247: Lobster Dream Hands

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 have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and more 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 in 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 go on sale 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. Oh, and welcome to Dear Hank and John! Where's that bird thinking of the beer John and Hank?

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the views, advice, and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I woke up this morning, absolutely covered in copies of a beautifully foolish endeavor and I think that I only have my shelf to blame. That's my last one. That's my last book related on it.

It's all I got. I only laugh because I'm looking for any pinpricks of light amid the darkness. I think it's funny because the implication is that I have a shelf that just has copies of my own book that I keep directly above my head while I sleep. Well, our finished copy of a beautifully foolish endeavor arrived over the weekend and for those of you who don't know, Hank's second novel of beautifully foolish endeavor comes out as this podcast is being uploaded tomorrow, July 7th, Tuesday, July 7th.

We have live events virtual going on. You can find out more at hankleinserturlhere. Hankgreen.com. Great job.

Oh, wow, I wish I had Johngreen.com, but it's that realtor in Southern Mississippi. This is what mama dad did to you. They gave you a normal name so you couldn't get your domain. I know.

And then I did it to both of my children. That's fine. For Henry, I've reserved Henry Green.TV info and for Alice, I've reserved Alice Green.Russia. John, actually, actually, there's a dot green domain name now.

So you can probably just get like Henry Doc Green and Alice Doc Green and probably not John Doc Green. That's probably taken. Yeah, I want to go. It's not it's available, John.

Don't get it. No, I want to I want to dot com. I like John green books dot com. It's great.

It expresses what turns out to have been about one quarter of my career. Anyway, our copy of a beautifully foolish endeavor arrived over the weekend and I reread it. And it's just such a great book. Congratulations.

I really I really think it is that rare sequel that is better than the original. It's just I mean, especially right now, it has helped me understand and think more complexly about the internet and its role in the social order and also its role in my life. And yeah, it's just a really great it's also, of course, a rollicking adventure. But the the parable side of it has had me thinking very, very hard of late.

Well, thank you. And I'm feeling, you know, as good as as good as I think I could, you know, right now, a week before publication. And I'm just like the first reviews are in and they're very positive and that feels very good. A lot of people who I trust have said really smart things that that feel like they sort of got what I was trying to do.

Something really good about it. And I can't wait for people to read it, honestly. So come see our live shows at Hank Green dot com. Yes.

They won't actually be there, but that's how you find out where they are. That's how you find out about them. Yes. All right.

Let's answer some questions from our listeners beginning with this one from Marina who writes here John and Hank, how can I learn how to dance? I'm okay, like circle dancing or line dancing, but I can't seem to get the whole put my hands in the air. Like I just don't care kind of dancing arena. Now Hank, this is relevant to me as well because one of the stranger things to me about our siblinghood is that although we were raised in the same home by the same parents, you were named the best dancer at all of Winter Park High School in 1998.

And I have never had a good moment of dancing in my entire life. Like I tried to do a TikTok dance. What are they called challenge? Yeah, I thought it would be funny.

Well, I didn't actually upload the TikTok. You know, I'm sticking with one TikTok, but I tried to do a TikTok dance challenge just to be like, okay, like this is just a series of repeated body motions. And I know how to make all of them. So I should be able to do this TikTok dance challenge in a way that looks as cool as this person who I'm watching on TikTok.

And then I did a video of myself doing the dance and I watched the video and I was like, no, that's terrible. Delete that immediately. Like I did all the right motions. Put it in the fire.

But I was terrible. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a couple of reasons why it might might have not looked great. I, you know, I think that there's a point here that is interesting to me that we, you know, theoretically share a lot of genetic information and we were raised in the same house.

But I have to ask how much MTV is the grind did you watch? Not a lot. And we did have very different lives to be fair. And maybe that's part of it.

But I hear the music and the music flows through it. It's just that like what comes out bodily is all wrong. Like in college, I dated a dance major for a while. And it was fascinating to learn from them how like dance worked in their lives and how like dance became like a bodily expression of our, not dissimilar to any other artistic expression.

Whereas like to me dancing is just, it's the height of self consciousness. Like I'm never more aware of the fact that I have a body than I am when I'm dancing. Yeah. And as I've gotten older in my body, doesn't always move at the speed that I expect it to I get I'm having that sensation more as well.

And also I will watch what happens in TikTok dances. And I will think to myself, well, I should be able to do that. And then I find that I am incapable of it, which makes me think that actually I learned a lot more than I think I did that I, you know, in the process of watching people dance on my television upstairs in Florida and like dancing along with them, I learned a lot about how to move my body. Can I tell you what the TikTok dance was?

Which one was it? Was it Carse the Goboom? It wasn't Carse the Goboom. Although it is lovely to me that one of the songs of our childhood, Carse the Goboom has become a TikTok phenomenon.

Yeah. No, it was the Hooky Pokey. You know where you do the Hooky Pokey and you turn yourself around and that's what it's all about. You put your left foot in, your right foot out, whatever.

I've heard it. I've heard it. Yeah. So it really should have been doable.

Right. Like I was like trying to accomplish, you know, some kind of balletic feet. What was going through your mind when you set your camera up to record yourself doing the Hooky Poke? Did you think you were potentially making content?

No, no, no, no, no, no. Of course not. No, I was never going to upload it to TikTok. I was just interested in like, could I do the dance?

And I don't know if I can do the dance until I look at the video and then I know and the answer was, uh oh. You know, I think that like different people do start at different levels. I think this is definitely the case with dancing, but in general, on the internet especially, but also all over our lives, we will watch people who look like they are doing things extremely effortlessly that they actually put a lot of time into. And maybe that was fun time.

Maybe like that was dancing and not training, like not like feeling and seeming like work to them, but a lot of time did go into that. And that's true of whether it's, you know, poetry or dance or art or novels or any of that stuff, like video blogs. And I think that in some cases, we actually intentionally tried to make it seem like very little work went into something when actually a lot of time did. Right.

That's a very particular aesthetic. And not just on the internet, it also predates the internet of putting a lot of effort into something that looks dashed off or looks effortless. Like I remember as a kid thinking like that was in a way the definition of cool. Yeah.

You know, it was people who were able to do something where it looked like they weren't trying hard, but it was very good. But of course, the only way to do something very good is to previously tried very, very hard. Yeah. Yeah.

In the quiet darkness of your bedroom in Orlando, Florida, right? Which is why I was trying to learn the hokey pokey. But now I've given up. Okay.

Well, that's you're good at lots of things, though, which is nice. This next question comes from Hannah who asks, Dear Hank and John, why do shirts have tags? Maybe in the olden days they had to put a physical tag inside shirt, but now can't this be done in other ways? The tags are itchy.

I just cut them off and end up with holes in my shirts. Is it possible that shirt tags are even more useless and outdated than the penny? Please help. Only if you got enough life jackets, Hannah.

That's a real that's a throwback reference. I barely get that reference. It's so old. John, as you know, I am in the merchandise business.

And so I know more than you'd like to know about t-shirt tags. I mean, okay, so first off, we are in the merchandise business. Okay. All right.

So tags are tags were have been a thing for a while. Really interesting thing once happened where so yes, tags have to be there legally. They are required for a couple of reasons. Well, the information contained in tags have to be there legally.

Correct. Correct. You have to like say, country of origin and you have to say it is legally required that you tell people how to wash the thing. And that was originally done by putting on what the materials in the shirt were.

And so it'd be like, this is cotton. I know how to wash cotton. This is wool. I know how to wash wool.

Now shirts and textiles have become very, very complicated now. And so there are lots of different things that you've never heard the name of. So eventually we transition to just like care instructions, but those care instructions also do have to be on the tag. And sometimes it's just icons and sometimes they're written out in words.

Now, there are a couple ways to get around the tag. One is to print the information on the shirt. This is more expensive to do. A second print location can in some cases, you know, almost double the price of a shirt.

So that's why it's not done. It's more expensive than to have one thing that's been pre-printed a bunch and then just sew it in. So one way to get around this was that Hames did this where they said we're going to print the information on the shirt. And then they did this huge ad campaign that basically said that we are, because it's 100% cotton, we don't have to have a tag.

But that wasn't true. They just sort of like made that sound like that to make it sound like there was like a purity to their shirts that made them so pure they didn't have to have a tag. But really they just did a second print location. Their sales went up by like 30%.

And it was like a Michael Jordan ad. It was a really successful thing. The other is to have tear out tags, which we have on a lot of DFTBA shirts. So the tags are there and then they're removable.

Let me ask you a question, Hank. Yes. Would it be legal to have a shirt with no tag and no secondary print location, but where the primary print location is just the instructions? Yes, that would be it.

Yep. So we could make a shirt. You could do that. You could make a shirt that just said in big letters on the front made in the United States, 100% cotton, machine wash warm.

Yep. You could do that. You'd have to find someone to sell you a shirt without a tag though, which also might not be allowed. So you'd have to go like you'd have to basically have a cut and so operational.

I'm very fond of the idea of a deer hank and John T-shirt that says deer hank and John made of the United States 100% cotton machine wash warm. That's all. Sizing is also important. So you have to think about it.

No, I do not want to have the size on the primary print location. I'm not interested at all. Moving on. Next question.

I thought I had a million idea, but it turns out that I really don't know. It's terrible and we should not do it. Next question isabella writes, deer John and Hank. I understand you might not be able to tell the truth about this on the pod.

But have either of you ever written and published a book under a pen name so as not to ride on your own success? Oh, isabella. It is so kind to you to think that the main reason one of us would write under a pen name would be to not ride on our own success as if Hank or I has anything approaching that level of goodness and generosity in our hearts. If yes, can you recommend the book?

No, I know. So obviously, and I don't want to speak for you Hank, but if I wrote a book under a pen name, I wouldn't reveal it because the whole point of writing under the pen name would be to be able to write as someone other than myself, not so that I couldn't take advantage of past success, but so that I could in a way be free from whatever expectations people bring to my name. I'm not going to ruin that on an episode of the podcast, but also as it happens, I've never done it because each time I'm writing a novel, I think like, oh, I'll publish this one anonymously. And then I get to the end of the first draft and I'm like, nah, I think I want to use my name.

Yeah, I want to reach people and have my audience know about this, like make them happy and provide them with more stuff. Yeah, is that usually the case? I'd never really question this, but I guess there was this idea in my head that this might be a reason to use a pen name is to get out from under the idea that my success is based on previous success. But if you did that, I think what you learn is that your success is based on previous success.

Yeah, exactly. I've made some TikToks that are like, I want to basically pretend like I'm not Hank Green and up with a thing that doesn't have my face and doesn't have my voice in it, but it's funny. And those don't do as well. Yeah, well, so there are actually a bunch of authors who've had that experience, right?

Like JK Rowling wrote as Robert Galbraith and got medium to good reviews and sold almost no copies, which is the story for 90% of fiction. I have friends who publish under other names that aren't connected to their name and they have similar experiences. I also have friends who publish under different names that aren't connected to their sort of public facing names, I guess. Yeah.

And they tend to have similar experiences. And I think if I published a book under a different name with attempting to obscure the fact that it was written by me, it would do poorly. Comparatively poorly. Yeah.

I've never created anything. I don't think that wasn't using my name. And I wanted to once and then I gave up immediately. I do have a moderately successful private Reddit account that is devoted to talking about soccer.

And I will never reveal its identity because it would take all of the joy out of those inane soccer conversations for me. That's great. I'm glad I have nothing like that. Instead of that, I just have actual, like just my normal life where none of my friends care about my job.

Yeah, that's good. I mean, none of my friends care about my job either. In fact, I think most of my friends kind of think that I don't really have a job anymore because my job is like that I used to publish those books, right? This next question comes from Mallory who asks Dear Hank and John, okay, so you know how some people use air quotes when talking to each other?

Well, I was thinking, who even came up with that and how would it get passed on? I'm just imagining the first of a person to use air quotes doing it and then the person they're talking to being like, wait, what the hell was that? I need my curiosity satiated Mallory. That is such a there was a first person who was like this thing.

And someone was like, whoa, all right, bunny man? Well, no, because I think the original use of air quotes was not in quite such a sarcastic context. Okay. I kind of even slightly remember this from the late 1990s.

And I might be wrong, but this is my personal memory of like my college years is that people would use air quotes like to actually quote people, but not in a pejorative way. Right. You know, it would be like, and then he was like, I love you too. And you would use air quotes over, I love you too.

But it didn't have the same meaning. And then I think like over time, that's my theory is that over time it became the meaning that it has now starting out in an un-sarcastic, unironic way. Right. Just an evolution.

Like you have to have some first step on the process and you have many steps until you finally get to where we're at with air quotes now. That's interesting. And it would explain how it would get sort of passed from person to person. But I also like, it's fairly self-explanatory.

And I do look a little bit like I got two little bunnies and they're like, happened along. Well, I think people get the idea that it's a quote, if you will. But I don't know that they get the if you will part of it just from the image of air quotes. I think that it's also in the intonation.

And that's really that's actually weird. You actually hear what I'm doing air quotes, even when I'm not doing air quotes. Yeah. So that's often the case on the Anthropocene reviewed because I write them out in advance.

But the only version of them that exists is audio. And I find myself like in the studio doing the air quotes. Right. And you can totally hear it.

It's funny the things that you can hear. I think the human voice that more and more I think this that our primary method of communication is voice, like, you know, traditionally in the this is what we've like dedicated a huge amount of our cognitive resources to like being able to make these noises and interpret them is really complicated and wild. And I'm starting to think that like the voice is the thing and that a society that like divorces voice from meaning as we do often on the social internet is a society that has lost a lot of context and you know is as much easier time sort of assuming negative intent. And I like voice.

Yeah. Okay. But counter argument, voice doesn't have to be audible, right? Because like voice also exists in American Sign Language.

And I would argue that voice exists inside of Internet Speak2. Like there's a difference between LOL and LOL. There's a difference between this sucks and this sucks. Like I feel like on the internet, we're in the process of developing strategies for inserting voice into text.

But it's a process. And not everybody's on the same page. For sure, right? It's going to take a while for that to happen.

And also like, it's been something else like being an internet native as a lot of people are new to the thing. And I'm like, I don't understand how you're using this tool, because I've been doing it for a long time. And there's a lot of cultural understanding I have around this that you do not. And so like we are using it in very different ways and imagining it in very different ways.

Yeah, all the time, all of us need to try to be a little more aware of the limited context we bring to conversations. And the ways that our limited context can shape and distort those conversations. Yeah. All right, let's move on to this question from Laura who writes, Dear John and Hank, sometimes at my job as a care worker, I have to do night shifts.

And one of the duties is to answer the phone. And my question is, what do I say when I answer the phone at two o'clock in the morning? It is no longer good evening, but is it good morning yet really? It's not technically morning.

And I can't say good night, Laura speaking, or it sounds as if I'm going to tell them a bedtime story. I guess I could just say hello, but that doesn't seem very professional. Language and landlines Laura, just in case you think that like language is finished, Hank. It's not.

We don't have words for picking up the phone at 2am. That's not a thing. I remember when I was... You certainly can't say good night, which is interesting.

Like good evening is a greeting. Good night is always an end. That's how you say goodbye. Yeah.

Good night is never how you say hello. It is weird that good evening means hello and good night means goodbye. Like I never thought that until just now. But you can't say good evening at 2am in the morning because it ain't.

I remember when I worked at Graveyard Shift at Steak and Shake, there was a regular who would come in at like 2.30am or 3am in the morning, every single night or day, depending on your worldview, I guess. And he would walk in and he would say, good morning. Ow, I just hit something. And he would say good morning.

And I would always be like, no, it's not. Not on either level. I mean, it's morning. Oh, if you've slept, you know?

He hadn't. Yeah, I guess it is. Laura, I think that you're safe saying good morning at 2am in the morning because it is technically 2am in the morning. And also the people that you're likely talking to since they're calling you are presumably awake on some level.

So I think you can say good morning. Yeah. I also think that you can go to a more traditional approach and be like, you know, blank residents, this person speaking or if it's a facility, like the name of the facility. So there are like actual professional ways to do it.

But I'm not sure who you're answering the phone for. Because when I do the phone at 2am in the morning, what I say is what's wrong? No, but if it's like a patient, you don't want to like announce the name of the facility where they know that they are staying before saying this is Laura. I'm like, you could also, right.

You could also just say this is Laura. Yeah. I've always thought that that's a pretty succinct way to get to because the whole job of saying hello, right, is to get to the point. Right.

It's like the whole job of saying hello is to establish that the connection has been made. Like that's the reason where hello was literally invented. It was literally invented for the telephone as a way of saying like, yeah, go ahead. Do I ever say hello, not on the phone?

I usually say howdy or how are you or good afternoon or something like that. You have a very particular way of saying hello on the phone too. I don't know if you know that. But do I tell me more?

It's slightly resigned in world where you say hello. Like usually when you call somebody on the phone. Hello. This is age.

Totally. Usually when you call someone on the phone, they say hello as a question mark. Like because they don't know what's on the other end of the line. But you act as if you do know.

As if you know exactly what's about to happen and you say hello. Well, it is. It is. Every time you call me, I know it's you.

So maybe that's just the hell that you get. And to be fair, I don't generally call with good news. Yeah. Like usually when we call each other, it's because there's a problem.

If it's good news. Yeah, if it's good news, we text. Mm-hmm. Happy birthday.

If it's good news, I'll just make you a video. That's true. Hello. John, I have another question from JJ who asks Dear Hank and John.

Hello. I'm a high school senior who just finished my first internship. Hello. That's right there.

That's actually on the question. It was fine. I enjoyed the internship. But my primary takeaway was that I don't like meetings.

Should I be concerned about this? How can I become a functioning adult if I don't like meetings? They seem very important to adult life. The first Google result of my name is a Swedish band, JJ.

JJ, you've got to get yourself into a position of power. It's going to take a bunch of meetings. But once you're there, then you can get rid of the meetings. Yeah.

And then what you'll find, JJ, is that you slowly have to reintroduce the meetings one by one, because it turned out that they were all there for a reason. So, JJ, if this internship occurred during lockdown, I do have a small piece of good news, which is that in-person meetings are slightly, very slightly less unbearable than Zoom meetings. Yes. I also think it's very important that you try and schedule meetings for the appropriate amount of time.

And I know that you're not a person who's in charge of this. But for the people who are, if you are JJ's superior and you are planning these meetings, do not just let them go on for the amount of time that they take, because it's a weird thing about meetings. They will take exactly as long as you plan them to take. If you say it's going to be 50 minutes, it's going to take 50 minutes.

If you say it's going to be 15, it's going to take 15. As you know, as you don't hang, I am a huge believer in not only in ending meetings early, but in celebrating the success that is inherent to ending a meeting early. So, when we end a meeting early at Complexly Indianapolis, I try to thank each and every person for making this special moment possible. That's one thing.

The other thing is that it is possible to live in a world without meetings, even if you work in an office setting. It isn't possible for us in our work. It isn't possible for lots of other kinds of work. But when I worked at Bookless Magazine as a production editor and as an assistant, there were a lot of meetings in the sense that I would go and I would talk to people I worked with and I would have questions for them and I would get those questions answered.

And sometimes we would gather in small groups and have those conversations. But because they were not scheduled or formalized, they lasted much less time and they were far more efficient. And there was only one meeting a year. Admittedly, I look back on the time of my life with the level of nostalgia that is inappropriate to how happy I actually was in those years.

But I will say this, while the years of my early adulthood were probably the worst of my life so far, the lack of meetings was the great saving grace of it all. I would go weeks, months sometimes, without even thinking about a meeting. This is not a familiar idea to me. Though I guess I did also have jobs where I had very, very few meetings.

I've forgotten what that life is like. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by meetings. Meetings, everyone hates them, but they still happen. This podcast is also brought to you by air quotes.

Air quotes, it's when you want to say something. This podcast is also brought to you by Hanks, pseudonymously written novel. Hanks, pseudonymously written novel. A adverbally adjective noun.

The wild thing about this is that the question asked or thought that either of us would have had time to do anything they don't know about. This podcast is also brought to you by the shirt tags. Shirt tags. They have vitally important information that is legally required to be on a shirt somewhere.

We also have a product for awesome message. It's from Dragish to Iwana. Hello Iwana, Pingu here. Shout out for being an awesome person, but I decided to take drastic measures to get your attention.

Panda feels like he's being ignored. Narwhi thinks you should be training more. You never know when the apocalypse comes. Let's avoid having a switch Azora for Korgi and Narwhi to Leo mission anytime soon.

You and Dragish would never notice. I have no idea what just happened, but I said all the words. I understand none of that. I think I know what a Korgi is.

Yeah, and yeah. I think that we were meant to not understand. Yes, I believe that was a code that begins World War III, and I for one am ready to be remembered by history. This episode of Dear Hank and John's Bronteau 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. And that is what Shompify makes easier. When you start with Shompify, 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 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. Shompify 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. This episode of Dear Hank, Adjourn is brought to you by Factor. Imagine, for a moment, that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly, but you love it anyway.

And you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and 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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See website for more details. Podcasts that launched it all off. This next question comes from Sherry who writes Dear John and Hank, I've been watching Vlogbrothers for a while and I've noticed that you two use the same account to both post and watch slash comment on other videos. But why?

Like I don't imagine your YouTube recommendations are very representative of what you actually want to watch and it just seems pretty inconvenient. Well, actually, yeah, our YouTube recommendations on the Vlogbrothers channel are totally representative of what we want to watch because the only two people who watch videos on the Vlogbrothers channel are me and Hank. And what I have experienced anyway is that Hank introduces me to a lot of new sides of YouTube that I turn out to enjoy. Yeah.

And John introduces me to people playing Tetris and yelling about soccer. Yeah. Yeah. Not that there's definitely more to it.

Like, yeah, I mean, I find all kinds of stuff because John has been watching it and like I just went to our YouTube channel and there's like speedruns of video games which John is super into, but like I also like watching them but wouldn't see them if not for if not for having John. Yeah. And we introduce each other to like new history channels and different educational channels as well. So in some ways, it's almost a way that we can communicate without communicating.

Yeah. It's a way that we can share each other's interests without having to like formalize a strategy for it, which I really love. Now, you have to get the right person to share your YouTube account with it. Don't get me wrong.

Like it's got to be a lifelong deep relationship. But yeah, I think it's great. I would suggest it. I think that my YouTube page is better than it would be without you.

I definitely feel the same way. And I also think that if you weren't there to like, there's a certain amount of like stuff I might watch that I don't because I know that you'll know. Yeah, you don't hate like too much hate. So and then it like shows up in John texted me and it's like, what did you watch?

Yeah. Well, what did you watch? Why are these things being suggested? Yeah.

It only takes like one 45 minute conspiracy theory video to really reshape the YouTube algorithm suggestions to us. And so I do a text take and I'm like, please stop watching these videos that do nothing but make you angry because the algorithm doesn't care if you're angry or happy or well informed. It only cares that you're there. Yeah.

And it wants to drag you in too. The algorithm's goal is to get you to pay a lot of attention to the platform. And however, it can draw you deeply in down the rabbit hole, it's going to take you there. And I for one think speed runs and high level competitive nestetris are the very best that YouTube has to offer.

John, this next question comes from Kate who asks, dear Hank and John, for the past few weeks, I've been having a weird dream in which my family moves and I go to a new school, which is normal until I talk to a girl and then she turns into a lobster while I'm talking to her and then she chases me around with her lobster hands. Yeah. What does it mean with Kate expectations? Kate, we haven't had enough good make specific sign off lately.

That was great. Thank you. But it doesn't mean anything. Well, but it's recurring.

Right. First of all, lobsters don't have hands. They have claws. Well, we don't know what lobster people have, Hank.

Okay. So let's not tell Kate that her dream is anatomically incorrect. She's already going through a difficult enough time. But I have like not exactly that recurring dream, but like similar recurring dreams.

And what I enjoy about it is that if you have the dream enough, it almost becomes like Groundhog Day, where right before the person at the new school turns into the lobster person, you can think to yourself, she's about to become a lobster person. And that's when he starts to really have control over the dream because I have some like pretty scary recurring nightmares. But if I on the occasions when I'm able to be aware of it enough to be like, oh, I bet the I bet the weird horrible thing is about to happen. And then it happens and I'm like, new and there's a little level of control in that for me.

So what does it mean? It means that you're anxious about life and your brain is throwing anxiety producing scenarios at you to try and maybe in your YouTube future or prepare you to future stressors? Probably is what we think. One of the reasons why we have these stressful dreams.

What does it mean that the source of the stress is a lobster girl? Nothing. It's just your brain trying to come up with something that sounds stressful. It's like, what?

What do you got? Like the stress bang lobsters? All right, that's good. But like, also something else meeting someone for the first time.

Great. Great. We're going to put those two things together. Exactly.

I think all of us are maybe trying to process a little more anxiety than usual. And so it's going to be lobster people for a while. That's my summary of 2020. I think before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I just want to say a personal thank you to the several of you who wrote in to say congratulations to Liverpool on winning the Premier League.

Many of you are also Liverpool fans and it meant as much to some of y'all as it meant to me. People in Liverpool are often called scouse. In fact, there's a famous sign held up in the stands at Anfield that says we're not English, we're scouse. And one of the people in Jen wrote in and said to be scouse is to persist, to be resilient, to keep waiting and hoping until one day.

And that day for Liverpool fans has arrived and while obviously sports are not important, for me Liverpool winning the Premier League is a reminder that as they say in the Liverpool song, you'll never walk alone, though your dreams be tossed and blown, walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone. So thanks to everybody who wrote in about that. And I'm really, really happy that Liverpool won the Premier League after 30 years. It's pretty, pretty great development amid dark times.

The news for me, AFC Wimbledon this week, is also encouraging. One of our better players last season is a young man named Shane McLaughlin. And there was some uncertainty about his contract because the club is under a lot of financial stress. Obviously, it's, you know, a lot of players have had to be released, but we have just signed Shane McLaughlin up for another season of hard hard work in AFC Wimbledon's midfield.

So that's encouraging. Shane McLaughlin is the kind of player who can keep us in League 1 for another season. So I'm excited. Well, I'm glad.

And I guess that's, I guess we're headed into that part of the news cycle. We're going to hear about whether or not you're keeping your players and what new players you're getting. Next week, I'll share the names of the 43 players we had to release. Well, the news for Mars is, does also make the anxious noise.

Oh no. The experience launch has been pushed back again. Oh no. Still a big window.

Still a big window. So on June 24th, NASA announced that there was a contamination issue in the ground support lines. And I don't know what this means. My, so I know what ground support is ground support is the people who help out with getting things that go up to go up, but they themselves do not go up.

Right. I know. Yeah. But what is a contamination in the lines?

I don't even know what a ground support line is, but what I'm imagining is possums. So right. You know, like something like that, or maybe there was water where there shouldn't have been water or there was carbon dioxide where there shouldn't, I don't know, but it might have been possums. So there's contamination in the ground support lines.

And that came that happened as the rover was being encapsulated in the Atlas V rocket. The launch was originally scheduled for July 17th got pushed back to July 20th. Now it is pushed back to July 22nd. So they have to clean up that whatever that is in the ground support line.

I'm just guessing possums. And then the rocket itself seems to be all good. The company building the rocket, you know, the launch line is pulled off a wet dress rehearsal, which includes fueling the rocket. So that all went well, the launch window is through August 11th.

But I mean, July 22nd to August 11th is not a huge period. And if they missed that, it's a 19 month wait, right? It might be possible to extend through August 15th. So basically what's happening is at that we're getting farther and farther away from Mars.

So you have to use more fuel. And then you have less fuel left over for contingency. And then so then the decision making point means like, do we want to dip into our contingency fuel or do we want to wait two years for another launch? So yeah, it was August 15th.

Honestly, probably we would still launch if that was there. But yes, July 22nd is the current launch date. And everybody crossed your fingers for that. Oh, definitely keep my fingers crossed.

I'm starting to get nervous already. And that's unfortunate because I already had, as it happens, a full complement of anxieties. You know, it's like when you're when you're playing Uno, and you already have the largest hand and someone gives you that wild draw for like really, sorry. It's okay.

By the news is the news. The news is the news. Thanks for potting up. All right, John.

The podcast is edited by Joseph tuna medics produced by Rosie on a house row, awesome shared in Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. The music you're hearing now and beginning of the podcast is by the great gonna roll up. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.