Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.
Friends of Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and Moore will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. There's a lot of things with your John and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer all your questions, give you to be surprised and bring you the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbleman John. What is the elephant in the room? Oh Hank, I think we both know what the elephant in the room is this week. It's a no brainer elephant.
Three, two, one, Michael Cohen. The insignificance of everything we do. I mean they're related. They're related.
How many times do I have to make Michael Cohen the elephant in the room until I get to feel that magical moment when you also say Michael Cohen and we can finally have a Michael Cohen focus podcast segment which I've been begging you for for months. Hank, all of the most famous podcasters, the way that they get huge is by talking about Michael Cohen. I'm sorry. What is the insignificance of everything that we do?
Just in general, like the sun is such a very small thing and it's so very big and the space between the stars is immense and the space between the galaxies even more immense than that. I think we only matter to each other, John. And I guess that's kind of beautiful and okay. And also we matter to each other so tremendously much, right?
We all have the capacity to bring each other solace and joy and fear and terror and horror. We matter to each other so much. We matter to other life on Earth so much. We matter a little bit to the moon.
We might even eventually matter some to Mars. So I think that our mattering is expanding, which is great, but I think the core of our mattering is always going to be in how we treat each other and how we take care of each other. And speaking of taking care of people who have taken care of you, Michael Cohen, the quasi-attorney of the president of the United States who is under investigation for a wide variety of crimes, might be flipping. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the moment if I'm Michael Cohen, the moment President Donald Trump gets elected president, I'm like, this isn't going to turn out great for me, is it?
I bet that yes, I would think that would be my first thought. I would think I am going to be in the spotlight and I feel that if light is shown in this area of my life, there's going to be some uncomfortableities. Right. Like maybe how many people do you think that Donald Trump like, you know, maybe your life is not one that needs an excessive amount of scrutiny.
Like this might not be something that should be like all the light shown in all the different little crevices, probably probably the most the most dangerous thing you could do for the way that you have lived thus far is to sign up to be the most looked at person in the world. And to be fair, I think one of the arguments that Trump supporters will make is that Trump had very little to gain from the presidency and in fact in many ways a lot to lose. Yeah. And so that would be an argument that Trump's presidency really is born of a desire to serve, of a belief that, you know, he could bring positive change to the country.
And even though it would negatively affect him personally, it would be worth that sacrifice for the larger good of the country. And that is an argument. It doesn't jive with other things that I see completely in the way that he's run his administration. But I am definitely open to that argument.
I just think that this is a big news story. I think it's an important news story. I think because it's salacious and it has the feel of gossip at times, it doesn't get treated like an important news story. I've been trying to slow burn the podcast about Watergate that tries to recreate the experience of Watergate as it unfolded.
And something similar was happening during Watergate where there was a lot of like, oh, this is, you know, salacious stuff about dirty tricks and with all of these over the top personalities. And it only unfolded slowly that people started to think like, oh, and also this is quite a serious thing. Yeah, right. And I think that like both from the perspective of like the how it's being treated in the news media, but also how I guess we're in our own heads, we're like, well, this is about like, you know, a sex scandal.
And that's not like, are we, are we still having sex scandals? Is that something still that important in this day and age? But it's not, it's not a sex scandal. And I think that like, we sort of like half treat it like a sex scandal.
And then you can be written off because of that. But it's not, it's part of part of a lot of different, a lot of different wrongdoings. Well, we'll see. We don't know yet.
There's a lot we don't know. And I don't want to get ahead of the facts. But did we do the thing that you wanted to do? We have our Michael Cohen.
Oh, no, oh no, he'll be the elephant in the room next week. Don't you worry. I just whenever whenever we figure out what the elephant in the room is, I always just go to Twitter and look at what the top trending hashtag is. And John, this week, it's Michael Cohen.
It actually was. I should have gone with you. I was right. All right.
Well, John, as you know, there are people who listen to this podcast and they send us questions. And I feel like we wouldn't be doing our duty unless we answered some of their questions eventually. So let's do that. This next question comes from Lauren who asked Dear Hank and John, in the internship I have at my college this summer, one of the major things I'm doing is calling prospective students to get their interest in school and such.
I'm supposed to be a resource to these potential students. So I introduced myself at the beginning of each call and leave my phone number. Sometimes though, I have to call someone who has my same first name. It just feels very weird to leave a voice mail saying, Hi, Lauren, this is Lauren.
What should I do? Should I lie? Change my name? When it's raining, it's Lauren.
You just gotta make a joke out of it. Yeah? No, you change your name, not permanently, just for the sake of the call. Yeah, you still don't care, frankly, if your name is Lauren.
So and it's to me, it gives you a great opportunity. Now you can only do this when you're calling Lauren's. You can't do it every time because it'll be seductive and super fun and you'll want to do it every time that you can't. But every time you're calling a Lauren, they answer, they say, Hello, and you say, Hi, this is Bette Midler from Florida State University.
And they say, What? And you say, This is Bette Midler. I'm a student at Florida State University. I'm calling because I know you've been admitted to the school and I was just wondering how you feel about it.
I love that you chose Bette Midler. Well, I just think it's the perfect course. But that's that's a name that prospective college students will really resonate with, you know, because they remember Wind Beneath My Wings. I saw beaches, Bette Midler is good.
I think in general, like something a little bit obscure is excellent. You could also be like, Hi, Lauren, this is Manhole. I'm calling from Florida State University. I just wanted to let you know that we're really interested in giving you as much information as you want on the great programs we have at FSU.
Okay, this is your you're on to something here, Hank, which is that what happens when because nobody's listening to the beginning of the call anyway, what happens when you try an increasingly obscure and absurdist series of things, right? Like what happens if you're like, Hi, Lauren, this is a gang of turkeys calling from Florida State University. There's 17 of us. We were just wondering how you feel about Florida State's excellent classical music program.
We have four for classical music majors here among our gang of 17 turkeys. We're making this phone call. We're happy to connect you with one of them directly. I'm an anthropology major.
Hi, hi, Lauren, this is one scissor. Now, is that possible? Yes, because scissors are a pair of scissors. I'm just one of them.
My other friend is calling a different Lauren right now. I'm basically a knife. Anyway, I have a loopy handle. Anyway, this is really great.
I've had a really, really positive experience here. Hey, Lauren, have you ever been driving alone at night and you're filled with a sort of vague melancholy, but not an unpleasant one? That's me here to tell you about FSU. What do you think?
Would you like to go to college here? Don't feel pressure. I know there's a lot of great schools. Urgent help.
I was hammering some holes into a belt. When I was putting the belt away, I dropped the hammer on the marble floor and now there's a chip and a dent in the floor. What do I do? I live with my parents and if they see this, I'm going to be in very big trouble.
Help, Talita. All right, Talita, you're not going to be able to do anything about the dent, but you're going to fix the chip and you're going to fix it quickly. No, no, no, you're going to fix it all, John. You can fix the dent and the chip.
How do you fix the dent? You get a sculpture that goes over the dent. That's beautiful. And everybody would be like, wow, what an elegantly placed sculpture.
Such a good idea. Way better than my strategy of super gluing the chip back into where it chipped off from. Much, much better. The next time your parents come home, they're like, what the heck is this?
And you just say, oh, this is a sculpture that I made of David. And your parents are going to be like, this is incredible. And you'll be like, yeah, I know, I did a really good job. So this is where the sculpture is.
By the way, it's a site-specific sculpture. So you can't move it around in the room because then it's just ruined. Right. Well, maybe David's holding a cup of coffee and it's just very full.
Or maybe David's reaching for the little tug on the ceiling fan. So if you put it anywhere else in the room, what's he reaching for? It doesn't make any sense. You're welcome, Talita.
We've solved your problems. Next question comes from Leanne who writes, dear John and Hank, I recently decided to play matchmaker and set up two of my friends from different social circles. The day went really well, and now both of them can't stop telling me how wonderful the other person is. As happy as I am for them, how do I stay impartial?
What if they start coming to me with their relationship problems? I was okay with giving them advice before with other people. But now it's just a little weird because I know both of them so well. Should I leave them to it?
Should I keep a bunch of secrets for both of them from the other person? How do I do? What do I do? I don't want to be the middle man, Leanne.
Leanne, you are worried, so worried about a problem that doesn't exist yet. Yeah, you're good, Leanne. This is like, you don't know that any of these things are going to happen. Do you know these people well enough that they always come to you with a relationship advice with every relationship they have?
Maybe that's going to happen? But I don't know, maybe it won't because they are aware that you're good friends with the other person that you set them up on the date with and they're probably going to be like, well, probably not going to go to Leanne because the other person is a good friend of Leanne. I think that there's a certain amount of- Also, there's the 95% chance that this couple is going to be broken up within a month. Oh, dang, John.
Maybe not. Don't you think? I don't know. It'd be interesting.
You've done the math more than I have. What, what, what percent of relationships last forever? Zero. Do you mean what relationship relationships last in the until death?
No, I mean, what percentage of relationships last until marriage? Oh, it's got to be pretty low, at least based on my own personal experience. I mean, it's very high based on mine. I suspect that we're outliers.
I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, like somewhere between like 48 serious relationships and two. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there has to be, there has to be like somebody has to have done this research and I cannot find it.
And my rehearsal dinner, my friend Dean gave a toast. You may remember this, Hank, in which he talked about me coming home from meeting Sarah for the first time and I came back to the apartment and I said, you know, I think I'm going to marry that girl. I really do. And Dean said, it was only the 17th time John had said that to me.
John, I found the graph and the risk of breakup is very high in the beginning. So around 80, 75, 80% of couples will break up in the first year of their relationship, which is actually a little bit, you know, I kind of expect to be higher than that. Yeah, but then a number of couples break up in their second year, right? Not everybody like dates for a year and then gets married.
And then I think the overall, Leanne, the overall chances that this relationship is going to be like the defining romantic relationship of these two people's lives is under 10%. So let's wait to panic. Okay, we're gonna wait to, I completely agree. In general, wait to panic is great, great advice.
Not don't panic. Just like if I could, one, just give it a couple of breaths, I might tattoo that on me somewhere. Wait, wait to panic. I could really stand to have wait to panic on the inside of my wrist.
The other thing that I'd like to have tattooed somewhere, like maybe under my eyelids so that I could see it every time I close my eyes, would be this is temporary, which is also in all the best ways and all the worst ways, constantly true. Yeah, it's good. It's good to recognize both because of the good and the bad. I think I feel like we're going a little dark.
Can we live in things up with maybe like some grease to or Alvin in the chipmunks? What do you got for me? Well, those questions from Alexis who asks, Dear Hank and John, nobody in my family eats the first and last pieces of bread, the heel, as they were called in our family. I don't know if everybody else calls us that.
I feel bad, just throwing those out. So you don't have any suggestions for what I could do thanks a lot. I don't have a car, but if I did, it would be Alexis. You eat them.
No. Yeah, you make a sandwich out of them and be like, I'm not having a sandwich. No, no, no. And basically because it's made out of the heel, it's sort of like calorie neutral because you're doing a social good.
If only that were true. No, no, you do not eat the heel pieces of a bro. No, no, no, no. And you do have to be peanut butter on one of them and put them together, nothing else.
And it's just like, it's a nice little snack. You don't like it? What's wrong with this? Is there something that I'm missing?
Like is they're a danger? You know, when we were little kids and mom would cut the crust off of our peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they were so good. And then we got a little older and she stopped cutting off the crust because we were, you know, older now and that was just the way the world works. You got to learn to live with a certain amount of suffering with your peanut butter and jelly.
Yeah. What you're proposing Hank is you're proposing eating a crust sandwich. And like, you know, I eat the crust because of the rest of the sandwich being like good enough for me to understand that I have to suffer through this crust part because I am an adult and that's how life works. Right.
I'm not exactly. I'm not exactly telling you. I'm saying that you not only should do this, I'm saying that you have to do this. This is part of being a human being is having some sub-subpar experiences because this is the way that the world works and like they baked the bread and the bread had to have an edge and all of the bread was food.
Hank. Yes. You know how I feel about this, John? Ultimately, is that I don't actually care at all.
And I like just I went real hard on something that I have like I'm maybe like a one out of 10 in terms of the strength of my opinion. Well, I would also argue that the strength of your overall argument is pretty low. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I think that's why my opinion is also low because it was not a good argument. But I don't mind eating a heel sandwich. I do remember in the past, I would actually go like two or three slices in to get like the best bread, not just not eat the heel. I wouldn't eat like the second or third slice.
Yeah, I still do that. I give the second and third slices to my children. They don't have the difference. You know what I like about orange sandwiches?
So when we make it orange sandwich now, we cut it up in a little bit so it's easier from to grab and eat. And then you get some pieces that are crusty, but then the middle ones are like they're basically like well, tiny sandwiches with no crust. And it's very, very hard for me not to eat one or two of those when he's having a sandwich. Have you ever had an uncrustable?
I've heard about them. Oh my god. People in the office eat them. Oh my god.
Uncrustables. They're just magic. Just when you thought processed food couldn't become any more perfect. Along comes the uncrustable peanut butter and jelly sandwich with no crust in a circular shape that if pressed, you can eat all in one bite.
I just go build on crustable. It looks like a pie. It's not a pie. It's a delicious peanut butter and jelly pie.
This next question comes from Christopher who writes, dear Hank, but mainly John. It's my kind of question, Christopher. I've been invited to a World Cup Soccer Pool by a coworker on a related note. I just learned that there's a World Cup this year.
I don't know anything about soccer, but I want to make work friends and such. And I'm also quite competitive. And I think it's important that I win this pool. So what strategy should I use?
Or better yet, can you just tell me who's going to win? Soccer pool over Christopher. Christopher, I am happy to help. Christopher, you're in a pretty simple situation.
You would not have been invited into this World Cup pool if they did not think that you were dead money. That is a person who will definitely lose. So the worst that can happen is exactly what everyone else expects is going to happen. If you can bet on Brazil, do.
If you can bet on Germany or France or Spain, do. Everyone else is a long shot, but some long shots are longer than others. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is not going to win the World Cup nor is Australia. My best dark horse pick, Uruguay.
There you go. That's all I got. Good. Well done, John.
I just found a YouTube video. I'm sorry. Something about soccer makes me immediately open a new tab. I apologize.
And I do believe in that. And I think I may even make my whole video this week about how much I believe in the goodness of the World Cup. But I found a video from a creator who said, if you eat on crustables, you need to watch this. And the first comment on it is, get bent, you kill joy.
That's like, remember when people started eating Chipotle when Chipotle first came out and everybody was like, man, this healthy Mexican food is so healthy and so delicious. I could eat tons of it. And then somebody made a website called chipotlecalculator.com and you go to it, you told the calculator all the stuff that was in your burrito and then it told you that your burrito contained 17 days worth of food. And everybody's response to it was like, hey, Chipotle calculator inventor, shut up and go away.
I was happy for five minutes. If you eat on crustables, you need to watch this. Oh my God. She's got a whole series and her thumbnails are just like her holding a piece of food and then giving a thumbs down.
All right, Hank, this next question comes from Charlie who's six years old. And yet asked a question that I don't know the answer to, which is something that happens to me all the time in my life as a father. Dear John and Hank, how do you know when you get to the end of the galaxy? Do you go right into the next galaxy?
Charlie. That's a good question because it is a fuzzy boundary between between the galaxy and not the galaxy anymore. There are sort of like the number of stars decreases and like there will be, you know, basically you have like there's a hundred around and then there's ten around and then there's one kind of nearby and then there's one really far away. But there's a definite distinction between galaxies and the way that I can best illustrate this is that if you go like half the distance between two galaxies, there won't be any stars in the sky.
So if you were just on a planet in between two galaxies, this guy would just be dark. You wouldn't even know that there are stars. You would see probably some smudges that would be other galaxies or that would be galaxies. So that wouldn't be other galaxies because you're not in a galaxy.
God, the universe is so big. Yeah, that's a really sort of messed up weird. So yeah, so the short answer is like there is no sign that says like you're now exiting the Milky Way galaxy but there's a tremendous amount of space between most galaxies. Yeah.
And by tremendous, I mean like impossible to wrap my head around. Yeah, it's real weird. I told that to Catherine. We were going through these questions before before now and I said to Catherine that you could be in space and not have any stars in the sky and she was like, ahhhh.
Yeah, that's one of those things that I almost wish I didn't know. Like I don't really want to know how big the universe is because it makes my tummy hurt. I think I want to ask you another space-related question. We get a version of this question many times every day and I just think it's time to address it.
It comes from Bradley who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a pretty new nerd fighter and I would like to thank you both for creating something positive and also addicting. You're welcome, Bradley. Although that is what I said about cigarettes when I was in high school and it turned out I was wrong. So I hope that we hold up better than Marlboro-Lightstit.
My question is about the moon. I have a friend who saw a documentary and is now convinced that the lunar landing never happened. That is not a documentary. This reasoning has to do with the live streaming of the entire country.
If we still experience significant problems live streaming events now, how could they have done so in 1969? I personally think that of course the lunar landing is good, but this question is interesting to me. What the heck was it like to live stream the lunar landing? How did they do that?
So the question we get is different versions of I slash my friends, slash my brothers, slash my cousins believe that the earth is flat or believe that the lunar landing was faked or those are the two big ones. These sort of conspiracy theories that have taken over a certain subset of online experience, mostly the subset of online experience where in response to being told you have to do your own research, you have to become your own expert, people try to become their own experts and along the way conclude that the earth is flat or that the moon landing never happened. Right. I think that flat earth is such an interesting example of this because as soon as stuff gets called into question, you're like, well, I'll look into that.
I think flat earth is a good example of it because you can see, obviously, this isn't one that is easy to get sucked into, but you can see all of the ways in which people justify it. That allows you to see through your own lens what are the things that I might be really susceptible to. So how did they technically live stream? Wasn't, of course, precisely live.
How did they do that? It's complicated. And NASA worked really hard to make that be a thing. And you can read articles about it.
There's one called how NASA broadcast Neil Armstrong live from the moon on from popular science. And it's very interesting. And it's complicated to complicated to talk about on this podcast in large part because a lot of the technology that they use then doesn't exist like we don't use it anymore because we've figured out other ways to do it. And I think some of what's beneath the larger phenomenon here is that people feel like they can't trust experts.
And they feel like they can trust people who explain stuff to them in ways that make sense to them. And the truth is at times when trying to explain stuff, science communicators, at least some of them can come across as condescending, which can make somebody shut down and not want to listen. Whereas when people, and I've watched some of these videos about how the Earth is flat, they treat their audience in a particular way that makes makes you feel like you're being taken seriously. And also reflect something that you probably believe to be true on some level, which is that people in power, people with elite status use that power and that elite status to deceive people with less power in order to prevent them from getting power.
That does not mean that the Earth is flat. The Earth is not flat. And we know that for a lot of reasons. It doesn't mean that the moon landing didn't happen.
We know that for lots of reasons. What I do when I'm thinking about whether I believe in a conspiracy theory, as I ask myself two questions, the first question I ask is, would this conspiracy theory being true reaffirm my worldview? Because if so, that may be a big part of why I believe it's true. And two, how many people would have to be lying to me at the same time for this conspiracy theory to be true?
And in the case of both the moon landing and the Earth being flat, we're not talking about dozens of people. We're talking about tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. It's really interesting to me, Hank, because something really similar happened in the early 1970s, right around Watergate, with a huge rise of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories being taken much more seriously, books of conspiracy theories being published by mainstream publishers, which had never happened before, etc. And we are again in one of these moments where we feel like we cannot trust many of the people who are in power or many of the power structures that we trust to govern our lives.
And I think it's a response to that. But I also think you've got to know that it's a response to that. Yeah, and that's absolutely true. And it's as a science communicator, it's frustrating.
And part of it is like, I don't want to engage with it because I think giving it any air at all, only sort of makes people be like, well, I'm going to check for myself. And then, as you say, like a lot of times what you hear is like what the experts are saying doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And then there's this alternate viewpoint that does make sense. And the reason that it makes sense is not because that viewpoint isn't biased or isn't incorrect.
It's because it shares your same biases. It comes at the world from the place where you already are, whereas the world actually is complicated and messy and weird. And when it comes down to how particles work and physics works, like that's never going to make intuitive sense, because it doesn't make sense. And when it comes to how like how NASA broadcast the moon landing live, it doesn't like it's really hard to understand.
And like you can find lots of places in that article where you're going to be like, well, I don't actually, I don't get this because you don't get it. And I don't get it. And I don't care enough. Like even as a person who's like intensely curious about that stuff, I'm not curious enough to try and figure out how like a UHFH works.
Like I just don't know. But it's but it comes down to this idea that I can't trust experts. So I'm going to become my own expert. And the problem with that is that you are not going to be, and I don't mean just you, I mean, any right, no one is going to be a really good expert in both particle physics and, you know, beer making.
No one is going to be a really good expert in both carpentry and astrophysics. Like, or maybe you could do both those, but you can't do everything. And so we have to trust on some level, people who devote their professional lives to a subject, we have to at least take them seriously. Which reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by everyone lying to you at the same time, everyone in the world lying at the same time.
It's how all the most dastardly deeds get done. That is kind of how I felt in middle school all the time. So now I have a new found sympathy for that worldview. Today's podcast is also brought to you by a vague sense of melancholy, a vague sense of melancholy calling you on the phone to learn your interest level in Florida State University.
This podcast is also brought to you by a statue of David with a very full cup of very hot coffee. Do not move it, mom and dad. There is no particular reason why it has to be right there. But I say that it does.
And lastly today's podcast is brought to you by a starless sky, a starless sky. If you've ever been far enough out in the water not to be able to see land, imagine being far enough out into the universe not to be able to see anything. This next question comes from Courtney who writes, Dear John and Hank, my brother is three years my senior but he never went out of drive. I however have been driving for almost a year now.
Who should be able to sit shotgun when we're both in the car with our mom? Uh, uh, uh, I don't understand the relationship between the first part of the question, the second part of the question. But it goes on. I firmly maintain that I have usurped the pre-majenitor birthright to the front seat.
Wow. Wow. By successfully owning and operating a vehicle first, he does not share this feeling. Who, how did your brother convince you that there is a pre-majenitor birthright to the front seat?
I, I, that is, that is the most remarkable thing. And then, and the next step to think that you could, that like you can usurp that through the acquisition of a of just one particular scale that you have arbitrarily selected. Obviously the person who gets shotgun is the person who says shotgun first and that needs to have been established early on and you have maybe already lost that battle. No, no, no, no, no.
This is, no, it's not too late, Hank. You've given up on Courtney and that's a mistake. So here's the deal. I, I think this person is not from the United States.
I'm, I'm judging this on the fact that they know how to spell pre-majenitor, um, which is not an idea we have here in America. Really? Unfortunately, otherwise I would get all that sweet, sweet mom and dad money and Hank would be left out in the cold. I don't even know.
I don't know what it means either. It means like the first son gets all the money. Okay. Well, the good news is John that you're good.
Yeah. I mean, I could be better. That is the follow-up capitalism you found it. I mean, I want to cut that, but I bet Nick's going to keep it in.
All right. Point being, I assume that this person is from probably maybe England and therefore they believe that certain rights are passed down from generation to generation to the oldest child or whatever. I don't understand why shotgun would be one of those rights, but I certainly don't understand why learning how to drive earlier would mean that you know I'm going to get shotgun. Courtney, there is an existing foolproof strategy.
I got so passionate. I just dropped the phone and can't hear me. Dude, I can't hear what's happening. Hey, hey, I dropped the phone.
Hold on. I'm coming back. I was literally pounding my armchair, which resulted in me dropping the phone. There is an existing foolproof strategy for this, Courtney, which is that when you are walking to the car from the moment you leave whatever building you are in to the moment that you are outside in the same outside that you will be in until you reach the car from that moment.
It is possible at any point in that moment to call shotgun. And if you call shotgun, you get to sit in the passenger seat. It is that simple. Those are the rules of shotgun.
Forget all of this birthright shotgun crap. You get shotgun by calling shotgun. That's right. That's right.
This is not about like we have moved beyond the idea of absolute monarchy. This is about this is about who is clever enough, fast enough, and willful enough to call shotgun first. But I want to be clear, you can't call shotgun like the moment you get out of the car. You can't call shotgun until you are in the same outdoor space that you will continually be in until you reach the car.
That's the rule. So if you first out the door and you yell shotgun and they're still inside that counts. To me, that's an open question. That's part of it.
It's part of being able to get up and go out to being the first out the door. And your mom's going to appreciate that too. Everybody's out to the car. And you're standing there by the door.
And he like your brother's walking up and you say shotgun before he steps on that first paving stone, you are the winner. All right. All right. I buy it.
Thank you. Before we get to the all important news from our agency, I need to read this project for awesome message from Amanda to Ryan and to Marshall. Amanda donated to the project for awesome to get us to read this message. And we will read it now for my two favorite guys.
Thank you, Amanda. Not John and Hank. Oh, well, I'll keep reading anyway. Who just happened to be two awesome husbands and dads.
I couldn't think of a better way to say how awesome you both are than from two of the coolest people I know. Thanks for being in my life and for being a great husband and son. Ryan and Marshall. So Ryan Marshall, thank you for being a great husband and son.
Amanda, thank you for donating to the project for awesome and for warming hearts everywhere. Yes. All right, John. We got some corrections and responses.
We got Savannah, who is a vocal list on one of the world's largest cruise ships and just wanted to let us know that there are people who listen to the pod from a boat. Though oftentimes they have to download the pod beforehand because Wi-Fi on the boat is not super great. Also, Daniel, who's an engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the Mars helicopter. You know, you have Hank's dream job.
Well, you certainly have my attention. This is very exciting. I was ecstatic to hear Hank discuss our project in the recent podcast episode. I do have a very small correction and I got very nervous when I read that, but it's okay regarding a statement that Hank made.
There will be no way to test precisely how good at its job it will be until it is there because it won't be able to fly on a place that is exactly like Mars until it gets there. And I wanted to mention, this is Daniel again, I wanted to mention that, wow, this is technically true. So I guess it's not quite a correction. We are in the middle of an extensive test campaign to simulate Mars-like conditions as best we can.
For example, in this video, the NASA release, which we'll put on the Patreon, there's footage of our free flight testing. This test was conducted inside our 25-foot diameter vacuum chamber at Mars pressure while an offload system simulated Mars's gravity. The health, I don't know how that works, but it's very cool. The helicopter successfully ascended, traveled to a waypoint and then landed multiple times over the course of the test.
Hopefully we will see similar success in all of our tests, in which case we can be reasonably confident that the helicopter will work on Mars when it gets there. Thankfully, there are no lions on Mars, Daniel. I mean that we know of yet. We won't know for sure till we have a helicopter fly over the whole planet and check.
That's amazing. We can't have humans on Mars yet. There could be a lion. Just in case you thought we were going to get through that question without Daniel thinking that neither of us is an idiot.
I mean, John, you never know, there could be whole underground systems of caves that are at high pressure and contain mostly lions. I mean, is there any possibility that Mars is flat? That's all about something that I've wondered about, Flat Earth. Do they think that all the planets are flat?
Are they just like discs out there in space or like we see them rotating? So we know that other planets aren't flat. It's just that Earth is flat and then the other planets are? I don't really, I don't think we're going to convince a single flat Earth or on this podcast.
As you know, I have become increasingly convinced that no one who currently believes anything on the internet can have their mind changed by anyone else or anything else on the internet. Yeah. Is it time for the news for Mars and AFC Wimbledon then? Oh, it is time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
Do you want me to go first with the Mars news? Because it's very big and it's very good and it's very, very big and it's multiple parts. Yes. Yes.
Yes. So occasionally NASA will have these press conferences where they say we got some big Mars news. And when NASA says we got some big Mars news and we're going to do a press conference, if you're a science communicator, you look at who's going to be at the press conference and you can have a pretty good idea of what kind of news it's going to be. And usually you're like, well, I looked at the press conference, I looked at who's on it and it's not going to be about the fact that there's a life on Mars.
But this time, it kind of like maybe this would have been the panel of people like partially that they would have talking about the fact that they found like life on Mars. And so, of course, like all the science communication world is like, it's not life on Mars. Like, I'm not like, I feel like I would have gotten somebody like somebody would have leaked something to me. I would have heard about this.
They would have been like a lot more hub up. There would be a lot more buzz. But of course, everyone is like, but maybe. And so what in fact, two different things, one, after Curiosity is, you know, hanging out on Mars for a long time now, it's been able to get regular measurements of methane concentrations in the Martian atmosphere to the extent that it can now see a seasonal variation.
So in the summertime, there's more methane in the Martian atmosphere and the winter time there's less here on Earth, the atmosphere remains almost entirely consistent, except for water vapor throughout seasons. Weird. Why? So they think that, one, this definitely means that methane, like it seems like methane is being released continuously, and thus it is being replenished by some system.
So more methane is being created inside of Mars. And then as the surface of Mars heats up, there's these methane-containing compounds that are like, icy methane, water compound things called clathrates. And the clathrates will, you know, sublimate, so go directly from a solid to a gaseous form. And the methane will get released and then, and then leave the atmosphere, the way that the Martian atmosphere leaves the planet, or resiliified under the surface in the wintertime.
But it continues to be the same amount every year. So it's like, it's coming from somewhere, and they think probably some geologic process, which would indicate a pretty active geology inside of Mars, which is not something that we've super anticipated. And the other potential source of the methane could be microorganisms. That is not something that they're talking about actively or seriously, but that is how methane gets produced on Earth is almost entirely by microorganisms, though it's also produced by some geologic processes, I think.
And then there's the other piece of the news, which is like very, like also life related that they in mudstone, which is sedimentary rock that gets left behind after, you know, like from silt on the bottom of a lake. So they crushed up some mudstone, basically heated up a bunch and found a lot of different organic compounds, meaning compounds that contain carbon. And all of life on Earth is carbon based, is why we call carbon atoms organic compounds. And what they can't tell is precisely what compound these compounds were originally, because Curiosity cannot dig very deep into a rock.
It can only go like a few millimeters or centimeters. And all of those compounds over the last three billion years since they were first trapped in that mudstone would have deteriorated because of like being hit by solar radiation. So there's no way to tell what those compounds were originally, but they are definitely like, you know, chains of carbon compounds, which can again be created by biological or non-biological systems, like comets have amino acids on them, not because there's life there, but because, you know, lots of different processes with water and sunlight can create amino acids. So what does it mean?
It means that Curiosity is making strides toward better understanding the chemistry and geology of Mars and also that like it is very Earth-like and back three, three and a half billion years ago, it would have been like a place that looks pretty habitable, pretty, you know, friendly to life as we know it. So this is something I've been wondering a lot about lately, Hank. Is there really a bright bright line between alive and not alive when it comes to organic compounds? Because it seems to me that there are some fuzzinesses, at least in life on Earth.
Yeah, there are definitely fuzzinesses in terms of what life is, chemical life. You know, like viruses, people will say, aren't alive, but they are capable of replicating themselves, they are capable of moving around, not really moving around, but like sort of getting to the place where they want to be. And so like, yes, there's a little bit of complexity there. Really, the idea is that the sort of thought in the sort of space between chemistry and biology world is that if you have a self-replicating chemical system, it will move itself toward complexity in a way that like in sort of an inevitable fashion that will make it clear that whatever that is, it is life.
And so the idea is that like a planetary like science level on a planetary biology level that you're going to like, if there's anything like life, there will be something that is obviously life. Now, whether we're able to sort of like understand it as life, because all the tests that we currently use to determine whether there's like a living system happening are really based on the chemistry of our life, that's up in the air. And also like a huge question, because if the system that that life uses is identical to the life on our planet, then one that raises the question of whether that's just, you know, like contaminating from Earth or whether like life on Mars and Earth arose from the same source, whether that was Mars life getting to Earth and all of us being Martians or Earth life getting to Mars and existing there for a little while after like hitchhiking on an asteroid or meteorite that was ejected from the surface of one of those planets. Or some external third source that just like seeds the entire universe with life is the big question.
Well, I mean, that is a big interesting weird question. Speaking of big interesting weird questions, when is AFC Wimbledon going to move into their new stadium? So the hope had been a hank that the new Plow Lane would be finished in time for the beginning of the 2019-2020 season. That's not next season, but the season after.
And that also would mean that even if we were to get relegated next season, which we're definitely favorites for at the moment, we would begin life at the new Plow Lane at the very worst in League two. So still in the football league, still a full-time professional team and all that stuff. Hank, I don't know if you've ever engaged in a house renovation project, but if you have your likely familiar with contractor timelines and the actual progress of days and nights as they're observed with the sun rising and setting and how different the sense of days are between what your contractor thinks a day looks like and what the sun thinks a day looks like. That appears to not only be a problem for residential home renovations in Indianapolis, but also a problem for AFC Wimbledon.
It looks like the demolition of the Greyhound stadium where Plow Lane will be built is going slower than expected. And now it looks like at the earliest AFC Wimbledon will not be moving into the new Plow Lane until midway through that 2019-2020 season, at least according to an article in the Evening Standard. So we'll see, but the race for Life on Mars versus the race to get to the new Plow Lane is back on. Well, as long as we get humans there by 2028 in both places, I'm good.
Okay, all right, Hank, what was your phrase of the week? I completely forgot about phrases of the week. I mean, you even wrote Phrase of the Week in the document. Did I?
No, somebody else did that. I didn't know that. What was my phrase of the week? What was my phrase of the week?
I did not know, John. I'm bad at the game. I apologize to everyone. Well, I don't even think we would still be playing the game if it weren't for all these lovely project for awesome donors who donated phrases of the week.
This week was donated by Otto, and my phrase of the week was a gang of turkeys. God dang it. That was the thing I was trying to think of. I was like, what was between the scissor and the other thing?
Oh, God, a gang of turkeys. It's beautiful, John. Thank you, Otto. And for that wonderful gang of turkeys, because it allowed us to have a really enjoyable moment together.
So thanks, Otto. How do we learn today? Well, I also got to say that Kelly Naylor suggested my phrase of the week, which was Jell-O-Salad, which I feel like I could have perfectly easily gotten into the podcast. Totally.
Totally. Totally. Hey, Lauren, this is a Jell-O-Salad calling from Florida State University. That's great.
That's perfect. Sorry if you heard that. I just got a bit of a jiggle. But yeah, no one back.
Hi, how are you today? All right, John, what have we learned today? Well, we learned that there are places in space where the sky ain't got no stars. We learned that you got invited into that World Cup pool because everyone expects you to lose.
We learned that no matter what the situation is, if it all possible, wait to panic. And finally, we learned that John feeds his children the less desirable pieces of bread. Oh man, good thing that I listened to the pod. Hey, thank you for poding with me.
Thanks to everybody for listening. Again, you can go over to our patreon.com slash dear Hank and John and see all kinds of special updates. You don't have to pay to get them, although if you want to pay them, welcome to. We're about to go record our Patreon Only podcast this week in Ryan's, which is just the 10 worst podcasting minutes of your week.
But we appreciate everybody who donates there and listens to it. And also everybody who sends in questions. Thank you for all your wonderful questions. If you have questions, please email us at tankandjohn at gmail.com.
This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosie Anna Hoss. I'm Jared Gibson, our head of community and communications is Victoria Vongiorno, the music that you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarolla and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.