292: AlienzBop

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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 prefer to think of the Dear John and Hank?

It's our podcast where two brothers answer your questions giving me a surprise from bringing you all the weeks news from both Mars and AF Zuimald and John. Yep. I got a copy of your book but it's a special copy of your book. It's about same width as all of your other books but it's about eight times taller.

And I got it so I can walk around and people can ask me about it and then I can say it's a long story. And that's my joke. It's a real high quality joke and thanks for bringing that to the podcast. I'll take any form of Anthropocene Reviewed advertisement you want to deliver and so I accept it and I embrace it and I'm grateful for it.

And thanks to everybody for their incredibly kind responses to the Anthropocene Reviewed book. I'm so glad that it's out in the world and that the reviews have been so lovely and I'm also just honestly hugely relieved. That's the main emotion when you start when people start reading it. You're like okay so you don't, people don't hate this.

Yeah I was also very worried that people were going to meme rate it on a five star scale because it's a book that makes fun of the five star scale. But no people have been, instead have been very nice. In fact it's my highest rated book on Goodreads. So that's nice.

It's nice. It's my best book according to data aggregation systems that I consistently lampooned throughout the book. Yes. Hank, all the stars.

I want to get to. What if instead of counting the average number of stars, we just kind of the total number of stars? That would be great. It would be like this book has seven million stars.

I do kind of do that. Not that many people like it but almost everybody's read it. It's called the Starlet Letter. When I am curious about it, this is like the only way I know of to look and see overall how well a book did is the number of reviews it has on Goodreads.

Which of course is deeply imprecise because there are some authors whose audiences spend a lot of time on Goodreads and some who don't. I don't know that there's a ton of like DaVinci Code readers who are super dedicated to Goodreads. I don't know. There might be but I agree with you that it is not a perfect measure of the popularity of a book but I also inevitably use it and I also occasionally glance at Goodreads to see how people are rating the book.

But I try to remember in that process that it's an inherently ludicrous enterprise to try to distill any reading experience down into a single data point. That said, I can't help myself. I've looked, John, and DaVinci Code only has two million ratings on Goodreads. So merely two million.

It turns out I don't understand why people use this website or who its users are. Now it only has 48,000 reviews which is a very low rating to review rate which makes people a lot of people have gone through and been like, oh yeah I did read that at some point. Right. Because that's apparently what we do as people.

Or even maybe a bunch of people rated it who didn't read it because you don't actually have to pass a pop quiz to to to review. Yeah. That's a good point, John. Hank, before we get to answering questions from our listeners, which I am excited to do, I feel like we need to talk about the sneeze issue.

We've done so many bits on this podcast over the last 17,000 years. And in a way, the podcast, it's just a bunch of bits stitched together into a quilt that makes absolutely no sense. But the sneeze thing has captured the imaginations of not just our listeners, but also of myself more than any other bit ever. You're still thinking about it.

I'm thinking about it. I'll tell you when I think about it, every time I sneeze. Well here's every time I sneeze I think about the bit. And for those of you who didn't listen, it was a question that came in from someone who's allergist, a medical doctor had said, it is not normal to sneeze.

It is never normal to sneeze. I never sneeze. Well, here's a weird thing, John. I also think that I would think about this every time I sneeze.

But I haven't, I don't know that I sneezed. I don't know that I sneezed in the last two weeks. Well, we got to be. I think I might be a non sneezer.

I think I might be a never sneezer just like this. I think it might not be normal to sneeze. Yeah. Like when, yeah, like when have I sneezed.

And then like every other never sneezer, when you do sneeze, you're going to say to yourself, that didn't really happen. And that was a proper sneeze. We got this wonderful email from Jesse writes, dear John and Hank, I'm not sure if this information is useful to you. But here's a data point regarding sneezing.

I sneezed 566 times in 2020. I kept track. Wow. I'm doing it again this year.

And so far, I'm at 190 sneezes in 2021. This tracks well with last year as I have 200 sneezes on June 1st of 2020. I'm a fall allergy person. So it picks up in the second half of the year.

One thing that may skew this data is the fact that I sneezed when I see bright lights. That doesn't skew the data. I think a lot of people sneeze when they see bright lights. That is the kind of high quality data driven email that I love to receive.

Thank you, Jess, for confirming that at least for this person, it is normal to sneeze up to 566 times in a single calendar year. John, there is a possibility that I think is unexamined here, which is that the doctor who thinks that sneezing isn't normal. Yeah. Is it denying their own sneezes?

Isn't confused about what a sneeze is, but just as very forgetful. Because like, do you remember your sneezes? I don't remember. I do now because every single time I sneeze, I think of a doctor somewhere saying sneezing isn't normal.

I never sneezed. It's the absolutism, the certainty that I find so shocking. I never sneeze. I would have thought that that sentence had never been spoken in human history.

John, we also got an email from Missy about a related question. It was a dear Hank and John. I just listened to the episode you guys were talking about. A doctor said it wasn't normal to sneeze.

I have a rare condition that makes me unable to burp. And whenever I tell people that I know someone who has that, they try to catch me burping when no one is looking, which doesn't happen because I have a condition that makes me unable to burp. I just wanted to tell you guys that. But I guess that I do have a question.

So do you guys burp? That's not really normal if you do. Missy. Yeah, maybe the doctor has a condition whereby the doctor can't sneeze.

Doesn't know that they are the one that has the problem. Exactly. Exactly. And so like pursuit of career as an allergist because they grew up not sneezing and what is wrong with all of you.

Look at his sneezy world and just being like, oh, I've got to treat this epidemic of sneezing that I see everywhere except in my own life. So that's a condition I had a friend who never burped and I was like, hey, he was like, I just don't. I refuse to. He wouldn't burp even though he could.

Oh, and I guess he just farted more? I guess. Like it does get out eventually the other way if you don't burp because it is a thing that does happen where people don't recamp burp and the swab would air goes up the butt. I burp a lot.

So me too. There you go. Everybody's different. I burp less now that I've stopped drinking soda.

I bet. It's kind of a bummer because I do love that soda burp. Yeah. Well, all I know for sure is that sneezing is never normal, never ever ever.

Yeah. And that for the rest of my life, whenever I sneeze, I will imagine a person in a white lab coat saying to an actual patient of theirs, sneezing is never normal. I never sneeze. Same with pooping, by the way.

Not normal. Never normal. Never normal. Never normal.

It's always like the doctor being like, you shouldn't have a body. Body is disgusting. Having a body is not normal. You should be a disembodied mind.

It's like, so there's the thing your body is perfectly able to do causes no problems, but it is a huge problem. Yeah. John, I have a question that is very definitely for you and I am excited by it though. I don't know.

I don't know ultimately that we will reach satisfaction. It's from Monica who asks Dear Hank and John. I just saw a vintage ad that read, try Dr. Pepper Hot.

Oh, yeah. Now, I have never once considered drinking soda pop hot. Were there others sodas that encouraged this type of behavior? More importantly, have either of you ever drink Dr.

Pepper at diet or otherwise hot, if not, can you and report back? Thank you. A little bit of Monica. First of all, for a second, I thought this was a variety of Dr.

Pepper that was spicy. No, no. So this is a thing that long time Dr. Pepper, CEO, Foot's Clemens was obsessed with.

So he would notice that how when was he CEO for like 40 years until but no longer the 80s? No, he's currently deceased. And with his Dr. Pepper money founded the Dr.

Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute, which is a museum devoted both to the history of Dr. Pepper and the importance of free market economics. But anyway, Foot's Clemens noticed that sales of Dr. Pepper would dip in the winter because people don't need as much of an ice cold refreshing drink, especially in the South and for a long time, Dr.

Pepper was a mostly regional phenomenon. And so he was like, all these people are out here drinking hot tea and hot cider and hot chocolate. We need to be selling hot Dr. Pepper.

Now that you put it this way, and this is Dr. Pepper that you put into a kettle, and it's actually, I have had it, it tastes like hot Dr. Pepper. It doesn't have much in the way of bubbles.

So that's a weird taste profile. But I mean, hot cider also doesn't have much in the way of bubbles and is sweet and a little gross. And it has done fairly well over the centuries. And so he really tried to make hot Dr.

Pepper happen. And of course it didn't happen because one thing Americans don't really want is hot Dr. Pepper. You know, like, advertising can create a market for a lot of things, but it cannot really create a market for flat hot Dr.

Pepper. Did you try it with a lemon slice? Because they've all got lemon slices. Every picture I'm seeing has a lemon slice on top.

Yeah. So like Foot's Clemens drank hot Dr. Pepper all the time with a lemon slice. And he said it was better than tea.

And his concept was that like the place that tea had in the American South would become a place that Dr. Pepper had. I mean, that's it. Summer and hot hot Dr.

Pepper in the winter. It's worth taking the risk on that. Like if you can become the new tea, become the new tea. Yeah, I know.

But you could. But as often happens in the world of a free market, Hank, the people said, no, I tried it and I don't want it. Oh, man, I, I, there are so much there. There are times I have seen where the leader of the organization says this is going to be huge.

And everyone says you are wrong. And they say, I am the visionary. That is my job. And then they are wrong.

And it's like, well, I mean, it was their job to be the visionary. Yeah. We're just wrong. Yeah.

And to be fair, like Foot's Clemens continued to lead Dr. Pepper to greater and greater heights. And today it is the only major American soda that exists in the field of the Pepsi and Coca-Cola Corporation. So like he succeeded in a way.

It just, he didn't succeed with hot Dr. Pepper. I've wanted for a while to make a Vlogbrothers video where I try like regional weird mixes of drinks. Like in some places they put salted peanuts in their coke.

Yeah. And and like a hot Dr. Pepper would be fun. I think you should do so.

I think I'm gonna do that sometime. It's sort of like very 2014 vibes of like YouTube. But like, I like that era. Me too.

By the way, if you want to learn much more about the history of Dr. Pepper and the astonishing life of Foot's Clemens and the Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute, check out my book, The Anthropocene Reviewed, which can be chapped around Dr. Pepper.

Does it include the stuff about hot Dr. Pepper? No, I wrote a bunch of it, but I cut it because I was like, this is not relevant to the overall argument of the piece. One of the pleasures of writing the Anthropocene Review book was writing like an extra, you know, 110,000 words that didn't go into the book.

That's like my favorite part of writing in general, cutting. John, I've got another question that I feel like you will be good at answering. It's from Jesse who asks Dear Hank and John, what are mausoleums for? I've always thought they were either tombs or fancy garden sheds for cemetery upkeep.

Jesse, which one of those is it, John? I mean, all about graves. I think it's mostly tombs, but now that you mentioned that it seems plausible to me, like if you've got to have a rake somewhere, why not have it in like a fake mausoleum? Nobody's going to look that closely.

It's true. It's true. Have the grandkeeping thing just look like, except that that's like more expensive than a normal shed, I'd imagine. Yeah.

Yeah, that might be an issue. How do you so I've always kind of wondered, can you get into a mausoleum? Depends on the mausoleum. Someone from our public to anyone?

Yeah, a lot of them have doors and then like a tiny little bench thing on the inside, if you really want to sit up close to the graves. But I mean, I've always felt like that's for family. Sure. In fact, Sarah and I were just walking through Crown Hill Cemetery, my favorite cemetery in America, home to more dead vice presidents than any other location on earth.

And we went on a walk there on our anniversary because that's kind of party we enjoy. And we came to the mausoleum of Eli Lilly, the drug company executive. Yeah, sure. I thought that was two people.

I thought there was an Eli in a Lilly. No, no, no, there's just one Colonel Eli Lilly. A lot of people named him just after their last name, not Eli. Yeah.

Yeah. So he was like, take the whole thing. Right. So the Eli Lilly mausoleum was erected by his widow and it has like a few tombs in it, I guess.

But it was really lovely. There was something about it I really liked, which is that most of the time mausoleums are like, so and so lived from such and such, such and such beloved father and founder of the Eli Lilly company or whatever. But this one was much more personal than that. It was I erected this mausoleum in loving memory of and then the people.

And I was like, that's so much better to acknowledge the perspective and place of the mourner who is actually the person that the mausoleum exists for in the end. It's not really about the dead person. It's really about the people who want to have a place to come and visit and think about their loved ones. And I just thought that was really lovely.

So yeah, I like I like a mausoleum. For the record, I personally, as you know, Hank, do not particularly want a mausoleum. Although it's not about me, it's about it's about whoever comes after whoever. You know, it's not the main thing that I want, of course, is to be buried just above James Woodcomriley at the top of Crown Hill.

Oh, God. Do you know why it's called a mausoleum? I don't because there was a guy. His name was Mausolos and he died and he was a king.

And I think probably Greece sounds great. Sounds great. Yes. And and and his wife and sister, not two different people, built a really big building for him.

And then it fell over. Oh, so I erected this mausoleum in honor of my husband and brother. Yeah. Mausolos.

And it was so big that everybody was like, wow, any grand structure that contains a tomb will be called a mausoleum. And now they tend to contain more than one. But the original one was just him. It was just mausoleum by himself.

And now there is a ruin that you can go and see, but it did fall over and earthquake. And to be fair, they will and to be fair, they will all fall over because such is the nature of time. Yeah, I mean, the nice thing about the way they built the pyramid is it's hard for them to fall over and can't really fall over, but they can't erode away slowly. Yeah, something's still gonna happen to them eventually.

Yeah. I think all the time there's like a giant M on the mountain here, which is the thing we do in western states or maybe other places to, I don't know. There's a giant concrete M on the side of the mountain. And I go up there because it's like a hike that everybody does.

And you can see that as time has gone on, like the front of the M is like eroding away. And I'm like, eventually this M's gonna fall down the mountain. Yeah. Like it's just gonna, it's like, if we did nothing, it would just slowly fall down and break into a bunch of little pieces.

And even like now, if you're when you're hiking up, you can, you like start to see little painted pieces of cement as you're getting close to the M because they're already falling off. Right. And yeah, human time scales are so weird compared to geologic time scales. Like the other day we were driving in the car listening to the Indy 500 qualifying and the announcer mentioned that it was the 105th or whatever running of the Indy 500.

And in the back, Alice was like, do you think they're gonna have like 500 runnings of the Indy 500? And I was like, probably not, you know, like, but it's a great question. Yeah. And I think that like, you know, the most likely outcome is that people lose interest in the sport, which happens.

Yeah, it happens. I mean, yeah, like there used to be like, you know, like a chariot races and those aren't big anymore. No, no, we could we could be having our like 2200 consecutive Roman chariot race. Yeah.

But we aren't. So yeah, what's the longest running sports tournament? It's got it. Can I make a guess?

Yeah. The Kentucky Derby. The Kentucky Derby is close. Okay.

What is it? And I don't like, I don't buy this, honestly. So this, I've looked this up. I don't buy it because all of these things are like in England or America.

So I'm like, you probably missing. So you probably got a narrow focus. Right. But the year first awarded for the Carlisle Bells was 1599.

And the Carlisle Bell is a horse race in Carlisle, Cumbria, England. Oh, okay. All right. That's a very old sporting event.

That's an old sporting event. So good on them for keeping it going all this time. And I don't know that they've never missed a year. I bet you they've missed some years in that time.

But like, hey, yeah, we'll give it, we'll give it to them. I mean, I hope they've missed some years because I for one like, feel like the year like 1937 to 1945 was not a time to be like, let's all have our horse race here in Carlisle doing some fun horse races. Oh, God. Hank, I want to ask you this question from Edmund who writes here, John and Hank, I'm watching a movie about aliens and it seems to me the perfect step one in a first contact situation would be to present the aliens with a gift to show them that we can be peaceful and that we are willing to share resources.

Okay. Edmund, I don't want to disagree with the premise of your question, but I think that we have shown very little evidence for the fact that we are peaceful and willing to share resources. But I agree that is the version of ourselves that we should try to present to the aliens. What would be the best types of gift and offerings we could provide to the aliens for a first contact meeting?

Alien pumpkins and space penguins, Edmund. Gosh, I really kind of think that anything would be bad. Really? I think that giving a physical gift to an alien might be a little weird because no matter what you're doing, you're going to be trying to sort of embody a lot of different information.

You're not going to be able to do it. So I think like a handshake and a conversation, I think that that is the thing that is the gift that we need to give to each other more often. And well, I don't agree about handshakes. Not specifically the handshake.

Yeah. But the just the openness for connection is the gift because that is that's the thing that's going to be the most important thing. And I say that as if this is coming around the corner, like I've received an embargoed press release, which for clarity, I have not. Well, there's so much energy right now around UFOs and aliens are already here, which I find really interesting.

I don't know if this is going to end up being what I write about, but I'm writing about it now for the Anthropocene Review podcast. I find it really interesting because it happens periodically. It's sort of cyclical. Our fascination with aliens, our belief that aliens are already among us like pops back up.

And I think it's because it has so much explaining power. Like, in the same way that God has a lot of explaining power, like God can explain a lot of things that are difficult for us to understand. And so can aliens. And did you see my tweet?

No, that's wild. Because I tweeted basically this. I said last night I tweeted that the reason I mean, this is now a week ago for you listening, but the reason people like me never think it's aliens is that aliens could explain anything no matter how weird, yes, it's unusual, but completely expected situation where we really don't know what the what WTF is going on defaulting to an explanation that could explain anything is lazy. Well, okay, I agree with the first part of your tweet.

I don't think that it's necessarily lazy. But I do think that it's a shortcut if it's not carefully considered. Right. And it's also a shortcut to say nothing can explain this except aliens or God or anything else that could explain everything.

Right. Well, the thing is that what you say, all the things that could explain everything could explain everything. Yeah, which is a problem. Because as you said, as you have been saying, which I love, we don't know almost everything.

And we it is hard for us to confront that because we don't spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that we don't know almost everything. And so when we encounter something that's like, we really don't get what's going on here, it's just I guess that the problem isn't that it's lazy. It's that it's usually wrong. Because when we are so confused that we're defaulting to an explanation that could explain anything, that means that it's likely that there is something else going on there that's much more specific and that explains just that one thing, not that could explain everything.

Yes, there tend to be very few simple straightforward things that explain lots and lots and lots of stuff. Right. But most things that explain something actually explain one thing. Yes, but occasionally, the thing is occasionally there are simple ideas that have immense explanatory power, like gravity, right?

Yeah, like natural selection, where I was like, oh, wow, wow, wow, wow. Yes, that explains a lot. But with both those examples, because it explained a lot, people were immediately like, oh, I'm going to use it to explain a bunch of other things as well that it doesn't explain. That's totally true.

Yeah, it's wild. And this is this is one of the one of the things that happens most in science, where science gets stuff really wrong, is that there's this extremely powerful new idea. And it is really powerful. And but we're not sure the boundary of its power.

And so we have to over time to redefine the boundary of its power and realize like, oh, actually, this doesn't explain X very well. Yeah, and there are a few, few ways that we can notice that we're doing that while we're doing it before we fully understand that we're doing it. Yeah, like for instance, if it reinforces existing power structures, yeah, I mean, probably wrong. Almost every time we discover something really big and new, we're like, wow, it's amazing how that explains my racism.

Right, right. It does an amazing job of explaining all of the ways that I want to feel about people who are different from me. Gravity less so, but still, like, you know, gravity was so exciting when it was, you know, when the underlying ideas were first being explored in the 17th century that people like Edmund Hayley were like, oh, that probably means that there's another earth inside of earth. And it probably has its own atmosphere.

And it probably has little little people who look up and see our ground as their sky. Oh, God, it's so much fun. I love smart people being wrong, except when it's me, John. I recently someone was weed-wacking out in my alley and I was like, well, that's not too loud.

But now they have turned on a chipper shredder. Oh, and they are feeding trees into it. So I'm not sure if like, this should be, you know, just the sort of real, like bring the real today of the chipper shredder or if we should stop recording because I don't think it's gonna stop anytime soon. No, we should just keep going and people are just going to enjoy hearing a chipper shredder in the background.

Let's bring the real. I have an idea for what we could give aliens other than a handshake and a conversation, which by the way, I think might be the worst thing to give aliens like, who are we going to nominate to have the conversation? I don't trust anyone I would trust to have that conversation. We'd have an election.

Do you like everybody sort of? Oh, yeah, that's how we find the best deal. That's is via a party. God, we never made a we've never got that wrong.

Okay, what's your idea? What's the what's the present? I think it should be a periodic table with little examples of all the elements. I because I think if we gave them a periodic table with little examples of all the elements, we'd basically be saying, this is how far we got.

We're gonna lay it on the table. This is the basics of where we are. I assume since you're visiting us that you made it a little further, and I just want to kind of give you a sense of what we got to. I think so now I'm circling back, and I think that we should probably pick like the best album.

So I think that maybe we should give give them 1998's, Megaphone speaks by Tomahasheenohara, and just let them sort of rock out for a little bit. Be like, I see what you got for me. Okay, look, a lot of you are going to disagree with me about that particular choice, particularly, mostly that no one has any idea what that album is. But I think it's the best album.

Yeah, that's another one I don't want to leave up to popular vote, you know, because like, well, I think we'd end up with BTS, and I think that would be fine. Yeah, we probably wouldn't end up with BTS. Their fans are so well organized, and also their music is good. And I think that would be fine.

Yeah. But that's a really interesting question. And I think you were a tiny bit flippant with it. What would be the actual album you would give to actual aliens?

I don't like I think that I think the instincts to try and like pick very good music is the wrong instinct. I think that it should be like, my first thought is like, kind of go with something that is like broadly respected John Coltrane's love supreme. Exactly. Yeah.

Which is a great album. And I think the aliens would be impressed with John Coltrane. Anybody would be. I think that there's a like, I agree.

But I want I'd want to find something that doesn't require a lot of like institutional knowledge. Like I think that jazz builds on jazz builds on jazz. And so I'd worry about that. Like whereas I might be a little bit more like, if it is just a really classic pop album.

Right. So my argument is that it should be John Coltrane's love supreme. A Hank's argument is that it should be now that's what I call music numbers. Exactly.

I don't know that we could miss by going with one of the now. The peak now that's what I call music era. Yeah. Hank wants to do the he just wants to do the kids, Bob version of Old Town Road.

That's old town road with a great choice. I know Old Town Road is a great song, but clearly you haven't heard the kids Bob version. No, I have heard the kids Bob version for some reason or in latch down to the kids Bob version of uptown funk, which is not great for my mental health. That's perfect.

That's it. That's the one we're settled. We are handing the aliens a compact disc that includes 13 times in a row. The kids Bob version of uptown funk uptown funk is a great song.

I'm sure kids Bob and I know that a lot of kids Bob producers listen to this podcast and so I apologize in advance, but y'all know. I think that will tell the aliens what they really need to know about us, because look, a love supreme would tell the aliens who we want to be. The kids Bob version of uptown funk tells the aliens who we are. One of the great things about it is that whatever you give them becomes like an instant forever like the most iconic object.

It's the most important object of all time. Right. Right. And so for that reason, I think it should probably be a furby made of beans.

That's like if I had a choice, like I don't know, like it's really about it's definitely about the story we're telling about ourselves rather than making a particular impression. And so that's why I'm worried about it because I worry that whatever story we're telling about ourselves is too simplistic and very sort of like narrow inside of a particular culture. So yeah, no, I agree. I would be very worried about giving anyone that responsibility.

No, I got it. I got it. A dog. Yeah, that's a great idea actually.

Like a really, yeah, good dog. The queen loves them. And so we got you a corgi. It's named Max.

Everybody. Yeah, dogs are distributed across the whole earth. People have dogs everywhere. They are good, good fun.

They bring joy and everybody's, you know, they're also ultimately temporary, which might be nice. The other thing about giving a dog to the aliens is that the moment that we like gave Max the corgi to the aliens, Max the corgi would walk up to the aliens and be like, all right. So what do you want to know about these weirdos? I got the lowdown.

We've been tracking them for 250,000 years. They are nuts. I think to a certain extent that the dog might be one of the greatest human inventions. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I would describe it as an invention as such.

But it's certainly one of the greatest human series of choices, which is, yeah, that's wow. Wow. That's a way to look at us. It's one of the oldest best things that we've done.

Yeah, it's older than agriculture and maybe better than agriculture. I don't know if I would say that. I don't know. Agriculture prevents a lot of...

Listen, I'm a big fan of agriculture. I love an economic surface. Believe me. I really love dogs.

They're good. They bring a lot of joy, John. Yeah. John, I love this question.

Question number 29. I don't know what they've turned on in the alley now, but it's something else. So exciting. You never know.

It's from Caitlin who asks, Dear Hank and John, who coined the phrase, coined the phrase? That's so good. Do you know the answer? I don't, but I do have an interesting story to tell about it.

Okay. I do know and it's fascinating. Oh, well, I mean, okay, you go. Tell me what you found because I did research and I found not a definitive answer.

It is very old. The phrase is extremely old and it's at least as old as the Romans and the first time we know of it being used was in reference to Augustus who coined the phrase Son of God in Latin by putting the phrase on a coin with a picture of Julius Caesar. I don't know, man. That might be a folk etymology.

I mean, it's completely made up, but I was really, I was trying to sound confident. Sounds great. Okay. At least it sounded good.

Yeah. Absolutely. It sounds 100% like the kind of thing that you would read by a guy who was like, I bet this was the reason. Right.

Yeah. It does. You're right. I should have.

I should have dug a little deeper because it sounded too much like somebody else made it up and I read it rather than, yeah, you're right. I should. Okay. I'll use that in the future.

My next trick, Hank, is going to be so good. It's going to trick you successfully. But what is what did your research indicate? Because I did none.

Okay. Yeah. So it just seems like coin is a word that we use for create. Oh, so it wasn't, it wasn't really a phrase that was coined because it was just a thing that people would say they would like things would be made.

So pointing for creating goes back to creating coins, which were not what we think of as coins. They were the blanks before you stamp something into them. And that word came from the stamp that you would use to stamp something into them. So neither like the coin was not called the coin, the blank and the stamp were called the coin, but not the final product.

Wow. And that comes from like a word for wedge, which is just like the thing that they used to stamp. But the earliest known use of coin a phrase or coin the phrase was not that long ago, but it was from 1848. And it was the phrase angel of assassination.

Oh, it was the phrase that was coined. It said we had to find a name which should at once convey the enthusiasm of our feelings toward her. And so we would coin a phrase combining the extreme of admiration and horror and the term and term her the angel of assassination. Who so that and that was who's the her?

Do you know who this was? Was Charlotte Cordet? Oh, I don't know who that is. Charlotte Cordet was the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat, who was the man who made the French Revolution more revolutionary.

Yeah, it's just more I think you can stop it more. One of the people who made the French Revolution more. Yeah, he had a one of the bellows and he pushed it at the fire. So this was fascinating.

I read this whole Wikipedia article and the story of how she did it is wild. So she was, you know, she was a minor aristocrat. She did not believe in the actions of the French Revolution and she wanted to kill him. And so she knocked on his door and she said that she had uncovered a plot to there was there was like an uprising happening like a plot to take him and his power structures on.

And he said come in and tell me about it. And she stabbed him in the bath after so he had a skin problem. And so he like went and got in the bath and was like, tell me of this plot against our our against me and our movement while I bathe and she was and she was like, well, it's me stabs that. Wow.

So that's clever. Very clever. She wasn't wrong. She didn't lie.

She was going to tell him about a plot. It's sort of like how in fourth grade this girl asked to be my girlfriend by coming up to my door and saying there's a dead rabbit in the road. And I was like, okay. And then I walked out and there was another girl.

And that girl said this first girl would like to be your girlfriend. And I was like, very, very a little bit like that. Where's the rabbit? And they were like, there is no rabbit.

It was a ruse. And I was like, all right, well, now we're in a relationship, which reminds me that podcast actually brought to you by my fourth grade girlfriend. My fourth grade girlfriend, I'm doing all of us the favor of not naming her podcast is also brought to you by the Chipper Shredder in the alley, the Chipper Shredder in the alley, probably doing some important work that I on the whole approve of. And of course, these podcasts is also brought to you by Dr.

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And I genuinely might get the word sneezing is never normal tattooed on my arm. I can't stop thinking about it. It's the most powerful idea I've ever encountered in my life, right? It is completely overtaken my consciousness all the time.

You know how like after you have like a horrible breakup, everything reminds you of that person. And you're like opening a car door and you think, like, Oh, God, I remember the way that this person opened a car door. I'm like that. But with Dr.

Never Sneezer Scrooge, like, I can't do anything without thinking sneezing is never normal. Okay, the podcast is also brought to you by Artemesia II of Caria, the wife and sister of Mazelos and also his successor ruling in the Hectum Nid Dynasty from 353 BCE to 351 BCE. After that, not a long time. So it's likely that that didn't turn out great.

Oh, the Golden Age. This episode of Dear Hank and John's Brownview by Shampify. 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.

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All right Hank before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC one we have a question from Ivy who writes deerhank I've been wondering you know how water condensates onto glasses of cold water in the summer. Sure. Can that also happen with other things like humans? Can water condensate onto me?

Ivy not the poisonous type. So I thought I spent a lot of time thinking about this John and the answer is yes but in specific circumstances. So if you are outside and you have been outside water water can prop I don't think that water can condense onto you because it's hot out there in a situation where there would be condensation so there's a lot of water in the air because it's warm and humid but you are staying cooler than outside through sweating. And that and that is an evaporative cooling process and so if you are if there's stuff evaporating from your body then water is not condensing onto you because the whole and if you can't evaporate water from your body water is not you have a different problem you have a different problem which is that like you are going to overheat and it has a serious problem but this absolutely can't happen all you have to do is be in a hot humid place and go into a refrigerator or just a very cold room and then leave and water will condense onto your cold hands.

But if you are at I think if you are like acclimated to the outside I don't think it can happen though I am willing to be challenged on this because I thought about it a bunch and it was a bit of a brain teaser and water is weird. All I know is that when I worked at Steak and Shake sometimes I would go into the freezer like at the back of the Steak and Shake and I would just it would just be so wonderfully astonishingly cold. Yeah and then for like 45 minutes after that I could kind of like hold in my heart that coldness and so even though it was like kind of miserable and gross and humid and Orlando Steak and Shake 3.30 in the morning on a Wednesday I could still like feel that coldness so I don't know if water was condensating onto me or not but I could definitely I held onto it somehow. Yeah well yeah but maybe it was just in my heart which reminds me Hank that it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

How was your heart doing? Oh I mean it's just relieved Hank because we're still in League 1. We had our first game in front of fans, 2000 fans so it's a slow process of reopening in England so fans are now being allowed back into stadiums for test events where with relatively small crowds all the sort of protocols are being tested and for a lot of people for you know around I would say 1900 people it was their first time in Plow Lane many of them called it the first home game that AFC Wimbledon had played in over 30 years. Wow over 10,000 days and it was a really special day it was a friendly game against Liverpool's under 23 team Wimbledon lost but that wasn't very important.

What was important was fans in the stadium, fans getting to see the seats where their season tickets will be getting to see the pitch, getting to feel what it's going to be like to play a proper home game back in Wimbledon for the first time in over 30 years. What an incredible accomplishment by a group of determined hard-working fans who stuck together through really difficult times and found a way to make this happen. It is such a testament to what people can accomplish when they work together and what communities can do and I'm just really really glad to see fans in Plow Lane and I cannot wait to be one of them. You will wait.

I guess I can wait because I have to. I will wait until it is safe and both governments involve tell me that I can go. But then I will go. Well as we get to Mars news we got our first photographs from the Chinese National Space Administration's of Shurang Rover.

There is a short video where the Rover Land or Combo was released from the orbiter that it was attached to and then there is an image of the landers ramp that is deployed and ready for the rover to roll down it and head on to the surface of Mars. It suggests that everything has arrived safely and that it has got a good place to drive around it. Looks like a good area to explore. It will not be too challenging to rain.

Do you know when they first were flying like when they were first planning to go to the moon? They were like we don't know what it's like there. What if it's just dust all the way down? Yes.

I remember that. And not personally. I wasn't a lot of people reading about it. They thought it was possible that the lander could land and just keep falling.

Yeah. Because we don't know what it's like. They sent a few non-manned probes and they all landed. It seemed like a good guess that it would work.

That would be dust pockets elsewhere. Terrifying. Terrifying. Anyway, also the surface of Mars turns out to be pretty good for landing on.

Also in Mars news the ingenuity helicopter should have taken its sixth flight and that flight will be part of the new phase of that mission where it's going to be scouting different areas and landing in new locations just to take a look around while it still can. Now I wanted to thank I wanted to ask you I saw a map of where all the rovers and etc. is that have ever landed on Mars landed. And it looked like it was pretty well spread out.

And it made me wonder could we land anywhere on Mars? Like could we land at the poles? Do we have a lot of choice when it comes to where to land? So there are things that we don't want to do.

So there are areas that are really rocky. There are areas that have like really there's a very steep canyon which would be amazing to visit but like maybe some concerns about wanting. And there are slopes that you don't want to land on so that you want certain amounts of you don't like there are very steep slopes. So you don't want to land on a steep slope.

You want to land in the Kansas of Mars. You want to land somewhere nice and you want to land somewhere flat and you also want to land somewhere that's not super sandy. So sand dunes can be really bad where you just sort of like the rover wheels get bogged down or they like it's harder to move across them. So like there's a combination of the the slope plus the level of sand that makes life extra hard for rovers.

And also if you're doing a solar mission solar powered mission there are some like so as roughly similar season stuff. So there are areas that are dark all year round or not all year round but for a long time that you would want to avoid so your solar powered system doesn't get too cold though now we're doing a good job with curiosity and perseverance of having these non-solar powered rovers which could go anywhere. But yeah the reason I ask yeah the reason I ask is because it took humans like 249,800 years or whatever to get to the North Pole of Earth. Right.

And I wonder how long it's going to take us to get to the North Pole of Mars. Well there is up there as well as there is a polar lander. We already did it. We already did it.

I don't know. It's not on the pole. It's like not there but it's close. Okay.

Okay. That's pretty cool though. I mean it is weird how fast human technology has changed. I know.

I don't know how this story ends but I want to do yeah man I'm excited to find out. I think it'd be fun to like I think that we would be good at writing books that have almost clickbait titles that end up being deeply informative. So like what's the fastest object is like a great clickbait title. It's like what is it.

And it's like well so like let's go through and in reference to Earth because of course like speed turns out to be fake and we could talk a little bit about that. But in reference to Earth or to the Sun or something you just go in like you look at like what the fastest we've gone and then you give a moment like so like there's the fastest that a person can go alone and then it's like there's on a horse and then there's in a car and then there's an plane and then there's space probes and then there's like you know how fast can we make things go that don't have people in them all of all of this. And I think that you could just learn a lot. But I guess that's kind of what the other person interviewed book is.

Yeah in a way but without the clickbait title it has the least clickbait title of any book of all time because people don't know how to spell the title which is very advantageous for search engine recognition recognition. That's what they always say you want to have a title that people cannot spell or pronounce if you want to maximize audience. They all yeah I mean my mom can't even remember the title of my books just like she can't know but there's lots. Well I wrote a book called Looking for Alaska that is not about the state.

So I should retire name our books the biggest explosion of all time. I remember there was a great A.M. Holmes book that was called This Book Will Change Your Life. Yeah and that's that's a properly good book title.

Yeah. All right. Well thank you for potting with me. It's been a pleasure.

We're off to record our Patreon only podcast this weekend stuff where we talk about stuff that made us happy this week. This podcast is edited by Joseph to an Amadishates produced by Rosie Anna Holzer-Hossen, Sheridan Gibson. Our communication coordinator is Julie Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Debukie Trucker-Vardy.

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