261: Not Pastable

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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. Welcome to Dear Hank and John! Where's that prefer to think of it here John and Hank?

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your question. Give you the best advice and bring all the weeks news from both Mars and A.S.E. Wimbledon. John, do you know how the Romans would cut their pizzas?

Wow, with little scissors. I'm... Howdy pizza, Miss John! I'm very vulnerable right now to bad jokes.

I'm taking my laughs where I can get them. It's been a little bit of a challenging week here at the greenhouse hold and that is also a top-notch joke. Yeah, so I'm glad to have some pizza jokes for you. It is indeed pizza-ness in our community, which means that it's a two-week period where Hank and I make videos back and forth to each other on our YouTube channel Vlogbrothers every day just like it was 2007 again.

And we raise money for charity by selling a variety of different items featuring my face with a mustache. In fact, as I'm making this podcast, I don't know if you can hear it, but I still have my annual pizza-ness mustache. I don't know if it's affecting my intonation at all. It's there.

I remember the conversation with you when you were like, oh God, pizza-ness is coming up. I have to decide if I'm going to do the mustache. Yeah. And then I seem to have put in my mind that you weren't going to do it and that's why you didn't have weren't growing out of beard, which you have to do in order to get the mustache.

But then suddenly it was there. It just arrived. Yeah. Well, at this point, I don't want to brag, but I've reached in a level of maturity where I know how many weeks of beard I need to have a really horrifying mustache.

Yeah. So you go too long. The mustache actually looks pretty good. And if you don't go long enough, the mustache doesn't look like much at all.

Right. But if you're going to get to that worst possible mustache mustache, I'm relying on for pizza-ness. Right. I know exactly how many days of beard I need.

And I don't want to brag, but I think I crushed it this year. You can go to youtube.com slash blog brothers to see for yourself. But I think I hit it out of the park. Yeah.

What I've never seen, John, and what I want to see is you with the full year mustache, with the kind of mustache where the mustache has on the top, have to sit on the mustache on the bottom. So there's an inch of it's just going out before it gets to the end of the mustache. That's what I want to see on your face. And I don't think that's ever going to happen.

No. Because you don't get one of those mustaches with a lot of commitment. Yeah. Well, also it would be really bad for my marriage.

And also eating food. Be hard bad for that. And potentially for my relationship with my children, last night I was reading Alice a book. And I said, on a scale of one to 10, Alice, what do you think of the mustache?

And she said, I guess a three. And then she paused and said, well, really a two. But I don't want to hurt your feelings. Yeah.

Well, John, I'm excited for for a pizza miss. And we are in the midst of it now. And this is the last episode of your hand. John, that will remind you that you can go get stuff at pizza miss calm, but which is our new pizza miss website.

And if you if you wait until next Monday, when the next episode comes out, pizza miss calm will be closed. It'll be over. It's just a two week experience. And that ends.

And you can never ever get any of the amazing 2020 pizza miss stuff ever again in your entire life, including the ridiculous and terrifying pizza miss 2020 mask. All right, John, here is a question from Molly who asked Dear Hank and John, why does fire have such a specific shape? When you make a fire, it almost looks like a leaf or as if it's climbing. Why is it like that?

I'm staring at a fire right now. I can't stop thinking about it. Please help. Like the country, Molly.

What? Like what is our country called? Molly? Yeah, the one in West Africa.

It's spelled differently. Oh, I see. Yes, there is. Yeah, John, looking at a fire is one of my favorite things.

And it is remarkable for how long you can do it. Yeah. So one of my all time favorite books, Parable the Sower by Octavia Butler, has in it a drug that causes you to want to do nothing other than to stare into the flames of fire, which does seem really just realistic to me because every time I stare into a fire, I think I do not get tired of doing this ever, which is weird, because I get tired of every other form of staring in the natural world. And secondly, I think this is like the oldest form of human entertainment.

Just looking into the fire. Yeah, we've been doing this for so long that like, I think it's deep, I think it's deep down that I like looking at flames. It does make me wonder if I did every day when I eventually be like, another fire. But I don't know, maybe not.

It's really cool. It's always different. It looks very interesting. Yeah, it's always changing.

But why does it appear to sort of lick up into the sky or to have that sort of leaf structure? Is there a chemical reason? It's a physical reason. So it's basically a reverse teardrop.

So like the fire is going up. And as it goes up, the convection currents like sort of push the heat into a narrower and narrower band. And of course, this is because fire is made of gas, not liquid, it's much less uniform than if it were than like a teardrop is or a raindrop in that very specific raindrop shape. But it's basically that, but like much more dynamic because it's a gas and convection currents are very stochastic, very random.

So which is why fire never looks the same ever. You look at it once, you'll never see it look that way again, which is great. But there's lots of air moving around and there's the certain air that is very hot once to get up. So you're seeing the air currents that are created by the heat of fire.

That's really cool. Now it's going to be even more fun for me to look into a fire. All right, this next question comes from Elise who writes, Dear John and Hank, obviously none of us are going out to Halloween parties this year. Right everybody?

Right everybody. It's more terrible. But I work at a library which will be open on that spookiest of all it is and it's typical for staff working to dress up. I need to be wearing a mask while in my costume, obviously, but I feel like just a rubber party city mask is probably not going to do the job.

Now dressing up as a doctor or a nurse could be in poor taste or maybe not, I don't really know, it's just sort of bleak though. What's a fun creative costume I can incorporate a mask into so that I'm not just a cartoon character who happens to also be wearing a mask. I'm kind of low on ideas and I need something fun when you rent an apartment, you sign, Elise. Nice.

Well, so first of all, I think that it's fine to be like, I'm going to be Ted Theodore Logan of Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, but during the pandemic and so Ted is wearing a mask. Like Ted would wear a mask. Yeah. Because Ted wants people to be awesome to each other.

So I'm dressed up as the dude in Big Libouski and just as the dude would in 2020, I'm wearing a mask. So I think that that's fine. I think that there will be lots of Halloween costumes that incorporate masks intentionally and lots that are just like, look, I am Bart Simpson butt-masked. Yeah, or you could go with another hyper contemporary costume, Elise, like Tiffany who's saying I think we're alone now.

But that's a joke. That's a joke just for Hank. Nobody who listens to this podcast remembers that song except for Hank. I love that song.

It was like, that was the first vinyl record I bought with my own money was Tiffany's album. I desperately wish I still had it. Like, how come I held on to all this stuff from childhood, but not Tiffany's classic? I think we're alone now.

Oh, God. Who else? I mean, so there are some like, plenty of heroes who wear masks. You could have all the people from the Watchmen television show War Masks.

There's that going on. And also you can wear things that have masks but then wear masks under the mask and then no one will see the mask because you'll be like, you know, Richard Nixon or whatever, like those terrible rubbery masks that people put on over their heads. That reminds me that a friend of mine has a kid who told them I want to dress up like one of those bird people. And the friend was like, what do you mean?

Like where you have a big crowhead. And the friend was like, you want to dress up like a plague doctor? And the kid was like, is that what they're called? Yeah, plague doctor works.

Yowsers. Yeah. So go. You know what?

That's it. We did it at least. Go as a plague doctor. It's not appropriate for nine year olds, but you're going to crush it out there as a plague doctor.

Oh, I think there'll be a lot of plague doctors this year, John. I mean, as long as they're celebrating in a safe and socially distanced way, Lord, great. The other thing I'll say, at least, is that I've just gone to a website where there are a bunch of masks that you can buy that are super weird and infestive and could incorporate easily into Halloween costumes. There's sequined masks and there's studded masks.

There's Burberry masks and Jack Skellington masks. And so you can you can build your costume around your mask. That's great. Or just wear a mask and be like, that's my costume.

I didn't want to work hard. All right, Johnny, here's another question. This one's from Caroline who asks, do you hear Hank and John? Why do dumpsters all smell the same, even though they all have different stuff in them?

Some dumpsters can smell worse than others, but all generally smell the same to me. Is there some explanation? Thumpkins and fatless Caroline? I never knew that until it was pointed out to me, but it's so true.

There is a dumpster smell. Garbage can to like the largest dumpster I've ever been near. They all have the same smell. They have a there is a smell that is dumpster, which is interesting.

Yeah, I would not say that all dumpsters smell the same having been a person who spent a fair amount of time around them. I thank you to rescue electronics and textbooks and repurpose them and sell them on eBay. It was part of the business that we here at Dear Hank and John know best for the part of the business where he stole all of my baseball cards and sold them on eBay. So I did not find those on a dumpster.

But yeah, like you found them inside of the package laminated because they were all in mint condition, including the higher starting lineup of the 1986 Chicago. What really got me started on my business career and I appreciate it. That's the kind of well that's the kind of assistance that big brothers do and that little brothers appreciate for their whole lives. So thank you.

You're welcome. There. See you. Welcome.

All right. So there are so there are certainly dumpsters that don't smell bad at all like office building dumpsters don't tend to have much of a smell and then like a sushi places dumpsters and it's no terrible. And I actually found a Reddit thread from a garbage person who talks about all the different smells of different kinds of dumpsters and that you know restaurant dumpsters tend to have stronger smells than you know your average dumpster. But I think there is something to the dumpster smell and here's what I think the dumpster smell is I think the dumpster smell is a lot of food that's a little bit old.

So like that smell and add on to that a little bit of food that's very old. Which is just the stuff that's like stuck to the bottom. It's the cake the stuff that's caked. Yeah, it doesn't come out.

Yeah. Right. When I guess dumped. So I think it's mostly that smell actually because for reasons we don't need to get into the exact details of I once had a about a third of a Big Mac underneath my bed for about nine months.

And it smelled similarly. It smelled like a dumpster but in a smaller package. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Speaking of which if at all possible someone could have a talk with the worms that crawl into my office to die that would be great because they don't smell good. Yeah, I have that same issue actually in my basement. It's like the worms think to themselves well it's time to go.

And I know how I want to do it. I want to do it in a way that slightly inconveniences John. Yeah. Like every once in a while I come to my office and I'm like it kind of smells in here.

I wonder like I guess I'm just a funky dude and then I clean because you know it smells all clean. And then I'm like no it was all the goddamn worms in the corners. I look forward to all the emails that we're going to get about how the fact that we have worms in our basements are symptomatic of some horrible disaster. Anyway, this next question comes from Kavita who writes here John and Hank I'm a sophomore in college and I've been 18 for less than a year.

First off Kavita, no bragging. Are you bragging to think it's just being young bragging to you now? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't brag about being 18. Okay.

Don't come to me with your age. Yeah. You've already heard my feelings Kavita. We're not even full sentence in your question.

Not since my daughter said that my mustache was a two. Have I felt so called out I've been 18 for less than a year and I've been excitedly and not so patiently waiting till the day when I can vote and I very much plan to do so when I get my mail in ballot yet still on every social media platform I use they keep telling me to vote. I understand that it is important to reach the young people and whatnot but it's getting quite annoying. How can I make it known that I am going to vote so that the FBI agent who is watching over me and presumably personalizing my ads for me sends other ads my way a newbie nerd fighter Kavita.

Oh boy. This is so just as an example. I recently bought a Chevy Volt John. I went ahead and did it.

Congratulations. I got a 2015 Chevy Volt. It hasn't arrived yet but it's on its way. It's a good year and yeah no recalls on that one and that's good vintage.

I am still getting ads for Chevy volts and I'm like look like I know these aren't cheap ads because car is a big purchase and so these are expensive advertisements and like like if you are so all knowing internet notice when I buy something and stop because I'm not getting another Chevy Volt. This reminds me of my all-time favorite tweet from April 6th 2018. Some would argue the peak of Twitter written by someone named Jack Rayner. Dear Amazon I bought a toilet seat because I needed one necessity not desire.

I do not collect toilet seats. I'm not a toilet seat addict. No matter how temptingly you email me. I'm not going to think oh go on then.

Just one more toilet seat. I'll treat myself. Yeah like they the ads are so good you know they're so perfect except when it comes to knowing that me buying one toilet seat is actually sure evidence that I'm no longer in the market. Yeah yes.

I'm not going to be in the market hopefully for many years. But Kavita we have no idea. We have no idea if you're going to vote or not just buy your social media profile and that's good. This is good.

We want to live in a world where the government and the social media companies don't know whether or not we're going to vote. Boy do we. But yeah so you are experiencing us trying to reach or us people trying to reach people like you and there are other people like you who are not made up their mind about whether they're going to vote or they don't have a voting plan and so we have to and so they're going to continue to try to reach them. I know it's annoying it will end in less than a month but in the meantime maybe if you can't take the opportunity to try to make sure that people who maybe aren't seeing those ads or aren't affected by them also have an opportunity to vote.

This next question comes from Yvette who writes Dear John and Hank I'm a high school government teacher Yvette thank you. While we're talking about voting high school government teachers are incredibly important to the future of our country or another country if you live in a different country Yvette I don't know why I presume you are America but anyway thank you. Occasionally my students will ask me a question that both makes me marvel at their curiosity and also makes me question everything around me. The other day a student asked me if humans will one day run out of dirt.

I of course had no idea how to answer this question and told them that I would get back to them ASAP soil and soil and Yvette. Oh well I mean in some ways yes and in other ways no it depends on what you define as dirt. Right so here's a situation top soil is renewable like it is a thing that is created by the biosphere and geosphere of earth so it is it is something that you know is constantly being replenished and there is more and more of it however at the same time various agricultural techniques decrease the amount of topsoil that topsoil will run off and right now we are kind of using it in quotation marks it's not like it gets like sucked up into the plants and we eat it or anything it's just like through the process of agriculture there is less and less topsoil when you do certain kinds of agriculture we are using it faster than it is replenishing itself it takes a long it's surprising it's dirt is actually very complicated it takes a long time for dirt especially what we consider to be topsoil to to be created and kind of create itself because it needs like dirt is more it's easier to create dirt when you already have some dirt kind of stuff like that and so this is a concern the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that like we could run out of topsoil in the next 60 years that affects how water works it affects carbon dioxide absorption it of course affects how much food we can make great so sorry to give you another thing to worry about um yeah I didn't have that on my I did not have that on my bingo card but I'll be sure to put it on there but there are a number of ways to have topsoil reduction happen less and I think that you know I think in the next and in the latter half of my life which I'm entering that we will see a lot of new ways to make food that will be a lot more sustainable and might even open up some land that was once agricultural to being natural again I disagree with the notion that you are now entering the second half of your life what because I've entered it a little while ago well because you don't know it seems very presumptuous that's true I it's possible you entered the second half of your life like six or seven years ago it's true john thanks for bringing it up but it's also possible that you're not going to enter the second half of your life for another like 13 years yeah but like it's not possible that I'm going to enter the second half of my life in like 30 years I mean it is possible it's just very unlikely let's be honest my point is only that you don't know where you are in the timeline I don't like we don't know where we are in the timeline of our species oh god you don't know where you are in the timeline of your own life your country your country we don't know yeah we need to oh boy oh boy he went there first I mean you went plenty of places first you know what I was thinking about recently and I don't want to take it to talk of a place but I was thinking recently that the last tweet the last Facebook post and the last email will almost certainly not be sent by a person oh it's probably true huh anyway we got another question this one's from Lydia who writes dear john and hank oh god who had the idea for keys oh I was thinking about keys and how cool they are actually are and how like before them you couldn't lock your dwelling I assumed doors came before keys so how did people protect their homes key and to know the answer Lydia well john they have the when do you think can you give me like a rough like century or even millennia when you think keys happened so I know that like a thousand years ago if you lived in a french village yeah like one way that people would check in on you would just be to like lift up your roof and they just like lift up your roof and they'd be like how's it how's it going and you'd be like oh pretty good you know it's a Jean Paul just another just another full moon here in ninth century france so I'm going to guess that keys were invented but on the other hand like castles maybe had keys I'm going to guess that keys were invented in the year 622 CE 4000 BC oh I was really close I was on the right track yeah the oldest the oldest key lock we know of is from Mesopotamia so modern day Iraq it had it was a pin lock it had the key itself was wooden but the pins were brass and to make the key you would cut you like how to art isn't that would carve the key now it's it's wild to me that like locks happened in concert with civilization with like first food storage the first like concentration like you know see like real like leaps and concentration of power that happened in Mesopotamia and yeah and and before that your lock was just a just an armed guard but but yeah they made a lock wow and it worked and it's it is it is extant like it still exists I've always said extant but I think that either way is probably acceptable which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by keys keys there's one from 6000 years ago that is extant or extant this podcast is also brought to you by fire fire look at me we're only having podcast sponsors today from from the broadest possible this podcast is also brought to you by targeted toilet seat ads targeted toilet seat ads no really once I've bought one I have the one that I need and also this podcast is brought to you by vote vote vote please vote if we can get one email from one person who voted as a result of us asking them to vote oh my god I will be so grateful yes every email we get from somebody who's like yes that's like that will fill my heart so much that's like a day of life that we need right now yeah I could like you will be the thing that makes our day better that day yeah so if you don't have a plan to vote make a plan to vote if only to make Hank happy I'll be so happy make my day we also have a project for awesome message to read it's from Jared from Ohio to Dwayne Christina Jason cat Adam and Aaron all three of my older brothers are getting married this year so I guess they weren't a shout out congratulations bros to each of you and your wonderful brides to be on finding love and companionship may you only grow closer as the years go by through thick and thin may this new chapter of your lives be the best one yet also hi mom and dad wow hi Jared's mom and dad that's wild that is that is wild three brother marriages I hope that's all gone as as expected I'm sure no hitches were and anybody's getting up I hope it's gone as well as as this episode of your Hank and John is 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 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 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Yes, exactly. John, this next question comes from alien who asked deer hank a john. We commonly use water to make pasta presumably because it's widely available. It's not toxic.

But is there another substance we could safely cook spaghetti and stress is on the a and the e is silent alien. Yes, yes, I can only think of two edible liquids that aren't water. Well, there's a lot of edible liquids that aren't water and you could make pasta with Gatorade. Well, Gatorade is water.

Okay. It's not water. Anyone who's ever drank both water and Gatorade can tell you. Okay, I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure that Gatorade is not water.

Like when I turn on the tap and my home, orange Gatorade has yet to come. So I'm approaching this as a chemist. What you're saying is that the liquid part of the Gatorade is the water. I agree with that in the broadest strokes.

Yes. Whereas there are two liquids that I could come up with broadly that are not made out of water. Milk is also made out of water. Okay.

What do you got? There's oil, which is also in milk. So like liquid fats. And then there's ethanol, which is pure grain alcohol ever clear is what we're talking about.

And that burns off pretty fast if you're trying to. This is yeah. So I think that it won't be possible to boil pasta. That's a possible.

It will not be possible to boil pasta in oil and get pasta just because I think that because oil is non polar, I don't think that the pasta would like dissolve in the same way. No, I feel like if you do that, you get deep fried pasta. That's how you get fried pasta. Oh, dang deep fried pasta invented today.

It's the potato ship of tomorrow. I did not invent it. I did not invent it. I'm sure that it's been done a lot in a lot of state fairs around this great country.

You probably are correct. But I am more interested in the ethanol question of whether I can have just like extraordinarily intoxicating noodles. Oh God, it would be so gross. And you are right that it would boil off really fast.

Ethanol is a really low boiling point. So you have to do it need a gigantic that. No, I think you need a pressure cooker in order to get the ethanol hot enough to actually cook it. Okay.

You have to increase the pressure so that the boiling point goes the boiling temperature increases. Okay. And so you need like a pressurized vat. Problem here is that do not do not do this with a pressure cooker in your home, because that pressure cooker is designed for water.

Don't do any of this alcohol is super flammable. It is very flammable. Everything about this idea is so bad. Yes.

But there's no part of exploring this that should be done by anyone who does not have a PhD, not just in chemistry, but in this kind of chemistry. Exactly. So I would like that person to make me booze noodles. No, no, I don't even want to put that person at risk.

Listen, if you know the SOPs for how to get ethanol to a high temperature and pressure safely, put pasta in it for me. Thanks, give it up on the whole thing about how he'll be really happy if you just vote. If you find a way to boil noodles in pure grain alcohol. But no, seriously, do not do this in a home pressure cooker because I'm pretty sure that it would create an explosion.

So just for clarity, this isn't not like a wouldn't it be fun if we tried this? No, it wouldn't. But I do want to boost noodle. Okay, before we get to the on-port news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to answer this question from Daniel who writes, Dear John and Hank, I spend multiple hours a day listening to podcast to help me cope with my anxiety.

And recently, I've noticed a theme of people cutting for an ad break, but no ads showing up. I assume this has something to do with the pandemic and the recession. But does this mean my favorite shows are at risk of disappearing altogether? Pre-order the other scene reviewed book now, Daniel.

Thank you Daniel. That's very, that's a great. I really like your sign off. Well, first, you do not have to be worried about this podcast, which is extraordinarily inexpensive to make.

Also, the money that makes almost all of it through Patreon and through advertising goes to complexity to help make stuff like Crash Course and SciShow, you know, ons and all those shows. But yeah, so the way that this works is a lot of podcasts have switched over to dynamic ad insertions, which is how YouTube ads work. And instead of baking the advertisement into the podcast, which is the case on our podcast, we just sort of stop. And then we record advertisements at different times and based on who you are, based on where you are, or just based on whether we have an ad to sell that week, like oftentimes we just don't have like our inventory is not 100% full, then a piece of software will insert an ad into the episode.

And it seems to me that since that's kind of taken over, I've had more experiences of just not getting an ad. And what that says to me is not so much that like this podcast doesn't have any ads, it's that like they didn't have an ad for me right at this moment. And that's probably, that's probably okay. I think that the podcast advertising ecosystem, if you're worried about that, is mostly all right now.

There's definitely, there was a pullback in the beginning, but there's a lot of businesses that are sort of like trying to figure out how to adapt to a new moment and they have to communicate about how they might be changing or businesses that are well suited to this moment, they want to communicate about their services. So our experiences is that the podcast business is not hurting too much right now, certainly compared to a lot of other businesses. That said, Hank and I are considering buying out all the inventory on our own podcasts. That's not a joke.

I don't know if we're gonna make it happen, but I do see why you would want it to happen. It's an interesting idea. It's not just that I want it to happen. Like, I feel like people who listen to our podcasts want ads that are targeted to them very specifically in the sense that they are about our work.

Indeed. We hope to be able to do that at some point. But obviously, that's a lot of revenue that's coming in that's supporting other educational projects at Complexly. So we've got to do it carefully.

But I really like the idea of only selling ad space on this podcast to me. We'll see what happens. John, is it time for the on important news for Mars and AFC one? It is.

Would you like to go first this week? I would have to be happy to do that. Many people thought this was going to be last week's Mars news, but it came in just a little bit too late. So Mars, as you may have heard, John, two years ago, scientists reported that they had found a large saltwater lake under ice and Mars's South Pole.

But we weren't sure exactly what it was. So researchers went back, gathered more data from the European Space Agency's Mars Express, which has ground penetrating radar that bounces off the surface, but also off of stuff beneath the surface of Mars. And by studying how those waves bounce back, we can learn what's underneath the surface of Mars, which is amazing. We use that on Earth all the time for lots of different reasons.

Find some surface glacier lakes is one way, like we could find water that way. On Earth, we can also use it for mineral exploration kind of stuff. But from this, researchers were able to not only back up the 2018 discovery, but they found three more lakes. The lakes cover about 75,000 square kilometers, the largest one around 70 kilometers across.

So there's some, a lot of discussion going on right now about what these lakes are. Are they actually lakes? Like there's still a little bit of debate about like what other things could represent this kind of finding, but it seems very much like this is water, like liquid water. There's also how are they liquid?

Because this is quite cold. So either either it's maybe some combination of warmth from geothermal activity, like maybe there was like some kind of volcanic activity that happened down there, warm some stuff up a million years ago, or something. And it still hasn't been frozen because there's also all of these different salts in the water that raise the freezing temperature, that lower that lower down the freezing temperature. So that it is very cold.

It is hard for it to freeze. So it is not it is not a good place to find water that astronauts would use, because actually the frozen water on the surface is more pure than this water. That would be, you know, and it's easier to melt water than to purify it. But it might be a good place to look if you're going to find any signs of prehistoric life or even current life going on there.

That's right. I mean, it would have to be very resilient to live at those temperatures and at those salinities, especially because this isn't like sodium chloride, table salt, which is also hostile to life. But this is like even more hostile to life salts. Still, those are some big lakes.

They are big lakes. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, if you think about the way that we understood Mars, I know, I understood Mars when I was a child and the way we understand it now, it's just mind blowing, it gives me so much hope about the future.

Yeah. Speaking of hope about the future, Hank, AFC Wimbledon suffered their first loss of the League one season to Aqrington Stanley, a team that we are better than but keep losing to. They've always been a team that we struggled against no matter how good we are and no matter how bad they are, they always find a way. And I felt like, especially in the first 30 minutes of the game, we were playing so well, we scored a goal.

Ryan Longman scored a second or third goal this season. It was a beauty. And then we just at the very end of the first half, we gave up two goals in quick succession and we were never able to play well in the second half, never able to get back into the game. Aqrington Stanley killed time really effectively and we lost.

So it's frustrating to go from one nil up to two one down. That said, there are still, I think, promising signs about this year's Wimbledon team. Like we look like we are playing as a team more, we look more effective in attack than we did last season. Like last season, whenever we would score a goal, I would think to myself, well, that was borderline miraculous.

Thank goodness for that random deflection. And now I see actual plays, you know, like players running into space, passes meeting the players where they are. I see hope for lack of a better term. Wimbledon are now in 12th place in League one after four games.

Obviously, it's still the beginning of the season. We've got 42 games to go if we end up playing all the way through the season, which fingers crossed. But five points after four games and in 12th place, I will take that all year long, especially if the table freezes right where it is right now because Wimbledon would finish in 12th and the franchise currently playing its trade in Milton Keynes would finish in Dead Last. Oh, or John, it's a wild, wild story you've got us all invested in.

It's crazy that they still exist even, but alone that they're in the same league. Anyway, thank you for plotting with me. I can thanks everybody for your questions. You can email us at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

We're off to go record our Patreon only podcast this week in stuff. We talk about something that is making us feel good right now, and that's available at patreon.com slash dear incajon. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Metis produced by Rosie Anna Halser-Hossen Sheridan Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom.

Our editorial assistant is Deboki Tarkarvati. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by The Crick and Rolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.