289: No Moon Chickens

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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. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Who is that preferred to think of it?

Dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions. Give you a piece of advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC One and John. A lot of people ask me how I have so many dad jokes to tell on the podcast and I'm a little bit nervous to tell them that I have a database.

That's okay. Seriously though, do you find them on the internet or do you think of them while you're walking around doing your daily business? I tend to go to the Reddit, the dad jokes subreddit and then I look around for specific kinds of things I would like to talk about. Like related funds and you sort of optimize them for our audience.

I optimize them for that for the story that I'm telling. Now that I've said optimize, I realize that's the wrong verb. You shine them up a smidge. Yeah.

Okay. Well, right. Or down. I could sometimes like do polish.

Yeah. Just because I yeah, you don't want them to be too good that way. The main reason the dad jokes exist as I understand it is a kind of barrier to entry for fans of the podcast. Like we don't want just anyone listening that's right past the first 45 seconds or so.

And so it's a way of weeding out the less committed listeners. Yeah, on delete this, we do this even more by starting the podcast off by having what will probably be the least interesting conversation that we have during the podcast. Right. We want the real that yeah, it's about selecting for an audience that will be kind mostly.

Exactly. There is this is a very old trick on the internet actually. It goes all the way back to Zae Frank who in 2005 when his internet video show started to become very popular, he introduced a new segment called Are the New Viewers Gone Yet where for the first like 45 seconds of a video he would do something utterly nonsensical and completely strange and never explain it and then say are the new viewers gone yet and then go to the regular video. Yeah, he specifically started doing it because like the when he got like a New York Times write up and he was like, oh God.

Yeah, I need to weed these people out. Well, fortunately, Dear Hank and John has never and will never be covered in the paper of right. Oh, yeah, no. The thing that we do is no longer exceptional or interesting, which is lovely.

Yes. No one is so confused anymore. They're like, oh, you have you're a podcaster. Like, yeah, podcaster, sure.

Yeah, it is weird to have watched this way of making stuff become mainstream enough that now when I say what I do, people know what it is because very, you know, early on when I would explain that I made YouTube videos, people would be like, oh, that's that's nice and weird, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. And now, and now people are like, do you know Mark Rober? That's the number one question I get as if we all like live, I don't know in the same neighborhood or something. I mean, I do know Mark Rober, though.

I know you do. All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners, Hank, because we have to do that part so that we can get to the real meat of the podcast, which is the news from AFC Wimbledon. By the way, on Reddit recently, I saw a comment from somebody who said they were talking about AFC Wimbledon, and they said, Hank and John's podcast, Dear Hank and John is actually a really good source of AFC Wimbledon news, but you have to skip the first 30 minutes. This first question comes from Rachel who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are crisp packets so loud?

I suspect Rachel might be English, Hank, so you're going to have to finish this one in your English accent. It's question number three. When I crush a crisp packet, why is this a little bit of plastic so incredibly noisy? Bombas and Pringles, Rachel.

I went all over the place. I was in every region for a little while. I felt like I was in the musical Oliver, and then at one point, I felt like I was at a fish and chips stand, but not in England, like maybe one in like Peoria, Illinois, where the fake and end of the employees have been like instructed to only sell fish and chips in an English accent. That was a while over.

That was wonderful. Hank, why are what I would call chips packets so loud? When I get to read it, you would call them for clarity, you would call them a chip bag. Packet is great, not even anywhere near what it is.

For us, even packet is usually too pretentious. We prefer bag. Yeah, we've got to be a 50 gallon garbage bag full of chips for all you know. It's just for some reason the image of somebody hiking the Appalachian Trail, but with their gigantic backpack only containing Doritos just came into my mind.

And so they just stop every now and again, and there's no tent or anything like that. That would be a waste of time. No change of clothes, just Doritos. They keep you warm.

Why are they so loud, Hank? Why are they so loud? I assume that it's so that you can't get away with not sharing, because the chip companies want more people to eat the chips and they want that noise. So that everybody in the house is like yink.

It's true. And then the dog is there, your brother is there, your sister is there, your uncle is there, everybody is there. The neighbor is coming over. It's the announcement.

I don't know. There might be like the material science of a chip bag is probably pretty interesting. Like the fact that I can open it fairly easily, but it doesn't do that on the way to the store. That's kind of amazing.

Though sometimes you can't, and the newer chip bags can sometimes be it basically brain teasers to get open. And just go get a night. I know you would think that they contain some kind of highly illegal drug. When your dog accidentally eating this.

So the short answer, Rachel, is that we don't know, but that's not going to stop us from speculating. Yeah, absolutely. And it's also not going to stop me from launching a new company that sells chips in cloth bags. Oh, God.

That's just what I don't need. One thing that my life cannot handle right now is supporting Hank in a new endeavor. Yeah. Everybody knows that cloth is for some reason greener than plastic, which for clarity, it's not unless you use it a lot.

It's not. It's much less green, because it's extremely difficult to make cotton. But it feels like it's green. So I'm going to make it out of hardy that that tote bag fabric and it's just going to be chips and you can see the oil through it.

It's great. You really know, you really know what's up in there. I like that too. It's like it, you know how like when some people eat pizza, they put the like a paper towel down on top of the pizza to leach off some of the grease.

Yeah. This bag does that for you. Does that, it does that work? Yeah.

It's already a healthier chip just because the cloth has leached out some of the oil, right? Right. And if you want to, if you're getting cold, it doubles as a fire starter, just like each corner. And it's like a everlog.

They're a flame. That's what they're called. Not everlog. This next question comes from Raylin who asks, during a John help, I just saw that John is going on tour for the Anthropocene Reviewed and I'm very excited, especially considering my stop is in the Midwest and we'll have Ashley Seaford as a guest.

She's my favorite deer, Hank and John guest host. My problem is I have already pre-ordered my copy of the Anthropocene Reviewed. The tour comes with a copy. So what do I do with my extra copy?

Oh my god, it's burning Raylin. I hope your extra copy is currently not on fire. Yeah, me too. Well, I don't think it's arrived yet because the Anthropocene Review doesn't come out for eight more days.

That's true. This is being uploaded anyway. So that means that if it is on fire, a bunch of other ones are on fire too, because they're all together right now. Yeah, which is a worry.

Raylin, first off, thank you for coming to see Ashley and I on tour. I'll be at a virtual tour. We are very excited. I just saw Ashley a couple days ago and we chatted about it.

And anybody else who wants to see me on tour, you can go to my website, johngreenbooks.com. And there's a thing that says, appearances. And there you can find links to the tours. They are virtual events and they exist to raise money and sell books for independent bookstores around the United States.

So they are regionalized, but you don't have to go to the one in your region. It's up to you. I'm not here to judge Midwestern people for wanting to go to the Southeastern Anthropocene or whatever. But whatever day you got free as for what you do with your extra book, I think that you either give it to a friend or you find one of those like little free libraries in your town and you just sneak it in there.

Oh yeah, yeah, you know those little like mailbox library things. Just sneak it in. Those are all over the place from the zoo. That's how you know what kind of town we are.

Oh yeah. What would you do? Well, like full disclosure, you likely will receive an extra copy of the Anthropocene Review book. Well, yeah, no, I'll definitely give it to a friend.

We have an office. So probably we will I might just leave it at the office and be like, whoever wants one. Oh yeah, or two or three. So that's nice.

You can sort of like take it to your workplace and be like anybody want to book. Yeah, especially because in my case, the book was written by one of the founders of the company. So maybe that's a little bit of yeah, people want to see what I've been up to for the last like three years when I was not doing a good job running the company. Yeah, but it's also a beautiful and weird book.

And so I think it is a very good gift book because it doesn't one of the nice things is it doesn't ask you to like sit down and like read the whole book. Yeah, it is compartmentalized. It is experiential. There are sections to it.

And so you can sort of pick and choose what you want, which is sort of a lower pressure gift book, which I very much appreciate a gift book. I do too. I like a gift book that doesn't ask me to like read 900 pages all at once. Yes.

And hopefully the Anthropocene Review does not ask you to do that. Also, there are lots of little miniature jokes inside of the book, which is my favorite thing about it. Hank, I think your copy is arriving tomorrow. So I don't want to spoil any of that.

But there are three, there are three like mini reviews inside the physical book, a couple of which are downright hard to find. Okay, I bet I bet I'll spot them. You probably will. But there was that was a lot of fun to do.

I mean, the great thing there's been so much that's been fun about making this book and making the new season of the podcast that's coming out alongside it. By the way, if you don't know what we're talking about, I have a new book coming out. It's called The Anthropocene Review. It's my first book of non-fiction.

It's a book of essays that take the form of like reviews on a five star scale. But the book is different from the shtick of the book, which is one of the things that's hard about talking about it. Anyway, one of the things that's been so fun about it for me is that this really is the first time that I have written about like myself and for me, for lack of a better term, like when I'm writing fiction, I'm not writing for myself, I'm usually writing for at least so far in my career, I've been writing for people who are very different from me. And this book was written for me.

And right, so I was able to have a lot of fun with it. And I was able to have a lot of fun with the bookmaking part of the bookmaking, which is also really lovely. And I had a great partner in Dutton, I'm looking at the book now, and there are just so many lovely little details that they were able to put in there. And all of that would have been totally unimaginable to me when my first book came out.

So it's a really lovely book. I'm really proud of it. And I hope people like it. And if you don't, I hope you don't tell me.

That's it. Does that help sales? Do you think that was good for marketing? All right, if you have another question, and this one got me thinking, I think I know the answer to it.

But then I was like, maybe I don't. Abigail writes, Dear John and Hank, what goes between all your organs and stuff, other than muscles and blood vessels? Like, what makes up all that empty space? Is it just water?

Or air? Yeah, but I would go. Yeah, but I would go. Yeah, but I would go.

Yeah, but I would go. Yeah, yeah, but I would go. Abigail. I like it too.

I like it too. Yeah, but I would go. Words are fun. John, this is this is so so various.

Now there's no air. I can tell you that. And it's not really just water either, though everything's water everywhere in your body. Right.

Sometimes you hear like that somebody like it stabbed or shot and missed all their vital organs. Yeah. And I'm like, how? Like it like from if you're torso, if you're in the torso, it's all vital organs.

Yeah, they're really they really are pretty much stacked on top of each other, right? I mean, I guess, yeah, they stack on top, they bump right up against each other. I guess if you went like a quarter inch in like halfway between my bottom rib and my hip, you might not get anything super important, because it's mostly subcutaneous fat there. Yeah, yeah, there's not definitely like fatty areas where you can sort of go through the edge.

Right. But it is hard for me to imagine no vital organs in the middle there because yeah, it's all it's all like, it's all pushed together. It's actually quite crowded in there because the intestines occupy a lot of space. The liver is quite large.

There's there's not a ton of room. Yeah. Bodies are very weird and we are not good at picturing them because like, usually we either see skeletons which are empty. And so we think like, oh, like there must be a certain level of emptiness.

Or we see these diagrams that are like the livers here and the stomachs here. But those usually aren't three-dimensional. So it's a little hard sometimes for me to get in the same way that like when I watch two-dimensional video of microorganisms, it's a little hard for me to understand that they're three-dimensional. It's a little hard for me to picture the internal organs three-dimensional sometimes.

Yeah, like if you put your hands right under your pecs. That's about where your liver starts. And that's weird because it's also where your lungs lungs are. And the diaphragm is the bunch of stuff happening there.

Your liver is like sitting over your, yeah. But anyway, so so one, yes, not there isn't much space. It's all going to cram together. Two, there is kind of space and there is a conversation ongoing in anatomy, the anatomy world right now about what exactly to call that space.

And we just haven't been good at understanding it or knowing sort of kind of what it's made of. And so we've started to call it the interstition. Oh, I like that. Some people sort of call it another organ.

So like the way your skin is an organ and it's all over. There's also this interstition, which is all over the place. But it's just like the, it's a network of collagen fibers with, you know, it seems to have some immune system function. So it's got like some immune cells in it.

And then it has pockets of water. And the primary purpose of the interstition might be just so like when you jump, you're like your organs don't get bruised. So it's like a little network of rubber bands that are around everything so that when stuff jostles around, it doesn't jostle around too much. Sort of little like egg holders.

Yeah, just to just act like one of those foam crates that you put like camera equipment in, except very, very small and thin. Careful. And so it packs everything in perfectly. I find bodies very weird as we've discussed many times before.

Like it's very weird that, you know, we have consciousness and yet we are also like just a series of chemical reactions. It's pretty hard to get my head around. In fact, much of the Anthropocene Reviewed book is about me trying to grapple with the fact that I'm at once conscious and unconscious that I'm like both a human being with a soul and a series of chemical reactions trying to sustain a departure from chemical equilibrium. It's hard to like get your head around all that that entails.

But there is nothing that is weirder to me than the fact that there is a tube that goes from my mouth to my butt. And that tube takes food and gets rid of most of it, but then uses some of it to do all of the stuff that it does. Yeah. Yeah, that's weird.

I think the weirder part is that a person can do that and with that they can make another person that also has a tube. Right. That is weird. But that is very the whole the whole thing.

I feel like if we pitched Earth life to other aliens, to like other sentient beings, they would be like, that is wild. I can't believe you all weren't able to do that. That's an incredible accomplishment. Yeah.

And I'm sure we'll look at them and think the same thing. We'll be like, wow, hot mercury for your blood. Whoa. Wouldn't have thought of that.

Yeah. Speaking of words, that's a surprise. Stay away from us. Hank, if you had to like pitch the essence of humanity, oh God, two aliens.

I realize you wrote two books about this. But if you had to pitch the essence of humanity to aliens, what would you say? I think I know what I would say. So if you want, I can start and then you can use that time to come up with your own answer.

I mean, I've got an idea, but maybe you should go first. I would say there was this disease called smallpox that was the deadliest disease for many thousands of years for many groups of people. And we are species developed a way to prevent that disease that became so successful that we eventually eliminated that disease from the entire species and the entire our entire world. So that's that's one thing I need you to know.

And then the other thing I need you to know is that after the way of eliminating that disease became safe and effective and inexpensive to produce 300 million of our kind still died of it. Yeah, which was a big big percentage of us. Yes. Just for clarity.

There weren't like three trillion of us when that happened. No. So so like that, that is my summary of humanity. That's good.

I like that. I of course was going much more mechanical than a story. So my mechanical version is just we transmit information very quickly between each other. And that allows us to feel as if we are individuals, but act as a collective.

I like that very much. Even though we don't even know that we're acting as a collective oftentimes to the point where it allows us to do absolutely ludicrous things like allow 300 million people to die when it was not necessary. Yeah, like that's both our strength and our monstrosity. Yeah.

All right. Here's another question. All right, great. Man, this the vibe of this podcast is all over the place.

But you know what my vibe right now is all over the place. So this is great. Yeah. Julie asks, Dear John and Hank, why are advertisements on podcasts done so much differently than on TV and radio?

Why are the podcast responsible for writing the ad for their sponsor instead of the sponsor providing a prerecorded ad? Stay unruly, Julie. Well, I mean, to pull the curtain back on that, it's because it's more effective for the advertiser. Now, that also means that it's a bigger responsibility for the podcaster to choose who you are willing to work with to make and to some extent, not guarantee because like, can you ever guarantee, but try to guarantee that it's a good company that provides a good service.

Because like, it is to some extent based on the relationship. And that's a little bit what the advertisers paying for, right? Yeah. And that actually does have its roots in radio.

So in radio, there would be long time, like decades long sponsors of particular radio shows, particular hosts or creators on radio. And those hosts would read the ads in their own words and would talk about their own experiences using the products. And that made those kinds of radio ads much more effective than standard radio ads and also more expensive. And so that's the reason.

Now, there are still lots of podcast ads that are canned reads or nonhost reads that they tend to be less valuable to the advertiser. And so they tend to be less expensive. But Hank has identified exactly the thing, which is that when I am watching, say, soccer on TV, I never think to myself, oh, the host of this soccer show is endorsing my use of this particular brand of whiskey. And so television ads can get away with all kinds of absolute insanity that podcast ads could never get away with.

Like at the moment, there's a television ad for a brand I like called Subaru, which basically makes the case that Subaru makes your kids safer than any other car. And it makes this case by imagining a horrible car accident that your child survived because they were in a Subaru. And if I said that on this podcast, if I said an ad that was like, your child will be less likely to die in a Subaru, people would be like, well, one, that's a lie. Because it is.

And two, what a horrible manipulative way to try to sell something, which it is. And so I think there are big downsides to both kinds of advertising is what I'm right. Right. Right.

Right. That like, you know, the fact that we get to do it in our way, both is kind of more valuable. And so that's also means that something that we have to be more conscious of. And so we have to do it in our way.

Right. And so there's a lot, in fact, probably most advertising opportunities we turn down because we don't want to say some version of something that we think is like fundamentally untrue. Yeah. So we hear a lot from creator friends that it's really frustrating for them that, you know, TV ads are judged on a different scale.

And I feel that frustration sometimes. But I also think like it's, it's good to ask advertisers to be more thoughtful and conscientious in their messaging. Like, I think ultimately that's helpful. Yeah.

I mean, that is that is the world that it would be better if we were all in. Look, I think Hank and I are both deep down, somewhat ambivalent about an advertising funded internet or an advertising funded creator scape. Yeah, just advertising in general. Like the thing that I worry about creating artificial wants and desires and inadequacies in people.

Like I think that that's a lot of what advertising does. But it's nice to be able to control that. And when there's something that I feel like is doing that to just say like, I won't do that or and do it differently or just not work with them. Yeah.

And I think it's good that audiences are also holding creators to account on that front. Yeah. I think the next step for all of us is to also hold corporations to account for creating this creating needs where none exist. Yeah.

John, we have another question. This one's from Maggie. It's important because we're gonna be talking about it later in the podcast. Hey, Hank and John, I have been listening to the podcast for quite some time and I love everything about it.

Well, everything, but whenever John talks about everything about it, whatever John talks about it, whatever John talks about it, it's a world in being in the relegation zone, I get confused. Oh, yeah. Like it's a place that is bad enough that you get relegated. But what is a relegation zone?

I don't know sports Maggie. All right, Maggie. So right now, AFC Wimbledon play in the third tier of English football. There's like the Premier League where like Liverpool and Manchester United and Arsenal play.

And then there's the championship, which is the second division. And then below that, there is it's hopefully known as League one, the third division of English football. And below that, the fourth division is hopefully known as League two. It's not your fault, Maggie, that this seems complicated.

It is a really dumb system. They should name them League one, two, three, and four, and that would make it so much easier. But anyway, the best teams from League one, the three best teams go up to the championship. And so that means that every year, the three worst teams go down a league and different number of teams are relegated or promoted from different leagues, which also makes it confusing.

But but basically what it boils down to is the worst teams in a division get demoted to the division below that's called relegation and the best teams get promoted up that's called promotion. And when somebody says the relegation zone, that means that AFC Wimbledon is currently occupying in the case of League one, one of the four bottom spots in the league. And at the end of the season, those four teams at the bottom go down to the fourth division of English football, which in England is the bottom tier that is still considered professional. And so you really don't want to get relegated.

It's a painful experience. Lots of clubs don't recover well from relegation. And so it's possible to get relegated in a quick series of cycles and pretty soon you're out of out of professional football altogether clubs. So there are real stakes involved.

It's not just playing for pride, which is mostly what it is in the US. So you don't want to get relegated. Wow. So basically the relegation zone is if you are in that zone and like if we just said, okay, the season ends today, you would get relegated.

Yeah. And indeed, if the day was the last. That is exactly what happened last year, weirdly, because those two get resulted in the rest of the season getting canceled in the lower tiers of English football, which resulted in the teams that were at the bottom when the last game happened getting relegated. Wow.

And so this season, we will be able to finish the season and the bottom four teams will be relegated. And AFC Wimbledon will not be one of them. They have some of them have never relegated. Not relegated since 3.4 morning in 2002, six promotions, zero relegations.

How do they pull that rabbit out of the hat year after year after year? At this point, it's like they're pulling a hat out of a rabbit. It's even more amazing, which reminds me of this podcast is brought to you by the relegation zone. The relegation zone, they just are tired of everybody saying nasty things about them.

And they just like to have a little bit of a PR campaign. And so this is part of that. And I just want to say, hey, we exist. I know that it's no fun to be here, but like, not being so mean.

Yeah, we're what makes football interesting regardless of whether your team is good, the relegation zone. You hate us, but you wouldn't want to live without us. Today's podcast is also brought to you by something else that I don't like, but wouldn't want to live without the five star scale, the five star scale, absurd, and not that helpful. And yet at the same time, ultimately indispensable, like too much of modern life.

This podcast is also brought to you by the interstitium. The interstitium, it's possibly an organ in your body that just cushions all your stuff. And today's podcast is brought to you by one last thing that is indispensable. And yet my life might be better if it didn't exist.

Bags of chips. Yeah, I'm so delicious. We have a product for awesome message, John. It's from Griffin to Lucas.

Lukey. Oh gosh, Griffin. Is Lukey okay with this? Sorry.

It's from Griffin to Lucas, who is Griffin's brother? Lukey sharing this past year with you has been so much fun from ping pong to smash brothers to lightning in the driveway, spending time with you is always when I'm at my happiest, keeping you because you're doing an awesome job, best of luck at college in the fall, and make sure to pack some graham crackers in case I decide to tag along in your backpack. Love, Griffin. Oh, that's so, so sweet.

And also, that's just the best it is. I don't want to speak for Lucas, but I can tell you from the experience of being the older brother that there is very little in the world that means more than having your little brother like you. Well, now you made it even sweeter. This episode of your Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.

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Well, then let's turn our attention to a question about Mars from Q who writes Dear John and Hank, I work in an elementary school and during our announcements this morning, the fun fact was that Mars has blue sunsets. Is this true or is this just like a fun thing to say to five-year-olds? It is true. Mars.

Yeah, Mars has blue sunsets. Whoa. Does it have like red daytimes? It has sort of a brown daytimes.

So like if you look up at the sky, the sky looks just sort of brown. Yeah. And also like Mars doesn't have a lot of clouds. It just has dust in the sky.

So occasionally we'll have clouds and I'm sure that those sunsets would be a little bit more impressive. But as we all who everyone who's enjoyed a sunset knows, the clouds are kind of what make it. Yeah. And so when you hear a blue sunset, you might be picturing something that is not exactly what you'd be seeing as the blue sunset on Mars.

But because of the way that dust is scattered or the light is scattered by the dust, it makes it sort of like almost the color of our sky, sort of a light sky blue in the sunset area. Now the sun is smaller, the sun is dimmer, and everything else is sort of like a brownish-tope kind of color. But it's lovely to think that Martians of the future might look up at the sky and think this is what I've read that Earth Daytime kind of looks like. Yeah.

Sort of like a dusky, dusky Earth day. Yeah. Do you think there will ever be anyone who lives their entire lives on Mars and has to like fully imagine Earth life? Oh yeah.

I mean, if all goes according to plan, like we've got kind of two options. Yeah. Yeah. I think probably someday.

I wonder at the physical, like how the physical sort of movement off Earth will go. I think there's a lot of people who have lots of thoughts about it. You know, obviously Moon is very close. That is very nice.

You can get there in a few days. Mars is very much not that way. But Mars has a lot of other things to recommend it, specifically the gravity, which is not Earth-like, but definitely more not going to kill you than basically that sort of floating around at the Moon gets you. Wait, you're going to die earlier with that Moon gravity?

Well, you, well, I mean, I don't know actually. We don't know for sure because what we do- We never had anybody on the Moon for like two years. You couldn't come back. Oh, it'd be too squishy.

Yeah. So if you spend too much time on the Moon, you basically will not be able to come back to Earth. Really? Is that true?

That's really that long. Yeah. Because why? Yeah, because your bones, your bones won't be dense enough.

You're like your physiology changes. Oh, man. I do not want to go to the Moon. No, I mean, I do.

I'd like to go to the Moon briefly and as the 85,000 person more more. Yeah. Who's gone to the Moon? Like I would like there to be a Denny's when I get there.

Hank is ready to go to the Moon on the day there is a Denny's. I love it. If Denny's is listening, yeah, when you open up the first Denny's on the Moon, here's Hank Green. It's 2021.

Can you believe this? Predicting Moon Denny's? Here I am. Predicting Moon Denny's.

And I'm just saying I will be happy to cut the ribbit and be your spokesperson for Moon Denny's. I would love some Moon eggs. I went out there like dehydrated, I guess, and then rehydrated. Well, no, I bet you that they are definitely not made by an animal.

Yeah, I can't imagine Moon chickens doing very well. Just way too much way too many resources, mostly. We got to figure out a different way. Oh, I mean, I can barely manage to feed the five Earth chickens that I have right here in my backyard, let alone try to deal with getting their food to the Moon.

I can barely get their food to the coop. Yeah. And they're just breathing on carbon dioxide all the time. You don't want that.

Yeah. Hank, can I tell you the thing about our chickens? Sure. And they're really technically mom and dad's chickens, but I claim them.

Okay. Two of our chickens are named, they're called the Ball Sisters, and they're named Puffball and Fireball Junior. Cute. And I really love that Fireball Junior is named Fireball Junior because there is no Fireball Senior.

There was no like original Fireball. We went straight to Fireball Junior. Well, what about Willie? But they don't know about that.

They don't know that Willie's British name was Cara Wilson Roberts. They don't know any of that. Okay. They weird.

Just called him Puffball and Fireball Junior. That makes it even weirder. Yeah, very cute. Very cute.

Love it. Kids and chickens, man. It's adorable. I played tag this weekend with a seven year old.

And oh, yeah. No, they can run. Yeah, they can make, they can make a, they can juke, you know, they can make their fast. They're fast.

They're fast. They can, yes. And I thought I could do that. I was like, I've seen how you move.

I could move that way, but I have much more mass. And so my legs did not, my foot did not stay stuck to the ground. Oh, it's serious. I went down the hill and I have a butt bruise.

You get to the point very quickly where they can do things and my shoulder hurts. You just can't do. You start out letting them win and then they just eat you. Yeah, that kid can ski.

I'm like, Oh my God, what's my son going to be able to ski? I'm terrified. I can't ski. I'm never going to win out of skiing.

I went skiing once. No, we're way too old or we're brittle. I went skiing once. And it was a bad experience.

I didn't enjoy any part of it. Yeah, our ligaments are weak and not stretchy anymore. No, I mean, you know, I'm on the other side of the mountain in every way. Hey, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, which this week actually is important.

Audrey, Kristi and Marshall came together to write an email. They had to use all three of them to write the following email. Dear Hank and John, my parents and I love listening when we eat dinner and we have questions. I think this is such an interesting question, Hank, and I don't know the answer to it.

I don't even know if there is an answer. In your Wimbledon and Mars spectacular, Hank said that the Mars helicopter that got pooped out of the Perseverance rover weighed four pounds. Now hold up. Is this Earth pounds or Mars pounds?

I think it's, I think it's Earth pounds. But weight is different, right? Like, yeah. So you would, you would weigh, correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not, I'm not great at math or this, but you would weigh less on Mars, right?

Correct. Like a third. So it's not a four pound helicopter because it's not on Earth. It's a three pound helicopter.

I know. Well, but this is the thing because we don't have a unit in America for mass. So if you say kilograms, that's not, that's the same. Wait, no, on Mars and Earth.

No, no, why? Because kilograms is, because kilograms is relative to a standard mass. So if you took the standard mass to Mars, it would weigh, you know, a third less and so everything. So, so mass is, is actually defined by the number of atoms in a thing and how much each of those atoms, like how massive each one of those atoms is.

Whereas pounds is just how old fashioned American, yeah, slash English way of weighing that's relative to nothing. Because why should it be? Yeah. So you need to stop saying that it weighs four pounds and start either saying that it weighs three Mars, three Mars pounds or speak of it only in kilograms.

Yeah, the thing would be to speak of it only in kilograms, but we don't get to do that because no one knows what that means, including me. I don't like, I don't know, kilograms are it's a two, it's two point two, heavier or lighter. Yeah, it's heavier. Well, and the problem is that kilometers are shorter, but kilograms are heavier.

I'm like, pick up, pick a side. I think you just say, there is a two kilogram or four Earth pounds or three Mars pounds. I think you got to say the whole thing every time you're talking about the helicopter. Yeah.

And Hank, that brings us at last to the news from AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon, after spending almost all season in the earlier defined relegation zone, recently exited the relegation zone and found themselves needing either a win or the other teams to draw or lose in order to secure safety and have another season in the third tier of English football over the weekend. Now, Hank, as I've previously discussed, since May of 2017, four long years, since May of 2017, AFC Wimbledon have played one, a one singular one game when they were not at risk of relegation, one in four years until this weekend when we will play a second. How do you this weekend?

We have we have ensured that we are not going to be relegated and this weekend we will play Lincoln City and I don't care if we lose by 70 million goals. Doesn't matter. Jon, how do you get to not having this be the thing over and over again? Well, are you glad you're talking about how to make it stay all like tense for the podcast?

No. You're just trying to make a good movie here? No, I have repeatedly requested that Wimbledon do better. It is much less stressful for everyone if we don't spend all season at the very bottom of the table and then with six weeks left decide to get good.

I think that this is a bad strategy and I would like to change it. And on that front, I have to say, so we lost this weekend, we lost to Portsmouth, we lost three to one. It didn't matter because the other teams that were below us also lost and thereby ensure their relegation. So after the end of the game, the Wimbledon players found out that they had survived and this is a huge accomplishment.

I mean, we have one of the smallest budgets in the league every year. Somehow we found a way to survive and it's a big accomplishment and I would like you should celebrate a big accomplishment. But interestingly, our new amazing coach who is the reason this happened, Mark Robinson, was like, no, we're not going to celebrate because that's a small club mentality. Like all these all these things that we're celebrating, like we don't need to celebrate not getting relegated.

We need to look to the future and be in a stronger position and have a different mentality about the kind of club we are and the kind of expectations that we have around here. And I'll tell you privately, I celebrated not getting relegated. Just don't tell Mark Robinson, but I cried, I screamed, I jumped up and down, but I absolutely agree with him that we need to not have a small club mentality and we need to be in a different position next year. And I mean, we'll see, but I wouldn't put anything past Mark Robinson with him.

Everything seems possible. So maybe we will finish 15. I mean, if you could do as well as you did during his tenure at the end of the season, for the whole season, you'd be a solid middle of the road team or maybe even like on the edge of the playoffs, like on the edge. Okay.

All right. But here's that's ambitious. Here's the true fan coming out, the kind of fan who's like, I think we can, I think we could pull this off. I think we could be a Premier League team.

We're two years away from being in the Premier League. Admittedly, it would be two very weird years. But which a lot of other teams get a lot worse. Yeah, I feel like like all of English soccer would have to kind of collapse under the weight of its own massive debt in order for us to fight ourselves back in the Premier League.

But anything is possible. And right now it really does. It's just such a huge, huge relief. I cannot wait to watch this game on Saturday and not have to worry about whether we're going to be relegated for only the second time in four years.

So we're like, I can't wait. The only downside is that it does look very, at this point, it looks beyond likely that we will be saying goodbye to our Tyler's manic number one goal scorer, Joe Pickett. He looks to be headed, I mean, hopefully for him headed to the Premier League. And obviously I would never begrudge somebody taking that opportunity.

But yeah, that's the only downside. Everything else is golden. What's the news for Mars? Well, ingenuity helicopter continues to do all kinds of cool stuff.

It's had its fourth flight after being delayed for a moment. But that moment was very short. It traveled 872 feet, which is the longest trip it's taken. It's flying all over Mars.

It's doing its Mars flying thing. And to the point where, so the original plan was to have a fly, five different flights. It's going to have flights, fifth flight soon. But they're also going to be extended the mission.

So it will have a sixth flight as well. And that's what I'm not even sure what they're going to do. I don't think they're sure what they're going to do with that sixth flight. Yeah, because it wasn't planned.

Now, one of the problems that we might run into here is that ingenuity will live long enough that will be kind of like, well, we did everything we intended to do with you. And you haven't broken yet. Yeah. So what do we do?

Flour for the sunset. The only new style fly off over the horizon. And we never know where you end up, for sure. Yeah.

So so it looks like I probably not what they will do. They'll probably land it so that it will be nice and preserved for future museums. But come on, what about the metaphorical residents of us never quite knowing how it ended up? I just fly towards the sun like Icarus and see how far you get ingenuity.

Yeah, maybe you'll fly to the back to earth. Maybe. Probably not. Maybe?

Probably not. So what's happening is in August, they are going to have to stop flying ingenuity around because they have to prepare for what's called the solar conjunction, which is when Mars and Earth have the sun in between them. And when Mars and Earth have the sun in between them, we can't talk to any of our equipment there. And so it's sort of like a scary crunch time to make sure everything's ready for solar conjunction.

So before in August, because solar conjunction is in mid-October, they're going to stop working on ingenuity and just focus on perseverance's mission, which is obviously much more has much more robust scientific equipment on it than a four pound three pound. Three pound. Three pound. Three Mars pounds.

It's like two point seven Mars pounds. You're doing weird math regardless. It's less than that. Hold on.

Hold on a second. I'm going to do some math right now. I think it's like 2.64 Mars pounds. Oh, you didn't mean a third.

You meant one third of 1.33 Mars pounds. I thought you meant like discount it by a third. Not it's not discounted by 67%. 1.33 Mars pounds.

That's sorry. It's one to be clear. It's a one and a half pound helicopter. It used to be a four pound helicopter, but now it is a one and a half pound helicopter.

Yeah, which is part of the reason it's able to fly because there's like basically, you know, there's obviously some air. It's like 1% of Earth air and helicopter blades have to be pushing against something. And he couldn't couldn't do it if it was as heavy as it is on Earth. You have much bigger blades.

But luckily, it's only a 1.3 pound helicopter now. So anyway, that that will be the total length. Now, it could end before that if the solar panels get dusty or something, but we are in a good situation with ingenuity and we're in a good situation for the variants. Both of those missions are ongoing, but it's just a little bit like kind of trying to decide which mission we want to concentrate on, and we kind of can't do both at the same time effectively because we can't send the data over and also it just takes a lot of mission specialist time to be focusing on the helicopter and not diversity.

Well, I have to say I have watched some of these helicopter flights and they are wondrous to behold. I mean, it is very strange and beautiful to think that we are flying a remote control helicopter on Mars. Like that is mind-wowing. If you told my 10 year old self about that, he would have been like, wow, what?

Where are the flying cars? That would have been his next question. Cool. We've got bad news about the flying cars, little John.

Didn't happen for us. I mean, you will, John, not actual, little John. Although I'm sure he's also disappointed. John, thank you for making a podcast with me.

I had a good time. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Manishitz produced by Rosie on a horse road, I'm sure. And Gibson, our communication coordinator is Julia Bloom, our editorial assistant is Deboki Shrockravarti, the music you're hearing now, and the beginning of the podcast with by the great Gunnarolla, and as they say in our home town, don't forget to be awesome.