believe the last shall be first, not the last shall be first, and then last again.

So I think that's just a worldview difference. But I'm gonna argue that in general, this door thing, both these door problems, boil down to the need to be kind and generous toward each other and also careful of each other. Like ultimately, what it boils down to is that if you feel like somebody didn't hold the door open for you and you were close enough that they should have held the door open for you, you need to pause and say to yourself, you know what, that person probably had a brief moment of crisis and made the best decision

that they could make in that moment. They're not a bad person. They're not out to get me. They just, they made the call that they thought was right in that moment. And I don't think it was right, but I'm gonna be okay with it. Alternately, if you are the person holding open the door

and you look and you're like, I think that person's a little too far away, just make the best call that you can make in that moment and assume that everybody is going to be okay with it and not going to be mad at you. You know what I do, John? I kind of, I sort of look a little bit before I open the door to see if maybe there's anybody around in a way that makes it clear that like when I open the door and I feel like that person's too far away, I don't have to look back at them and acknowledge their existence before closing the door in

front of them. I can, I sort of like know that they're back there and I don't look at all and I just let it go as if I'm just an unthinking person rather than someone who is intentionally closing a door on someone. So try and surreptitiously look. You know what I'll do sometimes? If I feel like somebody's a little too far away, I'll just sort of, as I'm opening the door, I'll look back at them and I'll just sort of shrug

as if to say like, sorry man, but like, I don't know how to hold this door open. I I honestly will sometimes slow down as I'm approaching the door if I know that so there's someone who's a bit farther away So that like and I just like take a real long time open in that door like oh I got distracted by this newspaper stand And now I'm looking at that for a little while to make like let the person catch up so that I, but I will say John. So here's a thing that I do that I wouldn't mind if other people did, but I'm not saying it's a necessary part of being a polite human. When I have the door opened for me and it's a restaurant or something where there's a line, I will then stand by the door and let the person go in front of me so that they,

like, so that they are not punished for being kind and opening a door for me. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of etiquette that goes with this. I think in general in human life, almost all the time, unless you are in a true Wendy's emergency where if you don't get your Wendy's as soon as possible, you're going to faint like if you're on the edge of a diabetic coma or something, I think it's almost always the right thing to do to just say to the person who you held the door open for,

why don't you go first? I am a big believer in like those little tiny acts of kindness making life bearable. Like I try, this is hard to do, but if you can imagine in the 99% of time, when you aren't in a tremendous hurry, and like when there isn't huge pressure on you to get something done,

if you can remember that and remember that, like you are not actually in a rush, and you can treat other people as if they are in a rush, their days get so much better. Like, they go home and they talk about this person who was nice to them, because I really believe, like, it's made that much of a difference in my life. And those times when I've been in a huge rush

and people have been kind to me, like, it makes a lasting difference. Like, we talked in a recent episode, remember where I was jogging and I said good morning and the person said it's 1202. Yeah. Yeah. David, a lasting difference in my life, like that stranger had a lasting impact in my life.

It's just kind of a negative impact. I think if you can like try to find those little moments to have that positive impact, it's huge. No, I agree. And I also really enjoyed doing it. Like, I feel like increasing the amount of appreciation in the world is, it makes me feel better as well. Yeah, so you win. You win when you hold the door open for someone

and let them go in line first, which reminds me, Hank, that today's podcast is brought to you by Wendy's. Wendy's, you don't have to get there first to get those delicious sea salted fries. That's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Accounting.

It's necessary if you want to run a business, and there is parts of your job that you're not going to like, and it might be one of them. Accounting. Oh, God. Laughing hurts so much. And today's podcast is also brought to you by Bath salts. Bath salts, the kind that you put in the bath. And finally, this podcast is brought to you

by Charlene's husband, who doesn't want to help anyone and just wants to scrooge McDuck his neck broken. Charlene's husband. Would it be great if our podcast was actually sponsored by accounting, like as an abstract idea, if like the American Association of Accounting sent us a huge check every week, and we could just like find different ways to work accounting into the podcast, or alternately, if our podcast was actually sponsored by Wendy's, or anyone, wouldn't it be great if someone paid us a

bunch of money to talk about their product and or service on our podcast? I was recently on Twitter trying to get LaQuat to send me 378, 12 packs of La Croix, which is, you know, would make my life better. I'd talk about La Croix all day on this podcast if they'd send me some. God, I love La Croix. Like if there's one thing, one way that my life has changed demonstrably since the success of the Fault in Our Stars, it's that I now buy as much La Croix as I want, which is a lot.

You know, John, there's a thing about the world that I kind of dislike right now. And that is the sparkling Dessani and Aquafina that I'm starting to see at grocery stores. Because look strong. Yeah. It's all through. Because look strong through. Because look strong through.

Found this thing and they were like, oh my gosh, we found a niche. It's calorie free beverages that are flavored well and that are refreshing when cooled. And they found a niche that Coca-Cola and Pepsi missed. How weird and amazing is that opportunity? And LaCroix does not have good graphic design. Their logo is very weird. The copy that they're packaging copy never makes any sense and always makes me just crave to like

hire a good copywriter for them. And I feel like their CEO writes it or something because it's very disconnected from reality. And then, but it works. It works so well and it becomes so popular. And it frustrates me to know and to know that somebody Coca-Cola tried to buy La Croix. And La Croix was like, no, we're gonna do this on our own.

And so they just came out with these beautiful sparkling Dessani beverages, it's sparkling, aquafina beverages, and are trying to take on the croix. And I'm like, no, no, you will not. You cannot have this. There's one thing that you can't have in its la croix. Yeah, Hank, I totally agree with you,

but on the other hand, if delicious sparkling disani water wants me to drink 378 of their beverages and receive a huge amount of money in exchange for talking about how much I love sparkling to Sony water, I'm more than happy to do that. Yeah, I totally agree with you. It's so funny, Hank, like, the difference is that I am serious, I want to sell out so bad.

And you don't, you genuinely don't want to sell out, it's so annoying. You guys don't know about this because like, you don't have to deal with Hank and Private, but like, Hank will never sell out, even in tiny little delightful ways. It's super annoying. That's not necessarily true.

I sell out some ways. No, you don't, you really don't. I struggle, I struggle, and I go one way, some days and another way, other days. Just not with our sort of core properties of the brother stuff, because I feel like who needs it? This is the thing. We're just messing around.

And it does, that's why we have fake sponsorships, even though I kind of feel bad, because of course, many podcasts need real sponsorships because they need to make it work, because they put in a great deal of effort and they want to be compensated for the great work that they do. But we don't have to do that. But I mean, but it's clear to Hank, Hank, none of our listeners, just in case you're concerned

about this, none of our listeners labor under the delusion that we put in effort in this podcast. So you don't have to worry about that. No one's out there thinking, God, they're working hard and not getting paid for it. They're out there thinking, I wonder when they're going to answer the next question. And the answer to that question is now. Hank, this question comes from Allison,

who writes, dear John and Hank, hello, my name is Allison. Allison, I really like it when people repeat their name. So thank you. My ice maker broke. So I, Allison, and currently using an ice tray. My question is when is the best time to refill this ice tray? Do I, Allison, wait until all the ice is gone, or until there are two to four cubes left? I would love to hear your opinions. Hank, I think that this is one of those, there's two kinds of people in the world questions. No, I think there's one

kind of people in the world, maybe two kinds of people in the world one who hasn't heard about the right way to do it, and then there's the other kind who just does it the right way. Okay, well why don't you just tell me what the right way is as you usually do? Okay, well in that case, I absolutely will. Thank you, John. You put a separate container in the freezer and you empty out the ice tray into the bucket. And then you refill the ice tray long before you have used all of the ice cubes. You don't take individual cubes out of the thing. You break the thing and then you take all of them out at once. I mean, I will tell you something, which is that that is a brilliant solution that I have never

thought of in all of my many years of not having an automatic ice maker. Let me tell you the way I do it, and then you can tell me whether you think your way or my way is better. The way I do it, and I've done this, we don't have an ice maker now. I've an at a ice maker in my fridge most of my adult life. And the way that I do it is that I have a couple ice trays that have ice cubes in them. I take those trays, I use all of the ice cubes,

I put the empty trays back in the freezer, and then I go in to get ice cubes, and I'm like, dang it! Why did I not take three seconds to fill up this with water six hours ago? You idiot, and then I get mad at myself. I drink a very warm lookroy while I'm waiting for my new ice cubes to become ice cubes.

And then I'm finally able to enjoy delicious refreshing sparkling grapefruit lookroy available now at grocery stores everywhere. You know, John, they recently, I don't know how recently, but they have coconut lacroix now. And I stayed, stayed well away from it for a while, thinking, and I'm not a big fan of coconut. I like Thai food, though.

And I like, uh, I like crackling oat bran, which has a lot of coconut in it. But for the most part, I'd prefer to not have, to not interact with coconut too much. And I drank it and I did not like it. Somebody got it for a party. I went to, it was the only thing available. I had someone, I was like, eh, but then I mixed it with orange juice and I liked that quite a lot. And then I put some lime juice in the coconut,

La Croix, and that was very good. And I thought to myself, my goodness, I just put the lime in the coconut and mixed them both together and drank it all up. And I thought that was a wonderful moment in my life. It hurts the laugh. It's so terrible. It's like this, oh god, it's extremely painful to laugh. Okay. I'm glad that you got that lime in the coconut joke. In there, it only took you four minutes to arrive at.

It was one of those jokes where the moment you said coconut, La Croix, I started to be like, is he going to put the lime in the coconut and drink it all together? And the answer, of course, was yes. Hank, before we sell out any further to a company that has given us no money or any Delicious beverages before McRoy. Let's get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. All right. Do you want to give us some

AFC Wimbledon news or I should I tell you about the the fascinating news from Mars? Tell me the the moves from Mars. Okay. Here's my here's my nose moves So NASA has a plot a program. It's called the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program and it helps sort of give small amounts of funding to ideas that would be revolutionary and would totally change spaceflight, but probably aren't going to turn anything particularly useful. And one of the things that I've gotten money from NIAAC recently is a research project to induce a hibernation-like state, a state of torpor in astronauts, allowing them to basically sleep all the way to Mars.

And the way that they would do this is using... I know, we talk about this in science fiction all the time, but they're actually like, they're looking to take an existing medical technique called therapeutic hypothermia and actually apply that to healthy people who just are taking up too much space and eating too much food, making it impractical to get them to Mars. And the applications this would not be for the first missions to Mars, it would be if we wanted to send hundreds of people to Mars. And it would basically actually create a sustainable, another human world in our solar system. And it would dramatically reduce, cut by a factor of 40, the amount of space that the people would

need on their trip to Mars. Basically, the technique works like this. They take your body temperature down like five degrees, and then they give you some drugs. That basically puts you into a kind of like suspended animation state. And that is a thing that they currently do for people who have been badly injured while they're working on repairing their bodies. It is a thing that exists. It is not particularly safe, and we don't, of course, we've never tested it in microgravity, but it is a thing that people are interested in doing and would potentially be safer for astronauts because they could put more shielding on the containers.

They could also, their muscles might generate less in the time that they're traveling to Mars than it would in a normal microgravity environment while have it being awake. They would eat less food and it would be easier to get them there. But it is definitely a thing that is for the future. But I was fascinated to know, oh, sorry, it decreased the body temperature by nine degrees Fahrenheit, five degrees Celsius. And yeah, it would make it a lot easier

to get a bunch of people to Mars, though to be clear. It is one of those things that is a high payoff if it works, but probably won't work kind of thing. Follow-up question, and I don't mean to be insensitive in any way, but do they have the technology to go your body temperature by nine degrees Fahrenheit and let you sleep off, say, a broken rib injury? Yeah, maybe. I think usually it was... But you said it was risky.

So I assume that it's not something I probably want to do myself, but I would love it if they could develop that for the next time I break a rib because this... I don't want to be insensitive to your pain, but I need you. I need you not in a hypothermia induced torpor to do to do all the things I feel like things would be moving swimmingly if I were in a hypothermia induced torpor right now. Speaking of hypothermia induced torpor, AFC Wimbledon continued their league one season as a third tier English football team. Hey, you may remember that I said last at the toward the end of last season,

if by some miracle, AFC Wimbledon were promoted, it would likely be a sort of a one-year venture up there in the, you know, the third tier of English football. So far, that's looking into the smidge prophetic. IFC Wimbledon very nearly won their first game of the league one season against Rockdale possibly wrote down nobody knows for sure how to pronounce it

uh... they were up one nil uh... in the ninety-fifth minute which is five minutes longer than the game should have technically gone on uh... it was an injury time when rockdale uh... scored to tie the game meaning that a fc winbled in are now on two points uh... two points that the two points uh... uh... the bad news

uh... about that is that rockdale are also on two points uh... they are down there just above us at the very very bottom of the table we are last their second to last so that is a game that we would have needed to likely probably would have been nice to win that one but we didn't so here we are on two points having played five games. That's not where you want to be, but I don't really have a butt. That

is not where you want to be. I'm sorry. Who's been scarring for you, John? Well, in summary, no one, which is a bit of the issue. You have isolated, there's sort of two issues, which is that we are not scoring enough goals. And then there's the second issue, which is that we are giving up too many. I feel like if we addressed either of those issues, it might lead to a significant improvement in the results.

Listen, I'm not a football commentator, but I feel like if we were getting more goals in and letting fewer in that we would be scoring more. There is some good news, George Frankenstein is coming back after almost like five months away. The wild Taylor has scored a couple of goals. There's a new guy who's doing okay. Polion. He's been scoring some goals.

Dom Polion, but no, it is not great at the moment. But there's still a lot of season left it's only five games in we'll see it just googled a of c limbalton and and Tuesday august 30th wimbledon won against swancy city three zero yeah no that's the swancy city under twenty three side not the grown-up swancy city and it's in a it's in a competition called the, it's not the league one competition and indeed or is it the FA Cup? It's this sort of, it's the football league cup which I believe right now is called like the Change Away Cup or something because it has a sponsor that's

some betting site. I don't know. It's great to get a win in. I'm not sure that that really counts as a proper victory though. I would agree with you. I agree. And I see now looking at the Ligue 1 table, that indeed you are 24th of 24. Yes, that is correct. Sitting comfortably in 24th, but I will remind you, if we finish 20 nope, if we finish 20th, I don't think that if we do all we have to do is finish 20th.

Well, or above. You know, that's not nothing. And then you can you can stick it in there and maybe maybe you can get against the Don's and you can, you really only got to win one game this season, John. And it's against the MK Don's. I prefer to think of them as the franchise currently playing in Milton Keynes since they have no right to use the nickname the Dons, but yes, I'd like to win a bunch of games this season, but there are certainly two that I have circled on the calendar. All right. Well, John, what do we learn today? Well, we learned that accounting is important even if it's boring.

Uh, we learned that you probably don't want to dive head first into a vat full of coins So instead you should fold them up into origami dollar things and of course We also learned that Hank has a significantly better way of dealing with ice trays than John does and finally We learned that the Mars Rover does not in fact sing itself happy birthday every year after a year It's been another year year it's been on Mars, which is really too bad. You think they just, like, haven't have a go with that. What, what, what harm is it doing? Come on, let it sing itself a song, a loan, on a dark, desolate planet, until that wonderful

moment when a human comes up and says, how you do and buddy, good work. And that's gonna happen in 2027. I can't wait for that to happen in 2029. Our podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. Our intern is Claudio Morales. Rosie on a Hoss Rojas helps us out with the questions. Our theme music is by Gunnarola Hank. I think I told people where to email us,

but just in case if you wanna email us, you can do so at hankandjohnatgmail.com. I believe that covers it except to say, Hank. Yes, as we say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.