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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. Doors up for Think of Dear John and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast for two brothers and to your questions. Give you dubious advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, what starts with E and ends with E but only has one letter? What?
This envelope. Oh God. I mean, I'm not even sometimes they make me laugh even as they make me angry but that one just made me angry. Hank, I do have some good news this week.
Not a lot of it. I'm not gonna lie. That's not how it's supposed to work John. People are getting in the you can't be grudgingly deliver the good news every week.
You have to be excitedly tell me about good things that happen in the world. Well Hank, I want that sounds great. That sounds lovely. I would love to be in a position where I could tell you good news and not have it be begrudging but unfortunately, that's not possible right now.
So instead here's the begrudging good news. In just two short weeks, the United States is going to have an election which is incredibly exciting no matter what your political persuasion is because it means that we have a voice in our governance which puts us at the very far edge of the bell curve in terms of human history. We should be grateful for this and we should be excited about it. I'm fired up about it.
I've looked up my polling place. You can go to Vote.org. Make sure you know that you're registered, know where you're voting. You've got your sample ballots so you know how to vote on all the like weird down the ballot school board stuff which is incredibly important and get ready to vote.
Make a plan to vote. If you're not sure you're going to vote, if you're thinking like I might vote or I might not, right now I want you to find an accountability partner. I want you to text someone you know and care about and say listen, I'm in a situation where I need an accountability partner and you're going to help me make sure I vote before or on November 6th. Yes, that's the one John.
We're going to vote Hank. I'm so excited to vote. I heard voted. I did it.
I'm proud. You did. I'm a person who loves waiting until election day. Even though I know there's a small chance that I might die in the interim and therefore not be able to vote.
Well, I think technically if you're dead you shouldn't vote anyway. Even if you voted absent T they shouldn't count it but I think probably that's a small enough occurrence that it's just in the margin of error. I mean first off great job by me getting my own death into the good news of the week. I'm really proud of you John.
I'm in a great headspace. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. All right John, do your John and Hank. You didn't highlight this one John but I did.
Great. So here it is. I'm excited to find out why. If I wanted to write a book about failing to climb Mount Everest.
How far would I have to go? Do I even need to get out of my house to say that I failed to climb a mountain? Well no. But I think there might be a tension between the book you could write and the book that any readers would find interesting.
Yeah I feel like all of us could write a book about thinking to ourselves. Maybe I could climb Mount Everest and then being like nah that'd be a quick book. The point though is John the reason I'm interested in this question is like at what point do I fail at doing something? Like the moment I think whether or not I could do it do I immediately am I failing until it happens?
Like when does the failure occur? And this has presented to me a new worldview in which failure is a spectrum which of course it is but I hadn't ever thought of that and it's like it's an entirely constructed spectrum and I am in many ways right now failing to climb Mount Everest but that's okay because I don't want to. It sounds miserable. Yeah I mean I'm so excited about failing to climb Mount Everest.
It might be my greatest success. I'm failing to do so many different things right now and so really it's about what do I value and what am I not accomplishing that I would like to and if I'm failing at a thing maybe I should look at that thing and say is that even a worthwhile thing to want to do. I think Hank's working through some pretty deep stuff right now guys. Thanks.
Thanks anonymous for your question. I am not sure why to do things. This next question comes from Rebecca who asks do John and Hank I had the exact same crisis that Hank is having exactly three years ago and Hank had absolutely no sympathy for me and so I'm gonna have absolutely no sympathy for him. Hank was like oh god whatever I mean just stop thinking about it.
That's literally what he said. I was like I don't know why I should be doing any of the things that I'm doing and he said just stop thinking about it. All right this next question comes from Rebecca who writes do you're John and Hank I'm a biology student and I've been growing fungus in a big block of old coffee grounds for four weeks as you do. My tutors have told us that we are allowed to eat our fungus after we have recorded our results.
This seems like a terrible idea and yet kind of tempting. I was with you until the end of that weird sentence. Should I eat the fungus and then Rebecca signs off. Thanks cool.
I assume that Rebecca sent the email a little earlier than intended but maybe that's just their sign off in which case I love it. Thanks cool. Thanks cool. Don't eat the fungus and also have a conversation with your tutors about not telling their students to eat like Randa do you know what fungus it is like did you implant a specific fungus that's like a tasty one.
Is that like like morale mushrooms. Is something good or is it just fuzzy that could totally give you a disease or not. We don't know for sure Rebecca but I'm also not completely convinced that you're like 23 year old TA knows for sure. Yeah so I'm going to lean toward not eating the four-week old coffee ground fungus.
Yeah or alternately. Oh god you do eat it you get sick. Well suit. Right because that tutors just loaded you know just like money gushing out of the pockets of a 23 year old biology tutor.
That's right you're just going to be you're going to be like Scrooge McDuck swimming in that that TA money. All that pocket lint. Don't eat the fungus Rebecca. Don't eat the fungus not a joke.
Do make coffee but with regular new coffee grounds that come out of a bag that you opened recently. John I just want to bring up the fact that I have like some really long eyebrow hairs now and I don't know how to deal with it. I guess I should just cut them but like what is this thing about getting older where your eyebrows are like you know I have an idea. I don't want to have too much of a call back here but I started experiencing that as well three years ago and it's actually a pretty straightforward thing every time you get your haircut you also get your weirdly long eyebrow hairs cut and most hairdressers are familiar with oh yeah and they're able to do it really really well.
Oh interesting this is such a good advice I had no idea I figured I was going to have to do this myself in the mirror and I was going to mess it up but man maybe I should or alternatively I could just let it go and be that guy with a giant eyebrow because lots of people choose that route. You want to know some other things that are going to happen to you in the next three years or like with that spoiler. Are you the kind of person who wants to know the age and date of your death or are you the kind of person who's just like no I'll run with my chances. Oh no I want to know everything John.
Oh okay then I can tell you a bunch of things that are going to happen to you in the next two years. One of the things is that you're going to be injured you're going to notice your body breaking down in weird ways and you're going to be reminded of that line from F Scott Fitzgerald's The Crackup that begins of course all life is a process of breaking down but in the past when you've read that line you've always focused on the stuff that comes after because that's the dramatic stuff but it turns out that the fact that all life is a process of breaking down is in and of itself pretty dramatic. Then another thing that's going to happen is that when you're like 39 and a half and pretty burnt out and overwhelmed and you realize that like your primary responsibilities are to your family and that it's very difficult to balance those responsibilities with the responsibilities that you've taken on you're going to try to retire. And you're going to call your brother and you're going to say I would like to retire and your brother's going to say well no that's not how it works and you're going to say well but no I don't understand other people retire and your brother's going to say no I'm sorry but that's not allowed.
So I have an update on the eyebrow hair situation. Okay great so I got the sake of them and I just yanked them out. That strategy. Well I would like to inform you that about half of the eyebrow hair is grey.
Well yeah of course so that's that's also a thing. So I'm just going to have like like all of my grey eyebrow hairs will grow forever and all my normal like youthful eyebrow hairs will be short and in hiding behind my giant grey eyebrow hairs. Hank buddy you're a great person but you don't have any youthful eyebrow hairs. You have old eyebrow hairs and you have less old eyebrow hairs.
Alright Hank we have another question it's actually two questions. They came in to our email within seconds of each other. The first one came from Isaac who wrote, Dear John and Hank my bossy 15 year old sister keeps telling me to stop dabbing. Oh well but I can't stop dabbing.
Oh I think it's an illness. How do I stop dabbing? Any dubious advice is appreciated. Call me sir.
Isaac moments later. Dan Yell asks my annoying 13 year old brother won't stop dabbing. How do I get him to stop dabbing? He is stuck in 2015 and I cannot for the life of me pull him out of the past.
Help and he dubious advice is appreciated. Don't Dan whisper or Dan speak. Dan Yell. That's very good Dan Yell.
Here's the thing Isaac there's something about dabbing that feels so good. I get it. I totally get it. I get it because I have an eight year old son and a five year old daughter and they love to dab.
They have all of these like iterations on the dab. There's like a rainbow dab. There's the infinite dab. There's the speed dab where you dab back and forth left right left right left right.
It all has to stop Isaac. Okay once it's filtered down to the eight year olds and the five year olds the 13 year olds like yourself need to let it go. That's a great point John. I do have to say that it is a lucky thing that this is a podcast because I just dab like a thousand times.
Are you serious? I've dapped so many times just now in the last in the last 30 seconds of this podcast. My kids ask me to dab. I do it reluctantly and while I'm dabbing I feel older than anything else has ever made me feel.
I yeah I am I am occasionally asked to dab and not so much anymore because it is after all 2018 but like on a live stream or something and I cannot I cannot do it with other people looking at me but I can do it on a podcast and I'm doing it right now. I'm imagining it and it's extremely cringy. Don't put it in your head. I don't want you to imagine me dabbing.
I'm just I am and don't I guess that's part of how don't think of an elephant. Don't think of dabbing. Don't think of think of having Isaac. It's okay to dab.
You got to dab in the privacy of your own room. There are some things that have to happen alone especially when you're a young person. Dabbing is one of them. That's right.
That's right and all your dance moves because this isn't the only dance move you're ever going to have. You got to develop those while watching MTV's The Grind alone in your room like you're good Uncle Hank did. I mean that's weird calling yourself Uncle Hank is weird. That's like that's like a great old man thing that old men start doing where they're like you know what Uncle Hank always says.
Uncle Hank always says dab alone while watching MTV's The Grind. You know what Uncle Hank always says? Uncle Hank always says don't let your old man eyebrows distract people from your youthful eyebrows. See that's a great advice John.
Uncle Hank is full of good ones. You know what Uncle Hank always says never put a cough drop in your eyeball. I got good ones lots of good advice stuff you should definitely listen to. All right I have to end this bit immediately causing me a lot of anxiety.
This next question comes from Karen who writes, Dear John and Hank my brother and I are both in high school and he's like a super nice boy but I've noticed when he's with his friends he tries to be more tough. I don't think this is an uncommon occurrence but I feel bad that he can't be himself when he's with his friends. I know his grade and I don't really think switching friends is an option. How can I encourage my brother to be comfortable enough with his friends so he could share his real interests and not be such a jerk.
Sharon is Karen. So Karen I have a story about this but it doesn't star like a ninth grader. It stars 37 year old me. When I first arrived at the set of the movie Paper Towns the only person I knew was Nat Wolf.
I knew Nat because he'd been in the Fault in Our Stars movie and we were friends. And so I got to this big hotel suite where everybody was hanging out and there were all these new people I didn't know and I was super nervous and when I get nervous sometimes I revert to like childhood behaviors in really weird ways and I look back on them and I'm like oh god that was so horrible. This is one example of that. So I see all these new people that I don't know but you know a couple of them are well known enough that I know who they are and I'm super nervous and I don't know how these people are going to think of me and I don't know I just I don't know I'm totally overwhelmed and I look at Nat and he's wearing a leather jacket and somewhat fashionable like in my opinion two fashionable shoes and the first words out of my mouth are what's up with those shoes?
Wow. And Nat just looked at me and he said well they're the shoes that the costume director got for cue and also I know what you're doing. Oh my god you can't get called out like that by somebody who's like a decade and a half younger than you that's that's hard. He's a decade and a half younger than me but like a decade and a half wiser as well and and he explained it to me like I didn't know what I was doing but that was like sometimes when you're in a room where you only know one person you make fun of that person as a way of trying to like make the other people in the room like you and you think that's a good strategy and it makes sense in your head partly because of toxic masculinity and partly because of other reasons but it's not actually a good strategy and it doesn't actually work and maybe there is a way to be the Nat Wolf in this situation with your brother to be like I think I know what you're doing but I'm not convinced that it's effective.
Yeah I mean I think that we all try on a speck like at this age we try on lots of different identities and we see how they fit and and if there's like if there's a situation where it feels like your brother's being pressured into being a way that he doesn't want to be and it is it's frustrating and difficult and hard and like that can be something where you're commiserating with him but also like if he's finding like if he's finding something in that that's appealing and but also like it might be leading to you know more like a less you know thoughtful way of viewing the world or you know a lack of empathy on his part or something that you know things that you don't want to see in your brother like calling out the identity might be a little bit too much might be like too much of a threat to him you know depending on how how his social group is responding to sort of like how are we going to become men together and and so I think that one thing to remember is like make sure that you highlight and like and like uphold the parts of you know your brother growing up that you really admire and that you want to to admire in him like that he's hard-working that he's caring that he's helpful and that he's thoughtful so hopefully you can have some kind of some kind of like a version of like growing into manhood that is is about more than like being a real man or whatever that's supposed to mean just just tell him like I know exactly what you're doing when you try to make fun of my shoes my shoes are awesome this next question comes from Lorena who asks Dear Hank and John a couple of days ago I received a phone call and was offered a job this job is to sit at a show and volunteer when asked to get on stage and go inside of magician's box and he saw it in half while I don't know the more about this this is wonderful congratulations on this job was this a cold call like oh did you apply for this job or did you just get a phone call that said are you looking for a job getting sawn in half because if it's the latter I would be highly suspicious of this gig Lorena now if you're in a situation where you applied to be a magician assistant then yes this is fine otherwise I think that you might be making a terrible mistake it does the way the question is phrased does sound like you've got a call from someone who was like I want to give you 20 bucks to come get sawn in half I assume that you knew about this beforehand because no person would agree to this right? Whatever knows but but we are giving you the not dubious advice do not go and have a stranger saw you in half just because they called you on the phone but such good advice Lorena goes it's so solid you know we're really got it we're hitting it out of the park today John it's the kind of thing that you might not otherwise know like some some things just don't set off your alarm bells you know right and he says Uncle Hank's here for you Lorena so it's learning says it's wonderful news that they they're getting a job but they have some questions and concerns I have no idea what I'm going to do since I have to sit and watch the same show many many times I have no experience in this can I bring a book with me no could I just arrive late to the show every time no should I get my Google assets and watch Doctor Who the entire time actually maybe that's that's a good one dubious advice needed pumpkins and penguins Lorena you definitely have to look like a plant you can't like you have to look like you're not a plant that's what I meant to say Uncle Hank says you have to look like a human being not a plant not a ficus you need to look like I'm so excited to see my first ever magic show yeah what an opportunity tonight is what you're getting paid for and I worry that if you bring the Google Glass it just makes you it just adds a level of suspicion just based on the way I feel when I see people wearing Google Glass it for me I don't want to generalize but it does add a level of suspicion I feel toward that person yeah just generally in all things yeah so my I think what you're gonna have to do Lorena is what I had to do at the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World for much of my childhood you're just going to have to pay careful attention to the same thing happening over and over again and you may discover that on the other side of what will initially be kind of boring is this weird kind of transcendence like watching the Hall of Presidents show 50 times is kind of boring watching the Hall of Presidents show 500 times is sort of revelatory why did you watch the Hall of Presidents show 500 times oh um because you know you remember how mom had like permanent lifetime free passes to Disney World uh-huh because she won a community service award in Orlando uh-huh and remember how I hated Disney World and Hall of Presidents is the only place that's air conditioned and doesn't have a line uh-huh okay so I would just go into the Hall of Presidents and uh chew tobacco and watch the Hall of Presidents show and then go right back in for eight hours many times it's really good John that's wonderful what a good teen boy thing to do John you just really couldn't be bothered to enjoy the happiest place on earth oh I enjoyed it a great deal because I'm telling you if you watch the Hall of Presidents show and now if you will find on the other side of it a transcendence the likes of which space mountain cannot provide all right well there you have it from Uncle John's I'm real real the doozies of advice don't you don't chew tobacco arena I know that probably goes without saying but it's one of the great shames of my life it was really gross it was such a weird I remember being at a family wedding and our grandmother nanny yeah I remember nanny walking up to me and looking at me and just like something shifting in her eyes and her saying are you dipping and me being like yeah and then she just like looked at me for a half a second and turned away that that was it that was the end of my relationship with chewing tobacco oh god I've got a little bit sure how that sentence gonna end no she shows chewing tobacco over my grandmother Uncle Hank says there's nothing better than a dip get get your some uncle thanks chaw oh man would not be great Hank why don't we sell chewing tobacco at dftva.com there's so many items that we could sell that we don't yeah it's like we've completely avoided all of the things that cause cancer in our addictive what are we doing yeah people love that shit they can't stop literally but I think that we definitely answer the question which is watch the magic show over and over and over again learn about this show yeah get into the magic show especially because you might have a career as a magician's assistant in front of you or maybe even a career as a magician if you start to figure out how the tricks work hopefully you will definitely know how the one trick works hopefully that has been explained to you all right this next work comes from maddie who writes dear john and hank I am a registered absentee voter exclamation point I love your enthusiasm Maddie I love the exclamation point I think it communicates correctly that we should all be psyched about voting and we should all have plans to vote and we should all know where our sample ballots and we should all know what our sample ballots look like and we're polling places are vote dot or I'm not gonna stop hank I'm not gonna stop until actually when I stop because the election is over I'm just gonna start in for 2019 for your exciting county commissioner races I am currently going to college away from where I live and I'm mailing my ballot back soon however as I'm filling out my ballot I find that there are a ton of local positions and even some state offices that don't have multiple candidates I find this especially troubling because I don't agree with a lot of these candidates even worse there's a state court position where neither of the candidates reflect my views at all I can't even find the lesser of two evils there is usually a lesser of two evils Maddie but that's for another time can I just leave this part of the ballot blank also there are some local initiatives on the ballot concerning taxes and property I don't own property there nor do I pay the taxes that the ballot concerns should I not vote for or against these initiatives will not voting for any local elections remove me from the discourse of the town that I am already physically removed from actually quite happy not Maddie oh that's cute so there's there's two things in there one is the thing where I don't know how to vote in this election just because like I don't maybe I don't have time to do enough research on all of the candidates for the courts though I would absolutely encourage you to do that research and there are now far more good resources for doing that than there were even two or four years ago so it does not take that long yeah so that that is is and also the situation where there's only one person like do I have to vote for the one person you don't have to vote for the one person and and also like that person's gonna get elected so if you want to just save the time of filling the bubble you don't have to vote for that person well not only that but not voting for that person can communicate right thing it can communicate to maybe people who are considering running against that person that there might be some support and so I think that not voting for someone in a uncontested election is a way of communicating your lack of satisfaction with your representation in that particular elected office as far as whether you should vote on taxes you don't pay I think you should because you're voting about your community and it's not if it was going to be a vote that was held only to taxpayers it would be but it's not it's a vote that's held to all members of the community yeah because you together are deciding what kind of community you want to live in now you may not live there right now or may only live there part time but it is still your community both legally and in terms of how you think of it so I absolutely think that your voice you count yeah I mean there's a lot there's gonna be voting on lots of things in your life that won't directly affect you like like once you are out of school and you don't have kids or your kids are out of school you will still be voting on ballot initiatives that have to do with school and so those will be taxes that you will pay or not pay that will go to resources that like ultimately like you care about and and will affect your community even though you are not one of like you are not affected by that directly okay we are all affected by those things indirectly like whether there's a new tax and what that tax supports affects us even if we don't pay the tax even if we don't directly use the resource that the tax is paying for yeah getting slightly off topic here one thing I hear a lot from wealthy people I know whose kids are in private school is that they vote against all funding for public schools because it doesn't affect them and it just raises their taxes and that seems to me so astonishingly narrow-minded in the way that we think about how our communities work and even on a very selfish level even on a very me-based level it is good for me to have people in my community get access to better educational opportunities because then they can get better jobs they can build businesses in my community that I can do business with that that is how we grow as a community like to me public education is one of the massive earth-changing innovations of the last 200 years and so I really think it's important to vote on those issues because other people definitely feel empowered to vote on them even if they don't think they're directly affected by them that is for sure. John I got another question that comes from Dalton who asks there Hank and John there's a particular spot on my chin that I cut almost every time I shave I've tried going with the grain against the grain perpendicular to the grain all the similar results I grow a beard and forget about it but my facial hair is too thin so it looks awful I'm 24 so that's not an issue that is likely to get solved with time can you help me shave better yes I have seen Roadhouse Dalton okay John I don't I don't like other than doing what I just did in my eyebrows I'm just being like okay you guys are coming out with tweezers I don't I don't have much suggestion here help help Dalton well I think the most important thing is actually hey it's having a good razor blade okay having a really sharp razor blade a new razor be it's really working whether it's shaving cream or whatever you use to kind of lubricate the surface of your face for shaving you really got to work that in carefully I have a spot that I cut probably 60% of the time even doing all of these things because there's just one spot on my face it's near my chin where I don't know if the skin is thinner or what but I have found that if I really work in the shaving cream stuff that I use I use like fancy shaving cream stuff I can really work that in for a while and then I've got a really nice good razor I can usually avoid getting cut there I also another thing that I've tried to do though is just understand that I can get cut there and it's not a big deal it's not the end of the world like I cut myself shaving right before I was on TV for 60 minutes and they didn't have like a hair and makeup department to like fix me up or whatever so Sarah used this magical stuff called makeup on my cut and it went away and as a result of that I realized that there is this thing called makeup that can do a lot of different things to make your face look better and I've been told not to use it by the social order but the social order is totally wrong about this which reminds me John that this podcast is brought to you by makeup which is a thing that you can put on your face to make it look slightly different it's available to people of all genders new product out now makeup and of course today's podcast is also brought to you by good Uncle Hank good Uncle Hank distributing obvious advice in an old man's voice since earlier today this podcast is also brought to you by Secret Dabbing Secret Dabbing it occurs alone where no one can see you today's podcast is also brought to you by the coffee fungus in the biology lab the coffee fungus in the biology lab I mean they say it's edible this episode of your Hank and John's brought to you by Shopify there are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me and that is what Shopify makes easier when you start with Shopify the tools to design and launch and take payments they're all there from 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customers can get through the process Shopify handles that foundation so you can focus on the thing that you're actually trying to do it's really kind of amazing to me that Shopify is a tool that works from the first day your store launches when you're just starting to get customers all the way up to being the size of good.store or dftba.com or being the size of like Mattel and Gymshark when you build a Shopify you're building with tools that already work at every scale all you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest you can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th 2026 see website for more details one thing I love about summary is how easy everything feels the days are a little more relaxed my kids don't have to wake up at five in the morning and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again which is why I keep coming back to quince I often wear either a long sleeve or a short sleeve button down from quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints in fact sometimes I get compliments about it I was at the airport a couple days ago I often find myself in airports and someone said I like your shirt and I said thanks it's from quince quince is 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable easy to throw on in the summer upgrade your rotation needs starting at just 34 dollars their tees are soft enough to live in all day and the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when those summer nights cool down so that's why I'm wearing quince this summer and you can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash deerhank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too that's qunce.com slash deerhank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deerhank. you can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice peel off broccoli and carrots this has the fiber I need it has the protein I need 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 and 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 deerhank 50 off and use the code deerhank50 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 all right I got another question John from Anya who asks deerhank and John recently I received a letter of recommendation for a thing the person who wrote it emailed it to me so I could print it out and attach it to my application which I can then submit is it okay for me to read what has been written about me not the Disney princess Anya John I looked this up what the rules are you shouldn't do it unless they say can you read this and tell me what you think you should you probably apparently you shouldn't oh yeah well I've certainly never invited by that rule uh likewise so Anya as you read the letter of recommendation just know that you shouldn't be doing that I have no idea that you weren't supposed to do that and I have to say I'm very grateful obviously I'm sure that the etiquette is right and I'm being terrible for saying this but I'm just gonna say it I'm very grateful that I read the letter of recommendation that my professor Don Rogan wrote for me for divinity school because it in like really hard times in my life or really dark times in my life when I felt really sad and felt like I'm worthless and stupid and I just can get so angry with myself sometimes I go back to that letter because it was so kind and generous and it sort of showed the best version of me and sometimes I need to see that myself so I mean I get I get why you're not supposed to read them I get how that can maybe be a violation of privacy now that I think about it but boy I'm grateful for that letter so hey I got a question for you and it put me down a very deep rabbit hole that I've only recently emerged from it's from Laura who writes Dear John and Hank around eight years ago my friend now girlfriend had a jello putting cup in her lunch a common occurrence okay on the lid of the cup a smiley face in the letter O of the word jello had a speech bubble saying frown is a four letter word we could never figure out what this meant and it's been haunting me for years can you wait this mystery to rest roses are red I am a nerd what does jello mean by frown is a four letter word John I mean this this isn't something everybody knows but just like so you've got five fingers right but you don't actually you have four fingers and and a thumb that's the case with w w isn't technically a letter it's its own thing it's a w so so frown has four letters and a w yeah that's right that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard that all makes says w is not a letter it's a w I'm just gonna explain this for any young people who might be listening that is wrong all letters are letters frown has five letters so there's actually a whole community on the internet that even eight years later is still furious about this there's still very upset and the more I think about it the more I agree with them like I started out thinking like oh it's just a dumb thing where they're saying frown is a four letter word so in English colloquially four letter words are kind of curse words like there's the s word that's a four letter word like bad words are often called four letter words and I think the joke is that frowning is bad and you shouldn't do it because jello should make you happy and so jello is here to turn things around make your frown into a smile and stop having you say in those four letter words of negativity and obscenity like frown but it's the stupidest it's stupid on every level because one thing it says to people who are frowning instead of saying like I'm sorry you're having a difficult day it says like your experience is equivalent to expressing yourself in an obscene way which is not helpful your sadness is an obscenity according to the jello overlords right exactly so in addition to the fact that it's like unhelpful to people who are experiencing frowning it's also super difficult to parse like it's a joke yeah it's a joke that people are still debating eight years later because that's how bad of a joke it was so I just want to say to the folks at jello like that was terrible and if you need advice on how to develop more compelling advertising you should go to noted brand specialist Hank Green who is in the process of becoming a national spokesperson for a big big brand yeah I don't know I think I'm really gonna put my my weight behind jello honestly it's just it's basically sugar water I'm not that into that I will say John that we are still talking we did say jello a lot and and and also people are still talking about this bad joke so maybe it worked like maybe this was the goal the whole time to create a bunch of controversy have a bunch of forum posts have people still arguing and thinking thinking about jello being like oh god that frown joke was bad but also jello putting cups pretty tasty but they aren't that's my counter argument when was the last time you had jello not recently but I yeah now that I'm thinking about it I kind of want some so I recently got some jello for my kids and I was like this is a wonderful dessert that I enjoyed a lot as a kid and my kids ate like one bite of it and they're like what the is this they don't like jello sorry that that is an example of a four-letter word they don't like jello they not only did they not like jello they were like how on earth could you have ever like ever enjoyed this it's like if our parents had served us like sheep intestines and liver we would have been like that's weird like in the old days I guess people had to eat all kinds of things but god now we can have granola bars I mean people still like oh man so like millennials killed a lot of things but like your kid's generation is deaf gonna kill jello is that what you're telling me I'm telling you what what comes after what comes after millennials dry lineals yeah dry lineals you know it's poly poly lineals yeah so the poly lineals who are coming they're gonna destroy everything they're gonna destroy jello they're gonna destroy meat they're gonna destroy based on my children's food preferences the poly lineals are going to destroy all food categories except for vegetarian chicken nuggets I mean that's good for the chickens anyway okay before we get to the all important news from Mars and oh my god the darkness darkness everywhere I've got this message to read from Sarah who writes near John and Hank I recently started college in Raleigh North Carolina and I celebrated my 18th birthday this past Thursday my wonderful parents wrote four hours to spend four hours with me and then return they used to live here and so took me to breakfast at a restaurant they used to frequent called Briggs I recommend the food and it was overall a very pleasant experience except that I was forced to eat an entire meal next to a horrifying five-tined fork that was the size of my whole body I'm looking at a picture of this fork it is it's very large uh-huh oh boy oh boy it's upsetting it is there's nothing worse than a five-tined fork I mean there are things that are worse than a five-tined fork to be clear like a poverty disease burden etc I attached a few pictures because it's just so horrifying I had to share it with someone who would understand my family did not they just thought I was getting even weirder Sarah no I wasn't intentionally named after the Terminator Connor great name Sarah um and also really great picture we'll post it on the patreon at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John all of your five-tined forks pictures we received many of them we found all of them equally disturbing and distressing and in in one case they made me vomit this one that is that is the size of Sarah is is of is like my eyes can't parse it it just like it doesn't work it doesn't make sense I can't count the number of times it's like it's like they found the way to hack the human brain in that way that the the federation was going to do to the Borg with you with uh with a impossible geometric shape but they ended up not doing it because they thought it was immoral which I still think is a really dubious decision.
Hank that's a really great example of a reference that everybody who listens to this podcast will get and it will really resonate with them all right John there's like literally 1% of our audience was just like it is like that and the other 99% were like I think I know what the Borg is I think I need a new podcast to listen to yeah well there's the Anthropocene reviewed where I never talk about Star Trek yet you can review Star Trek that was something that's created all right Hank it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon it's going to be it's a darkness I'll go first okay Wimbledon cannot stop losing this we cannot stop losing we lost yesterday to Bristol Rovers 2 to nothing even though we dominated the game the problem is that dominating the game doesn't matter when you can't score goals and we cannot score goals the only time we can score goals is when we're already down by more than one goal we haven't scored a goal when not down by more than one goal in like six weeks or something or eight weeks it's the situation is completely out of hand and I am just uh oh god I keep it keeps popping up on my little my little home screen because because now Google knows that I care about AFC Wimbledon and yeah and it's and it just it makes my day worse if you like I'm like why am I so stressed out right now and it's like oh it's because I just looked at the AFC Wimbledon score me too I'm also really stressed out about it there's a lot of talk about Neil Artley resigning or Neil Artley uh I don't know I mean that's or him getting fired it's obviously a very difficult situation and you know I think everybody's dream Neil Artley played for Wimbledon when he was a kid you know he's been a huge part of this club's history and I think everybody's dream was that he would lead the team out when the new Playa Lane stadium was finished and managed the first game there and and that dream now seems in doubt also it has to be said that Wimbledon's league position in league one is very bad I mean the only reason the only reason that we are not in last place is because there are two teams that are just inexcusably bad one of which we've already lost to actually know now that I look both of which we've already lost to my gosh so it's just it's a really bad situation obviously and sometimes that leads to a change in management sometimes I don't know I don't know what's going to happen in the years that I have sponsored AFC Wimbledon I would say this is the second most difficult period and the first most difficult period is when they almost got relegated from the football league entirely and in that case it was Neil Artley who came in and really saved them and on the last day got a win when we needed one and kept us in the league how we're going to say in league one this season I do not know but it is still only October and I guess there is still time for things to change Hank what's the news for Mars is it gonna cheer me up no it isn't because I also get a lot of Mars news now on my Google homepage because it knows that I'm interested in Mars what's the news for Mars well there is there's good news for Mars it just doesn't get news from Mars opportunity rover so there was a study recently released in Nature Geoscience suggesting that the water that we have found on Mars might you know they did a bunch of math basically let's just say weird math models they figured out that even though there is not a lot of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere it's 0.145% oxygen and that is a very thin atmosphere so it's very little oxygen and oxygen is good for helping complex life evolve so life can happen without oxygen in fact that's how it happened on earth but then once oxygen is available life can use that to do a bunch of good interesting things with you can use that to to form more complex structures basically and so this this new model indicates that the water on Mars very likely contains more oxygen than we assumed it would and also enough oxygen that complex single-celled life so more complicated single-celled life could happen but also potentially like very simple multi-cellular life could exist with this level of oxygen in like dissolved in the water and that looks like sponges like that kind of multi-cellular life which is right on the edge of where single cells and multi cells sort of function and like having like more specialized tissues not so much but but definitely having cells working together and forming into like a single organism that has lots of different cells so that that oxygen allows for you know more chemically interesting stuff to get done and and so obviously this doesn't mean that life does exist on Mars it just means that like it could and it could exist in a way that we didn't know about before so it could be like we've known for a long time that life on Mars probably isn't going to be like crawling around probably isn't going to have opposable thumbs etc yeah but this is the first evidence that we've had that based on what we know about the chemistry of the planet and the water that we could have multi-cellular life right based on what we know about the chemistry of that of Mars and also based on what about the chemistry of multi-cellular life it just is pretty cool is a requirement to have a certain amount of oxygen dissolved in water for that to happen and Mars and many places does have enough oxygen and for that to happen and is there anything about the water on Mars that makes multi-cellular life less likely or impossible well if we took multi-cellular life from earth and put it in like an analog Martian water it would not survive it's got a lot of harsh chemicals perchlorates are the like a kind like a ionic compound that is dissolved and that is actually what allows like these sort of salts these salts are what allows for the water to be liquid on the surface sometimes and also for the liquid water that we found substantially like you know more than a kilometer below the surface that brine allows the water to stay liquid even at like lower than freezing temperatures but that brine also would would kill anything from earth but we know that evolution does a good job of selecting for things that can live in weird situations and perchlorates definitely are a harsh chemical but maybe if you evolved in that situation maybe they're just food or just you know just just a natural environment and so it doesn't feel that way so that's we actually the SciShow team got to talk to some of the scientists who are on this paper and then they were like you know like we don't know what how life would would evolve to to handle a high perchlorate environment because it's never had to happen on earth so you know maybe there would be mechanisms that we wouldn't have imagined but there's no existing earth organism that could survive in what we know about existing Martian water correct okay that's interesting yeah so if we discover life on Mars it will be like truly weird to us it's not like oh yeah it's an amoeba oh I mean like the question is whether it's based on the chemistry of earth life if it has like like DNA and RNA and it uses like similar protein structures to us because that wouldn't be something that would happen automatically that would mean that that life got carried from earth to Mars or life carried from Mars to earth and so we're like share a common ancestor which is totally possible but the the alternate would be like totally like even in that case it would be extremely foreign it would be very weird it would have gone in completely different paths for a very long time billions of years and but like if it evolved separately that would be the biggest story because that would mean that life is probably fairly common in the universe because it happened two times on two planets in one solar system and then but it would also give us a chance to learn I don't know like truly deeply huge things about about chemistry and about about ourselves by having some other version of life to compare ourselves to we have got to get to Mars hey yeah you're there with me now we need humans on Mars all right that would be that would be by far the biggest discovery in the history of science yes correct 2028 John no there's no way we're getting humans on Mars in 2028 but we do we need humans on Mars I'm on board I don't want to be one of the humans but I'm 100 on board all right well I'm on board with AFC Wimbledon winning a game as well god please all right well thank you for potting with me Hank thanks to everybody for listening again you can go to patreon.com slash dear Hank and John if you want to see a really very large five time fork and thanks to all of our patrons there for helping support the work that we do it complexly John before we end the podcast what is important about Ethan Hawkes birthday what is important about Ethan Hawkes birthday it's November 6 John vote I love it I love it vote thanks for listening our podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins produced by Rosie on a horse road house and shared in Gibson our head of community and communications is Victoria Bonjour the music that you're listening to right now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla and as they say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome