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At the podcast we'd rather answer your questions, give you advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC. John, Spring is here and as I look out my window I can see that sign of that spring on my lilac tree. What a relief! No boy.
Well, this actually does not leave that on it yet. It takes a while. It is Montana after all. I'm so excited about Spring.
I am going to allow that joke to pass unmentioned. It's really wonderful to have a bit more sunlight and warmth here in the Northern Hemisphere. It's been a long just to state the obvious. It's been a rather long winter despite having been a relatively short winter and I am very very excited for Spring.
Oh, the days of light and interpersonal interaction are coming. Let us hope. My father-in-law lives in Missoula and we will occasionally be over at their house and he does this adorable thing where whenever the sun comes out he goes, a shadow! And he'll do it like four times an hour.
Because it's not like it's like a pure blue sky. But occasionally the sun will peek through and he gets very excited and points out the shadow and then Orin will run over and be like, where, where? So that is adorable. And that's how I feel.
Every little chance to celebrate the sun coming out is what is one we should take. Johnny, what answer some of these questions that we got from our listeners? I have a question from a listener that's also just a question I have for you, Hank. This question really really got my mind working.
Jesse writes, Dear John, Hank, you know that children's song, he's got the whole world in his hands that talks about God holding the whole world? Yeah. First off, I didn't know Jesse until you wrote that that that was a religious song. Oh, the only words to it I know.
It's a big giant? Yes. I thought it was a big giant who had the whole world in his hands. And the only reason I even know the chorus of the song is because the melody was repurposed to sing about famous Liverpool goalkeeper Jersey Dudek.
Oh, you're going to sing it for us, aren't you? I'm not. I'm definitely not going to say it, but I'll tell you the words Jersey Dudek is Polish and the words where we've got a big pole in our goal. That's my only relationship to this song.
How would earth feel if you shrunk it down to hold it in your hand? Would all the trees be scratchy? Would it feel hot? Because if it's core and most importantly, would it bounce?
Would it bounce? Because, okay, so I thought about this and I don't know a lot about science, but I thought it might bounce because of its atmosphere. I, you know, like it's surrounded by this like air pocket sort of that makes it maybe bouncy. So are we imagining that the earth shrunk down and it still has an atmosphere and is not inside of an atmosphere?
Because I imagine that like you shrunk the earth down, but then you're still on the earth or us, an analogous planet. No, I think you're on this because you have to bounce it off of something. Yeah, the surface of Mars, you're on Mars. The earth is the size of your hand, or it's actually smaller than your hand.
So it can fit in your hand. Right. And you throw earth down as hard as you can against the surface of Mars. I think at least in my imagination, earth bounces right back up.
It's like, it's not like bouncy ball level bounce, but it's like, say, tennis ball level bounce. I think it's like pool ball level bounce when they do and pool balls do bounce pretty good. I would take a pool ball bounce for sure, if that's what we're talking about. Yeah.
But the other question, which I find completely fascinating is would it be warm to the touch, or would it be cold to the touch? Because in certain places, it's quite warm in other places, cold. I assume that the trees would be so small that they wouldn't matter, but like you'd feel Mount Everest, right? Like you'd feel it'd be a bumpy ball.
No, no, it would not be a bumpy ball. Okay. It would not be a bumpy ball. It would be significantly heavier than a bill your ball about twice as heavy.
If it was the size of a billiard ball, it'd be twice as heavy as a billiard ball. Okay. But it would be smoother than a billiard ball. What?
That is? No. Yes. No.
Because the pits and scratches on the surface of a billiard ball, if you blew that billiard ball up to the size of the earth, would be deeper than the deepest sea and higher than the highest mountain. It would be wet though, right? Because it would be 70% water. A little bit wet.
Yeah. If it was, I mean, you've now introduced Mars. So it's on the surface of Mars. The atmosphere immediately dissipates into Mars.
No, no, no, no. No, no. No, no, no. No, it's magic, kang.
Look, if we're going to have a hypothetical situation, let's have a hypothetical situation. Okay. I'm saying the earth's atmosphere, forget everything I just said, Mars blows up to make it so big that the earth is not the size of a billiard ball. And I have also blown up in conjunction with Mars to make me so big that I am now.
So I am now such a giant that I can hold earth and its atmosphere in my hand. I'm in space. I can live in the vacuum of space because I say I can when I bounce the ball, all the water shakes around in the atmosphere. But in my imagination, at least it's like a snow globe, like the atmosphere stays.
Yes, the atmosphere stays. So all water goes up into the sky and then it comes back down. It's like the hydrological cycle that's sped up. Right.
And everybody who's on the planet is having a bad, bad day. Okay. Yeah, I definitely think this would be bad for the other humans. But I'll tell you what, giant me would be loving it.
Also, it would be a little bit damp. It would be very, very wet. It would be a little damp. No.
Are you going to tell me now that a billiard ball actually has more water on its surface than earth would? A billiard ball, actually. Actually, no. It would not be a little bit damp.
It would be soggy. No, I think it'd be a little damp. I think it'd be a little damp. No.
It's 70% water. Of course, it is. Yeah. So some of it would be dry.
Some of it would be wet, but I don't think it'd be that deep. I guess that's true. But I wouldn't, I'm not cutting through the bouncy billiard ball that is earth. I'm holding it.
I'm only touching the surface. So my question is, so I think the answer to is it warm is it's warm, but not hot. But maybe there's like, one really small cold spot, like when you're swimming in the ocean and you feel that like, both inexplicable cold spot. No, it's going to be cold at the poles.
Yeah. It's going to be warm at the equator. Right. And like, there are going to be spots that are going to be super warm.
If like the moment you shrink it down, it's got the same warmth as all of it. It's just the surface temperature that we're talking about here. Yeah. But I'm saying that like when you're holding it, some of that temperature gets like distributed.
I don't know. Now that I'm saying that. It starts to after some time, but like it's got a little filmer ice on the, on some frost on the top and bottom. It's a frosty damp billiard ball.
Okay. But it's twice as heavy and bounces. I'm pretty sure it would bounce. I think it would bounce.
I'm 100% sure it would bounce. And people who are going to say it's not going to bounce are not imagining the right hypothetical. Would the earth bounce? I'm going to put that out there.
They're going to say, there are things that I do not know intuitively. If anybody has more information, please let me know if the earth will bounce. Okay. Definitely a damp billiard ball.
It's a soaking wet billiard ball. Just I can't let that go. I'm sorry, but there's a lot of just damn most of the billiard ball is wet. That is not a damn billiard ball.
If most of the billiard ball is wet, it is a wet billiard ball. Most of the billiard ball is damp. No, stop it. Try.
Yes. Yes. As is the case with every wet billiard ball, part of it is dry. No, you can make a billiard ball 100% wet.
If it's underneath the water, you can make it entirely wet. But the moment you pull it out, there's little parts of it that are dry, which is what I mean, we're having you're a crisis of language. Imagine a hand can close your eyes, imagine that you put a billiard ball into a full bathtub of water. Now, you pull out the billiard ball.
Yes, it's wet when it's under the water. You pull out the billiard ball four seconds later, when it is still most we wet, but in places dry, that is what it would be like. All right. Whereas you're arguing that it would be a slightly damp billiard ball, which implies to me that somebody has like an eye drop, missed it and puts like four beads of water on the billiard ball.
That's not it. It's 70% wet. I think it's no. I don't mean like little dots.
I mean, it's missed it. That's wet. If you have a billiard ball, it's a mega billiard ball. Like now that we're talking about it, like hard things don't get down.
Yeah. This is obviously a completely ludicrous conversation start to finish, but your notion that if you spritz a billiard ball with water, that the billiard ball isn't wet, fascinates me. Well, I'm just thinking like the ocean parts, like they're not wet, like you're not going to stick your finger in and be like, like a couple of water on your finger. No, because as you explained to me, it's going to be it's going to be much smoother than that, but it is going to be wet.
Wet. Next question comes from Tremaine, who has Dear Hank and John. Is there a hand written equivalent to using italics? Are you supposed to emphasize something if you're writing, not typing?
All the other things work for both. You can bold, you can underline, you can do quotation marks. Is italics just for typing? What gives?
Not Johnny Tremaine. I mean, I when I'm typing, sometimes don't bother to italicize and I just put slashes around it. You can do that. The long standing way of thinking about this, though, is that italics in text, in print text, is the equivalent of underlining in handwriting.
And now there is also underlining in printing. And so it's a little confusing. But if you think about it, most of the time, when you're reading a book, you read italics. Like when you're reading something that don't see it under.
Yeah, when you're reading something that would be underlined handwritten, like the title of a book or a word for emphasis in printing, it's italicized. Tremaine, that was great advice, but I have another tip for how to do italicized handwriting. Okay. You have to get to an airport and get Mona Plain and then apply to Rome and then whatever you write there will be italicized.
Oh my god. I mean, thank God you didn't save that for next week's plot. That's all I can say. I do think that it's funny that the way that we like underline writing in printed books and stuff is by making it look more like handwriting.
Like the actual handwritten equivalent to me is if you wrote out everything in print letters and then when you wanted to italicize something, you wrote it in cursive. But for me, that's not an option because among the many things that I've forgotten since third grade is how to write in cursive. Where the heck does the word cursive come from? Is it only for you when you're using the bad words?
What? Because it's cursive. Oh god, are you just is this going to be like the Hank makes bad jokes spectacular? No, I'm serious.
Why? I sue. I always thought it's called cursive because it's got all kinds of curves curves in it. Like the word discursive.
I always assumed is related to cursive because discursive means like wandering in various directions in vaguely loopy ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You are correct. I think. Well, I was going to say no, you're not. You're not correct.
It is from the Proto-Indo-European root curse, which means to run. And it means that with written with a running hand. Oh, okay. That makes sense.
But this is sometimes I have cursive. I would think because like it means like to run on in various directions away from the meat of the sentence. Did you miss the part where I said sometimes I have cursive oops? Oh, I did.
I chose to miss it. But then you really wanted me to hear it. So I heard it the second time. It really hit home for me that time.
Thank you. He asked the question before I ruin our relationship. We're getting there. We're getting there.
Oh, goodness gracious. Okay. I know why it would be really funny to you. And I feel like when I tell Sarah about it later, she will also find it really funny.
I don't have that part of my sense of humor that's like extremely scatological. I've never had it. But I'm happy for you that you have it. This next question comes from N who writes Dear John and Hank, how do I handle feelings of jealousy with my friends who are also young and work from home start to get vaccinated before I do?
How do I patiently wait until it's my turn? XOXO N. Yeah. First off, N, I just real quick, we can't kiss and hug, buddy.
That's why XOXO is so good. No. It means hug kiss, hug kiss. And virtually.
Oh, okay. As long as it's just X is an O is N, that's fine. But if you want to XOXO for real, I'm going to need you to get that shot. Also, God, I don't mean to make you feel worse about not having been vaccinated.
Is there a word yet for vaccination jealousy? Because I definitely have seen it arising internally and externally. I feel it so intensely. I also, I saw someone refer to shot in Freud, which is the opposite of shot in Friday.
It's when you feel good about your friends getting the vaccine. Oh, I want to have shot in Friday. But instead, I have shot in jealousy. I do have shot in Friday, but I also have some shot in jealousy.
Like, even when I know it's people who are wildly more deserving than I am, and for whom it absolutely makes sense. Oh, sure. Like say my parents. And whom I love.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, obviously, they should get vaccinated before me on every level. And I'm 100% behind it.
But also, huh, that seems nice. It doesn't seem nice. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't really know what to do about this, except to know that it like it's coming. And also that like, it's not like the world just reopens to you once you get a vaccine. Like, every like, we're going to have to get this into a lot of people before it is responsible to behave the way that we once behaved, regardless of whether you're vaccinated. Like, there are certainly things that you will be able to do once you have our fully vaccinated.
But like, the thing we're working towards isn't really individual. It is a collective vaccination. Absolutely. And the positive outcome is also collective.
And we have to work with that. That said, because the vaccines are at least currently so incredibly personally beneficial, I understand. Oh, sure. If it were more like a flu vaccine that had, you know, like a 60% efficacy or something, then, you know, we could all talk about like, Oh, it's, it's about the collective and it is about the collective.
But there is also like personal, real dramatic personal benefit in getting vaccinated. And so I understand it. I feel it too. I think the way that you deal with it is by waiting because it's not going to be that much longer for for many of us.
Like, it's going to be pretty soon for most people. Yeah. And every every time it's a little it's longer, especially because we're vaccinating a fairly good clip now, that means the more people are doing it. And that's very good news.
So people who maybe were sort of waiting on their back foot for a while. I know people like this who want to kind of want to make their own decision and like weigh it in their own ways. Every person who decides, Oh, yeah, actually, this looks like it's working really well, you know, kind of pushes me back in line, but is very good news for them and very good news for all of us. Right.
Exactly. So that's the other thing is that being pushed back in line is actually good news for the social order. Yeah. Oh, you still really want to get it?
I am going to I have dreams about it all the time. Oh, wow. All the time. I have wonderful dreams about it.
And for whatever reason, every time I get the vaccine in my dreams, Sarah gets it first and she's crying. And this is notable because Sarah never cries like Sarah's maybe like 10 times in the last 20 years that I've known her. And every time I think but Sarah never cries. It's adorable.
Oh, God, I'll report back when I actually get it. I'll report back on who cries. I've got a pretty solid idea of who it might be. Oh, God.
Okay. John, I got another question here. It comes from Abby who asked Dear Hank and John. Recently it occurred to me just how odd it is that our pupils dilate.
I get why pupils contract and dilate according to like the surrounding light and stuff. But what happens to the iris closer to the center of the eye when your people dilate. So where did that portion of the iris go? Does the pupil just cover it up or does it contract in some way to make room for the ever expanding abyss of our eyes?
I am quite puzzled. Abby, John, your pupil is nothing. Well, it's not quite nothing. But I know what you mean.
This is actually something I know a lot about on account of having had orbital cell. Yeah. So the the iris is the thing that's doing the expanding and contracting of the pupil. The pupil is just the space that's left in the center and the iris is a sphincter.
So it's a muscle that can that contracts radially and can get quite thin and can make that whole really small or can make the whole really big. So you got a sphincter in your eyeball. So that's fun. Yeah.
And your pupil is basically the thing through which light goes and then the sphincter of your iris decides how big that needs to be for you to get the amount of light that your iris things would be most beneficial. So you're seeing is basically like farting and reverse but with photons. That is not incorrect. Right.
Yeah. That's not a terrible way to think about it. And you want to be able to control how many photons going on up just like you want to be able to control farts? Actually, you don't want to have an active choice.
It's true. Because you're if you had an active choice. It's to be able to be controlled. Exactly.
If you had a super active choice, it would take you way too long to be like dial it back there. Dial it. I don't actually, I don't want to be able to contract my iris the way I can contract my bicep. It doesn't work.
It doesn't work. It's another thing where the body is doing a great job without me. Do you ever feel like your mind is doing a great job without you? No.
No. I feel like my mind needs active intervention. I think it'd be great. I think your mind is does work.
Sometimes we will on its own sometimes. But I feel like my mind needs constant, constant intervention. Sorry about it. No, it's okay.
It's not like I don't know about it. And you don't want it to not be you don't want that kind of stuff to not be mentionable, right? Like you want to be able to talk about it and be honest about it. But yeah, I certainly know people who like their background way of getting through the world works really, really well.
Like they're sort of natural, inherited, unconscious way of navigating works awesome. Yeah, I am not such a person. But I also, I think there's a bad. Well, no, not really.
I was going to say it. No, there's not though. Okay. You have another question for us, John?
Yeah. But unfortunately, heck, I've just been informed that we need to read some sponsor advertisements. Oh, yeah. Like, for instance, did you know that today's podcast is brought to you by cursive poops cursive poops?
They just they go on and on. It's podcast is also brought to you by a damp billiard ball. It's possibly moist. It may be wet.
Yeah, but it's heavier than a billiard ball and it's very smooth. Today's podcast is also brought to you by a wet billiard ball, a wet billiard ball, a more accurate description of a billiard ball that is 70% water on its surface. And also this podcast is brought to you by Vaccine Dreams. Vaccine Dreams, who's crying in yours?
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Hey, I do want to ask this question from Ben. I think it's a really interesting question and I think we should try to solve it without dealing with the underlying problems which are real and complex. Ben writes, I want to write a story. That's great.
But my parents have access to my Gmail and therefore my Google Docs which is the only place I can think of writing it. I do not wish for my parents to see it and they have been very pushy about seeing other things I have done in the past. I'm worried that they will sign into my Gmail and look at this story. Should I get over these issues or is there another solution?
Note that I hate writing with pencil and paper and refuse to do it. Well, that's a good thing to know. That's that. Pumpkin some penguins, Ben.
They're the other gotta be like if you have internet, there gotta be places where you can write that aren't Google Docs. I don't know what they are because I don't and also don't did you know about Doc.new? No. If you go to your web browser and you type in doc.new.
What happens? Well, look at that. It's a new Google Doc. That's nice.
I mean that. That's cool. It is so convenient. It is.
It is not solved. That saves me like six clicks. It does not solve Ben's problem, but it is a good life hack and I appreciate you sharing it with me. So I thought of a few possible solutions.
One, Ben, is that if you're okay with having the document saved to your hard drive, there's usually on any computer like a basic text editor. Note taking text editor kind of app that you can use. And I actually wrote much of looking for Alaska inside of a text editor. And so I know that this is possible.
That's my first book. Ben, it's available wherever books are sold. Wow. I'm not afraid.
I'm not afraid to sell something I wrote 17 years ago. I'm not above it. The other thing I thought of Hank is, all right, Ben, this is my idea. I don't know if this is a great idea, but I really like it.
I want you to go to sheets.google.com and then your brand sheets are going to look at your spreadsheet. They're going to be like, oh my god, this is so boring. It's one of Ben's spreadsheets endless. I like it.
Make a real spreadsheet. It doesn't matter what it's about. You can make it like, oh, this is my net worth goals for the next 15 years or whatever. But make a real spreadsheet.
Make it about something that your parents are going to find intensely boring. Like if you have a Pokemon collection, make it a Pokemon spreadsheet, whatever your parents are going to find super boring. So what you're going to do then, Ben is you're going to create a second sheet down there at the bottom. Like a second page.
Nobody even knows about it. I can't. Or you scroll down. Do you scroll down a bunch or do you open like a sheet tab?
Because there are sheet tabs and sheets. I would open up a second sheet tab and then scroll down a bunch for extra security. Right. And then you can actually write a paragraph inside of a Google Doc, control exit, and then paste it into this secret second sheet, scrolled way down, and just go paragraph by paragraph by paragraph by paragraph.
And then the Google Doc is empty all the time. But your sheet is where the story is stored in the sheets. And I like this, especially because you're going to need to learn how to use spreadsheet software. So we might as well get that out of the way with your fake spreadsheets about your Pokemon or just do some science, like go measure some leaves or something.
Yeah. And I can't imagine that someone would look further than being like, oh, Ben, super into leaves right now. Okay. Alternately.
Oh, you got a third option. You could have a conversation with your parents, Ben, where you say, listen, I'm old enough now to be writing my own stuff and I need to be able to write stuff that you all can't read. Yeah. And that's a hard moment for a parent, but it's also an important moment because parents can't, they can't be over their kids' shoulders for the kids' whole life.
Like you've got to be able to grow up. But personally, I would do the sheets thing because I love to avoid conflict. John, this next question is from Morgan who asks, Dear Hank and John, no frustration has ever flooded my body more. And when I lost my copy of Turtles All the Way Down that was signed to the Pokeball and moved multiple times and it got lost.
John, will you be adding anything special to the Anthropocene reviewed books? Looking forward to May, Morgan, not for him. Thank you for that clarification, Morgan. Yeah.
First off, we'll send you a copy of Turtles All the Way Down with the Pokeball and if that's not a hard problem to solve, I still have the Pokeball creator here in my household. Wow. But yes, so I'm signing 250,000 sheets of paper that are going to get bound into the Anthropocene reviewed book. Most of them just have a signature, like the overwhelming majority.
But about 100 of them have illustrations either from or maybe 200 have illustrations either from Henry or Alice. So Henry tends to draw these stick figures that say high or that engage in minor acts of violence towards my signature. It's very funny. And Alice draws these, I would call them cat people.
Like, I don't know if you've seen the movie Cats, but it's sort of in that vein, although I have to say like Alice's illustrations more. So there are a couple hundred, by the time I'm done, maybe a few hundred of those, and then there are probably like a few hundred that I draw spirals on because I like to draw spirals. The vast majority of them, like I said, are just are merely signed. I wish that it were more.
But yeah, and there will be a few with Pokeballs just because I'll make Henry draw some Pokeballs at the end as we're stacking them all up to go into the boxes. I do not think that I will ever do this again, Hank. I do not think you'll ever do it again either. I think I'm done.
I think this is the proper number of times to do that. I think this is the last time I will sign the first printing of a book unless I get to a point where the first printings are like 800 copies and then I might do it again. We got to work toward that future. I think the first printing of looking for Alaska was like 6,000.
So I could have done that in a day, but 250,000 is I understood in the abstract that it was going to be difficult. But now that I've got 87,000 to go and my hand hurts them, this is the last time. So if you want to get assigned first edition of one of my books, this is this is it. This is the last the last time the Anthropocene reviewed coming to Bookstore near you on May 18th.
All right, Hank, before we get to the on board news from Mars and AFC, I want to ask this question from Grace who writes, Dear John and Hank, what is tape like scotch tape? What is it made out of? Why is it sticky? Why does it smell so weird, Grace?
Well, different tapes are different. Scotch tape. I looked at this. It's made of a bunch of different things.
And I was shocked by how many different things it was made of. So there's weird, like I never thought about this before now, Grace, but tape is weird. And I feel like if you pitched it to people of the eighth century, they would be like, wait, what now? Well, in fact, Scotch tape came out just before the Great Depression.
And because of it, 3M was one of the only companies during the Great Depression that didn't have to lay anybody off, because it was so useful that people bought it. It was an expensive to make. So they could sell it for cheap and still make money. And everybody was like, oh, this is extremely useful.
So there's four layers of scotch tape. The top layer is a layer that makes it so that it will stick to itself, but not too much. So it's like an anti-stick layer. And then you have a matte layer that makes it not shiny, but matte colored.
Like matte. It's not shiny. And then there's the actual film that the structure, the structural part of the tape, and that is made mostly of cotton, which upset me a little bit for some reason. I would not have guessed that.
It's cotton mixed with some plastic stuff, but it's cotton pulp that gives it some structure. And then it's the sticky part. And that is made of, basically, it's refined out of crude oil. And then they are mixed with water and sprayed onto the tape.
And that's the stuff that you're smelling. So there's some volatile organic compounds in there that were maybe the solvent that those compounds were dissolved in that then evaporated it mostly. They smell like solvent. Yeah.
Or it might just be that that's what the sticky stuff it smells like. But I don't know what the smell actually is. But it was invented because car manufacturers wanted a tape that they could use so they could paint a car to different colors. Really?
Yeah. Wow. Which I also found very surprising. But then it became extremely useful for everyone.
And of course, in the way of these things, because it was created as a company, the company made all the money and the guy who invented them, his name was Richard. Got, you know, we know his name is, you can look it up, but you don't think that he got super rich off of it. Yeah. His name was Richard Drew, John, Richard Gurley Drew.
Okay. Well, thank you, Richard Drew. Let's move on to the news from AFC One with Anhanka. As you'll remember, AFC One with an AFC One with an AFC One with an as a new manager, the former manager of the kids team, Mark Robinson.
And we are a different football club. Now, I want to be clear, that doesn't mean that we're good, right? Like we have the same set of problems that we had before, one of the smallest budgets in League One, all the same problems. We don't have like a whole new crop of players or anything, but we have a very different attitude.
And I love it. I, we are possessing the ball. We are passing the ball from one player to another, which is almost unprecedented in my time as a Wimbledon fan. It's it is, it is, it is joyful to watch.
Not only that, but two games in a row, we have been down one nil with five minutes left in the game. And we have come back instead of giving up late goals, we have come back to score late goals in our game against Shrewsbury or as a player, eventually in the UK, Shrewsbury. Oh my goodness. In our game against Shrewsbury, we had 53% of the possession, which is again, unprecedented.
And this 19 year old kid, you, us all scored a very late goal, came on as a substitute, his first game ever scoring for any kind of, in any kind of professional football. He's from the youth side. He's 19 years old. As Mark Robinson, the manager said after the game, you doesn't look like a footballer, but he has the heart of a footballer.
He's tiny. I mean, he's a, he's a very small kid. But I mean, watching him in that game was so joyful. He was relentless.
He was playing with, oh, it was so fun to watch him. So then he scores his first goal in professional football of his whole life. He scores. What does he do?
How does he celebrate? The answer is he doesn't celebrate Hank. He runs into the goal. He picks up the ball and he runs back because he wants to put Wimbledon in a situation where maybe we could get a second goal.
I have never admired a 19 year old kid so much in my life. Now we didn't get the second goal as it happened, but it was still very heartening to see. And then we were down one nail against Blackpool. And in the 93rd minute, Ollie Palmer, long injured, very big guy who has not played as many games as he would have liked this year, scored a goal in the 93rd minute in the last minute of injury time, essentially the last kick of the game in that game.
We had 56% of the possession. I love the new Wimbledon. It's so fun to watch. Everybody is playing with just such relentlessness.
And you feel like they're just playing to the absolute limit of their abilities. And it is joyful. And I love Ollie Palmer and I love love love love. I saw I love that he has come from the youth squad and that he's brought this energy into the team.
I'm just I'm loving sponsoring AFC Wimbledon. We are still in the relegation zone. You are still in the relegation zone, but two draws is great compared to two losses. Yeah, I mean, let's face it, Hank, if we draw the rest of our games, we'll probably survive.
No more scoring and no more letting anybody else score. That's right. Let's just let's know and avoid the season just zeros on the board from here on out. But yeah, I just I, Mark Robinson's AFC Wimbledon is an absolute just a wonder to watch.
And it's just so encouraging to see, you know, somebody who's never had a chance to coach anywhere near a professional soccer, get a real chance and just show what he can do. It's wonderful. So it's just it's been a lot of fun. If you can watch AFC Wimbledon on the I Follow app, I really encourage it, which you'll note I wasn't saying earlier in the season.
It's just great fun to watch us right now. In Mars news, John Perseverance completed its first test drive on March 4th. It took about for a little bit of a spin. It drove for 33 minutes during which it moved forward 13 feet, turned for 150 feet and then drove eight more feet.
That served as a, you know, a test of the ability and a calibration of all the rover systems. It's working great, which is it. I mean, I don't know why I always have this like this happens. It's like, ah, the rover is on the surface of Mars.
And like, that's the hard part. But like maybe it's wheels just don't work or something. Right. Right.
There's a little hitch in my giddy up and I'm just going to sit here for the the next four years. But yeah, it is roving effectively. Curiosity is also still roving effectively. I'm sending out some amazing pictures right now.
It's approaching a seven meter tall cliff face that is a hundred percent sedimentary rock. It's gorgeous. Really, really cool. In addition to testing out Perseverance, NASA has named the Perseverance's touchdown site.
So they do this, they named it the landing sites. They called it the Octavia E Butler landing for Octavia Butler, the author who wrote Parable of the Sower and Kindred in the Zeno Genesis books. Who was wonderful? I think that would mean so much to Octavia Butler to know.
I wish you were here. I mean, I wish you were here to see the big resurgence in interest in her work. But that is the right person to honor with that. That's really wonderful to hear.
That's so cool. And it's so cool that the rover is roving. I also have this fear that like, I know they're going to do the hard part, but like, you know, like the axle on my car brakes sometimes. What if we know what if the landing was a little rougher than it looked and something happened?
But no, it was great to see that it's roving as you put it. Thinking of a landing little tougher than it looks, I don't know if anybody else watched the SN10 launch with the new SpaceX missions in there trying to get this thing reusable and they launched it up for a test and it came down. And for the first time, but this is the 10th one of these, for the first time it landed vertically, very, you know, and it looked a little rough. And it kind of seemed like it came down a little hard, but then it was sitting there and it was like, I guess we did it.
And then it exploded. And just a spectacular explosion to yeah, like movie style thing. Yeah, I mean, it's it's hard. I would think based on my home rocketry with those little engines, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I can't I can't get those things to have their parachutes deployed with a regularity.
So I have a lot of empathy for people who are trying to do it with real rockets. Yeah, John, thank you for making a podcast with me. We're off to record our patron only podcast. This weekend stuff.
And I'm looking forward to that. You can send us your questions at hankandjohnedgmail.com. Thank you to everybody who does that. There is no podcast without you.
The podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna-Medisciates produced by Rosie Annal Halser-Hossen, Sheridan Gibson. Our communication coordinator is Julia Bloom, editorial assistant is the bookie tropper-vardy. The music you're hearing now and the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.