Dear Hank & John - 9: Dear Hank and Felicia (w/ Felicia Day!)

Episode Date: August 3, 2015

Can you ruin your life in high school? How do you un-friend someone IRL? What video game world would you live in? Hank Green and Guest-John Felicia Day take on these questions and more in the final episode before John's return next week!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or, as I like to call it, Dear Alicia and Hank. It is the weekly podcast where I, Hank Green, and usually John, I don't know if we can even say usual anymore because it has now been more not John than John. But anyway, this week, the amazing Felicia Day, answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. But first, Felicia, do you have a poem for us? Hmm, yeah, I do, in fact, have a prepared statement.

A couple of the sounds that I really like are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike. I'm a juvenile product of the working class,'s best friend floats in the bottom of a class Thank you. Thank you for that lovely poem written by Bernie Topin the man who wrote almost all of the lyrics to Elton John So this is the final This is the final Elton John lyric of Dear Hank and John because John's hiatus will be ending next week, so he will be back, but this week, even better than John, we have Felicia.

How are you doing? I'm really good, how are you? I'm good, we just did VidCon, so I'm a little bit exhausted and confused, and not entirely sure what my purpose is in life anymore, but other than that, just dandy. You have postpartum, yeah, I got, I got depression. I got a little bit of post VidCon melancholia, um, which is normal. I have that when I go to Comic-Con. Yes.

Yeah. And when I go to any television show that I have, because I think when you're in, any intense circumstance where you are just literally living moment to moment, when you stop to reflect the emptiness of life or the positivity of it, you get a little bit down. And that's what we're all about here at Dear Hank and John, pausing to reflect the emptiness of life. Cheery. Let's just do that for the next... For the next... Let's...

In fact, the rest of this episode is just going to be silence, but you are required as a listener to listen to these 40 minutes of silence during which nothing happens except that you reflect on the emptiness of life. But I think you should watch a timer as you watch that 40 minutes go by to really remind you of how fleeting life is because that would make it more depressing. So, you're gonna have to be more because that would make it more depressing. In reality, thank you, viewer, for listening, I suppose, for sharing your time with us,

because we know that you have a limited number of moments on this earth, and you have chosen to spend some of them with us. Boy, is this just the best humor podcast on iTunes? It is under the humor category, and I think we're channeling it, right? Yeah, we're pushing that hard. So what have you been up to in Felicia?

You know, I've been really busy. I have been, I have my book coming out, so that's very intense, finishing a book, starting it, telling people about it. I admire your brother very much, having gone through this process one time, he is the eternal champion of Gensuin his life into pieces in order to accommodate all the needs of a book

Other than that Geek and senderies going along lots of writing and And just I feel even even keeled. I feel like my life has planned out enough so that I don't have to be anxious about it I just have to live the moments. Yeah Yeah, that's excellent news. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. I'm really excited about your book. It comes out, if I'm correct, August 11th.

It is, August 11th. It's called, you're never weird on the internet, almost. Correct? Correct. And that was a title that took almost as long as the first draft. I bet. I would love to hear your long list of alt titles, which I'm sure is very long and awful and annoying

to even think about. There is some truly bad. Yes, there are truly bad, truly bad options. Geekarium, I mean, just really awful. That is how it tends to be. So here on dear Hank and John, or as it may be, dear Hank and Felicia, what we do is we answer people's

questions that they have sent us to the email address, dearhank and johnatgeamel.com. And we have a number of those to answer today. So I think that it might be time to just dive in and start doing that. Do you want to ask our first question? Yeah, I can do that. Annie asks, dear Hank and Felicia, I'm about to start my junior year of high school and how do I overcome the overwhelming sinking feeling thinking about what's to come this year? I am terrified. Everyone says it's so hard and very important.

And what if I screw up my entire life in the single year? Good question. Yeah. I will say that it is important, but I don't know that it's necessarily so hard, but it is also not so important that if you, if you have a rough go one year of any year of your life, what in a regardless of the year,

regardless of what year in school you are, boy, can I guarantee you that that will not mess up your whole life? Yeah, I agree. I relate to this question a lot because I am definitely a perfectionist. I have a perfection syndrome, which a lot of my life disabled me into making the kind of choices that I think would have been good for myself because I was afraid of messing up. So I'm not saying that it's go out and deliberately tank junior year because it's very important to get into college and do well on your grades to prepare you for that phase of your life. But I will say that as an older person, or relative to a junior high school person, the things that I have learned, that are most valuable in my life have been the failures,

not the amazing successes that I was able to brag to people about. Yeah, I mean, there's this weird thing about screwing up, that it feels like the biggest thing in the world when it happens, that it feels like the biggest thing in the world when it happens. But it tends to, from both the perspective of time looking back on it as me, but also from the perspective of people around me, that those things are fairly insignificant. That's the real surprise. The surprise isn't so much to me that looking back on my past failures

that I don't necessarily consider them as big of a deal as I did at the time. It's that even at the time, the people around me didn't think that those things were so catastrophic as I did. Really, what I was concerned about wasn't necessarily failing. It was being perceived as a failure. And that, I think, is mostly a usually irrational fear, because oftentimes when I see people fail, I almost never think less of them,

unless they failed for a reason that, that it has, it's not so much about the failure, it's that they have done something that I find that according to my values is a little offer, skeasy or something. So it's oftentimes when I see people fail, in fact, I find that increases my opinion of them. I try to think about that when I mess up or do something wrong and think about how do I turn this mess up into, you know, and not think about the way I mess up or do something wrong and think about how do I turn this mess

up into, you know, and not think about the way that people are thinking about me as a screw-up, but think about the way that people are thinking about me as someone who's dealing with a situation that isn't ideal. And so like, yeah, I often, you know, those are the moments where you learn the most about yourself and also the moments where other people learn a lot about you. And so I mean, all of this is to say that that anxiety about failure is a little, is misplaced because usually the people who are judge, who you think will be judging you are in fact, right there with you and probably caught up in their own

failure, their own anxieties and fears about the world. And think that whatever's happened to you is, you know, you're handling it well and you're being quite proficient. This is my, yeah, all of my thoughts on this very, very brief question. I mean, I think a lot of it, you're right. It is anxiety and is a very anxious person. I think it took a while and maybe just even in the last year so where I can comprehend that no matter if the worst thing

in the world happens, nothing ends. Your life will still go on. You will have different choices, but they may be even better choices in the long-term. So you kind of have to think of your life is, I don't wanna say it's a marathon versus a sprint, but that is a good analogy because it's true. Like you are the,

it's like if you go to a restaurant you love and one time you have a bad meal, but the aggregate of all the meals you've had at that place are pretty darn good. Obviously, I'm not going to say that place I'm never going back. I mean, if you, if there might be people who say I'm not, they're going back, but they might be missing out on the aggregate of an awesome thing. And that's fine if you don't have that person or opportunity in your life anymore.

I mean, I'm definitely not saying tank your junior year, but I am saying that life goes on and you will cope and you will have just as many options to you afterwards. They just will be different for them things that you're anxious about losing right now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and just more specifically, junior year is probably isn't going to be, I mean, if you work,

if you're conscious about how you learn and about wanting to learn, then I, a lot of people have gotten through junior year all right. So it's something that I, I think you can do, Annie. I have faith. Right. And junior year, I think, is that you should be trying different things and be willing to fail knowing that you might like those things or not like them. Like this is a perfect time in your life to figure out what you want to do a little bit more.

And you have free reign to experiment. And right now, there are lower stakes. It's not easy high school, but this is a time you should branch out and feel, um, and to feel out different opportunities that you might want to pursue more vigorously in college. So I would say embrace yourself and try two things that you might know that will go south, but it will be worth trying. Yeah, it's really interesting

because we do put a ton of pressure on young people in high school and in college and sort of saying like this is that you have to be serious about your future. But really, it is great to think of it as kind of a more low stakes time of your life. And that's not what the establishment wants to tell children because we don't want them to make those giant mistakes

that really can mess up your life, like that might land you in prison, for example, that might mess up your life pretty hard. But yeah, because you don't have people dependent on you, and you don't have to pay your own bills, and in a way you're not even dependent on yourself, it's a time when I think that certain risks should be encouraged rather than prohibited against at all costs. It's just an interesting way that we treat young people in our country because we are terrified and we don't trust them. Well, I think it's approaching other people's homework for you is important, but your own

homework for yourself is super important as well. And especially in that time of life, like that is when you should be free to do some homework, figure out who you are, and you will probably try things you don't like, but unless you try them, you won't know. And so that's why I always encourage people to jump headfirst into something.

And at least you'll be eliminating something for you're going forward in a satisfied way. I feel really good about our answer to that question. What kind and thoughtful people we are, Felicia. I know. We are people who have made mistakes who are trying to be wise. Oh God. Praise has a question for us. She asks, dear Hank and Felicia, what are some of your good best friend criteria? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, so if you're gonna have,

if you're gonna have or be a best friend, what are we looking out for? That's interesting because a lot of times I've felt like in my life, a best friend isn't necessarily something I've chosen, it's something that kind of happened to me, like a brother, you know, it's just the person that I ended up with somehow.

That's less the case now, as an adult who has made some more conscious decisions, but as a young person, I often felt like I kind of just, I know this is an entirely true, but in a lot of ways, just sort of ended up with the people who were nearby. Well, that's why putting yourself in situations and social spheres is super important and not settling for one where you, I think the core of it is being able to be yourself effortlessly and not have to pretend or hide anything you are because that person, in order to be, quote, unquote,

best should know the best you and still want to like you. I think that's important for a boyfriend, girlfriend, or a platonic friend. You, yeah, I mean, I think you shouldn't have any sense of shame about yourself with a best friend. Yeah, yeah, absolutely like that. There's something so wonderful about that moment where you realize where when you realize that people like you, despite the fact that you, in my experience, that I don't like me

that much because I am all up inside of me and analyzing my own faults. And then having someone be like, no, I, yeah, all those things are really great like that British Jonas diary moment and For all the people out there who aren't children and have seen that movie and Yeah, that's that's such a that's such a great way to think about it Yeah, I know that and and I think when you think about it like that you allow allow yourself not to have everyone like you, and I am a course of pathological please like me person. I don't know what it is about the way I was raised, but when I feel the most acutely rejected

when I'm don't, you know, it doesn't seem like I belong or I do something that messes up with someone or I show them an interest that doesn't fit with them and I get, I feel in my mind that I get rejected, which may or not be the case. So I take that to heart very closely. But when I realize that you're not gonna like everything, I don't like beer.

That doesn't mean me a bad person, but that just means that that's just not for me. And every person is not for every person. So it allows you to let go of things where you're clinging to them and might morph yourself to be inauthentic, and therefore you're always acting, which is not comfortable or in the best friend realm at all.

Yeah, and so I think that as, I think the right way to think about this is how do I be the best best friend? And really that's about trying to coax out the real person from the person that you love, the, you know, this dis-friend that coaxing them out and letting them be exactly who they are. And hopefully really, really liking that person.

If it turns out that you don't really, really like that person, don't try to change them, don't try to mold them into the thing that you want your perfect best friend to be. It might just not be that you two should be together all the time. It might be that there are other better people that have more similar perspectives and interests to you.

But that's the thing that I'm, you know, it's such a tremendous gift to someone, to try and help them be more themselves and be more comfortable with themselves. And that's a role that I am very grateful to people in my life for having done for me. So if you can try and do that for other people, it is something that they will probably be tremendously grateful for and love you for. That's very interesting because I was saying that, I'm thinking about acting and of course, don't be an actor and a relationship in real life, but I trained in Meisner a lot, which is a lot about not necessarily putting on a character, but being yourself authentically in the moment with a script about the other person.

And I know the best acting I've ever done was getting out of my own head and about my own performance and about what I'm going through and just focusing on what the other person was going through. And that really is what the Meisner technique is about, where you're putting all your focus on the other person and then you're reacting and allowing yourself to react naturally caring about that other person. And that's when you really forget you're acting and you're in the moment and I think the best acting is you're creating a relationship with that other person not acting that you

have a relationship. So it's an interesting analogy you talk about because that is sort of the real life version of myzner acting. We got another question. This one is from Cyprus, who asks, Dear Hank and Felicia, I've been having trouble as of recent with a person who's been a bit too friendly. I used to consider him a friend, but after a bit of a falling out, I realized that he wasn't a person that I really wanted to be associated with, so it's been a few months since then, and he's reached out to me and apologized and asked if we

could be friends again. That all seems fine and dandy, but frankly, I just don't want to be friends with him. I don't hate him or anything. He's just not somebody I'd like to hang out with. TLDR, how do I go about telling someone that frankly, I don't like them and don't hate him or anything. He's just not somebody I'd like to hang out with. TLDR, how do I go about telling someone that frankly, I don't like them and don't want to be friends with them again? Oh, that's tough. I mean, yeah, it is. And it's certainly something that I've dealt with. And usually by being like, oh yeah, give me a call.

And then not answering when they call. You know, it's the ghosting. You gotta ghost them. But that doesn't always work. And also it's a little crappy thing to do. It's really hard. And I know that I've tried, I mean, this is not the same as friendship,

but like in a business level. It's always the most persistent people that you're like, I don, this is not the same as friendship, but like in a business level, it's always the most persistent people that you're like, I don't wanna have lunch with you. I don't wanna have lunch with you. I don't, okay, fine, because you won't go away. You know, you tend to reward the people if you're busy with who are most persistent. And I've frankly been honest with people,

and I've been like, listen, I just don't have time to do this, or do this favor for you, or whatever. I don't have time to do this, or do this favor for you, or whatever. I don't have time to give you what you want from me. And the pushback I've gotten has been just so bad, and I'm a very non-confrontational person, so I don't know. Ghosting is my backup plan, I guess, in life and business and personal,

because I just don't know how else you deal with it and not leave a tainted sort of taste in your mouth with another person's feelings who just won't get the hints. Yeah, I mean, there's a certain amount of you have to be careful and make sure that this person isn't basically trying to manipulate you and being disrespectful of you. If you think you are being clear that you don't want to chill with them anymore and they aren't taking the hint, it may be that they are trying to willfully manipulate you. And that is, you know, in business, that's a kind of thing that you sort of have to deal with in personal life that shouldn't be of thing that you sort of have to deal with in personal life that shouldn't be a thing that you have to deal with. And in that circumstance, then, you know,

you might wanna look out for a sort of a pattern of manipulation in this person to make sure that they're just trying to be friends again and they have good motives rather than they're trying to control you. Because when they're trying to control you. Because when people are trying to control you, that is very much a situation where you wanna be like, look, I'm just cutting this off, it's not gonna happen.

Yeah, also it sounds like it's driven by their ego. Whether they, I mean, what is it that they won from you? Are you really, was it a very special friendship? Like, I guess, this is a question of what level of intimacy of friendship was there and what was the motivation for falling out? Was it a situation where you've grown past that person and that circumstance for being close to them or something bad happened and you want to separate yourself and they're just desperately trying to cover their own ego but even redeeming themselves regardless of what your feelings are and needing space to get over it.

It sounds like when somebody is like that, either they have a true problem in reading other people's reactions in which you might actually just have to be honest and say, I can't hang out, I need time, or I'm just really busy. Or they're just driven by their own ego and you shouldn't feel bad about just kind of not responding because hopefully eventually they'll move on. Right. If they're trying, if it feels like they're trying to control you, then you should have no qualms about controlling your own destiny and basically just ignoring them. And if it goes beyond that, if they keep bugging you, then that's like a legitimate circumstance

where you need to be straight up and be like, and basically say, look, this is in a relationship that I'm interested in having. I've got lots of stuff going on and you're not part of it. And it's just gonna have to be that way. It's very, that is extremely hard. I've had to do it a couple times. It's extremely unpleasant.

There's nobody, I don't know that anybody's good at it, except for maybe people who are just, just have zero anxiety inside of them. But, but those moments where you say, look, this is how it's going to be. And that's a little bit like, you know, a breakup where you're saying, this, like, no, we can't be friends. We have to break up.

We're friend, we're friend breaking up. And, and I don't need to explain why, because I'm living my life and you can live yours. But whether or not I'm a part of your life is my decision, just like whether or not, like you can't have, you can't, you know, like your desires do not affect my desires. And so, I don't need to tell you why this is over.

It just is, and you have to accept that. And a lot of times with particularly manipulative people, if you give them a reason, then they're just gonna be like, oh well, we can fix that. But it might not be about there being a reason, it might just be about you not wanting to chill with them anymore, and that's fine. Like you're not liking their values,

you're not liking them, you sensing something off about them that you don't want to have in your life. And that's fine, and you should totally go with your instincts. And you should not feel a responsibility to tell that person all the reasons, or to like cushion that blow or whatever. It's, you know, it's your life and you should be able to control yourself. I feel like just listening to your strengths is making me, A, what you're talking about is making me anxious, just thinking about a scenario where it would have to do that.

No, totally, right? Yeah. I mean, I've never broken up with a friend like that. I've never had a business thing that I could ever say to some of these face. I just don't want to do this anymore. And I think that's part of my being homeschooled. I did not deal with confrontation or rejection as much as I should have as a kid. I love the fact that you're encouraging that and everyone to be strong enough to stand up for yourself,

really, and control the relationship strings that are attached to you in life. Because if not, it weighs you down. And I think especially in modern times where we can't get away from our friends from college or high school or elementary school, because we are tied to them in an online fabric that is easy to cut off but persistently there where people can enter your life again. I think it's even a bigger issue to talk about. So thank you for lending

me strengths and Cyprus as well. Yeah, and it's, I mean, it gives me anxiety too to talk about it and not even having to do it. It's not something I've had to do in a long time, which is nice. Yay. Yeah. Yay, strength. But I mean, there are definitely like business

relationships I have where I would love to say that. But in business, it's different because it's not a, like, because everybody sort of shares business, like everybody shares an industry, and we all have to, you know, live together inside of our industry. But with personal stuff, it isn't. Like, it has to be a mutually agreed upon relationship.

And if one person doesn't want to be in it, then the relationship doesn't exist anymore. Like, that's how relationships work. Yeah, but as you know, it's, we are in a weird world. And when you're in an entertainment, business is personal, and personal is business frequently. And as someone who's gotten through a lot of iterations of what I do, and having personal relationships move on,

and business relationships move on in various good and bad ways, it is very difficult. And if something goes wrong, everyone's the hero of their own tale, and you know something goes wrong. Everyone's the hero of their own tale and you're not going to be the hero and everyone's tale. And so the only thing you can do is what your gut is telling you is the right thing for you. And that includes your moral fabric

in that you're not really messing somebody over or really hurting their feelings. So it's complicated, but yeah, it's even more complicated when business and personal mix. Yeah, sure is fun. Keras asks, dear Felicia and Hank, I was wandering through a nearby forest and was thinking about Groot. Groot can only say one thing, but can express emotion when he says it. My question to you is, would you rather only say one thing but express emotion as you want when you say it,

like Groot, or say whatever you want, but be unable to express any emotion? Oh boy. Well, the question is, can I say like, I am very mad right now. Or like, can I express, can I, can I, I can say whatever I want? So I can, I can express emotion in that way.

Just I wouldn't be able to, like, it would be difficult to believe for me to be like, I am so mad right now. I have never been this angry in my life. And this is the most angry I've ever been, and no one could believe you. No one would, and it'd be very difficult to say to someone like, I love you, but without any emotion,

ever being shown in your relationship with that person. And they would just have to believe you. No one would know for sure whether you were scared or not. You'd have to be like, I'm very scared. Yeah, I don't, I mean, that would be very spock-like in that you can't, I mean, because she says, or he, you would be unable to express any emotion, which means your face, which is a vehicle to unspoken emotion, would not be able to express it at all. So you're completely expressionist in your face. And body, I mean, if you're unable to express,

does that mean you can't hug someone? So that would be a very bad world, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I started out, I started out being, I would want to be able to say whatever I want. But I've come around to the other perspective, especially because I, and I believe those around me would be happy to learn sign language and express emotion that way. So boom, check that out. True. And technically in the question, you could write. You could only say it like Groot.

You only want, you could, would you rather only say one thing but express emotion as you want when you say it? And then that, I mean, maybe I'm just parsing, maybe I'm being a lawyer, I've watched too much good wife lately, I'm parsing this question. You should, you really should have phrased this question more carefully because the way we read it, this either way could be either way. It's really,

it's full of loopholes. I switched cheese. It's a swish cheese question, so I would say the group, group being able to say emotion and then be able to hug people, because I like hugs. That's good. That's good. Though we are both employed as professional speakers of words, but what good would it be if we could only speak words without emotion, that you'd get no more acting jobs for Felicia? Yeah, true.

No acting, although writing, you could be, well, unable to express any emotion. Let's just theoretically say that you couldn't speak emotion, but you could write emotion. So then actually that limitation might make you the best composer or writer in the world because you have to channel everything into your expression, your art. So actually, I don't know. Now I'm on the fence again.

Turns out this is a really complicated question. I was just thinking earlier today. I was having a conversation with some friends about how superheroes, and we're talking about, I'm talking about superheroes right now that have special abilities. How they choose to make the world a better place is often, seems very, it's big and it's explosive

and it's about attacking and defeating evil, but it isn't really the way that good gets done in the world. And maybe there's something, we're talking about Superman, maybe there's something in the sort of morality of Superman that prevents this, but he has the ability to do so much good in just sort of like infrastructure creation. And like he could just, you know, heat up balls of stuff with his heat vision and then

use that to power power plants without the production of fossil fuel, without the burning of fossil fuels and solve global warming sort of in one stroke. But I bet there's some weird mythological thing with Superman that says, like according to the laws of Krypton, he can't do that. I mean, I particularly, I'm not a big superhero fan, I, because I find, I mean, this is probably gonna be controversial, but, you know, yes, they can do great deeds,

but they are not emotionally mature to me. They don't seem to be. No, they would be terrible. It's almost as if they all act like teenage boys. Oh, wow. That's, it's true. Absolutely.

And they don't know how to express themselves. So they just say, I'm going to move a building. I don't know. And that's why I'm not, I mean, well, in your, just an cursory grants, would you say that any superhero has the emotional acumen to solve a problem with words and emotion versus just big actions? I wouldn't say that anybody particularly springs to mind in my mind. I think that there's probably some X-Men. X-Men, I was about to say, yeah, rogue.

I mean, some of the more psychological. Yeah, Kitty pride, maybe. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. But, you know, that's a big, and I think a lot of superhero mythologies have come a long way in the last like 10 years or even five years in terms of a more fuller view of the universe and of human interaction. Just because a lot of comic readers have grown up a bit.

Yeah, but it's almost like the evil ones have more psychological motivation. I can't imagine cats in America or Superman would be able to have a really good relationship discussion. But, you know, somebody who's a bad guy, I'm sure you could like deal with your issues. He probably wouldn't come to your side. But at least you know you're going to have a good conversation about it because they're a little bit more savvy. Well, yeah, I mean, it seems as if, you know villains, writers need to create more motivation for villains.

And so they create the internal mythology of the villain's internal mythology more fully than they create the heroes because the hero, the motivation is more explicit. It's more obvious to the reader. It's yeah, but it's externally motivated. And because of that, it's interesting. I often hear people saying, I kind of identify

with villains more than with heroes, because I get that. I get where they're coming from. And I'm like, ugh, the world is so messed up. And why not just destroy all of it? Which, it's always great when you see a hero dealing with that. When you see, watchmen is a really good example of a comic that has just a ton of,

a ton of like really deeply flawed heroes who, who despite the fact that the world might be coming to an end are basically just like, I could fix this problem, but boy am I sad and I don't want to. That's come, maybe why I love watchmen. Yeah, watchmen is pretty great. I know that, that, that was a complete non-secretary that had nothing to do with any of the questions that we were asked.

So we're going to ask another one, this one is from Lauren, who asks, dear Hank and Felicia, I recently read that the curiosity Mars Rover is programmed to sing Happy Birthday to itself once a year. I'm feeling too lazy to research this, could you confirm whether or not this is true? And also, do you think you would sing Happy Birthday to yourself if you lived all alone by yourself on another planet?

I can, in fact, confirm that the curiosity rover does sing Happy Birthday to itself once a year on the anniversary of its landing on Mars, which is just adorable. That's just adorable. That's really adorable. I wanna keep it. Is it a, what kind of cute little voices it? Or is it just like a chiptone thing? Yeah, it's a chiptone thing.

Yeah, exactly. That's adorable. I'm pretty sure. I mean, that's what I imagine. I don't know. Maybe it's just a recording of a child singing Happy Birthday, which would be wake-repear. Really creepy if you're an alien.

I just think that was such a great, like afterthought kind of thing. It's like, well, I mean, why is there even a speaker on it? I'm sure there's a reason that it has a speaker. There's probably a really great scientific reason that the curiosity rover needs to have speakers. And I don't know what that would be, but I'm sure there is one.

And so once you have it, you can be like, hey, you know what'd be great? You know what'd like let people talk more about curiosity, like give us another opportunity to have a press release go out. Let's have it sing happy birthday to itself. It would be great if you were able to submit your own, you know, voice.

Remember in the old days, they had that computer voice that you could program in and you would just make it say things if you typed them in to the browser. I mean, that was amazing. So if you had people bid for charity in order to be able to say, I'm gonna have the curiosity to speak on, you know. I love it. I love it.

Yeah, I just like send a message to curiosity rover and have it be like, but fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, but, fart, but, and, fart, and that would be so good. I would totally, how much money would I pay to have curiosity rover just say the word fart three times on the surface of Mars? I would pitch in for that if we could make a heaven. I'm a donor.

What's your number though? Like, what's your highest number? I would pay a thousand dollars. I was thinking a thousand. I was thinking somewhere between 500 and a thousand. I mean, that's an upper limit, but if we went in 500, $1,000, that's... Yeah, I mean, my first thought was like,

it was 500, but then I was like, would I pay more than that? Yes, I'd pay 700. Would I pay 800? Yes. And then I got to a thousand, then I was like, yes. And then a 1,100, I was like, oh, yeah, so I I got to a thousand then I was like yes and then 1100 I was like

Yeah, so so I feel like around a thousand dollars I would pay to have to have the Mars River just just say fart a few times and and apparently Felicia wants the same thing So we can just it's fine. It's so it's pretty good to happen I think I think we know enough people Collectively that we could definitely yeah if anybody listening to the podcast right now has the ability to get curiosity to say words for us, we've got $1,000 for you. Well, to charity, to charity. I think you should go to like a, you know. Oh, okay, it should go.

Yeah, right, right, not for you one person. I don't want to end the encourage, like, you know, under the table of charity. Well, honestly, I don't care what it goes to. I'll get anything. If it's for charity, I the table. Well, honestly, I don't care what it goes to. I'll get anything. If it's for charity, I would pay even more. But $1,000, I'd pay just, you know, Jeff from NASA to do that for us.

You're gonna get him fired. Now it's gonna be some kind of extortion ring at JPL. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. All right, the second component to this question was, do you think you'd sing happy birthday to yourself if you lived all alone on another planet?

Yes, because I saw castaway, and Tom Hanks got crazy hair from loneliness. And I think that benchmarks are important in life. And if I were to just say to how with it, I would probably be a dirty, very uncut lady at the end and just kind of die sadly without any sort of highlights to my island planet. I think it'd be hard to keep track of the days

if nobody else was around, but I guess if I had a smartphone, it would do it for me. Because one assumes that if you're on another planet, you've got stuff keeping you alive that has the date and time on it. So yeah, I don't know that I would sing happy birthday to myself, but I would definitely celebrate my birthday if I was mentally together enough to do that.

If I was in my current state, I would, but probably by the time my birthday rolled around next May, if like suddenly I was by myself on another planet, just the solitude probably would have gotten to my head by that point and I wouldn't be in the state to be able to do much of anything. I don't know though, maybe I'd keep really busy on Mars, maybe I'd be super into Mars and just like, look at rocks all day, that's eventually,

I probably would get tired of the rocks, but not for a while. I mean, I would carve in the rocks, because I mean, I guess if I always get angry at people who carve in trees when I'm hiking, I'm like, who are you? Well, I don't care about your love, but if I was on Mars, I would be vandalizing some rocks

to say like I was here and nobody would care who came after me, but I would feel satisfied to leave my imprint there. Oh yeah. For, oh yeah. Yeah, I'd probably, you know, you just build like giant canes of Mars rocks. So people in the future come along and be like, what on earth, and be like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I'd probably, you know, you just build like giant cans of Mars rocks. So people in the future come along and be like, what on earth, and they'd be like,

look, there was this hypothetical in a podcast and somehow it came true. And I got here, I can't explain all of that. I just, we're just like right, like I'm basically a novel with rocks, just like setting out pebbles to be like, here's, here to explain the entire thing. Here's a 5,000 word essay written in pebbles.

That would be that would be a that would be a life chore worth living. Yeah, absolutely. That would be a life chore of living. I want to read your pebble novel. Our next question Sarah asks, dear Fullyshan Hank, if you could be transported into the world of a video game Which game world would you most like to explore and why? Oh, I love this question. This is hard because- Yeah, I put this question in because I thought that you would enjoy it, but I completely forgot to come up with an answer for myself. So you're gonna have to go first.

Well, I mean, I actually forgot to come up with an answer even though when I read the, it in the email, I was like, Oh, this is very exciting. I mean, it's going to be hard because most places in video game worlds don't have toilets ever. So you go in and you're like, there's no toilet here. How do they go to number one or number two? I think I would be very torn between two different, I would be torn between a fantasy world and a science fiction world. So, you know, and every video game has disaster happening all the time. So, like, for instance, mass effect, if I were in mass effect, sorry, and I, people were trying to blow up my planet, that would be an unpleasant experience, although,

I would have to be a very rich, luc person in there so I would have my own ship. I would have a very diverse, um, peer group of different species. I would be able to travel around all the time, but, um, if I were to be sort of an alien just on a, a ship, I don't know. That seems appealing, but not 100%. So I, I probably would want to live in a fantasy world like Skyrim or even World of Warcraft because it has bright colors.

And even though I don't think there's, there's not a lot of bathrooms in there, but I think we could fix it. We could craft some. Yeah, yeah, you got it. It's the main concern is, do you guys have soft, fluffy, downy toilet paper? And so... It's the main concern is, do you guys have soft, fluffy, downy toilet paper? That's it.

That would be super impressive. And down pillows? Yeah. I mean, if you take out the chaos that is inherently in video games in that there's always confrontation and war explosions, if you take that out and just say, okay, you're just living in the world

like a regular person. It would be a tie between Mass Effect and probably World of Craft. I was just thinking about, do you remember the game's Space Quest? Oh, I loved that. Were you playing the janitor? Yeah, yeah, so Space Quest 6, I think was the last Space Quest

and it was the sort of most involved one. And so we can, the good thing about Space Quest is like, it's really like, this is just a bunch of dope in space, be in dopey, funny jokes, bright colors, you know, like pixel animation, and there's just not a lot. Like, like, the worst thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna get kicked out of space school. Like, it's, oh my God, not that I'm saying this, I really wanna let's play this game. So yeah, I'm into that.

But the other thing is that most media properties have video games. So my immediate thought is to take me to the Star Trek universe. I'll live there. Okay. And there's plenty of Star Trek video games. So yes, transport me to Star Trek Land.

And I will live in the next generation. I will be in... It was a very good... On the Starship Enterprise. And I'll be perfectly happy. They have toilets there. And everybody seems to be happy and fulfilled. And adventures happen, but very few people die in the next generation.

I probably would want to make sure I was a recurring character, because I guess a fair number of people do die. You would not want to be a red unitard, you want to be a blue or yellow or... Yes, exactly. So that's my cheating answer, which is that there are indeed star trek games. And that's where I've always wanted to live my whole life.

That's funny. I wanted to marry Ryker from a very young age, so. I wanted to be Wesley Crusher. Really? Oh, yeah. He was my fave. I did my hair like Wesley. Yeah, I...

He was so smart. You know, everything and everybody like respected him, like an adult, he was perfect character for me. I understand why other people were not a big fan of Wesley, but it was, I mean. Oh, I know, I liked him. I liked him and I wanted to be, you know, his mom was so pretty because I loved her red hair.

I was just kind of in love with Riker, the in a way that, no, there was no one else existing for me. And, you know, and when I met Jonathan Frekes at a party, I was kind of intimidated. I was like, oh God, hi. Can I get the Doritos? I mean, I really was just, it was not. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I love it very much. All right, we're going to, we're going to move on to the news. This is going to be the news from both Mars, the fourth rock from the Sun, and AFC, Wibbleden, the fourth tier English soccer team. So Felicia, do you have any

obscure British football news for us? I do indeed. I was given this piece of news, and just recently learned that football is soccer. So, let me, let me, so this is super, super from my records, not. Okay, so Neil Ardley, Wimbledon's magnificent and talented manager, got a bit upset during a friendly game between AFC Wimbledon and the Spanish Granada FC due to some over-Zellus refereeing. Ardley was quoted saying, the ref started to book players for nothing at all

and the lads from both sides lost their heads a bit. He blew the whistle for the slightest touch and it was difficult to get any rhythm in the game. In all, it was a shame and I don't know how often both an English team and a Spanish team have been upset with a referee. That is the most sports that's ever coming out of my mouth. Well, I'm proud. Proud do have been responsible for all those sports that just came out of your mouth.

Many, many sports. I've been to Grenada and it is a beautiful city. So I did feel like I at least touched a little bit of home in my heart. I really don't know. I wrote that. I just went to Google News and I searched for AFC Wimbledon and that was a thing.

And it moat like 90% of that was just a quote from Neil Ardley, which was exactly how the article was written in whatever publication it was written in. It was basically just, this is the thing that a guy said, and I really, like, I still don't understand what they're talking about. So I apologize if I messed that up in any way, but for some reason he was upset at a referee. And now you know that thing about AFC Wimbledon. On to Mars News. Yay!

There was a lot to choose from this week in Mars News. I'm going to give you a story that podcast listeners might actually be able to get involved with themselves. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been taken a lot of pretty fantastic pictures of Mars. So many that mission scientists are calling on volunteers to help them identify and classify fascinating and peculiar formations near the southern pole of Mars, marking them for future research. Ah, marking them for future research. These features are left behind during the southern summer on Mars when dry ice sublime off of the surface leaving weird spider-like formations and channels and holes. You can learn more about this project including how to participate at the

Planet 4 Terrain's website which is terrain.planet4.org and and that's PLANETE-F-O-U-R.org. And that is our episode of Dear Hank and John without John but guest hosted by Felicia Day, the creator of many wonderful things, including the entire Geek & Sender YouTube network, and author of your never weird on the internet, almost out August 11th and available for pre-order now. Yay.

Yay. Thank you for having me. Oh! I am delighted. I am always an admirer of you. And to hang out virtually with you in audio form is a big treat. Oh. So, thank you. That's very sweet.

It is a huge treat for me as well. And it's going to be also a huge treat for our editor, Nicholas Jenkins, who is a big Felicia Day fan. Thanks, Nick. So thanks, Nick. Our theme music is by Gunnarola. Nick, of course, Nicholas Jenkins is our editor. If you have any questions for us, you can send them to hankinjohnatgmail.com and as we say,

an hour hometown. Don't forget to be awesome. you