300: Robocalling Ryans

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I'm going. Three, two, one, start. We were just feeling each other then. We did it from the three.

That's almost impossible. I thought there was something weird about it, but I didn't realize. How did we do it from the three? I don't know.

This should be in the podcast because that just proved that there is such a thing as telepathy just in a very limited way. I mean, but in the way that this works, it only synced for you because for me, it wasn't synced. I started a little bit before you. But you, so it was only, so you were telepathic.

I was not. All right, forget it then. Let's just start with the podcast. And welcome to Dear Hank and John.

As I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions give you to be a advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. Yeah, grizzly bear. He walked into a restaurant and he says to the waiter, I don't even even sit down first.

Walk straight up to the waiter and he said, can I get a grilled cheese? And the waiter said, why the big pause? I love the idea that in your story, for no reason, the grizzly bear is rude. But so is the waiter.

There's no, yeah, because then like it makes more sense that the waiter can be rude. It's not necessary to the joke for the grizzly bear to be aggressive. He could have sat down, sat at the table, waited and started in the way to come over. It's just how can I help you?

It's the same joke. I feel that you've unjustly maligned grizzly bears as being aggressive when I feel like they're mostly aggressive only when they're hungry or tired or protecting their children. Also, I'm sure with the case with you, John, I recently found out that 6% of Americans believe that they could win an unarmed so an unarmed fight with a grizzly bear. So you want to grizzly bear and 6% of Americans think that they are going to come out victorious.

Okay, I have a couple questions here because I might be in the 6%. Oh my God. So all right. Okay.

Well, I'm so glad because I thought I would never meet one of you. Here's my question. Do I have to kill the grizzly bear? You have to win the fight.

I guess you could like it could be unconscious at the end. Are you going to put it in the headlock? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because I, listen, I'm not going to say that there's a 100% chance, but I think there is a reasonable chance that if you put me in an arena with a well fed content grizzly bear, that I could make the case to that grizzly bear that the best outcome for all of us is for both of us to walk out of that arena alive. So John has turned the fight into a debate.

I believe it's what is occurred. Not a debate. A brief discussion where it's like, and you may say, Oh, John, you didn't win the fight. If you and the grizzly bear are equally well walking out of that arena, and I totally disagree.

I want to fight. I guess that's a win. I would definitely call it a win if regardless if you walk out of the arena, but is it a fight? Because I'm imagining like a boxing match.

It wouldn't be much of a fight. Like maybe both of you could live. There might be some verbal sparring, but like the judge, the judge, is there a judge in boxing? Would have to say like, yes, you landed more punches in the grizzly bear like the technical winner of the of the match.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm acutely aware that in any kind of physical altercation, I'm going to come out on bottom. Right. I have zero chance of defeating a grizzly bear in an in an actual fight. What I'm saying is that I think I've got a chance that we both survive.

So here's here's my strategy. So if we are in a boxing match and there are boxing rules, I have heard I know that there are boxing rules. Can I get the bear to break one of the boxing rules enough times that the bear is disqualified? John, what is a boxing rule?

Oh, for sure. For me, low blows, you only have to have two or three of those before you can just call. If I have three low blows from a grizzly bear, I've been very serious. Carol.

Okay. Okay. There are other rules that I think we could maybe make work for this situation. What if so the grizzly bear has to be able to like touch gloves at the beginning of the fight and then go back to its corner nice before the bell rings.

I'm not totally confident. We just need a poorly trained grizzly bear. That's right. That's right.

I'm not totally confident that grizzly bear could follow all those instructions perfectly. Yeah, we need a poorly trained well fed grizzly bear who has is just content and also ideally there's a bunch of salmon around but not in the corner just to make sure it doesn't go back to the ground. Right. Yeah.

I yeah. So the long and short of it is that I don't think that either of us could beat a grizzly bear in a fight but I do have some level of hope that we could avoid the fight which is an I would argue an underappreciated 21st century strategy. Just in general. You know, I go about my day and I avoid fights with every every animal, every species on earth except for humans every day.

That's so true. So I feel like I could do it. I'll even avoid a fight. I know I can win.

Like if a squirrel gets aggressive with me, I'll be like, Oh, no, whatever man. This is your space. Cool. I got it.

I'll back off. No worries. What you're on my not trying to get rabies. Yeah.

And yet if a human a human stranger has something mean to me on Twitter, I'm like, here we go. Here we go. Time to throw down. Crack the knuckles.

I wrote a couple tweets this morning that I didn't send. It's always a good policy, which is potentially you know, it's an even what I should do with all of them. I was going to say, you know, it's an even better policy. Yeah.

Well, it's just making your Twitter drafts your Twitter. Just for you. Yep. Sometimes I send John my tweets.

That's I almost sent you one this morning that was a real doozy. Oh, you should have. You should have. I wish you had.

Let me tell you what it is. Okay. I was a great call not to tweet it. That's for sure.

Okay. Let's do some questions for a good God. What even is this podcast? Just take a job.

Tell you who told me yells at cloud. Yeah. I mean, I'd say that the grizzly bears would win, but we are winning against them by any objective measure. This first question comes from my who asks dear Hank and John.

I work at a movie theater with many security cameras. We always have to be doing something because the owner checks the cameras and yells at us if we're doing nothing. Most of the stuff we do is just making up work or doing things really slow to kill time when it's slow. You work in a Oh my God.

My question is, what is a good way to not do anything while looking like you are working, but not something difficult. But I'm a strategist Maya. Oh my God. So before we answer the question, can we just acknowledge that the worst possible business strategy is to spend all of your time at home watching security cameras of your business and then yelling at people when they aren't busy because the appropriate business strategy is to try to make the business busier.

Right? Well, here's the thing. It's a movie theater. They have start times and like the start times align.

And then there are there are down times. And during the down times you clean up and you like do I'm sure important movie theater things that don't take the full two hours. Yeah. And that's just a well, that's the model.

Well, I don't know the details of the movie theater business. I've never worked in a movie theater, but I will say that in general, it infuriates me when bosses are angry with their employees for like the business not having enough business because that is that's their job. The boss should be focused on that. That is literally their whole job.

So you can't make that argument to your boss because of the power structures and this person is obviously kind of a jerk. So it's a hard thing to figure out what to do. And so I think it is probably a good policy to figure out some things that are easy and look like work. Yeah.

So I don't remember these John when we were a kid and I don't think they exist anymore. They were like human powered vacuum cleaners and you would like rub them over the ground. There was a poll. Oh, yeah.

I had these have fast food restaurants and they'd go, yeah, yeah, I don't know what they're doing in there. I love that. They're like they're like self sweepers. I don't know what they're called.

But that always seemed like you're basically just going for a walk. And so maybe get one of those. Yeah. Looks like you're sweeping.

Yeah. Yeah. Steps in listen to a podcast. That's a good idea.

Macarroys in there or us. I guess you were a fan of this podcast. I like that your first thought was the Macarroys. I like that when you're like, what am I going to do to listen to something during a downtime?

I know. I'll listen. We're a podcast Hank. I advertise this podcast.

You're like that boss. He doesn't know how to build the business. Yeah, it's okay. We don't have anybody standing around not doing anything.

Luckily, it's true. That's definitely not the problem. The other thing that I was thinking about is I find that I can look busy if I'm listening to something. I can just walk from one stand to another.

I can kind of walk from one place to another and appear busy. Because think about this. I read the question this morning and then I spent a bunch of the morning in the garden picking beans. And I was like, I probably look busy right now.

But in fact, I am doing this as slowly as I possibly can to enjoy being outside for as long as possible. Yeah. I realize this is a practical advice. But I'm just going to tell you what I would fantasize about doing as opposed to what I would actually do.

Because I don't know what I would actually do other than be frustrated. But what I would fantasize about doing is doing nothing. And waiting for the boss to call and picking up the phone and then saying, what are you doing? What are you doing for the business right now, buddy?

That's a great tweet, John. Thank you. Do you want another question for us? Sure.

Let's stick with the movie theme. Alison writes, Dear John and Hank, my family sometimes watches movies that I don't want to watch. While they watch the movie, what should I do? Should I sleep?

Should I do something else? Please help me out when this happens. Pumpkins and penguins. Alison.

I have this problem almost every time my family watches a movie. Well, I can tell you what I do, John. What do you do? I work on my project for awesome perks.

Yeah, that's what I was going to suggest actually is like, make some art. Yeah. Yeah, I just I spent the last week drawing 50 monsters during while there were various YouTube videos that were not, let's say, designed for 41-year-olds. And I found it very gratifying.

And I was amazed by how many different monsters my brain could produce. I did occasionally run up against moments when I didn't think that I could go any further or like there was no way for a monster to exist. But it turns out there's all kinds of ways for monsters to exist. They can have big heads, they can have small heads, they can have snake bodies, they can have slug bodies, they can have bird bodies, they can have brontosaurus bodies.

It's great. I had a good old time. And so I will say that it was not because of the structure of the project. There was a significant cost investment as I was using thick cardstock paper and silver sharpies.

But I didn't think that I could have found cheaper ways to do it and been gratified. Yeah. I mean, what I do is just draw circles over and over again, which you can do with any pen and any piece of paper. And I could do it on the same piece of paper forever.

You can, actually. And I find that wildly fulfilling. And the thing about it is, like, when I'm watching a movie, I don't want to watch. Mostly what I don't want is I don't want to be deeply engaged in the movie.

And sometimes that's because it's kind of a stupid movie. And sometimes that's because it's just a little much for me, for whatever reason. A lot of horror movies are a little much for me. They are a little too close to home or whatever.

But if I'm doodling, then it's like I can kind of zone in and zone out. So I can still have an opinion about the movie. And I'm not distracting other people by being on TikTok or whatever, looking at my phone constantly. And I'm still enough of a participant in a family moment that I can talk about it when it's over.

But without the stress of having to watch something you really don't want to watch, which is for me anyway, actively unpleasant. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if it's not the first time.

Yeah. And in the case of the movies watched in our household, it's never the first time. I cannot get or into trying new movies, which is a difficult. He's like, no, it's too much.

And I get it. It's a lot. And he's four. And like, so it is a lot.

But boy, I love emitators, dug down Christmas. But I've seen it enough times. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We have the same issue in our household. And it's fascinating to me that we like, yeah, we have the same issue in our household.

And the case I try to make is, y'all can't rewatch movies over and over again until you've seen them for the first time. So maybe today is the day that we add by one to the number of movies that we can endlessly rewatch. That would be nice. Because if we can get it up to like 30, then I won't be so miserable.

Yeah. I think ours might be at 30. And I'm still like, all right. Yeah.

Let's watch the Will Smith vehicle spies in disguise for the seventh time. Let's do it. I'm in. Yeah.

Great. Oh, wow. I've even heard of that. He turns into a pigeon.

Wow. Oh my gosh. There's so many jokes about pigeon. Pigeon poop.

Wow. Geez. I haven't heard this many poop jokes since we rewatch the emoji movie for the second time. No.

I'm not looking forward to that stage of movie watching. I should be happy. I'm about to do Christmas and Christmas and cars over and over again. Sounds great.

I've kind of come around to the emoji movie. I don't know what it is, but it gets better on rewatches. Well, that is not what I would have expected. John, do you have any more advice or should I move on to this question from Andrew?

I think we killed it. Okay. It's like a killer grizzly bear to fight. Andrew asks Dear Hank and John, as I understand it, giving a COVID vaccine means that you get a deactivated form of the virus, not really.

No, that creates antibodies that fight an active virus. That second part is true. Mostly in the case of the current vaccines, you get a little chunk of instructions for building a part of the virus, then your body built a very small part of the virus, and then you develop antibodies to that small part of the virus, which has been extraordinarily effective, which is very exciting because it didn't have to be. But Andrew continues.

Also, as I understand it, COVID tests detect antibodies for COVID. So now that I have the vaccine, will I test positive for COVID if I'm asked to take a test, punctures and penguins Andrew, but sign off. No. So there you will test positive if you take an antibody test, which is a specific kind of test that all throughout the pandemic has either told you whether you are like have been infected with COVID or have COVID.

So in anybody test, even if you had COVID like eight months ago, you can test positive with an antibody test. And if you have a COVID vaccine, you will also test positive with an antibody test. And that will tell you that you have the antibodies. But anybody tests don't tell you whether you have COVID right now, those tests test for the presence of the virus.

And those ones are the ones that you generally are getting when you get COVID tests. Yeah, I just had a COVID test, by the way, I'm fully vaccinated, but I had a really bad cold. Yep. And I got a I got a test, and I don't have COVID, thankfully, but I did have to spend like just to be sick because kids are starting school, kids are vaccinated.

Yeah, I didn't I just didn't want to like ruin the kids for first day of school. So I spent the weekend in the basement and there's nothing to recommend about anything about the pandemic. Yeah, no, it isn't great. I just gave Aaron over the counter COVID test because he had a cold and it has gotten harder to get tests because I guess we feel better.

So we got the over the counter one and it was very easy. He's good. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's how it works. And it should be said that just as the vaccines are very effective, PCR tests are extremely sensitive and do a good job of detecting COVID when you have it. But hopefully you won't have it or at least you won't get very sick because you'll have the opportunity to get vaccinated. Yeah.

All right, Hank, we have a question that sort of melds are interests. And also I don't know the answer to it. So I thought I would ask you this from Chelsea who writes Dear John and Hank, I read somewhere that ancient Greeks used to use oil to calm the waves. Now not to stereotype, but I assume that this meant olive oil.

So I have to say Chelsea, I assume it doesn't mean olive oil because olive oil was pretty expensive and hard to make in large quantities. But I also might be wrong because I have read in ancient Greek texts about this calming of the waves. But I always kind of assumed that it was figurative or something. I just didn't think very hard about it.

Anyway, it got me to wondering does petroleum have the same properties that can help calm waves? And if so, will all of these oil spills actually help reduce the volatility of the ocean and reduce the severity of hurricanes and other climate change related catastrophes? Chelsea, I'll tell you what I love. I love your optimism.

It's like, oh, so if we can have enough oil spills, yeah, maybe we should just spill all the oil and just calm the ocean right down. I mean, we're in that case, we're not burning at least. But it is a really interesting intellectual exercise. And I love the question.

She signs off not out of AFC Wimbledon's league, Chelsea. Well, you're out of our league at the moment. But maybe not forever. That Chelsea is the name of a football team.

It is a source. Thank you, Hank. I don't know if it was olive oil or not. It may have been fish oil.

So oil that you get from rendering fish because that was probably cheaper. And you wouldn't want to use fish oil in a lamp, which was what olive oil or in cooking as much, which is what olive oil was used for because it is less pleasant to be around. But I don't know for sure what kind of oil they used. But this is a thing, to the extent to which this was done in our lifetimes.

And the mechanism of action is not entirely clear. But if you have a bag, so not like a huge amount, you have like a, like a, imagine like a five pound bag of oil, you can pour it around a ship and that can decrease waves around a ship. Really? Yeah, at the extent to which this works is not entirely clear and there hasn't been a lot of modern science done on it.

But Benjamin Franklin was super into it and he did a bunch of research on it and showed that on a small scale, like a teaspoon of oil would spread out over several yards and it would have a significant calming effect on water. Wow. To the point where people would still carry around storm, it's called storm oil, still carry around storm oil, probably and usually castor oil, probably because of it's just superstition these days. But into the 1990s, it was required on English ships.

Wow. So that's wild. Wow. Now I didn't know about any of that.

So you, John, having read the Odyssey or whatever knew more about this than I did. But the, the answer to Chelsea's question is it would have to be a lot of oil. And I think especially in a hurricane type environment, it wouldn't have a huge effect. Though there seems to be sort of a double effect happening.

One is that it interferes with the winds ability to catch on the wave and have the wind produce a wave. And the second being that it just adds friction to the movement of the water. And so the water is not able to move as much. So now could it, could it work?

Sure. Would we need to spill a whole heck of a lot of oil and cause a whole set of other problems? Yeah, we would. And it also, it doesn't tend to be the waves that cause the big problems anyway.

It's more that the water level increases with a storm surge that I don't think would stop with storm oil. But who knows, but also let's not explore it too much because I don't want that to be the solution. Yeah, it's not going to be a great solution. But it is still a really fascinating intellectual exercise.

So thank you, Chelsea. And thank you for introducing me to an idea that I had no knowledge of whatsoever. Oh, knowledge. Yeah.

That apparently extended into the 1990s and even into today. I enjoyed reading about storm oil. I wonder if I can ask you a question that we got 200 times this week, but we got different versions of it. And so I'm just going to ask you the overarching question.

Many, many people wrote in to say some version of how can I be happy when Earth is going to be dead in 30 years, referencing the recent, very disturbing, extremely well researched report put together by the UN. And I think this is a really important question. And I understand why people are asking it. But I also feel like I have a responsibility to tell people that the Earth is not going to die in 30 years or in 300 or 3000 or 3 million years.

And I also feel like I have a responsibility to tell people that in some ways it's much worse than that. Because if the Earth was going to die in 30 years and there was nothing we could do, then whatever, despair, nihilism, hopelessness, let's just give up on everything and enjoy what pleasures while we may. But the truth is a lot more complicated than that. And kind of less, both like less horrible and more horrible, which is that we are going to make decisions, we are making decisions today and we are going to make decisions over the next 30 years that do profoundly shape the kind of alive world that is going to exist in 300 or 3000 and potentially even in 3 million years.

Yeah. I mean, so I've been really active and engaged in this conversation for over 20 years now. My master's degree is in environmental studies. And obviously this was a big deal when I was getting that degree, it was a big deal when I was getting my chemistry degree.

It's been a big deal my entire life. And our dad worked in the environmental movement when we were growing up. And so did I'm up. Yeah, I remember being a little kid and our dad talking to us about climate change and we knew all of that in the 80s.

And by we, I mean, as a species, we knew it. What that has given me is a perspective on progress that I think a lot of people who are in their 20s don't or especially their teens don't have. And that very much comes in the form of seeing the pie charts change substantially in terms of our energy mix. Now that's not the only series of problems that we need to solve, but it is like a needle that I keep watching move.

And so the thing that the IPCC report says to me is not, we are doomed. It is, we know what we have to do. Now that is very different from actually doing it. But that is actually a really like that's a powerful thing that like, this is going to cost trillions of dollars.

But there are trillions of dollars to spend. We've figured out how to generate a lot of economic activity to leverage a huge amount of human potential and problem solving ability toward this problem, toward the problem of clean energy, toward the problem of like decreasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but also toward the problem of how do we deal with the climate change that we are going to experience because we are going to experience it. Like there isn't a world in which we don't experience negative impacts of climate change. I'm sitting here in Montana where we've had 45 days over 90 degrees this summer, which is not a thing that happens.

And the fires are very bad. And we've had like two days where the air quality has not been unhealthy. And like this is a situation that we're going to live through and we're going to live with, it's going to be different. And that is part of being alive though.

And also we, but and so we have to leverage technology for how do we handle the world as it's going to exist in the future? How do we mitigate the impacts that it's going to have on humans and other organisms? And I think that there are a lot of people that are going to be turning their minds to those problems. And those people are exceptional.

And I am impressed every day by the solutions that are being created and rolled out and that are really affecting the bottom line here. And I think that some people think that the right rhetoric is the thing that makes people the most afraid. But science shows that that is not the case, that when people get you know, be told that it is hopeless, they lose hope. And and I also think that that is bad rhetoric because it's not true.

I think that there are going to be really significant negative impacts of climate change. It's going to affect people who have the least the most. And those are the kind of people who are least responsible and it's going to affect them the most. And that is a justice problem that we will also have to interface with.

But the power of humans to overcome difficult problems is a little bit what it could cut us into this, is a little bit what got us into this mess in the first place. But it is also something that I really believe in and that I see no sign of anything standing in the way of it. Yeah, I completely agree. And so I think the proper response is not hopelessness.

It's not to shut down. It's not to say, well, it doesn't matter anyway, because there's nothing we can do because the world is ending. The proper response is activism. It's in how we press our governments to change.

But it is also in it is in personal choices. I mean, it is. And that's something that Hank has really brought home to me in the last year that like, my previously held idea that this was a problem of big systems and big institutions and big corporations that I wasn't meaningfully participating in because my personal carbon emissions are some tiny fraction, 100 millionth of the whatever, that doesn't actually help because what helps, the research is very clear on this as Hank has pointed out, what helps is when you become more engaged in your own personal, your family's emissions, your family's contributions to the overall size of our carbon footprint as humanity. When you become more personally invested in that, you also become a better advocate for the systemic change that we need.

And so people ask me all the time, like, what's one thing that you're doing or what's a few things that you're doing? And number one is we are working very hard to electrify everything. And then to make our grid clean, that's number one for us. And then number two is making the case everywhere, every time we can, that this needs to be a priority for our governments, state, local, federal, and for our communities.

Yeah. Yeah, it is, it people don't think that it's an emergency unless people are acting like it's an emergency. And so one of the things that like I talk about is eating less meat for no reason other than the impact on the climate, it's not about like, it is like, obviously there are lots of good reasons to not eat meat. But for me, the reason that I eat less and less meat every year is because I'm focused on the impact that comes from that, especially from beef, which just is a completely unnecessary luxury.

And I like, I understand enjoying it, absolutely understand enjoying it. But like that is a thing that I have carved out of my diet. And you know, people are like, you know, how like, why have you done that? My answer is there's only one reason why I have done it is because I don't feel right about creating that amount of carbon for that level of experience.

Yeah, McDonald's hamburger. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think we're all gonna have to sort of expand the way that we think about cost to include carbon cost. And that's honestly, that's something our dad has been talking about since we were like 10. Yeah, yeah, we knew the word externality a little early, I think, for the average person.

So yeah, yeah, I mean, we're fortunate to have the parents. Anyway, I just felt like we needed to talk about it, Hank, because we get so many questions about it. And I understand, I understand the despair. And I understand the fear.

I absolutely do. I just don't believe that despair is productive. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's it is an emotion that we often feel not because we are trying to feel productive. We're feeling it because like the news is bad.

Oh, yeah, no, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm feeling feelings. I'm not, yeah, okay, thank you. I'm not telling people to not feel their feelings.

I am telling people that like, I don't think I don't think despair tells the whole story. I think despair almost never tells the whole story. Occasionally it does, but not usually. Well, I think that I also think that that rhetoric that seems to be intended to inspire despair is a problem.

Like, and I think that some people like indulge in that and like create that very intentionally and think that it is effective, but it's not effective. Like they are, it's better at getting attention than it is in creating change. Oh man, you just like so much. Thanks for coming to Hank and John host an intervention with each other to try to talk themselves out of despair, which reminds me, of course, that today's podcast is brought to you by despair, despair.

Despite having an advertising budget of zero dollars, it has done incredibly well on the internet in the last five years. Yeah, they're doing so well. Now they can do some real paid marketing here at Dear Hank and John. But as it's also brought to you by that manual sweeper broom that you used to see in restaurants in the 1990s.

Do they still exist? I found one on the internet. This 10.5 inch manual sweeper has two corner brushes and a dual direction cleaning path for ease of use, an ideal solution for low pile, carpet and hard surfaces, dual corner brushes, ensure thorough edge cleaning, commercial grade construction for quick cleanup in lobbies and restaurants. You know that they didn't actually pay us, right?

That felt very much like that. That was an amazing little paragraph. That felt very much like an actual ad. You're right.

A human being wrote those words. They are good words and they deserve to be read out loud. Today's podcast is also of course brought to you by the six percent of Americans who believe that they could defeat a grizzly bear in an unarmed battle. The six percent of Americans who believe that they can defeat a grizzly bear, important to remember when considering that 20 percent of people believe X or Y.

Making us carve those ones out. Exactly. A third of those people are I could beat a grizzly bear people. So you know, I think we can kind of dismiss a third of the 20 percent off the top.

And also this podcast is brought to you by Benjamin Franklin's Storm Oil. Benjamin Franklin's Storm Oil. What was it made of? We don't know.

Fish probably. I would not at all be surprised if Benjamin Franklin had a storm oil concern at some point. It seems extremely in character. Yeah, yeah.

Totally. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me. And that is what Shopify makes easier.

When you start with Shopify, the tools, to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one. You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business. And this is important because you also have to look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing.

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See you website for more details. Hey, we have another question. It's from Ryan which is always suspicious, right? Like here at Deerhank John, we occasionally get emails from Ryan's and we always are dubious of their provenance because years and years ago, I'm not sure that there are any actual Ryan's.

Well, one of my closest friends is named Ryan and I think he exists. Are you sure? I mean, we just hung out and it felt really real. You know, like we were together.

That's how they get you. I know that's how they get you. They make an experience feel so real that you're like, I'm pretty sure this person is. You know, it's possible that Ryan, yeah, that's how they get you.

Anyway, we have an email from Ryan. Right. Dear John and Hank, I'm 15 years old and I regularly get calls now. Ryan has to stop you.

Unfortunately, I believe that there are some Ryan's. I'm not convinced there are any who are 15. Yeah. Yeah.

How do we stop this? I'm not. First off, I think Ryan is a great name. It's just that it's a name with a lot of deerhank and John history.

So if you haven't listened to like 300 episodes, oh my God, this are 300 episodes. It is. Oh my God. That's the Ryan's spectacular.

Only questions from Ryan's. Start over. They were all named Ryan. We were messing with you.

That's right. Everybody was named Ryan. The grizzly bear was named Ryan. Yep.

Benjamin Franklin's name is Ryan. Chelsea's name is Ryan. The fish that got turned into that storm oil. Its name was Ryan.

It's all Ryan's all the time. Everything was a Ryan. Every word you heard was the word Ryan mispronounced. That's all we've talked about.

Climate changes, Ryan. Everything is a Ryan. Okay. Okay.

It's the Ryan spectacular. It's our 300 episode. I cannot believe that we have made 300 episodes of this podcast. Me either.

I also can't believe we've really can't. We only do it once a week. Jesus Christ. Oh, we do it for a long time, Hank.

Oh, we don't even let's be frank. We don't do it once a week. We do it like once every 10 days on average. So it's impressive.

Ryan is purportedly 15 years old. And Ryan says, I regularly get calls from numbers I don't have saved in my phone. Sure. And whether this is a number from the same area of code I live in or not, I do not answer these calls because I figure that I know the numbers of the people who are going to call me.

Ryan, you are wise beyond your years. However, when my parents and other old people around me get calls from numbers, they do not have saved. They almost always answer them. This is the line.

My question is, at what age am I expected to answer these calls from strangers? Oh my God, Ryan, what a great question. Never. I mean, as far as I can be.

I don't. I do not answer calls from strangers. Of course. No, it's a ludicrous idea.

Oh, I will deal with it after you leave a voicemail. Like, I don't trust you. When I call strangers, I don't expect them to answer because why would they? There's a 99.97% chance it is a robo call.

Yeah. No, the only time I ever answer the phone when it is a number that I don't recognize is when I'm expecting a phone call from someone I don't know. Yes. That is 100% the case.

Yes. And Ryan, you should live by that for as long as you can. Now, they will come a day inevitably where old age overtakes you and you start answering the phone every time it rings. And that's just that's part of that's part of the aging process.

But hold on, Ryan, hold on for as long as you can. We'll hold on to go gentle into that good night rage, rage against the dying of ignoring phone calls. Yes. Pumpkins and Penguins.

You know, is calling now. It's okay. The fact that Ryan signed off pumpkins and Penguins, Ryan, is highly suspicious because I mean that Ryan is a longtime beer-handed John listener. Yeah.

Highly suspicious, Ryan. I like to see a birth certificate and two forms of ID and also your social security number and your mother's maiden name. Okay. This is a robo call, Ryan.

This is a robo call. I wrote what called you, Ryan. Yeah. You know who's Ryan now?

Me. I'm Ryan. I'm not just a Ryan bank account. We're all Ryan.

I am exhausted, John. Or I got up like 4.30 last night because he was cold and then I couldn't fall back asleep because I was worried about my sinus infection in my head hurt. Oh, I hate that. I hate that feeling.

It's fine. I'm sorry that you're not well rested. Although I will say that for someone who is tired, you've been a wonderful host of the 300th episode of Dear Hank and John, the Ryan spectacular and Hank, what better way to celebrate our 300th episode than with AFC Wimbledon's first game of the 2021-2022 third-tier English football season. Hank, you'll remember last season, AFC Wimbledon had a terrible habit where they would score a goal and then they would immediately allow the other team to score a goal and then they would lose 2-1.

This happened like 17 times out of 46 possible. So I'm watching their first game of the season. We had a terrible pre-season. You'll remember we lost six of our seven games.

We only scored like one goal. Watching the first half and I'm like, we look pretty good considering how young this team is, the youngest team in all of the professional ranks of English football. We're looking pretty good. I'm enjoying watching AFC Wimbledon.

We're kind of playing beautiful football, which is a little weird, to be honest. And then I was like, but we're probably going to do that thing where we're going to score and then the other team's going to score and then we're going to lose 2-1. I was playing a pretty good team too. And what happened instead is that about 20 seconds into the second half, we gave up a goal.

And I was like, oh God, we've picked a whole new way of losing for this season. I'm much more confident involved in scoring. I like this way even less than the other way. But then something extraordinary happened.

19-year-old Ayubasal, my hero, by Ryan, I you, Brian Asal. That's what they call him. He scored to make it 1-1. And then one of the new kids, Luke McCormick.

Luke Ryan McCormick. Luke Ryan McCormick scored on a free kick to make it 2-1. A free kick outside the box. In all of last season.

But we scored one in our first game. And then we kind of tenaciously and heroically and courageously clung to that 2-1 lead and won the game. And AFC Wimbledon, one game into the lead one season, are in second place. They're technically tied for like second place with six other people.

Yeah, that's fair enough. But because of the alphabetical order, we're in second place, which is technically an automatic promotion spot to head up to the second tier of English football. And I believe that we should stop the count. I think it is time to say enough football has been played.

We don't need, we all know who won this season. And it's AFC Wimbledon. Roth or Ham and AFC Wimbledon. By the way, Roth or Ham are going to go up.

But like Roth or Ham and AFC Wimbledon, that's it. It's done. Up to the championship. And from there, the heights of the Premier League are only a few moments away.

I loved every second of it. I love Ayubasal. I love the way Mark Robinson has these young kids playing. It is unbelievably fun to watch.

Like if you ever want to get into AFC Wimbledon, right now feels like the time. You can download the I Follow AFC Wimbledon app. It's not free to watch the games, but you can watch a really lovely high quality broadcast of them with commentary and everything. And I mean, I don't even know what to do with myself.

We seem, admittedly, we're 146 out of the way into the season. But we seem good. Okay. These are all the games you've missed in the preseason every single one.

Yeah, but those don't really count. Oh, no, they don't count at all. Right. Yeah.

This is only the second time that we've won our first game of the season in like the last 11 seasons. So you'll forgive me for being a little bit optimistic. I just, I felt like this team could easily maybe finish like 14th. All right.

I like it. John's calling it 14th. Oh God, I would love to finish 14th. I would love.

I think I've told you this before, Hank, but AFC Wimbledon have only played two games in the last four seasons where they were not at risk of relegation. And I would love to see that number double. Yeah. All right.

John, we have some news from ours, which is that the ingenuity helicopter has now traveled over a mile over the surface of Mars. Wow. It just had its highest flight. And it's it recently flew over a sort of rockier area.

And it's done a pretty good job. And it's starting to send back some of the video that it's taken as it travels over these places, which is just, I don't know, it's just very cool to see like what it can do and to like watch it. Yeah. Like drone video from Mars going over some sand dunes going over some rocks.

Yeah. It's so cool. It is doing it is doing everything that we hoped it would do in more. And, and in the future, we're going to, I think, obviously, if everything goes as planned, do this again with even more sophisticated, capable helicopters.

And what a what a bonus to this mission. I am so happy. What do you think is the over under on how many helicopters there will be on Mars before there is a human on Mars? Like is it three?

Is it 17? You know, my guess would be, well, it depends. If there is an element of the human of the sort of construction of the base that that is like better achieved with drones. So like a lot of the base construction, ideally, like a lot of the stuff will be there before the humans arrive.

And so if like it can be helped along by it, like the manned mission can be helped along by drones, then you probably talking about more up in the 15 to 20 area. But my guess would be, in terms of like robotic mission, not associated with humans, I guess probably just three or four. Okay. Maybe even less than that, especially if you get there by 20, 20 seconds.

I was going to ask like, how exactly are we going to get all these like drones building space modules by 20, 27? That seems like a stretch to me. Yeah. I'll tell you, with each passing 100 episodes of Dear Hank and John, it does become kind of more possible in my imagination that there actually will be a day when that bet comes due.

And I know, right? We'll have to rename the podcast Dear John and me. It's like, wait, it's like, okay, so we've been making the fact out for how long? I mean, 20, 28 is close.

It is. I mean, we're not quite halfway there. But like, we're, yeah, I mean, maybe we're not, we're not, we're not, I mean, we're not quite yet. Yeah, it is.

I mean, we're not quite halfway there, but we're like almost halfway there. And I still enjoy this. So yeah, it seems very plausible to me. I don't see why not.

Oh, gosh, I have to say, when we started this podcast, I thought it would Peter out within like a year. And then when we started Vlogbrothers in 2007, I also thought that would be around after a year. So yeah, what I've learned from this is trouble. Don't say yes to Hank, unless you're ready to make a lifelong commitment.

That's right. Correct. Correct. Oh, God, it's going to be such a bundle in one of us guys.