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It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your questions, giving you advice and bring you all of the weeks news from both Mars and ASE Little and John. How are you doing? I mean wonderful. You know what I did over the weekend, Hank?
No. I built a tree house. I did hear that you were building a tree house because at one point I called you on the phone and you said I am building a tree house right now. Yeah, I built a tree house with my buddy, actually my buddy Alex built the tree house but I did a lot of sawing and a fair amount of drilling and a little bit of measuring.
Oh wow, my assumption is that you may have moved a lot of wood around. I moved a lot of wood around and then I drilled a lot of wood into place. But it was amazing because I have a tremendous fear of heights but I was reminded of that line I first heard from Rajpun Javi of Last Mile Health that no condition is permanent and even though I have a tremendous fear of heights it turns out that I am slightly more scared of social embarrassment and so working with my fear of social embarrassment I was able to do it to stand on top of that tree house even when it didn't have decking. I was once in a situation in the Grand Canyon where our tour guide was like you should go out here and walk along this like six inch wide path that on one side has this cliff face and on the other side has nothing and then at the end of it you will find a lovely view and you can go and sit and contemplate your thoughts.
And I was I mean here's the situation I knew I there was like not a great chance that I would die but like I'm much higher than usual chance and so I'm walking out on this thing and I'm like you know what this is making me feel is that like there is in no way a situation which I should be doing this but and I'm not doing it because I'm enjoying it I'm only doing it because this man who I do not know asked me to and I did not want to embarrass myself in front of a stranger and so I am walking along and then I sat down and I did the thing that he said and I sat there and I just the whole time I was just like I have to go back on that path again. That's all I thought about. They were like and now you will feel at one with the universe and you're like I only feel fear. I feel I feel that that path is the only thing in my life.
I have forgotten about everything else. My friend Chris is incredibly good at not giving it to social pressure so recently we were on a camping trip and we were all like it was the middle of the night and we were all like we're gonna hike down to that lake Chris it's gonna be so fun it's so dark and we're gonna hike all the way down to the lake and then we're gonna hike up and Chris was like no and I was like you gotta go man it's gonna be amazing it's gonna be so beautiful and he was like no absolutely not I'm gonna stay here by the fire. Yeah where it's nice well the thing is John the problem is that I have had many experiences in which I was like I am not going to do that because of who I am and the fact that like I know me and then finally somebody convinces me and then I do it and I'm like you're right this was great and so I was like maybe this guy's right maybe I'm gonna walk on this path and at the end I'll be like oh this is beautiful and I'm all alone in the universe and and what is what is me anyway and uh did this guard all of the useless things in my life and only have the things that are great but it turned out that that that was not what happened. Yeah no we all want to glimpse the interconnectedness of all things but not at the expense of standing on the edge of a cliff.
No all right I made it back though John I'm alive to tell the tale. Yeah this time can I uh can we move on to questions from our listeners? You don't have a come on you have one job John. I actually have several jobs and I have news from AFC Wimbledon and I've gone through the questions I just don't have a poem.
So you have one more job than I have. Also I wrote an episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed over the last four days and I built a tree house so here is a question from Maya who writes here John and Hank. Everyday at school during lunch I go to the cafeteria to get a plastic fork as an excuse to see my crush. My family likes to wash and save plastic forks so adding one to the collection every day means that we have a lot of plastic forks at home.
I have a lot of questions about your question Maya. What should we do with these plastic forks? This does not seem to me to be the central question about your question. Should I host a party celebrating Hank's book an absolute remarkable thing available for pre-order now and coming out September 25th where people might use forks alternatively what should I do as an excuse to see my crush instead of getting a plastic fork every day?
You finally got there Maya that is your question. Hank if you don't mind uh could you do the sign off? You're more of the singer. Says Maya he Maya who Maya Maya.
Ha ha that's pretty good that's a pretty if you liked 2007 YouTube you will love that name specific sign off. Alright so I have I mean there's really only one thing to do with these forks John but before we get to that do we want to talk about the situation in which there is a fork vendor. Oh no I figured there's a cafeteria where there's plastic forks plastic spoons plastic knives. My question is why does Maya get a plastic fork every day when Maya could be getting a plastic spoon or a plastic knife so that once every three days Maya has a full set of silverware because what you really want to do Maya is get like eight or 12 full sets of silverware that you will eventually use as your family cutlery when you marry your crush and it will be such a cute story.
That's very cute you have to get them like silver plate and it's still a bit more durable. Of course Hank that goes without saying you spend thousands of dollars to silver plate your plastic. I was going to say silverware but of course it isn't silverware until after you cover your plastic forks and silver. Um so I okay here's what you do with the forks Maya obviously you got it take each individual fork and paint it in a beautiful way as if each one is a flower and then you wrap them in a ribbon and you present them as if they are a bouquet of flowers to your crush and you say I've not needed any one of these forks.
I just wanted to have you in my life. And now I'm giving you the forks back. Do you want to hang out sometime? Oh it's so sweet but then there's a pretty good chance that the crush is going to be like yeah no yeah that's life man that's how it works that's what having a crush is all about is that part.
When they say no Maya you got to take the risk here you got to do it you got to paint each of those forks individually turn them into a fork bouquet and the fork bouquet to your crush and say exactly what Hank just said it's adorable and I like it and if it doesn't work you have a great story in the future so that oh yeah next fall in love you can tell your next partner you won't believe how great I was to the last person. But just in general I think there's a lot to be said for doing dumb things that may be uncomfortable in the moment but will at least lead to a story that you can tell in the future. Yeah although I would I would put a slight asterisk after that comment. One of the things I really loved about the movie Love Simon I don't know if you've seen it yet Hank but it's really I thought it was really good.
One of the things I really loved about Love Simon is there's one of these moments where you know the person does something big to try to confront their crush or whatever but instead it's just so cringy and uncomfortable so it can definitely go all all wrong and you've got to be conscious of that like you don't always want to be John Q-Sack holding up the boom box. Especially if you know how the person feels about you and you're doing this to try to like win their affection but it doesn't sound like Maya knows that it seems like Maya is in that that true in between space where the cat could either be alive or dead but the box is not yet been opened. It doesn't necessarily seem like Maya knows that much about Forkperson. That is a good name for them.
The only information we've gotten about Forkperson is that they have some authority over Forks. Oh I didn't even think that they had authority over Forks. I thought that like Maya had a different lunch period or something or that's a great question Hank. What what is going on?
That was my first question and you thought that it wasn't interesting. I take it back. What is that? Why?
Why? It appears that Maya has very intentionally not given us this information. Well but Maya does say what should I do as an excuse to see my crush instead of getting a plastic fork every day. Like here's an idea you could eat at the cafeteria.
Why is that? That's a great question. I mean that's going to be one of the questions that we don't know the answer to and that just kind of we have to live inside the mystery of you know like. Oh absolutely yeah.
I mean you could like you could eventually develop a neural network that's like a thousand times more powerful than human brain and all it's going to give you is probabilities of what thing may have happened and it's going to be split between a thousand different maybes. So your point Hank is that we should take the most powerful neural networks in the world and have them stop playing go and trying to figure out autonomous driving which they don't seem to be doing a good job of and orient them entirely towards figuring out why Maya thinks it is necessary to get a fork from the cafeteria in order to see her crush every day. I mean at the moment it feels like we might be using those algorithms for less good things. I don't totally disagree with you.
Let's move on to the next question though. This question comes from Holland who asks steer Hank and John my car has naturally bright headlights which has its perks except that people often mistake my lowlights for highlights. I know your car and I do not like it. No just coming to come right out and say that.
My main problem is how they respond. They'll wait till just before they've driven past me and then blast their own headlights to the highest setting. There's only one setting. There's only one other setting.
It's the highest one. Yes. They're flashy with their brakes. What do I do?
They don't exactly give me enough time to explain that my headlights are in fact on low. Should I just ignore it? I'm afraid that someday it may catch me off guard so that I accidentally swear if I heard somebody or myself any advice would suffice. I'm at a loss.
Holland. Here's the thing Holland. You're going to need to get a different car. I mean can you go into the shop and be like my lights are too bright?
I think that naturally bright headlights is a little bit like saying I naturally sneeze like this. There's just no way for me to deal with the fact that my headlights are so much brighter than everyone else's. There has to be a way to deal with it. It's such a nightmare to be faced with extremely bright lights when you are on a country road at night in a two lane road situation.
It is blinding. So I'm completely sympathetic to the people who are flashing the bright at you because what they are trying to communicate is ow I'm scared. Yeah I can't like turn your brakes off please turn your bright. I mean you should not wait until you've just gotten upon them to do it.
I don't know. I tend to do that from a fair distance but maybe they I don't know. But it seems like maybe go see your dealer and be like I think my headlights are too bright. Have you ever gotten this complaint before?
Because it seems like I'm getting this complaint regularly as I drive a lot on not great roads which was also included in Holland's question and I just skipped it. All right this next question comes from James. You're right. It seems like a really crazy time in American politics these days but it also seems like corruption and scandals and fear and questionable hairstyles have been around for as long as people have been forming societies.
It's a really great observation James and I would argue maybe even before that. So why does it feel like it's especially significant now? I mean we're not at war with our neighbors so I feel kind of like this time pales in comparison to the Civil War though I suppose that is a pretty high bar to get over. Yeah is it the case that there was a long period of like 40 years where things were pretty chill?
No making that up? Yes. No from like Watergate to the end of Obama? No.
I mean it was not pretty chill. No don't you remember being a kid and having to hide under your desk during drills for how you would respond to a nuclear holocaust? That was a big deal. Yes that was a big deal.
That was very stressful. The Cold War was weird and super intense right up until 1990. It was pretty I mean I don't look were things this weird? No.
Things are very weird right now and I think there is a legitimate cause for concern. I genuinely think that and I don't just mean in the United States. I think if things are just weird in one country then it's sort of dismissible because you know a lot of times the pendulum will swing back or whatever but when things are simultaneously weird in a lot of countries I mean we've had decades now of kind of a pullback from a feeling of interconnectedness across the globe so we aren't functionally less interconnected like we're just as likely to give each other the flu but we are feeling less connected and our laws when it comes to trade and other things are expressing that less connectedness and I feel like what's happening in Europe and in the United States and to an extent also in South America is an expression of that broader thing that is the source of concern for me definitely but I also think it is nothing like a civil war. It is nothing like World War II.
It is nothing like World War I. It's certainly nothing like you know 1848 or the late 18th century that this is a weird time and I don't want to minimize it but it's not the weirdest time even of the last hundred years. We've been over the last 50 years and James I do like that you called attention to the fact that people have had weird haircuts oh forever and I don't know that we should like I do not really think that it's a good idea to focus on the physical appearance of your political enemies in these conversations. I know that it's fun but it does not seem to help.
No it doesn't seem to help on any level like no it seems very counterproductive on every level like it makes people listen to US but it also makes people feel less human so it seems to not accomplish either of the whatever enough politics and we're moving on. All right we're moving on to another question and this question is from Andy who asks dear Hank and John I overheard this question in the cafe at work a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it ever since so matter can either be created nor destroyed right and there are six billion more people on the earth than there were when Alexander Hamilton first rap battle Thomas Jefferson right so that means there's a lot less of something what is it this question's making me raggedy Andy that's good that's good names just sign off what was it John what was all that stuff all that stuff was Adams it was like sandwiches and ravioli yeah and now it's humans now it's humans right there's this uh there was a it's like research if somebody said like oh I used to weigh 68 pounds but now I weigh 70 pounds but matter can't be created or destroyed how could this have happened how could it have happened um so there's a very interesting graph that I found it's called the cumulative biosphere pools over giga years of time and so this goes this goes back pretty much to the beginning of the earth and also stretches on for like a about a billion years after now which makes this graph somewhat terrifying because at a billion and a half years after now nothing's left so I don't know exactly how they sketch that out but that's that's what they've calculated so according to this a billion and a half years from now there there is no more living mass but biomass is the sort of measure of how much living stuff there is on the earth at any given point and right now that split roughly equally between prokaryotes single cell prokaryotes single cell ukaryotes and then multi-celled animals like ants and us and and that number is of like us is actually when I say us I mean multi-celled organisms it's pretty steady at the moment though it is maybe decreasing a little bit which is a thing I don't know if we should be concerned about that but it seems to maybe be decreasing a little bit and the yeah so it's all roughly the same we are you know not an insignificant portion of the biomass of the earth at this point but we are not like a like not not a big piece of the pie like you can measure us but it it only becomes really significant when you measure all of the things that we also control which is like all the corn plants and all the cows and chickens and stuff well when you measure us plus all of the animals that exist solely for our use plants and animals yeah it becomes a really significant portion not as significant of course as bacteria but significant oh yeah yeah we control a great deal of the multi-cellular biosphere of earth yeah although let's be clear bacteria control us so who's really in charge it's all the system John none of us can exist without without the others we need to understand our interconnectedness which is why we have to walk out on very scary paths to the edge of the Grand Canyon to see I don't know man how do how do we imagine ourselves correctly as interconnected as we are I don't I don't have any great suggestions for you meditation helpful is to remind myself constantly that half of the cells inside of me are not mine this next question comes from Colette who writes dear john and Hank speaking of uh complicated organisms Hank like humans and ants Colette's question is do ants sleep if so do they just stop the middle of some grass and sleep did they have designated sleeping places do they have bed times seeking answers Colette and I thought you might be able to answer this question because you of course are known to be the world's biggest super fan of an ant colonies youtube channel so you want to check out Ants Canada youtube.com slash Ants Canada ants do kind of sleep like a lot of animals they they don't sleep kind of in the way that we do uh but insects do have like a psych like basically a pattern of cycling through resting periods um and like there it appears may that they uh do only sleep for a very short amount of time so like eight minutes have reached 12 hours according to a 1983 study so that's a lot could have changed among ants though in the last 35 years you know it's true we sleep a lot less now than we used to so maybe ants are staying up later you think ants are not a Netflix they're scrolling on their phones you know just like going through Ant Twitter and feeling at the same time energized and horrified and small and useless but unable to stop scrolling it's a hard life for an ant yeah it's it's weird to think about how you measure whether an ant is a sleeper or not so what they did is they basically measured how much their antenna moved which they took as a surrogate for how like active they were in observing their environment but i don't know like what if it's like rapid antenna movement sleep right great point hank what if they're dreaming yeah and they're just like sniffing in their dreams i'm going to confess that i have not read the majority of ant man comics but if one of ant man superpowers is not that he only has to sleep eight minutes every 12 hours they're missing a huge opportunity narratively yeah uh yes um it uh so i'm continuing to read this it also turns out that they studied the brain waves oh my god oh my god oh my god they put in a tiny little MRI machine do do ant even have brains they don't really they have like enlarged nerve endings at the the end of the spinal cord like barely yeah right now there's an alien species doing an advice podcast about humans and one of them said do humans even have brains really stop aliens stop watching us stop listening stop paying attention we're real aliens we don't need to be monitored by you we have souls with according to our books at least yeah no we feel it on the inside aliens we feel real and they're like yeah no we get that you feel like you feel real they're like oh yeah no that's what that's what's so cute about you guys that's why we like watching so much this next question comes from yo han i think fear hankajan why john is there still no paperback version of turtles all the way down available hanks book is even pre-orderable as paperback so i cannot accept oh books will always come out as hardcover first you just have to wait as an answer it panks book should not be available pre-order as paperback i don't think that yeah i don't think that that is the thing it sure better not be because i make way less money per book of the paperbacks yeah that's the short reason yo han is that hardcover books are more expensive and they mean that the author makes more money and the publisher makes more money but i think in the case of it's really that the author makes more money i think the author makes kind of the plurality or majority of their money in hardcover usually that's not always the case it depends on the book to mens on the author but the reason hardcover books exist is because you know authors get like two or three dollars a book instead of a number of cents yeah yeah um and please email us to let me know where you saw the availability of of a paperback pre-order for my book you may have just seen a discounted edition but i don't know i would be concerned about that yeah i'm sorry that it takes a long time for paperbacks to come out it is it is kind of an unfortunate function of the way that publishing has figured out to survive um in the current the current landscape and in a lot of cases paperbacks are taking even longer to come out than they used to but yeah once they're out they're out forever so that's the good news i don't know how long you'll have to wait until there's a paperback of turtles all the way down i'm sorry that you don't but it's a man it's eleven dollars yeah for a paper hardcover it's very cheap yeah yeah it's available right now for like eleven dollars with free shipping if you don't i mean hopefully wherever you are there are libraries maybe there aren't but um but that is you know there are there is always the library yeah absolutely yeah which and often now libraries even have electronic copies of books so that you don't have to wait if the book isn't in stock um yeah yeah and supporting libraries is also a really effective way to support authors because libraries buy a wide variety of books they don't just buy the most popular books so i would actually argue that libraries are in a lot of cases kind of better for the literary ecosystem than anything else so if you really want to support a broad diverse literary ecosystem i always think that your public library is a good way to do that of course choosing carefully what kind of books you buy and read also helps but i'm a big believer in libraries Hank this next question comes from tenly who writes dear john and hank whenever i talk to adults about their past experiences they often say the same thing i've made a lot of mistakes but i don't regret any of them at what point does this at what point does one acquire this mindset i'm 26 and i know i've made a lot of mistakes like the time i threw away my roommate samster but i regret all of them at what age can i expect to be totally content about all my bad choices regretfully tenly this is such a great question tenly because every time i hear someone say like i've made a lot of mistakes but i don't regret any of them because they all led to me being here where i am today i always think like no not all of them like you made tons of mistakes that had nothing to do with you being where you are today like i would i would submit tenly that like you would not be a substantially different person if you had not thrown away your roommate samster uh well that is is the idea to say like but i'm so glad that i'm here and without all the things that would have happened i wouldn't be this exact person and this is the person that i'm glad that i am that's what i've always interpreted it to be which is so ludicrous because you don't know how much better things might be yeah yeah i mean i i guess i guess you don't want to think about that though you don't want you like that's kind of an unpleasant thought to be clear i have it all the time and i'm perfectly aware that i have made mistakes and regret them i've never thrown away a hamster though no me neither but i do have a ton of regrets and i would and they are genuine regrets and if i could go back and do things again i would and i would do them differently that's another thing i hear all the time oh if i could go back and live my life i do it all the same i'm like i would definitely not i would change a bunch of things oh man i would ah god if i could live my life over again i well i would i would hold on to so much less bitterness over things that it turned out didn't matter well there's that but also like when i was 14 and a new eighth grader showed up at my school i would have been like hey this is gonna sound weird but i know that we're going to get married no that that probably would be an example of a bad choice to make no however maybe being like i am going to buy some google stock right it's the kind of thing that i would do differently if i had my whole life to live over i would bet everything on the Cubs winning the world series like of course oh man i actually have a pet theory that Elon Musk does have his whole life to live over and that's how he's gotten where he's gotten where he's just like really early on he was like yeah i guess now's about the time to join paypal yeah but the list of people who appear to have had their life to live over is short and definitely includes the Elon Musk john i just had the thought is there any conduction between the name hairy styles and the phrase hair style i don't think so um was was it were his parents aware of of this thing that they were doing uh i i mean the important thing to know is that hairy styles born name is hairy styles okay this is a fact that you know you did not look that up yeah hairy edward styles i even know his middle name oh my well i don't know if you know this i don't know if you've read turtles all the way down but there's a lot there are a lot of easter eggs for members of the one direction fandom and my new novel turtles all the way down you were just like i'm gonna become a real expert so that i could plop a lot of these down in here yeah i mean do you not know that much about hairy styles i feel like it's like a very human thing to have ingested a lot of hairy styles related information i got to say i don't know a ton about one direction john which yeah member of one direction is at least by some members of the one direction fan community believe to be in love with hairy styles this is an easy one is it it's it's not lance because he's not in oh god oh panic okay we're gonna have to shut everything down zane zane is a member of one direction i don't know that we can i don't know that we can continue the podcast without pausing for a one direction listening party in which i give you a bunch of background on the one direction fan community uh okay let's actually you know what heck we've got to move on to a different question because i'm getting upset did we answer the question yes i think it was a question it was a question you posed and it's been answered which is that hairy styles was born hairy edward styles not harried hairy i mean it must they his parents must have known they were naming him hairstyles they weren't naming him hairstyles they were naming him hairy styles but they were aware of this they were aware of the pond you know the one direction fan community almost definitely knows the answer this question which makes it embarrassing that i don't is hairy styles upon how good is good how good is styles wrong it turns out oh my god yes if it was if they'd spelled it like here suit then yes it would have been an obvious pun uh there is this is just a list of oh my god it's it's called puns about hairy styles dot tumpler dot com ah anyway it reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by tumblr tumblr oh dot dot podcast is also brought to you by fork bouquets dot com fork bouquets dot com providing forks for your crushes and today's podcast is also brought to you by regrets regrets i think it is appropriate to have some just some and finally today is brought to you by historically bad hairstyles not historically bad hairy styles but historically bad hairstyles of which there have been a number today's podcast is also sponsored by uh two podcasts that hank and i have been working on first uh you might enjoy the anthropocene reviewed if you like dear hank and john i actually don't know that that's true but i make a podcast called the anthropocene reviewed which are reviewed different facets of the human centered planet on a five star scale there are two episodes now a third episode will be coming quite soon it'll be about hank my new episode is about the plant species kentucky bluegrass and the practice of googling strangers mmm i do like the anthropocene reviewed very much john it is a well structured fascinating podcast and it's a quick lesson as well which is always often nice when i'm uh doing some specific task that's going to take about 20 or 30 minutes well thank you i should also say that this next episode is going to be incredibly sad so like your podcast sad that you've found a new home in the anthropocene reviewed i'm ready uh this podcast is also brought to you by my podcast with my wife delete this in which Catherine and i go through my twitter feed in over the last week in an attempt to sort of like redigest and understand the tremendous amount of things that have happened in the last week things happen very fast these days but also to analyze the way in which we interact with the social internet and whether or not that is healthy uh and it's great to have Catherine there for that as a person who is not super involved in the social internet and so can uh tell me how much all of this is bad and i am doing it wrong this episode of 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summer and you can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash deer hank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in canada too that's qunce.com slash deer hank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deer hank this episode of deer hank a john is brought to you by factor imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and you did not eat lunch what are you gonna do are you gonna get meal delivery that's gonna cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you gonna go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts because those are my two choices unless i have a factor in the fridge you can get smoky barbecue chicken breast with potato mash cream corn and peppers you can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice peel off broccoli and carrots this has the fiber right it has the protein i need and it has the deliciousness i need what about garlic herb roasted barramundi with potato zucchini and burr blanc sauce i don't really know what that means but it sounds delicious what about a black bean taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema a delicious high-fiber high protein meal that no animals had to die for any of those can be ready in two minutes fresh never frozen over a hundred rotating weekly meals including globally inspired flavors like mediterranean asian factor shops perhaps cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring head to factor meals dot com slash deer hank 50 off and use the code deer hank 50 off to get 50 off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until september 27th 2026 see website for more details uh and we also have a project for awesome message this one is from william girding of texas william says willful ignorance has invested today's political climate the quick short gains of ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away or passing it on to the next generation can no longer be an option for us our generation must be willing to actually make the future better for our children without footing the bill on to them no more bandage for boat holes says william we do have big problems and uh we do not have a great history of solving them although i would say that there i have also been places where we have solved big problems that we face together so i i feel like yes in a lot of ways we've kicked a lot of problems down the road and i think william's point is well taken but there are also a lot of problems that we solved in the last 50 years or at least things that we've made much better about human life yes i agree i i mean i think especially if you take a long view like we are tremendously good problem solvers and that has allowed us to you know feed our children and stuff which we've been just very good at and uh and that is ultimately what we're all going on yeah but i think that william's point is that we are also excellent procrastinators as a species and we don't always take the long view and we need to yeah all right one more question before the news from marzane cmilden john sounds good this one comes from daniel who's asked here hank and john i have been given the wonderful opportunity to travel to tailand to work on an elephant reservation this is clearly an exciting experience i have been gifted however it has come to my attention that i will be on a plane alone for 22 hours what do you do with all of that travel time alone i usually read during long travels however i don't believe i have the attention span for 22 hours worth of plane time what do you usually do during your long hours of travel during book and movie tours any debis advice will be appreciated dinosaur rawer danielle well i there's a nicha quote where he wrote if you stare at the abyss long enough the abyss will stare back oh gosh so i just try to get to that point on my plane flights well the good news danielle is that you'll probably be uh in the you know you'll sit down the chair and think this is okay 22 hours later you will not be a big fan of your chair no also people will tell you to sleep which is a great idea if you're the kind of person who can sleep you know in a tiny tiny chair surrounded by strangers in the 43rd row of a steel cylinder traveling 35 000 feet above the ground like if that's your ideal sleeping situation danielle then yes by all means sleep but if you're a normal person you're gonna sleep for like two and a half hours you're gonna be incredibly cranky when you land in tailand you're gonna be saying i don't even care about elephants but then you just gotta like get an afternoon nap let yourself adjust to your new reality which is that your body does not know what time it is lean into that experience and enjoy your time there because the other thing is that you got 22 hours coming home whatever that happens so obviously there will be movies on the plane there will be podcasts on your phone i think that you listen to at least some podcasts is my guess um there will be a lot of idea to listen to 22 consecutive episodes of deer hank and john on a plane trip to tailand because it might be my situation i will often either listen to a book i've already listened to or listen to podcasts i've already listened to so it's okay in my completely hair-brained state to just waffle back and forth between sleep and awake and not really know because it's very hard to not sleep but it's very hard to sleep for very long right and so i like to listen to some media that i've already listened to or what something that i've already seen so i'm not like getting caught up in the story too much right i would almost try to listen to something new i honestly danielle when i get on a plane i try to get on the plane with a huge variety of potential entertainments because i don't know what future me is gonna feel like if future me wants to watch a movie then i try to have a movie loaded on my ipad or my computer if future me wants to listen to a podcast i try to have like both familiar ones and new ones downloaded you can't over prepare for a 22-hour flight yeah you gotta load up all your devices with various media and uh and then it will be over and everything will be fine and the elephants will welcome you with open trunks and i also have to say that planes are made out of aluminum not steel just no great that sounds safer because otherwise people be adding john all all the time and it would be a correction on next episodes okay well great cylinders made of aluminum flying 35 000 feet above the sky it's basically just a empty dot coke an that is not an image that i have found at all helpful i've got that has sent me in the wrong direction i am flying in a large coke can that is something i am going to think about every time i get on a plane for the rest of my life goodness gracious what is the news from mars in the news from mars this week there was a so so as you may know the russia had its elections recently and Vladimir Putin walked away with a very large percentage of the vote uh as surprising that he won but he was uh he won't know issues there uh yeah turns out if no one can run against you um oh he had several opponents thank you only 172% of 117 percent of the vote um and uh in the midst of this they the russian government put out a documentary about Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin in this uh documentary discussed russia's near-term plans for sending uh missions and people to mars in which he was very optimistic about their ability to get uh missions to mars by 2019 which what uh yeah which is i mean i don't know if he's done the math on that but human missions to mars by 2019 you launched a mission today you could maybe get humans to mars by 2019 like maybe he's going to maybe i don't know but jon maybe today is a day there was there was scant information about this in the documentary and it was in russian so i only have second hand reports but what i can tell you is that the space race was good for getting uh america to the moon and the space race was indeed inspired by competition between the u.s and russia to to show how great each country was and we showed them that we were great and maybe that that kind of of you know non-military competition uh is it would push forward maybe some exploration but in general it's not great because we tend to deprioritize science when we do it that way uh you know one thing i did not think when we started this podcast thing is that by the end of it you would be pro-cold war but it's great i think it's a nice provocative interesting call and i like it i like like honestly what you're hearing me say right now is maybe we shouldn't go to mars by 2027 we should slow down and not do it this way oh okay all right so like it is a way to not do it this way that would be great to prioritize maybe we should just slow down and go to mars in 2029 or later yeah right well i just i think that we should do it cooperatively and not as a competition um and that should be a thing that brings the world together instead of being a fight um but yeah i mean i guess if fadamir poutin wants to take the right like they don't have a great track record of getting missions to mars without them being destroyed so i would not personally sign up for that mission to be clear i also wouldn't sign up for a mission that was being run by elon musk or the u.s government because of how i would probably vomit a lot for a lot of months before we got there and also i was very scared about walking uh on the edge of the grand canyon i don't feel like i'd be great at just being on the edge of the perpetual abyss so uh yeah but it doesn't doesn't seem like the safest strategy for vatamir poutin to be like hey look we're gonna have to look cooler than america so let's get this together and uh and and just slap a couple coke cans together see if we can get people to mars well that is uh that that is an exciting and interesting development i also recall the president of the united states saying that he wanted to get people to mars by the end of his first term and that yes that seems to have been a promise that has fallen by the way yes uh he also our president this week said uh that hillary couldn't wouldn't send people to mars and i was just like i mean like what what's happening well is he is he going to send people to mars because i don't think so that seems like okay that's a bit of a straw man argument um however let us turn our attention hank uh to america's favorite third tier English soccer team afc Wimbledon now with only nine games remaining in their league one campaign nestled uncomfortably in 18th place we have to finish in 20th or above we played rochdale rochdale rochdale uh last uh on saturday they are near the bottom but they're near the bottom partly because they've had a very good cup run um but anyway they're near the bottom and we tied them which is not a great result but if you were at the game or watched it as i did on my phone then it is a great result because we should have lost we have a really good performance uh from our goalkeeper uh george i thought he did a really good job and also uh they hit the post really kind of the inside of the post once uh they they were definitely i mean we were away from home but they were definitely kind of carrying the day but a one it puts us one point closer to safety at this point Wimbledon are on 42 points three that's right three points clear of the relegation zone uh i still think we probably need three wins or two wins and two draws at least to stay up uh in our last six uh our last nine games so yeah i mean we we need some results is what it comes down to but right now Wimbledon are safe uh if the season ended today uh wouldn't that be nice we would end safely and we would have another season in league one the last thing i want to say about the news from afc Wimbledon hank is that demolition has begun on the site where the new plow lane stadium will be built and they are aiming to be have that stadium finished and ready for soccer uh for the 2019-2020 season so that is incredibly exciting and i will certainly keep everyone up to date on that uh that will be the end of a long long long part of Wimbledon's history uh it will be a great coming home and even hearing uh the fansing uh we're coming home we're coming home when i was uh at the Oxford game was very moving so it's really yeah things are things are good-ish but also kind of terrifying we have a note from uh this is a soccer related note from Evelyn or Evelyn who is this dear hank john hi my name is Evelyn and i'm confused about this peterboro third-tier soccer team you speak of i'm sure i play for a u14 first-tier soccer team from peterboro ontaria where does your peterboro team come from and are they any good there's ontaria and taro and taro did i say ontari are ontario evelin i'm about to totally blow your mind so i hope you're sitting down a lot of place names in canada are named after place names in great britain and you'll never guess why it's because the queens on your money man you got the queen on your money uh yeah i mean evelin you have queen oisabeth the second on your money peterboro is also a town in uh the great nation of i can never remember if it's england or great britain i don't like to offend those people and they're very persnickety about which is which well it's definitely in great britain it's also with england can't evelin the important thing is that canada is a colony of england and that is why you live in a town called peterboro john do you know where peterboro got its name uh yes i don't i've got a guess i've got a guess is it from the apostle peter i don't i don't know john i was just i just wondered if you did the answer that's the dumbest that's the dumbest the dumbest question i've ever been asked in my entire life it replaces the previous dumbest question what question did you hope i would ask but i haven't asked you oh gosh i was recently doing an interview when the person i was interviewing asked me a question and i was just like no i can't answer questions right now i am extremely focused on how nervous i am to interview you oh okay we are we are completely wrong on every level what do you mean i mean that peterboro is not named after the town in England it's just convergent name evolution it's named after peter robinson an early canadian politician who oversaw the first major immigration to the area so there you go it also it's nickname in the distant past was the electric city as it was down in canada to use electric streetlights well let's bring it back uh like bring back the electric streetlights yeah well no just bring back let's start calling the electric city again i think that sounds all right i gotta find out who peterboro in england was named for hey finished i mean i'm like obviously i'm looking at the wikipedia page and it makes no sense i do not understand what's so stupid but i'm so annoyed now and i got to figure it out so what if you do what did we learn do all four of the what did we learn while i'm figuring out the stupid peterboro question all right so what did we learn today john well tink we learned that harry styles is named harry edward styles and may or may not have been a pun that harry styles his parents were playing on him we also learned that there are some fork people and some fork people are cute and we don't know why they have so many forks but also some people save their plastic forks which is not something that i do i throw them away every time though i was at the frozen yogurt place yesterday and the people asked the people at the frozen yogurt place if they washed the spoons to reuse and they were like no and then they all took their spoons with them which i guess so they're you're not the only one mia we also learned that uh john and i have regrets and that's normal uh but we never threw away anybody's hamster and finally john we learned that peterboro is not named after peterboro i did it still don't have an answer your stupid question crazy it's not weird it makes no sense god stupid super i'm gonna have to let go first i'm gonna have to figure it out second i'm gonna have to edit this wikipedia page to make sense oh god i'm so annoyed who's the peter who's peter god it's a very simple question i don't care about the burrow i don't care where it's located i don't care when it was founded who the f is the peter is it a love of god all right hank let's just take five minutes all right this is stupid and annoying but let's just both let's take five minutes to figure out what peter peterboro is named for and then will hard cut to us when we know all right i'll talk to you in five minutes god yes okay what you get in honor of the saint to who it was dedicated this is from a google books result in 970 however some bishop of winchester restored it by the assistance of edgar and his queen and from mehda hamptstead its name was changed to gildenberg golden city for its riches and again from that to peterboro in honor of the to whom it was dedicated so there we go at last that better be the answer i'm not digging any deeper it's in a book john it's got to be real it's not even a website yeah it is and the book is called the geographical dictionary of england and whales so seems like it should be reliable oh god it's over oh thank you so much to the author of that book it turned out to be the person i was guessing from the very beginning but i'm just glad that it's over i've been able to close the loop and now we can read the credits this podcast is edited by nicolas jakeins it's produced by rosiana halsra lassen shared in gibson our kind of community and communications victorian but i was a very weird what my giggle yeah it was just because it came in like our head of community like ark and i'm still laughing about you being all weird about peterboro i wasn't weird about it i just needed to answer the question before we could move on uh the music that you're hearing right now and beginning of the podcast and during this week at ryan's which is available to our patreon patrons who give over five dollars a month uh it's our dumb podcast where we try to stump each other about people not named ryan and he can get it and love it and i love all of you who love it um it's available at patreon.com so you can see this question hankajonajemail.com and it's also you can do that on twitter i'm hank green john john john john is john green and as they say in our home town wait wait two things first off i don't think you ever said the name of our head of community and communications which is victoria bonjourno and also i don't think you ever said that the music that we were listening to that we're we still listening to uh is like i don't know what you never said you never said go to rola i'm positive oh you're right i didn't get to that part thanks for listening and as they say in our home town don't forget to get awesome