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Friends have Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and Moore will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly's 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've 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. Welcome to Dear Hank and DAWG! Course I prefer to think of it here, John and Hank.
It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, bring you dubious advice and all of the week's news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, as you know, our production company Complexly is trying out a bunch of new shows this week. We're working on another one right now. It's all about the different systems that you need to fly a plane.
We're filming the pilot right now. It's not. Hank, before we get to questions, I'm not even responding to the joke. But before we get the questions from our listeners, one of the things this podcast has become is our weekly opportunity to talk to each other.
Yeah, hi, how are you? I'm fine. It's busy. It's been a little bit mustache right now.
Things have been a little bit busy at the moment. We're working on a lot of parallel tracks. Hank and I think are happiest when we're collaborating on projects. But right now, it's a lot of Hank working on some projects and me working on others because there's just a lot going on.
So Hank, I have to tell you this on a personal level and I hope that it's a good story for our listeners. But last night, a pretty weird thing happened to me. Is it exciting? In a manner of speaking, I had a stressful weekend.
A lot of work on this new Partners in Health project. Also, Pete Lewis is coming up. The Let It's No Netflix movie is coming out soon. There's a bunch of things happening.
I was working late on Sunday night and I got to the point, which rarely happens to me, when I was answering emails and I started to make mistakes. I started to just have errors in the email, like pacing the wrong link or whatever. And I was like, okay, this is ridiculous. I need to go to bed.
I'm going to get eight hours of sleep. It's going to be magical. I lay down. I was going to get eight hours of sleep.
I went to sleep. I was in the deepest sleep of my life. And at 1.15 in the morning, there was a huge explosion from the master bathroom. I don't know how it's to describe it.
It was like the largest Lego sculpture ever created all fell apart all at once. Was there actually a Lego sculpture in there? Well, that was my first thought. My first thought was, why is Henry playing with a very large Lego sculpture at 1.15 in the morning?
I jump out of bed, I scream like bloody murder. I open the door and I don't know how else to describe this except to say that the glass of our shower had exploded into like 150,000 pieces. Yeah. Yeah, that's how they do it now for safety.
It had exploded all at once. It was such an unbelievable scene that my first thought was, well, I guess somebody shot up our bathroom. Weird. It's a weird place to aim.
And so then all night long, my dreams were all about like, why did people shoot our bathroom? Some mean. Did you do anything? Do you just see it and then go back to sleep?
You're like, I don't have time for this right now. Yeah. So. I use a different bathroom.
The main thing I did was I held Sarah by the shoulders and I said, Sarah, we're both really tired and this is a very strange experience. So I just want to confirm two things. One, that it happened and two, that there's not some like larger thing that we're missing, right? Like, like we just need to make sure is there water pouring out of things, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, there's, is there a reason this happened that now requires further attention? Just go to sleep with a bunch of glass all over the place.
Yeah, the answer was number two. Yeah, that's great. I'm glad. I'm super happy.
We went to sleep with a bunch of glass over the place. And in the morning, when I woke up, I rolled over and Sarah was reading about this on the internet and she said, this is surprisingly common. Okay. So if you're out there and one night, your glass shower explodes.
Just know that that's it's totally normal. Here, here's what happened. We decided that shower curtains were too grody and wrinkly and just not pretty enough. So we installed these big beautiful plates of safety glass that occasionally explode.
And everybody on the internet is like, uh, at one fifteen in the morning, my glass shower exploded. And then all these other people reply like, Oh, yeah, happened to me in 2014. Yep, that's a thing. That's totally a thing.
You got to have to get a new one. Anyway, we're going back to, uh, we're going back to shower curtains at the greenhouse. This first question comes from Aaron who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was recently watching the new Aladdin movie and was wondering how the characters walk on giant hills of sand in the desert without sinking. Does it have to do with weight?
Like if a mouse or an elephant walked in the desert would either sink? Thanks, Aaron. So several different things are going on here. The first is like the actual, the big, the big thing, which is that when you compress sand, it kind of like finds ways to form little crystals and like actually solidify a little bit.
Friction happens and all the sand turns into like a sort of hard thing underneath you. If like you were your weight, but didn't have any size, you would fall into the sand. I don't know how you would be your weight without having size, but that that would happen. If you were just like standing on two needles, the needles would go pretty far down.
But interestingly, we are also less dense than sand. So there's a thing that you can do. You can blow air through sand and like get rid of all the gaps between the sand and have the sand kind of not touch itself. Mark Robert did a video where he made like a big thing where you could get into like a sand bath, basically.
But one of the cool things about the sand bath is that you still kind of float in it because sand is made of rocks and rocks are heavier than like the water that we are mostly made of. Like, and in a quicksand situation, you would actually find that you don't sink in quicksand. Eventually you start to float in it, though your head can be pretty close to the area where, you know, it's covered in sand. So it can still be quite scary.
And then also it's hard to get out. And that's, that can be a problem. So don't play around quicksand is real. I had always been told that quicksand was just a fake thing that I didn't need to worry about.
Do I need to reintroduce quicksand to my list of potential causes of death? No, because you would never, you, John Green, would never go to a place that has quicksand. Great. They are, they are really good points.
It's not like the fire swamp where it's like dry sand, quicksand is wet. And so you would, you, John Green would have to be walking around in a very wet, muddy place, which I just don't see happening. Very unlikely. The other thing is that it can be pretty hard to get stuck in quicksand.
It's just very hard to get out once you do. So if you work hard and you're like, this is fun, I'm having a joke. And then you're like, ankle or like knee deep. It's like, actually, this has now solidified around my legs.
And I do not know how to get out. And you have to call the emergency services. It's got to be a fun call for EMTs, you know, like a lot of the job probably isn't that great. But when you get the quicksand call, you're like, this is going to be fun.
Oh, yeah, I got to go dig some idiot kid out of a, out of a tide flat again. Hank, I have a semi related question for you, which is, you know how our dad like mushed dogs and shore snowshoeed and hiked to the Appalachian Trail and whatever? Have you ever put on a pair of snowshoes? Yes, I actually have one time, I live in Montana.
So I have also put on a pair of snowshoes. It is shockingly hard to snowshoe. Yeah. Well, the only thing that is harder is just walking through the snow.
Exactly. It's like 3% easier than just going up to your knees and snow. And actually, this is also true of sand. So like fine sand or just running on sand is harder than walking or running on a hard surface.
And there are animals that are well adapted to the desert. Like camels, for example, actually have like big furry, split out feet so that they don't sink down as much because it's more efficient for them to walk then. They have sand shoes. They have sand shoes.
No, it's adorable. Animals are so adorable. Why are we making them all extinct? Except chickens.
They're doing great. There are so many. There are more chickens than people by a wide margin. It's going to, you know, after humans go extinct, chickens are going to have like an amazing 80 years.
Right. Right. Before everything. The number of chickens just absolutely explodes and they're the dominant species on the planet.
And then coyotes are going to have an amazing like 10,000 years. This next question comes from Nicky who asks, dear Hank and John, this is less a question and more a plea for help. I apologize that I said I was a question. I recently found out that if you brush your teeth for the recommended two minutes twice a day, you spend over a day per year brushing your teeth 24 hours and 20 minutes per year to be precise.
That was your first mistake is being precise about this. I know that brushing my teeth is important. So I'm going to keep doing it. But now I'm thinking of all the time that I spend doing unnecessary stuff like going on social media and watching TV.
I'm kind of freaking out about all the time that I'm wasting. How do I stop freaking out? How do I work out what things I should keep doing? Nicky.
So Hank, you made a recent video about TikTok and social media platforms and how people are using their connectivity time and their entertainment time and how your connectivity time and your entertainment time are sort of merging in a way they've always been merged. I thought this was a great video by the way. Thank you. In a way they've always been merged because, you know, like a lot of times our happy entertainment time is also our time of social connection.
But if most of us look at the screen time app on our phones, we will find the amount of time that we are spending on our phones is a pretty significant time of the amount of time we're awake. Like in a lot of people's cases, it's most of the time that they're awake. And I'm super aware that I'm an old man who yells at clouds and that there have always been old men yelling at clouds. But Nicky, I'm psyched that the reason you're worried about this is because of your toothbrush time, not because of like your TikTok time.
Yeah. John, do you think this is a question about death? Ultimately, like, first we have to like say, okay, what is what is wasting time and second like what is time? And then it's like, Oh, this is this is actually about like, this is my one beautiful existence.
And like over the course of my life, I will spend years of my life watching television, years of my life, pooping, years of my life, like on Twitter. How okay is that? Am I okay with it? And also like, is it better to think about this or to not think about it to just like enjoy life as it comes?
Because one thing that I really want to get away from is the idea that time is wasted when you are not like producing something or that like your own happiness and satisfaction and connection, like all counts as a product. Like my joy is something that I make. And the joy that I provide to other people is something that I make. And that's not wasted just because it's not like turning into economic productivity or something.
Yeah, absolutely. But also, I do think that there might be some value in asking yourself, what do I want to do while I'm here? Like what I want to do in my time? And part of the answer for that should I think be, I want to distract myself from the pain of meaninglessness.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Or like, you know, you find meaning in your favorite television shows. Like, yeah, right. Like I watched the Tetris World Championships over the weekend Hank on Twitch.
And I watched it with my kids. We had a great time. We had different people we were rooting for. I was devastated when my Tetris player lost.
They were delighted when there's won the championship. Like, was that wasted time? Yeah, I mean, it was wasted in the sense that I didn't make any money, but it was amazing time with my kids like laughing, gasping, and just having a great time. Like that, that isn't a waste.
Now, I think it is a waste a lot of the time when I do that stuff alone. And it leaves me feeling like less connected to other people and less connected to myself and to the world around me like that. Maybe isn't a good use of time. That's it.
The core question, brushing your teeth is an amazing investment. Like it is. It's just it's an amazing investment in quality of life down the road. As is like all the time that I spend making dinner or something.
Absolutely. The one thing and Hank, I'm not here to criticize you, but if there were one way that I if I were you, I might just slightly rearrange the my day is that I and it's just me. I wouldn't spend 19 hours a day on Twitter. But like, I'm just there to try and make the other people on Twitter feel better.
Oh, yeah. That's a great because I know how I know how rough it is out there. I'm trying to help. Yeah.
Hank, our next question comes from Soph who writes, Dear John and Hank, why is the saying goody two shoes? Do naughty people only wear one shoe? Not very sophisticated, Soph. Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, you don't know about that? No, what is the edible? I have no idea of the etymology of that phrase and I've used it my whole life without ever thinking twice about it. And I guess we should say for people who don't speak English as their first language or maybe in other countries.
I don't know that isn't a phrase. But goody two shoes means like a person who's, you know, so good and follows all the rules that it's kind of annoying. Right, right, right, right. You're a little goody two.
So the weird thing about so first, the weird thing about this is that we're saying it, we have no idea what it means and that it makes no sense. Right. We've all got two shoes. We all want to be good people.
And so the fact that like you're a good person with two shoes should not be a negative. Right. Yeah, it's used to make fun of people. But now that I've thought about the phrase, like I want to be a goody two shoes.
Yeah, no, that like that I would like to I would I don't want to be a baddy two shoes. And I'm even more than that don't want to be a baddy one shoe or a baddy no shoes. It's like I think it maybe speaks to how in middle school it's sort of good to be bad. I'm just changing my Twitter profile to Hank baddy one shoe stream.
No keep it P I H dot or not that I've gone on Twitter lately. Hey, what is the other model of you this phrase? So there was a there was a story it was written by an anonymous person I think of the 1700s. It was called goody two shoes.
It was about I think an orphan child who only had one shoe. And then she got another shoe. And then she was enthusiastic about the fact that she had two shoes and told lots of people about it. And the story was kind of about like this is a person who really appreciates what they have, even though what they have is kind of what everyone else has.
And the story had a very happy ending. And then people needed a word for people who were too good. And so they like took this thing that never in the story was a negative thing like goody two shoes. The character in the story was was never like too good or was never portrayed as like annoying, but somehow it got taken from like that character in the story to being this other thing in the way that language doesn't make any sense.
And I love that. I love that too. English in particular makes no sense. No, yeah, we're not trying to make sense.
Like in German when they want to talk about the kinds of food that you eat when you're sad, they have a word for that and the word is grief-bacon. Like German words make perfect sense. Yeah, and we're like goody two shoes, you know, good people with two shoes. It's bad.
This next question comes from Diana who asks, Dear Hank and John, why do microwaves rotate the food when I use them? Remember that you are going to die, Anna? Thanks, Anna. No, it's Diana.
Oh, that's great. That's like a it's like a memento mori stuffed inside of your own name. Yeah, name specific sign off and Dear Hank and John specific joke. There are areas in the microwave that receive more energy.
And that is a quirk of the physics of microwaves. And so you want your food to rotate in and out of those areas or only one area of the food will get hot. It would be better if the food both rotated and actually moved, but that would be more expensive and difficult to have a mechanism of the debt and that mechanism would be more likely to break. That's a very easy answer.
I have a follow up question, which is why don't I ever remember when reheating soup to put something on top of the soup so it doesn't explode everywhere? You just got to be like my friend who has this greasy, terrible piece of wax paper that they use and keep it next to the microwave and use the same one every time. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't I don't I don't like that at all.
I would rather clean out my microwave after every reheating. Hank, you're really doing a great job with the physics questions with the sand and the microwave. I have a physics question for you. Okay.
Why did my bathroom glass wall blow up last night? I really don't know. Was there a significant temperature change? There was.
And one thing we read on the internet is that sometimes when there are significant temperature changes, the glass doors in your house blow up. So I wish somebody had given me a quick heads up on that one maybe before we had it installed. All right, we have another question. This one's from Malia who writes Dear John and Hank, if a friend asks me to hang out, but I don't care what activity we do, is the proper response, I'm down for whatever or I'm up for whatever directionally confused Malia.
So here's the situation in the great words of brass construction, John. Hey, well, leave your troubles behind. This is what we say to you. Get up, get on down, got to get up, got to get up, got to get up, get on down, got to get up to get down.
So you have to be up for whatever in order to be down for whatever. Apparently, according to brass construction, you cannot be down unless you have gotten up for whatever. I feel like it's I'm up for whatever. So I actually agree with brass construction insofar as I think the initial response is I'm up for whatever.
But then if somebody replies with three options, maybe at that point you say I'm down for whatever. I also feel like to be completely frank with you. Why is that right? I don't understand that seems very right.
I also think to be completely frank with you, there's something just slightly romantic about I'm down for whatever, whereas I'm up for whatever is completely platonic. I'm so glad that we have made it this hard to speak this language. This is a terrible language and it's just occurring to me. And I know we have Shakespeare and whatever, whatever.
But it's the spelling, it's ludicrous. Even ludicrous is ludicrous to spell. That is essentially what the success of the hip hop star ludicrous's name is based on. That like ludicrous as a word is spelled incorrectly.
He can do it better. I can do this better. He thought to himself. And by the way, he can.
The way that he spells ludicrous is much better. He was correct. Let me posit that I am up for whatever is just sort of is like saying, I am happy to do an activity whereas I am down for whatever means I will do anything. Right.
I am up for whatever is like, I don't care if we go bowling or if we throw axes. I'm down for whatever is like, if this ends in a criminal enterprise, that's fine by me. Yeah. It's like the chaotic good of I would like to hang out.
Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by ludicrous. That's right, Hank. I'm going back a little bit. Just be clear.
The artist and not the word. This podcast is also brought to you by the glass door industry and stalling very small detonators inside of their doors since 2010. I'm sure that the glass door industry is full of good people. I always feel like I need to defend everyone everywhere.
We're not hurting the feelings of people who are doing that good work. But also, this podcast is brought to you by sand shoes, sand shoes already on camels. And also, this podcast is brought to you by baddie one shoe, baddie one shoe. He's real trouble, but he's cool, you know, he's down for whatever.
This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought up to you by Shompify. 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 Shompify makes easier. When you start with Shopify, the tools to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one.
You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business. And this is important because you also have to like look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing. It also works on other people's brains to be like, this is legitimate.
Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet. It's built to help customers finish the purchase effectively and efficiently without a bunch of roadblocks. Returning customers can check out with a single click. That means less friction and fewer abandoned carts and a smoother experience for everybody.
That stuff gives you confidence early on and it gives other people confidence in what you're doing. You're not wondering whether the payment system is going to work. You're not wondering whether 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 dftv.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.
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and that you did not eat lunch. What are you going to do? Are you going to get meal delivery that's going to cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you going to go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts? Those are my two choices unless I have a factor in the fridge.
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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.
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Somebody posted on the internet and said they had a million dollar idea. It's from Jim who says million dollar idea drive through bathrooms. It's a very bad idea, Jim. What?
Look, we go to rest stops all of the time. Yeah. And you park your car and you get out of the car and you go to this public place with all of these people and there's like people trying to distract you with snacks or interpretive materials about the place where you are. Sometimes there's people like giving away free coffee that definitely have some kind of ulterior motive so you don't pay attention to them.
What if you didn't have to get out of your car? I'm with you until the last like seven words. Well, okay, here's what I know. I can go to a drive-through restaurant and get food through the window.
Why can't I do that but for bathrooming? A few reasons. The big one is that in most cars, it is difficult either to stand up or to squat out the window. Anyone who has ever attempted to moon their friends in high school.
No, no, you're imagining it wrong. The million dollar idea isn't the building that receives your bathroom materials. It's the area of your car that becomes a place where bathroom materials can go without you having to get up. I'm already sitting down, which is what I'm doing most of the time when I'm in the bathroom anyway.
Just open up a little hole in the bottom of the car but you have to drive to a place. You can't just do it on the road. You have to drive to a place and park in an area and then like they enclose you so you're like private and then I hate this. I hate everything about it and I can't.
I can no longer pretend that I like this idea. I apologize. Look, this tweet has zero likes and zero retweets. No one else liked it either.
I just thought it would be a worthwhile discussion and look, sometimes you're wrong. It's important to recognize that you could be wrong about stuff. I mean, I almost want to try to find a better million dollar idea and redo the bit. No, no, that's the one I chose and we're sticking with it.
Okay. Jonesy says that his million dollar idea is pumpkin-spiced white claw. No, that is a million dollar idea. That's got to be worth the drive-through bathrooms, John.
No, pumpkin-spiced white claw is a proper million dollar idea. Now, like, how could you have picked drive-through bathrooms when pumpkin-spiced white claw was sitting there waiting for you? Because I'm just tired of getting out of my car. There's so much time wasted and energy.
And I am tired of not drinking pumpkin-spiced white claw. I'm so tired of having to drive out my car window. Like white claw is so overwhelmingly and obviously Zima that I don't know how to hit it. No, it's not.
Zima was sweet. White claw doesn't have any sugar. It's culturally Zima, but it's not flavorally Zima. I quite like white claw and I think it's just sweet enough, but we can move on.
In fact, we must. It's been going on way too long. All right, before we get to the on-board news from Mars and AFC, I want to answer a couple more questions. For instance, this one comes from Abby who writes, Dear John and Hank, my boyfriend doesn't know who Elon Musk is.
It's not really a question, but it is weird. It's a little weird at this point. Like, but I think a more important question is, does your boyfriend know who Leon Musk is? Right.
Because there must be like one or two people out there who do know who Leon Musk is, but don't know who Elon Musk is, in which case Leon Musk's career as an Earth-only advocate seems very weird. For those who haven't listened to every single episode of this magical podcast, I once created a character named Leon Musk who argues for an Earth-only existence for humans, at least until 2028. Because Hank and I have a long standing bet that if there are no humans on Mars on January 1st, 2028, I get to rename this podcast, Dear John and Hank. Yeah, and look, it's going to happen.
I understand that my chances are slim, but what slim? Yeah, well, you never know. I know. Okay, well, you never know.
It is a far away from now. It's eight years. You don't happen in the last eight years, John? Yes.
No new internet startups, none. No new social media companies at all. We have reached monopoly. The entire forest floor has been shaded out and no new progress can be made.
So let's have to get off this planet. Look, yes, it is true that there have been no big internet startups in the last eight years, Hank. But as a counter argument, what about we work? I'm here all week guys.
Oh gosh, yeah, that's that one's for all the people who read the business section. But that includes John and me. So that that's what happens. And like honestly, John, I appreciate Leon's efforts on behalf of the Earth.
It's a great, it's a great place. This question comes from Heather who asks Dear Hank and John, single use plastics, particularly plastic bottles are such an environmental disaster. What do you suppose would be the effect of the past some form of legislation that would immediately halt the production of these types of materials? Unum, Terram Heather.
I think that means one Earth, which is the actual and definite number of Earth's. Also, it's not a bad motto for Earth. Just a gentle reminder, there's just the one. Yep, we only get to do one experiment at a time on this baby.
So this is an interesting question because it gets at how do we make big social change? And sometimes we make those big changes through policy decisions made by governments. And sometimes we make those decisions through a mix of policy decisions and social pressure. I think the most obvious example of that is that for a long time, it was seen as completely impossible to reduce the number of people who smoked because smoking was so cool.
And what were you going to do? Right? Just look at him. He looks so cool.
Like, hey, can I grew up in the 90s? And I grew up smoking cigarettes. And I was like, what am I going to do? It's so cool.
I want to be cool. Like the other cool kids who smoke. And then through a like huge social movement, which was led partly by really effective advertising and partly by dramatically raising the prices of cigarettes and using the new tax revenue to fund anti-smoking and smoking cessation campaigns, the number of people who smoke cigarettes has declined really dramatically. Now, there is a new nicotine based issue that's very serious in terms of public health.
But the success of reducing the number of people who smoke is one of like the great public health success stories in rich countries in the last 20 years. And I think that the best way to get people to stop using plastic bottles is to make people feel horrified by the notion of drinking water, or for that matter, any other form of like sweetened water from a plastic bottle. And in fact, I'm already starting to feel social pressure about single use plastics, which is a good sign. I need to feel more social pressure.
I need more shaming. But there's a third thing here that I think is really important, which is that you also need some kind of alternative to the bad thing. Like you can't turn off coal-fired power plants without turning on something that will continue to power my computer. Like, I need it to make a podcast.
And I'm super excited about creating those alternatives, both as a society, and maybe as an individual human, as I explore my soda syrup business, which will allow you to have sugary beverages at home without buying plastic bottles every three minutes. I do think that's a good idea, as I've told you before. But I just want to say for the record that we have an existing alternative to bottled water. Sure.
Yeah. Most people in most places most of the time. Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's not true everywhere.
In Sierra Leone, for instance, bottled water is critical to health in a lot of cases. But in the United States, in most places, most of the time, we have an amazing alternative to bottled water that just doesn't have enough marketing support behind it. Yeah. It's called tap water.
For those of you who never turned on your taps. It's amazing. What an accomplishment. And maybe the greatest thing human beings ever did was make clean water available in their houses all the time.
I can't believe the blizzard that is happening outside of my house right now. Okay, because there is a blizzard outside of Hanks house, we need to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon before Hank gets snowed in inside of his garage and is unable to make the seven step walk to his home without acquiring snow shoes, which he doesn't have. I'll start. The news from AFC Wimbledon is not great.
We lost our last game, one nil. It was frustrating. And I thought we could have maybe not lost it, but we did against Burton, another team that isn't very good. And we're currently in 21st place, which is still in the relegation zone, but it's at the top of the relegation zone, which is better than where we've been in the past.
And we're only one point behind the franchise currently playing its trade in Milton Keynes, meaning that our upcoming game against them has even more import than it usually would. Yes. I hate that. That makes me very nervous.
Yeah. I mean, we've got some games before then, but it's impossible not to kind of circle that day on the calendar. So our next games are against Lincoln City, who like us are not great. And then we've got the FA Cup, which, no, I mean, you know, if we make a run, that'd be great.
But I just want to finish 20th and League one and have one more season in the third tier of English football and move into our new stadium in the third tier. That is the dream. It's not currently happening, but the arc of history is long and it bends toward Wimbledon. Hank, what is the news for Mars?
The news for Mars is also bad. So last week, we were talking about how great it was that they'd figured out how to put a little extra pressure on the heat probe that's going into the surface of Mars, finally started digging itself down in after months of not doing anything. Yes. I was so excited.
And then we don't even really like this. This is very new. We don't have any data as to why this is that probe started to leap out of its hole. As if it encountered something scary down there that it doesn't want to see.
And much faster than it was driving itself down, it is yanking itself up. What? So yeah, I don't know, John. I don't like this thing works by slowly lifting away and then dropping it.
And I don't understand how that could result in the probe moving up. It is now halfway out of the hole. So like the terrible thing is that they were letting it go down and they were like, okay, well, it's working. And so they were like, okay, let's send a message out so that it'll hammer itself down a bunch.
And then like they got the pictures back and it's like, what, what happened? Who said this was okay? So it was leapt out of the hole. It's like now, you know, halfway unburied.
It's a long thing. It's a pretty long thingy. So it's like, but it's like half of its out of the ground now. Whereas before it was, it had at least gotten its whole self into the ground.
So it's very bad news that he probe experiment, which is designed to sort of like map out with the interior of Mars looks like by measuring how heat is flowing around the planet may just not happen, which has always been, you know, a possibility ever since it first didn't started to not work early on the mission. But then it seemed like it was going to, but now it seems like it again might not. But I don't know, I'm not a NASA engineer. So maybe they're working on something and I've figured out they haven't even like released a statement about this yet really, because they don't really know why it's happened, except that the regolith on Mars is really weird.
And they don't quite get it, which is, I guess data we're learning. So I am also not a scientist and I don't want to pretend to be, but I do have a theory about this, which is that while AFC Wimbledon, we're on a three game wind streak, the probe was working great, then AFC Wimbledon lost to Burton. I mean, obviously it could just be correlation, but it smells like causation to me. Right.
What we need is for NASA to give AFC Wimbledon a lot of money. I love everything about what you just said. And I feel like there has never been a better time for NASA to become really superstitious. Yeah.
Well, we'll see, Hank, because I suspect that AFC Wimbledon are going to go on another wind streak at some point. And if that is correlated with good news on Mars, I am going to become a true believer in the Wimbledon Mars connection. Maybe 2028 is the year that humans go to Mars and Wimbledon goes to the premiere week. We shall see.
Boom. Let's do it. Hank, thank you for bonding with me. It is always a pleasure.
Thanks to everybody for listening. I'm going to post a picture of my exploded door at thepatreon.com slash beerhankajon. If you're curious to see that, you don't need to donate to see the picture. It's astonishing.
I can't wait to see it. It just makes no sense. Anyway, thanks going to do the rest of the credits. This podcast is produced by Rosie on a Hals Rassen shared a Gibson it's edited by Joseph Tuna Medish, our head of community and communications is Victoria Bonjourno.
It is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC studios and the music to do during now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the Greek Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.