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Friends of Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and more will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets 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. Or is that anything with Dear John and Hank?
It's a comedy podcast where my brother John and I answer your questions, give you some advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC world in the future. Hey John, how are you doing? I'm wondering if we can rename the podcast or rebrand it a little bit to make it. Instead of you just saying a comedy podcast, if we could just say what it is, which is a comedy podcast about death.
I don't know why we didn't just call it that to begin with, not Dear Hank and John, just deathcomedy.com. No, I like Dear Hank and John Colen a comedy podcast about death. I'm a big fan of title Colen subtitle. I just think that it's a tried and true method.
But anyway, I am doing well. Happy New Year. I hope that you're having a lovely New Year in Montana. Yeah, we're back.
The Dear Hank and John was on hiatus and now we are off hiatus. You're not very good at saying hiatus. That's my review. I think you're pronouncing hiatus wrong.
That's one of the most embarrassing things that you've ever said in your whole life, which is really saying something. It's been a good 2016 so far. I've been sick for the entire time. At first, I thought I was just hungover, but it turns out I think I'm ill because now we're like five or six days in the 2016.
So I think I'm just sick. Yeah, a five or six day hangover is definitely something to be concerned about. Yeah, I think it would be unusual. I did over indulge on New Year's Eve though.
It was a lovely time with friends, but we do this annual champagne taste test where we have a blind champagne taste test. We taste like 20 different champions and we try to rank them. And Dom Perignon, the nicest champagne this year, finished Dead Last. Dead Last.
Let me guess. And first was just Sprite mixed with vodka. No, that's actually there's a name for that champagne. It's called Andre and it finished second to last just behind Dom Perignon.
The winner was Madame Liberté, an American sparkling wine. So there you go. Can I read your short poem? Okay, is it about getting drunk?
No, it's about hope. Okay, same thing. This is by Emily Dickinson. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.
And sweetest in the gale is heard and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilis land and on the strangest sea, yet never in extremity it asked a crumb of me. Hope is the thing with feathers. She's one of my all time favorite poems Hank and Lee Dickinson.
She knew how to write a word. She knew which words to pick. That's basically the whole thing of poetry. I've heard that thing about hope being a thing with feathers, which I assume is either a bird or a dinosaur.
I don't think that they knew that dinosaurs were feathered in Emily Dickinson's day, so I think it's probably a bird. But the author is dead. Poems belong to their readers. You can read it how you wish.
What I love about that poem though is that it talks about the inexhaustibility of hope and how hope never asks anything from you and is sort of always available. I mean Emily Dickinson, at least in some of her poetry, seems to believe in this idea of radical hope that's core to a lot of religious traditions, this idea that hope is available to everyone at all times, even to the dead, which is really interesting to me. So I just love this poem. It's one that I come back to over and over again.
First I want to say to all of our science people out there, yes I know that birds are technically dinosaurs and I just had to say that so that you weren't going to yell at me on Twitter. Second, I think that hope might be a velociraptor. Hope is available to everyone, even the dead. Hope is the velociraptor with feathers.
It doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well, but it's still good. I like it. I don't think it's bad. We are a professional duo of people who answer questions.
And so that we get paid to do that on the internet. We get paid through our Patreon. We get paid literal hundreds of dollars a month, which goes entirely to the people who edit the podcast and not to us. But I still can call myself a professional question and answer and also ask them.
Very marginally. Which is a wonderful thing. I am basically this generation's dear Abby. And you are this generation's, you know, that etiquette woman who told people like which fork to use.
Well, you know, dear Abby's sister was also an advice columnist and a very famous one named Ann Landers. They were sisters, dear Abby and Ann Landers, but they were estranged from each other, as I recall. They had no relationships. So clearly their advice was as dubious as ours is.
Anyway, you are not the dear Abby of the internet, nor I cannot believe that Abby and Ann Landers are siblings. That blows my mind or we're siblings. Well, they're still siblings. They're just no longer living siblings.
Can we just have a lot of raptor is available to that? Can we please just move on to our first question? It's a good one. Okay.
Ari asks, dear John and Hank, if humanity stopped producing food altogether and started eating each other exclusively, how long would humanity last? So very interestingly, I don't know if Ari knows this, but this question was answered by Randall Monroe, who is also a professional question answer and answerrer. And I will say it better whether or not. So you can go read that, you can read his answer to this question on his what if column on the internet.
All you have to do is Google, I assume, what if humans only ate each other and then it doesn't work at an XKCD. But basically, I remember reading that column and it was it had to do with how you did it. So if you wanted to humanity, the existence of humans to last as long as possible, what you have to do is kill off the vast majority of us and then freeze us and then over time feed us to a small group, like a sustainably sized small group of humans. Sure.
Because as Randall calculates, there are around 500 trillion calories of human on Earth right now. So that's a lot, a lot to sustain us. Yeah. Yeah, I did a little bit of research into this, Hank.
I only got as far as seeing that the average human has 81,500 calories worth of edible food inside of it. Wow, that is a lot. It is. Yeah.
Well, but on the other hand, you know, I just I'd rather keep it, I'd rather keep it moving, you know, I'd rather. What do you mean? I don't know. You'd rather not eat a human or you'd rather not be eaten or you'd rather not have this this this hypothetical that Ari has supposed to be reality, which I think everyone can agree.
No, no, no. When I said I'd rather keep it moving, I met like on to the next question because I'm getting destroyed. Oh, I see what you're saying. I'm getting disturbed.
Okay. I understand. Anna asks, dear Hank and John, if you lit a match on Saturn with the entire atmosphere of the planet combust, I know that hydrogen is highly flammable and that the atmosphere of Saturn is mostly composed of hydrogen. Yes, it would.
It would combust and it would be awesome. It would be amazing. It would be the gigantic ball of fire in the history of the universe. I've got a couple of problems with how excited you are about this.
First, thank you for your question, Anna. You don't know what you're talking about. You're welcome for the expert answer. Second, I can't believe you want to destroy Saturn.
Well, I mean, I don't want to destroy Saturn. I just, but you know, nothing can be created or destroyed, Hank. I just want to turn it into an awesome ball of fire. Okay.
Uh, an actual answer to Anna's question. Should I actually answer it? Or you just want to move on again? Do you just want to move on and not talk about all the other things that I mentioned?
No, it's fine. Actually, actually answer. Uh, we think of hydrogen as super flammable because we live on a planet that has lots of oxygen in the atmosphere. Hydrogen gas is actually fairly stable.
It's molecular hydrogen, two hydrogens bonded to each other. And it's fairly stable, which is why one of the reasons why it is the most common molecule in the universe. Uh, but in the presence of oxygen, it can, it would like to violently exothermically react to form water, which is even, I'm even more stable way for oxygen and hydrogen to be to exist. So water is super, super stable and awesome.
And so both of those things would like if given the opportunity would prefer to be, I mean, I'm obviously personifying molecules here, but they would be in a lower energy state if they were inside of water, which is why on earth, hydrogen is flammable, but there is not a bunch of oxygen on Saturn. So you could drop a match on to Saturn without destroying the planet, which is good news. Because if we ever wanted to like send a probe there, uh, and the probe had a fire coming out of the back of it, uh, we wouldn't want to like the whole planet on fire. That would really interfere with our science.
Wouldn't we though? I mean, you would get some science out of it. You'd be like, okay, well, we've never been able to tell what it would be like if there was a giant ball of fire in space. So now we're gonna, we're gonna look at one of those.
Right. Uh, but then, you know, you couldn't study any of that. Well, actually come to think of it. I think there is a giant ball of fire in space called the sun, but the cool thing is that Saturn, and don't correct me if I'm wrong here, please, Saturn would become our second sun.
And it would be like an on Tatooine in Star Wars, where there's two suns. That would be awesome. Interestingly, Jupiter is on its way. I mean, it's not on its way, but like if it were considerably more massive than it is, it would have been our second sun.
It would have to be about 10 times bigger than it is, but that's not all that big. And we would have lived in a solar system with more than one sun. If only, uh, if only Jupiter were a little bit bigger. Hank, do you remember when I said don't correct me if I'm wrong?
I didn't correct you. I added information. I ignored what you said, and then, and then I talked about how an interesting fact about our universe and our solar system. Yeah, okay.
Well, I'm glad that we only have the one sun because Earth seems to be a fairly hospitable place despite all of the carbon that we're throwing into it. Yes. Yes, it is a wonderful place to be. I have another question for you, Hank.
It's from Jackie. She writes, dear John and Hank, why do people get in serious relationships and then quit talking to their friends? I have more married, engaged friends than I can count on both hands, and only one who still talks to me regularly. I don't know.
I like to try and still hang out with my single friends, but I don't have kids. Yeah. Well, I think that when you have kids, everything changes because, your sort of life and schedule become focused around your kids. And so it's much easier to socialize with other people with kids than it is to socialize with single people who may have different schedules.
But I have a theory about this, which is that we have made romantic love too much at the center of how we understand the universe as people. And so when we get into a romantic relationship, we act like it's the sun and the moon and the stars and the whole universe and the only thing that we need. And then it becomes very destructive. I suspect, Jackie, if you just hang around, you'll find that you're married and engaged friends begin socializing more over the course of their marriage.
I know that's true for Sarah and me, but I've been, I was in romantic relationships where I didn't socialize with anyone outside of the relationship, but that was mostly because the relationship was super, super intense and it was my whole life, which turns out I don't think to be that sustainable of a strategy. No, yeah, that doesn't sound good. I will say that as a friend to people, that the people I have maintained friendships with are often step back and say, as a bad friend, the people I have maintained friendships with are often the people who helped me maintain that relationship who are like, hey, do you want to come over for dinner? Hey, I'm going to go see this movie.
Do you want to come? Hey, I'm moving this weekend. Help me move. Like people who actively engage, it's a thing that continues to, it doesn't just happen on its own.
I feel like it did when I was in school. It just happened on its own. But now, it's like, if I want to maintain a friendship with someone, I have to be like, oh, I haven't seen that those people in a while, I should be like, hey, I'll make you guys dinner. Do you want to come over?
I'm making macaroni and cheese with Gruyere. Yeah, you've got to be a proactive in general outside of school, like in adulthood, I found that you have to be a very proactive friend, which is hard to do. But yeah, it's work. But it is.
Yeah, it's kind of work, but it's worth it. But yeah, I do suggest I have found that cheese is a very important part of it. So whenever I go to someone's house or whenever they come to my house, there's always cheese. And I know that some people are lactose intolerant.
And if you have lactose intolerant friends, and I suggest you to find some alternate form of cheese that isn't cheese, like, I don't know, Pringles. Nuts. Yeah, cool ranch Doritos. Ooh, gross, no.
Something nice to go for. I got to take a sip of delicious diet cherry Coke Zero in order to get just the idea of cool ranch Doritos out of my head. There's so many chemicals in that. Oh, wow.
I'm going to have to take a sip of just brain wash so that I can forget how you just said there's so many chemicals in that. I love it when people say there's so many chemicals in that, as if there aren't chemicals in water, as if water itself is not a chemical. I think you're probably, I think you like hearing people say that just so you can see me cringe and want to tear out tiny parts of my own brain. Oh gosh, I hope that doesn't actually happen.
We should move on to the next question, Hank. Okay, I got one. This question comes from Avery who asks Dear Hank and John, for my women in literature class, I'm reading Margaret at Wood's The Handmaid's Tale. At one point, the novel, the main character is talking about Hitler's mistress and her refusal to call Hitler a monster.
The main character thinks about all the nice innocent, even endearing traits Hitler might have had, singing in the shower, having a loyal dog, and he says, how easy it is to invent a humanity for anyone at all. What an available temptation. My question to this, do you think that thinking of people in a more complex way can negate their negative actions, or should we try to see all people more deeply, despite any actions, no matter how negative those actions are? That's a good question and a big one.
It's a big question John made a tale about. So maybe just read the rest of the book. Is my dubious advice? But no, in general, I don't, I would say that I don't think that people's lives get worse when, or that the world gets worse when we imagine people complexly.
It may get worse when we project a certain kind of humanity on to certain people, which is what Margaret at Wood's talking about there. But that's us projecting our own expectations and our own experience into others, rather than trying to see them. Yeah. I think that there's often this temptation to try and understand these un-understandable actions.
And so we find the easiest cognitive way to understand them. And that is not necessarily related in any way to the truth. But I am not comfortable ever when we call other people monsters, because that is clearly objectively untrue. Other people are not monsters, no matter how despicable their actions, they are people.
And if we forget that they are people, then we forget this sad truth of humanity, which is that humans do and have done terrible, terrible things to each other. Right. I think we can't separate humanity from that monstrousness. And not just because of Hitler.
I mean, there are other examples. I mean, Hitler is the most common contemporary example. And certainly, someone whose individual life was unprecedentedly destructive to humanity. But there are lots and lots of examples of what the Romans called a homo-homony whoopis.
I probably said that wrong. But man is a wolf to man. And we'd like to think of ourselves as somehow fundamentally separate from other animals or other predators. But too often, we aren't.
Yes. I picked this question also because I've been thinking about this in the sense of sort of like a separate version of this. As I've been watching the 2016 presidential election happen, and it is clear that strategists on both sides are far more concerned with getting the person they see as necessary into office than with telling the truth. And so there's just this great, like this huge amount of simplification and vilification because they see, like, if we can get this person in office, that's what matters.
That we get a person who will make the decisions necessary to make the country better into that place. But even like, and like, I kind of agree with that because there are some truly terrifying candidates at the same time, if we continue doing this, if we continue escalating it the way we have, then we end up in a country where everybody hates each other. And that is not like, it doesn't matter who's the leader of a country where no one can get along. Because like, like having a place where people sort of agree that the system works and that, and that like things are pretty much okay is the most important thing.
And I'm kind of like, I understand like this motivation, especially like if you live and breathe it and never think about anything else to do everything within your power to get the person you think is necessary elected. But but my impulse is to is to tell the clearest truth and to say like, you know, like things are complicated and and nobody's quite sure what the best thing for the economy is in one one side wants to try this and the other side wants to try this and I know which one I'd prefer, but I don't like nobody knows for sure. But then you have a bunch of voters who are like, well, I guess you're right. I don't really know.
So why should I vote? I'm not an expert on any of this stuff. But you got to get people to the polls. So you create this fear and that's what motivates people to vote, which is very frightening.
Well, I don't think it's I don't think fear is always what's motivated people to vote. I don't think it's the only motive. No, I completely agree with you that like the quality of of political discourse is is in many ways like more important than who the actual representatives are. Like if we had high quality, honest, you know, conversations about policy in public discourse, we would probably be better off regardless of who was the president.
I mean, accepting outliers who frankly the outliers wouldn't even be candidates if we had serious political discourse, right? I mean, like, not not to single anyone out, but Donald Trump would not be a candidate for the president of the United States if we had high quality discourse about actual policy, you know, we would we would dismiss him as you know, as somebody who's built their career and their campaign around rhetoric rather than around, you know, policy and governance. And I totally agree with you. I do however think that we are not going to change.
I don't see a way out of this. But I think that America's been like this a bunch of times in the past and in the long run, it hasn't seemed to hurt us that much. Like if you look at the American economy since like 1910, it's grown at pretty much the same rate, regardless of who was president, regardless of how, you know, deadlocked Congress was. The only thing that stopped growing really is wages.
And I don't I don't see anybody fixing that. So I feel like the biggest problems we have are problems that no president can fix. And I don't see any improvement happening to our political discourse. I'm very pessimistic about it.
And as you know, Hank, I tried to generally be optimistic, but this is not a not a place of optimism for me. I also have had that problem. And I feel like I have that problem more in election years than other years where I just like, I actually don't I don't know that it's gonna I think I think I think everybody thinks gonna be okay. I don't think that like there's going to be an apocalypse unless there's an apocalypse.
Unless there's a solar flare. But that has nothing to do with political political discourse. I think it would it would radically Hank what a solar flare would radically change the political discourse. No one would be like, Oh, well, I think that she dies her hair.
They would be like somebody fix the internet. I am cold. It's very cold in my house. Yeah, I wouldn't be worried about the heat.
I mean, I can manage that. I can buy wood for a fire, but somebody get me back tumbler. Oh, we'd run out of wood real quick, John. I don't know you haven't seen my backyard.
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I feel like we should move on. It's just too depressing, John. Which Jenny was intrigued by the conversation in the first December podcast about being able to get to Mars if the Earth was smaller. She says, I am rubbish at science and enjoy you and enjoy giving me small amounts of easy to digest science information.
Please explain. Okay, I'm happy to do that. Thank you for your question. So if the Earth were smaller, it would be easier to get to Mars because it would be easier to escape Earth's atmosphere.
It would take less energy for the rocket. This is right, isn't it? Why? You know you're wrong.
You're just messing with me. Okay, let me try again. If the Earth were smaller, it would have less, there would be less gravitational force holding a rocket to the Earth. Yes.
And then you would need less energy to get out of the atmosphere. No, just don't think about the atmosphere. You need less energy to jump. Like, okay, so if the Earth were smaller, it would have less gravitational force, which means it would be easier to jump.
Like it would be easier to dunk a basketball the way that like on the moon, people can jump higher than they can on Earth. And it would also be easier to jump much higher if you had a rocket boost than it is currently. So you could get to Mars using less fuel and you wouldn't have this big problem where the fuel is heavy. So you need more fuel to get the fuel to Mars.
So it would be simpler. So that's why. Yes. You basically answered the question exactly how I would have.
So great job. All right. I mean, it's all about jumping. You're just trying to jump.
My science is so good, Hank. Talk to me. Talk to me. I want to ask you a question now.
Okay. Now that I've told you how good my science is, what do you think AFC Wimbledon's up front starting strike partnership should be? I think that it would be super good if if they had an upfront starting strikes partnership of See, this is what hurts me. This is what hurts me.
Like a like a sponsor. Oh, is this a sponsorship question? All right. I've got a question from Rachel Hank.
It's a big one. I want you to who are you seated? Yeah, definitely podcast sitting down. I love to sit.
If you had 24 hours to live, what would you do? Oh, gosh, do you do bowling? Wow, the whole time? Probably not.
Probably not. I tell you what, I probably wouldn't sleep. That's for sure. I do love to sleep.
I might sleep. Yeah, I love to sleep. I love. Yeah, I love a good nap.
I probably would go to sleep at around 23 and a half hours just so that I didn't have to be there when it actually happened. I don't know. It might be a little hard to sleep if you're going to die in a half hour. You'd be like, I'm a little apprehensive about this.
I'll tell you, I might spend a good hour of that writing out some last words. It's nice to know the actual deadline so that you can be like, I'm not going to mess this up. I'm not going to get halfway through this sentence. I'm going to say this and I'm going to not talk.
I mean, I would probably end up spending a whole 24 hours fretting about my last words. And then my actual last words would be like a poncho of E is who said, don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something. Oh, God.
That's awful. It's terrible. You got to be prepared. I like those last words.
No, they are pretty good, actually. He pulled it out at the last second. You know, the truth is if I had 24 hours to live, I would probably spend a lot of that time really sad with my family. Yeah, definitely.
I think I think the yeah, I spent a good amount of it as they say, getting my affairs in order. So just making sure that like I'd fixed up all the last will and testament stuff and everybody knew what to do and talking to talk to the people about how to run VidCon and maybe make it a video. I'd probably make a video. But then I would not make a video.
Oh, I would definitely make a video. Yeah, I mean, Catherine would be really mad at me about it. But I would be like, I just got to make a last video. And I wouldn't edit it.
I'd film it and I'd make you edit it. That's terrible. I refuse. Well, I don't have time to edit a video about to die.
I would never I couldn't bring myself to edit it. I think I would be furious with you if you spent part of your last 24 hours filming a video. I really would be. I mean, for me, like my professional life is super important to me.
But if it came down to an actual amount of time that was remaining, that was less than a month, I would focus entirely on spending time with my family so that I could, in the hopes that I could kind of ease the coming burden, I guess. But I don't know. I mean, the great thing is that this is not something that I yearn for. I have to say, like, I don't you don't yearn for immediate death?
No, no, I don't yearn for much for knowledge of my death. Oh, yeah. No, no, not at all. I'm one of those people who would be very happy to have it, just to be tapped on the back of the shoulder by death and then turn around and then I assume that's how it happens.
That's sort of the internal question. If you could find out when you were going to die, would you would you find out? Yeah. Yeah.
I feel like I'd be like, if it's over 80, tell me. But yeah. But then I know that it's sometime before 80 if they don't tell me. Right.
Yeah, that's kind of terrible because then the whole time you're like, oh, I know it. Yeah. I would see, here is my what is your over under? Like, if you were given a number right now that you could live to and you'd take it, the minimum number that you would be like, yes, I accept that I will not take my chances with fate.
I will not take my chances with fate. I will take that number. Oh, that's a great question. I probably like 86.
What are you kidding? Is that too? Is that too low? No, it is completely unreasonably high.
No, it's not. It's on the outside of the bell curve. You're going to, if you weren't given 86, you're going to take your chances. Well, who's doing the who's doing the bet mastering?
I was going to say like 73. No way. No way. That's on the inside of the bell curve.
Yeah, I would take on the inside of the bell curve to have a guaranteed life that goes to 73. No, no, no, no, no, I would not. I really, well, yeah, I got to play the odds, John. You got to say, on average, I'm going to live that long anyway.
So I'm basically like, I'm not using this as an opportunity to guarantee that I don't die. I'm using this opportunity to potentially extend my lifespan. Oh, yeah. So I am definitely using it as an opportunity to guarantee that I don't die tomorrow.
Like, just the, we definitely think about death differently, John. Just the quality of life addition that I would have if I could be guaranteed not to die tomorrow is difficult to measure. I can't believe there's a 16 year divergence between our over-unders on when we would accept a given date, day of death. Now I'm rethinking it.
Now I'm thinking maybe, okay, my last, my, this is my final offer to go 78. If I was given 78 right now, I would take it, no questions asked hands down because also that would mean assuming that Sarah lives to be 78 or 76, which she probably will because she has great genes, both J E A N S N G E N E N I think that would allow us to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Oh, yeah, no, that's a good idea. Just to be like, I want to guarantee that I get to 50th.
That's probably, yeah, that's a smart, smart thing to do. Yeah, I take 78. There's my offer. Okay.
I don't think about the possibility that I'm going to die tomorrow. Like, that does not come up with me in my brain. And it is very interesting to hear that it comes up in your brain. It comes up in my brain a lot.
I often get stuck in two obsessive thoughts by reals thinking that I am in my my final, my final days of life on earth. But I recognize that that is a result of my, you know, like brain brain disease. Yeah, it does suck though. I remember calling you once.
I don't know if you remember this. I remember calling you once. I think during 2007, during brotherhood 2.0. And, um, and I was in an airport and I said, Hank, do you ever like sit in the airport and think about the fact that all of these people are going to be dead and not in like a very long time either.
But like, they'll all be dead within a century. You were like, not really. Well, I do think which good for you. Like what it's not a productive thought.
Like, it's not a it's not a thought that I'm grateful to have had or like, it doesn't like bring me into some wisdom that I wouldn't otherwise have access to. I'm just like, oh, that's too bad. He's gonna die. They're gonna die.
She's gonna die. They're gonna die. Phew. Everybody listen to this podcast is gonna die.
I I that doesn't bother me. Everybody listening to this podcast, that doesn't bother me. Maybe there is one person listening to this podcast who will be alive in 100 years. Maybe.
Yeah. No, you know, I bet there's gonna there's more than one. Really? Yeah.
I bet there's I bet there's a I mean, so first we have to say that there's probably people who are under the age of 10 watching the podcast, listening podcast, which I think is the case. Yeah. Second, we have to say that that in the future, lifespans will be, you know, in 100 years, 100 years from now, lifespans will be a lot longer than they are now. So we have to say that there will not be a major technological break, like some kind of apocalypse or the and that, you know, we will continue to extend the human lifespan.
And I think that's a pretty good bet. So yeah, so people under 10, if you're alive in 100 years, think about this moment. Think about this and think about me and John and how we're super, super dead, but we had an effect on your life. So we mattered, at least for as long as you're still alive.
You know, Hank, ultimately, that's why I love football so much is that football is a thing that survives. It's a thing that crosses generations and survives. It survives the death of any individual. And then when, you know, the system itself tries to destroy football by moving Wimbledon to Milton Keynes, football says no, no, there will be football in Wimbledon in the form of AFC Wimbledon, the greatest fourth tier soccer club in the history of the world.
Would you like to know the news from AFC Wimbledon, Hank? Well, first I want to say that it's really nice that football gets to continue and be this eternal thing, unlike the whole of human knowledge, which is which is embodied in the spirit of exploration that we have imbued in our souls from the moment of the creation of the moment of the existence of our species. And you know, that is a much more limited thing than this peculiar institution of round things going into rectangles on fields. Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree with everything that you just said, especially the part where you said that AFC Wimbledon was much more interesting than Mars exploration.
So you go. So Hank, we have missed many AFC Wimbledon games as a result of our Hyatias. How do you say it again? Hyatias.
Hyatas as a result of our hyatas. You know, things were looking a little dark for Wimbledon. You may recall we lost to Dag and Red. Yeah, that was not a lose.
Dag and Red. That's always a bad sign. And there had been, I think, six games without a win. And then we lost a Stevenage on December 12th, and it was really a darkness.
And we had a two, two draw to Newport County. And that was actually what you say? I said Newport County isn't fun to say. We had Dag and Red and we had Stevenage.
Why aren't all the teams have great names? Wimbledon is also a pretty fun thing to say. Wimbledon. Yeah.
Dag and Red. Dag and Red. Dag and Red lose to you. I'd rather be dead.
Did they say that? I don't know. I don't know if they sing that song to Dag and Red. I'll inquire.
So then things started to turn around on December 19th. We were losing to Newport County. We came back. We tied two two.
Then we had a standard Wimley-Wombley-Nill-Nill-Draw against Bristol Rovers. And then we've had two consecutive victories on Boxing Day. Oh no. On December 28th, AFC Wimbledon beat Exeter City 2-0.
And then AFC Wimbledon beat Cambridge United 4-1, including a goal hank from our Montserratty and international friend, Lyle Taylor. I know it was very exciting. This means that AFC Wimbledon are now 10th in League 2. I know.
It's exciting. You can kind of, so Hank, I know that you're not a big soccer fan, but if you are a soccer fan, you can kind of feel whether things are going well or poorly for your team based on whether you find yourself looking down the table or up the table. You know, are you looking down and being like, oh my god, we're only 12 points away from relegation. Or are you looking up and being like, huh, we are only like four or five points away from the playoffs.
Right now, AFC Wimbledon are definitely looking up because they are more than 20. Well, no, 19. They're 19 points clear of relegation, Hank, and they're only four points away from a playoff spot. All right.
Well, all those teams that are above AFC Wimbledon in the table, I wish you bad luck. Very bad luck. Very, very bad luck. Very, very bad luck.
I'm starting to feel, Hank, I'm starting to feel with the decision about the new stadium that's going to be built. I'm starting to dream about dreaming about dreaming about dreaming. That's how close I am to dreaming. All right.
It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful dream. I feel as if your soul is filled with Velociraptors, John. It's being lifted by these beautiful flightless dinosaurs. In Mars news, amazingly, and somewhat disturbingly, your luck turned around on the 19th as did Mars's from a great year.
Whoa. From a great, well, it's around the 19th anyway, from a wonderful 2015, we got our first, really our first, I think, really bad piece of Mars news that I will ever have discussed yet on this podcast, the Mars Insight Lander, which was scheduled to blast off in March on Mars in September and use a very sensitive seismometer to learn things about the interior of Mars and its geological history and why it doesn't have plate tectonics and it clearly has active volcanoes, but how active is it internally? What's going on in there? They were doing some tests, preliminary tests before the launch, and this most important instrument on the Insight Lander, the super sensitive seismometer, had a leak in it.
It has to maintain a vacuum inside of it so that it for it to function correctly and it had a leak, and that means that they will not be able to hit this launch window. As you know, John, Mars and Earth both go around the Sun in basically a circle and they go around at different rates. Sometimes Mars is basically on the other side of the Sun, so farther away than the Sun, really far away. Sometimes it's real close, sometimes it's like basically next door neighbors, but it depends on the orbital cycles.
And so the vast majority of the time you cannot send things to Mars, it's just too far away. So the launch windows are very short and they are few and far between, which means that Insight will not launch until 2018, which is very sad. Wow, that is a bummer, I'm sorry. By the time it launches, AFC Wimbledon may be playing in their new stadium in League One.
That's a lot of jumps, John. No, it's just one jump. We're currently in League Two, confusingly. That is the fourth tier of English football.
League One, as you would guess, from the fact that it's called League One, is the third tier of English football. Above that is the championship, which seems like it would be the championship, but no, it's the second tier of English football. And above that is the Premier League. I mean, could they be any more pretentious in their naming of leagues?
This podcast is brought to you by the pretension of the English soccer league people who decide things. And of course, this podcast is also brought to you by vacuums, vacuums, breaking and not letting things go to Mars since 2016. This podcast is brought to you by human cannibalism. Human cannibalism, the last resort, if there was no other food on planet, but good thing, there are 500 trillion calories of human floor.
That's just so disturbing. I can't let it go. And of course, this podcast is brought to you by gambling with your life, gambling with your life. Sadly, sadly, you are not offered the opportunity to do it by picking a number at which you would accept death.
All right, John, what do we learn today? Oh, man, we learned so much. We learned that every human being, apparently, contains 81500 calories worth of food. We learned that John Green would like to drop a match onto Saturn and see it light up in a fiery fireball that destroys one of the most beautiful sites we have to see because he is a heartless evil person.
And of course, we learned that if Hank Green had one day to live, he would make a YouTube video just for posterity. People would get real good views. Oh, man, but you wouldn't be there to enjoy the immense wealth that comes from YouTube advertising. Thank you for listening to our podcast.
You can send us questions at hankandjohn.com or use the hashtag dear hankandjohn on Twitter. We're also on patreon patreon.com slash dear hankandjohn. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. The team music is from Gunnarola and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.