313: I Will Not Engage

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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. Oh and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I first think of it, Dear John and Hank, sorry we're in person so I get a little bit slow because I have to actually look at Hank with all his meat bags.

It's podcast, the Comedy Podcast, we're two brothers giving you two piece of advice, bring you all the new subscribers to Mars and AFC Wibble and answer your questions. Hank couldn't do that part because he was on Twitter. I can tell from his face that he was- I'm looking up a dad joke. Oh I have a dad joke.

Oh you do? Yeah because my father-in-law has been here for the last week so I've got nothing but dad jokes. He's the master of the form. This morning we were watching New Castle vs.

Arsenal and he said his new castle has like a nickname and I said I believe that they're known as the Magpies and after a moment my father-in-law said what a foul nickname. Wow. I know. Oh boy.

He's got him by the boatload. He's better at this than I am because I have nothing. The audio is gonna be a little better today because we're not in the shed. Here's what I want you to talk to you about.

Okay. It was a tip mouse. It was a chickadee. It was a tip mouse.

I know what tip mouse is look like and I know- I saw one of your chickadees today and their tiny little cute little chickadees even smaller than the Montana ones. It was a tip mouse. Respect. Gray crest.

Respectfully I know what my birds look like and it looked like this because it is a chickadee. Now you may be confusing, Hank. You may be a little confused because there are two basic chickadee looks. Yeah.

Okay. There's also this sort of chickadee look and maybe you thought that this was a tip mouse but it's a chickadee. Okay. Great.

I'm not a gray crest. It had feathers poking out from the back of its head. Indeed because it was this very chickadee. It did not have like a crown, like a roost.

We're not even, we're not talking about this. I refuse to engage with you on an audio podcast about a visual experience that we had. I will not engage. Okay.

I did want to ask you a question though. Uh-huh. I want to talk to you about committing to the bit. Now this is something that Hank and I talk about a lot in private.

I've thought about being a vlogbrothers video about it because I think that committing to the bit is one of the great skills and talents that is inadequately talked about in our education system. Is this like for a content creator or any kind of human? No matter what you are doing, the quality of your commitment may be more important than the quality of the bit. Oh yeah.

So like for example, there's a player in World of Warcraft who for the last 17 years has leveled up right all the way to the top level only by picking flowers never by engaging in combat. That is not a great bit but the quality of the commitment to the bit makes it transcendent. Yeah. I think that there is a lot to be said for the and and also I feel as if I don't do it enough.

Yeah. Now I do do it. No. You do not commit to the bit and this is a you know we commit to the bit together.

Now some time Hank so just so you know there are moments in our relationship where and we don't like to do this formally where we have to sort of check each other a little bit and encourage certain habits and maybe discourage others. Yeah. Bring out the best in each other. Become more aware of our weaknesses.

Uh-huh. And I want to take this opportunity to say first off lean in before you lean out. I adore you. I think you're amazing.

I feel like you used to commit to the bit a little harder in the I'm going to spend 15 hours inside of a target days. Yeah. Then you commit to the bit right now. Well look I have other commitments I have to commit to.

I know. And I feel like you're prioritizing family and being the CEO of Complexly and other things that I'm not going to say they aren't important. I'm going to say that I'm concerned that it's harming your ability to commit to the bit. It has been about a year since we completely unintentionally and uh and in no way was this was this something that we worked hard to do.

Named every single vlog of this video. Every line of Smash Mouth's All-Star. Not in order but all of them. And that is a great example of a low quality bit.

Yeah. With high quality commitments. I mean titles on YouTube matter so much. Not in that year they didn't.

Yeah we were like I think no. Yeah and to be fair I think on the other side of that we did we lost some audience but it was audience we were okay with losing it. They were the ones we made a choice. We made a choice.

We made a choice. Yeah they weren't they weren't ready to go all the way there with us. But the reason I've been thinking about this is because you and our sitting here in Indianapolis and we got all we our families are here. It's great to see our parents you know.

Orin doesn't get to spend enough time with his grandparents especially during COVID. So I don't want to say it's been anything other than an awesome trip. It's been amazing. I love seeing your kids together.

We watched a great movie last night. It's been a great trip. I'm concerned that you and I for the past five days have been together both quietly knowing not speaking about but both quietly knowing that we are three hours away by car from one of the last remaining racks restaurants. It's in Centerville, Ohio.

It's the it's probably our last chance to eat a Rax Rose beef sandwich because you think of the Centerville Rax is going to close. I'm concerned about how it's going to make it through the pandemic. Yeah of course there were like 1400 Rax's 30 years ago and now there are four. I am concerned about outside of Finland.

I'm concerned about that trajectory and it's three hours to it. Yeah yeah and three hours back from it. Well sure unless we decide to move to Centerville. That's a real commitment to a bit.

Well how else would you go to Rax every day? You have to go to Rax at like seven and get back at like three. You mean like seven a.m. No you even p.m.

Oh okay. Oh this Rax close. Your proposal would be that we do all the kind of family stuff all day. Yeah and then we're like hey guys we're just gonna go out for a gallon of milk and we do come back.

It's not like the cliche of the abandoning father but we do come back and just we come back at John I want to go for a drive three o'clock in the morning. We have a lot to talk about with Tommy Akes. Wait no it wouldn't be three it would be one. Yeah but we can do the Rax in Centerville close.

We could be back by one a.m. Hey I say up till one sometimes. It's not even an unreasonable bed time. I mean it didn't used to be an unreasonable bed time for me.

I mean it's when I would like to be going to bed. Really I never I always want to go to bed at nine. No that says it's auto corrected to tax. It's open to my don't want tax.

I want Rax. It's open till nine. So we have to leave at like five thirty. I mean the irony is that there are three Rax's.

Is it again? Sorry don't yell that. It's very loud. The irony is that there are three Rax's that are relatively near Indianapolis but they're all equidistant.

You know like they're all about the same distance. If there was one that was like in a city I would propose that we just fly there and eat at the Rax. No that that but there isn't really a good airport near any of these places. Rax roast beef.

What is this one in West Virginia? Oh this one says closed. This one recently closed. Oh the one in Indiana.

Yeah it's closed man. Oh no. I know we could that would have been easy. Oh we really could have been an hour away.

Really could have gone. I know. So anyway I'm just concerned about our committing to the bit and it's not just you. I feel like I also have been inadequately committed to bits lately.

Yeah. And it's just something I feel like. Well you know who's suffering the most from this. Who Rax?

Oh I know. I know. And I feel like our listeners they've come to expect a certain level of committing to the bit from us and I don't want to I don't like disappointing them. And so I just want to say we're aware of this issue.

We're sorry about it. We're we're pulled in a lot of directions right now by parenthood and family responsibilities and just behind the scenes life stuff. But but we recognize the issue of not adequately committing to the bit. I'm happy to report John that the Rax in Indiana closed in 2011.

So it's not we just missed it. That's good. That's good. Hey PS.

Yeah. There's a pretty good chance that I'm going to have a movie project happening in Ohio and maybe I can convince them to film it entirely in center with Rax. I am an executive producer. Could you write Rax into it?

I'm never really known what executive producer. I'm not a conductor you do and I don't know about it. I'm not really not really known what an executive producer does but maybe the executive producer does nothing except get on one phone call and say has anybody considered Centerville, Ohio as a setting? Here's the situation.

I'm an investor in a Rax. My brother and I this is my brother and I have seen the success of Beast Burger and we have decided and we purchased a single Rax. What we did was we went all in we pulled out all the partners and health money but don't worry it's going back to partners. Yes.

So this is it all pays off. Exactly. It's like it's like that four way parlay bet in that scary movie about diamonds without him sandway that was so stressful. Yeah it's the sixth sense.

I believe it was called sweaty paulms. I didn't watch that movie. It was called career opportunities. That's right.

Yes Adam Sandler's career. By the way I've been thinking since the last episode of the podcast that career opportunities in addition to being a good title for that movie because like that is kind of what it's about. It's kind of about career opportunities. So many of them missed.

Career opportunities is a pretty good name for most movies. Like it's not a terrible name for the second Hobbit movie. What are you going to do with your time? Yeah like the Hobbit is your location.

The Hobbit has forbidden journey colon career opportunities. I like the movie Citizen Kane might genuinely be better if it was called career opportunities. Same movie. People just understand it more.

Yeah it's just called career opportunities. Reservoir dogs. It's a movie in career opportunities. Sure.

Yeah most films Han Solo. He's just trying to figure out what he's going to do. So what color is Han Solo's parachute? Solo colon career opportunities.

There's no movie it doesn't work for. You could even argue. Another one and I'm just going to throw this out there Hank. Ace Ventura Pet Detective.

Yeah I'll follow up like the third one. Yeah career opportunities. How is that detective thing isn't really working out? Yeah and he's like I think I'm going to try out being a dude.

You know John I had this idea of never pitched it to you. Okay great. By the way that is an extraordinary statement. I'm shocked because you haven't pitched me.

So you know how they're like television shows where like every episode they like make over a different house? Yeah. I want to do a show like that but instead of make over a different house I start a different business every week or two months. Oh god.

And so I just like or three months. And so I start like 12 businesses. Yeah. And then over and then like try and get all the stuff together and then you sort of like what goes into starting a business and then it's just like boom next thing.

And then you try to put like a team in place to run the business and they're all like now got there the responsibilities of making making the you know the thing and succeeding along with it if it succeeds. And then over the course of the year and then you like follow the businesses and see how they do. This is my terrible idea that I don't want to do. I don't think it's a bad idea.

Career opportunity. But it's career opportunities is a great name for this Netflix show. The only thing I'd say is that why not bring a little shark tanky element to it where you're supporting somebody else free existing businesses rather than making it all about you. It's not as egotistic.

I know. That's why I like it better. Yeah. Hey green career opportunities.

I think you should be called. I think it should be called career opportunities with Hank Green. I'm not going to take you out of the title. I just don't want you to front load yourself into the title.

It's not an idea. We should talk to our I don't know anybody at Netflix. But I do I genuinely think it's a good idea. I think that you should call your friends at Netflix and I think it's a good idea guys.

And I think you should say I am inadequately busy and I'm looking to take something new on so that I can further alienate my relationship my core relationships. I think that should be your pick. I love the idea. Here's what I want.

I want all of the worst parts. Yeah. Of more. I think actually you should executive produce this show because that's the executive producer.

I think executive producer of several movies. I can tell you unless it comes to like I think we should have dinner at Rax tonight. You don't do anything. Okay Hank while we're on the subject of Rax I need to read you this email from K.

K writes Dear John and Hank first off your German accents were horrendous. Please never do that again. K I have good news and bad news. Vatysek, good news John.

The good news is that Zatysek being said, Hank's Finnish was not the first I've ever heard. Secondly German and Finnish accents sound nothing alike. What did I do to finish so well then? I was gonna say I have good news and bad news.

The good news is I'll never do German accents again. So bad news is this is my Swiss. Wait till you hear my Austrian. Oh my god.

Ready? Here we go. This is my Austrian. Lastly there are indeed Rax restaurants all over Finland multiple in Helsinki.

Welcome not to Burj de Bubbledo. It is possibly the vast pizza I have ever had. Oh man. Ah, that's not that was like the the I was like from the Mississippi Delta and then the have was it was man.

The have was a AI that's been trained to learn German but only by listening to people who are in their first week of Duolingo classes. This I would be very worried about any messages you get to be a brand ambassador for the salt for the Salzburg salt mines because they are taking you down there and leaving you. This is how it ends for John. That's how they do it.

That's how they get you. They're like a tragic accident. So I just wanted to be your brand ambassador and use my amazing accent and make the people happy. Anyway, what was the question?

There was no question. I just wanted to go back to doing our German accents. I felt like it had been too long. That's the last time we ever do German accents but have you heard our French accents?

Do you have a question from our listeners that was humiliating? Well, it's none of its look if it was good people would just think there were strangers talking to them. If it was good though, we would do it all the time. It's the truth.

Like if we had good accents, are you kidding? This would be an accent show. This is all we would never not do accents. If I could do accents, I would be an accent comedian.

That's a good question. I can't. I can't find any. Okay, here's one.

This first question is from Luke who writes, Dujan Hank, why are American English classes so focused on finding the meaning of quotes and books written 100 years ago? Even when there is no meaning in them, why can't we focus on grammar and spelling? Why do they do this in the same question with math? Why is it all in the path to calculus, pumpkins and penguins?

Luke, I can't speak to calculus, Luke on a few levels. But I do feel like I can speak to the American English class issue. So as far as why we read critically in English classes, we read critically in English classes so we can learn how to read critically because what language can accomplish in my opinion anyway is not only what it accomplishes, quote unquote, literally. It's not only like what the story does, it's also what the language does.

And we know this if we think about it because what the story does, quote unquote, literally, or if you read something, quote unquote, literally, you are in fact reading it figuratively because wrong. Well, language is made up of figures. It is inherently symbolic. And all language is symbolic.

And so what we're trying to do when we read critically is not divine what the author meant 100 years ago. We're trying to divine what the meaning might be for us and how we might have a deeper relationship with language through close reading. And I also don't just don't agree that authors never intend their work to be read closely. Oh, God.

I do not labor under the delusion that I am a genius, but I definitely intend my work to be read closely. There are lots of metaphors and symbols and resonances in my work that I am hoping that readers will pick up on it. But you don't want to go too hard on because then people will be like, I get it, John, I get it. I'm not trying to write animal farm.

I'm not trying to be like, have the reader be like, man, these pigs are definitely not pigs. But like, I get frustrated when people are like, why can't we just read for story? When reading for story is also a kind of figurative reading. It's just one kind out of many.

And I think personally that reading gets a lot richer and more fulfilling. And the same as we're watching movies, by the way, engaging with any kind of art, it's more fulfilling the more able you are to read or listen or watch closely and critically. I'll answer this question from a science majors perspective as a person who's sort of like crossed that bridge later in life into writing and reading and thinking about that stuff. And it is this, how do we teach people the complexity of language?

How do we teach people to communicate effectively and richly and beautifully? And that's like, that's the hard question. That's the hard question that primary and secondary school teachers are posed with and college professors are posed with. How do you teach a bunch of people to take language seriously?

And that's not an easy question. And this is one of the ways that we have figured out how to do it effectively, as you take a text and you say, this is more than meets the eye. And let's talk about the ways in which it is more than meets the eye. And that not only maybe deepens your relationship with it, but also maybe makes you a more effective communicator.

And I have to say becoming a more effective communicator is like, a lot of the reason we go to school. Yeah. And in truth, like, we can talk all we want about teaching grammar. But when we are teaching critical reading, we are teaching grammar, I think, on a jumper level, let me give you an example.

Like, if you were in a sort of, if you go to a grammar class, or at least if you went to a grammar class when I was in middle school, they might tell you well, double negatives are wrong. So you don't say, I can't not do that. You would never say that. However, it does mean something actually.

Exactly. And by the way, if you can hear a lot of noises, it's Hank's chair. I just want to clarify that because it's extremely loud in the room. I don't know if it's loud in the recording.

It sounds farty. It just sounds mostly loud and continual. I've never noticed how much you move inside of the chair until now. But the thing about a sentence like, I cannot not do it, is that that that means something and it means something other than I can do it.

And understanding the ways that language can be wielded, the ways that grammar can be wielded to create nuance, to create multiplicity of meaning, that is actually the work of what grammar actually does instead of learning grammar rules. Well, yeah, I mean, there's so it's, the communication is so subtle. Your father-in-law, again, pointed out at the Thanksgiving dinner table that there is something very different between, I love all of you and I love y'all. It's just like, I love you all versus I love y'all.

It means different things. Despite the fact that it's the same sentence and like, how do I know that? And I came in really closely, articulate with it, like the difference in the meanings of those two sentences. But it conveys a very different feeling to me.

Yeah. And so that's part of what, that's part of why we try to read these texts deeply. That said, I definitely think there is a risk to that endlessly deep reading. But to me, the risk isn't that you get too deep.

The risk is that you bring your own biases and experiences and cultural milieu into that depth, which can in some cases, I think exclude people or work from those conversations that shouldn't be excluded. A famous example of this is that I would say one of the best writers of the 20th century probably was Octavia Butler, who wrote Parable to Sower and Kindred and lots of other books that are now being read in college classes all over the place. But for many years, weren't because they didn't meet maybe the expectations of the people who were deciding what kinds of books we should read and what kinds of contexts. And so that is definitely a risk.

But I don't think that reading deeply is inherently unrewarding. That's my thank you for coming to my TED talk. We'll now allow Hank to do a TED talk about what this question comes from Rebecca who writes Dear John and Hank, does the spin of the Earth factor into air travel times like taking out weather variables like wind direction and speed, if a plane flew along an equator an equal distance in opposite directions, would the flight going against the spin of the Earth get to its destination in less time than the flight going with the spin of the Earth spinning right around Rebecca? Now this, I have no idea what the answer is.

It has to be like a couple milliseconds at least. There isn't it? There is an effect. Okay.

But basically now, because the Earth spins and so does the atmosphere. Like it's not like the, you don't like imagine like the Earth sort of like spinning into a storm. You know, you're not always sort of always crashing into whatever the like the Earth system, the atmosphere spins right along with it. Or else we would all buy like if the, you know, because the wind, if the wind was 25,000 miles an hour wind all the time, that would rip everything off the surface of the Earth.

So that would be a bummer. It does. So there is an effect though, because there's Coriolis forces and jet streams and that are influenced by the spin of the Earth, but it's not significant. So what?

Yes. For space travel, it does matter a lot. Because once you leave the atmosphere, there's spinning and you're spinning around the Earth. Going through.

It's not really about where you're going on Earth. It's about getting into orbit. And so you do want that speed boost from the spin of the Earth. So you have to get going a certain speed before you are in orbit, or just come out speed rather than height.

And so that all rockets take off in the direction of the Earth spin. Oh, significantly. That's interesting. More efficient.

That's interesting. I read this great book that's half by Alexe Leonov, the guy who took the first spacewalk. And he wrote about the reasons why he had to, because he had to choose a manual landing site because the automatic landing system failed. And he had to choose it.

The aircraft was spinning, it was in an uncontrolled spin and he had to choose it just looking out the little window and like doing geometry on a piece of paper. And he said he couldn't pick the original landing site. He's not an option. And I've always wondered why that was.

I've always wondered, like, because he doesn't really explain it or at least the way he explains it in the book didn't make sense to me. But I've always wondered why that was. And so he picked basically, he picked the space in the Soviet Union that he thought would be furthest away from a border because he did not want his spacecraft ending up in another country. And then also furthest from a human.

Because he didn't want to land on somebody's house. Then I watched this because he was like, look, I'm almost definitely going to die. I mean, pretty much might as well not take anybody with me pretty much. Then I watched this stuff, Soviet propaganda movie about the flight and it's amazing.

The best part about it is that they celebrate the return of the cosmonauts by saying not only was this the first man's spacewalk, this was the very first time in the history of space travel that someone has manually landed. Because if it was all part of the plan, we did it. We did it. Wow, Russia.

We keep it in first. We did the one on purpose and we did the one on accident. Yeah. Oh, man, this is the first spacecraft where the one of the modules didn't fully eject from the plane so that during re-entry, fortunately, a cable got hot enough to burn off.

That's why they didn't die. All right, Hank, let me ask you another question about science that I don't know the answer to because I don't understand any part of this question. Claudia writes, Dear John and Hank, I was talking to my friend about Gabriel's horn. I'm already gone.

I'm lost. Do you know Gabriel's horn is? No, let's keep asking. Maybe I'll remember.

We came across a question. If you don't know what Gabriel's horn is, Claudia, thank you. Thank you just came in clutch. It's a theoretically infinitely long horn shaped object that tapers off so that it has an infinitely large surface area and length, but a finite volume.

The question is, I can kind of picture this. The question is, it's a big horn. Well, is it a big horn? Because potentially, well, it's an imaginary big horn.

Yeah, potentially isn't it just like, it's a big horn. There's, okay, big horn. Listen, Hank, it is a big horn, but more to the point, it is an infinite horn and it's important that we don't confuse infinity with largeness. So it is, it is an infinite horn.

It is a bound to its horn that has a non infinite volume because of the taper and you can calculate the volume. Exactly. All right. The question is, what happens if you were to make a brass instrument called Gabriel's French horn in place, someone at the other end of the infinite horn to hear it?

Would the sound taper off? Would it be infinitely loud? There'd be air throughout the horn pressurized to 14 PSI, which again, doesn't actually mean an infinite amount of air. What would happen to us?

Don't blow this for us, Claudia. So if you blew Gabriel's horn? Yes. Do you Gabriel?

I need to just send me your horn, because I may or may not be about to destroy a Rax. You just laid that infinite horn down on the surface of the earth and already we have a problem. Because the horn extends out past the sun. It just goes around the earth a bunch of times.

It's a French horn. They go with circles. Oh yeah. Okay.

So it just infinitely circles the earth and then it's spiral horn. Yes. But as it ends up as it goes, it gets larger. It doesn't end.

The front it just keeps getting larger. But back in the back that you blow into it, the part that parts just keeps getting smaller for us. Yeah. Okay.

So by the time it gets like 700 revolutions around the earth, let's say it's like one nanometer in circumference. And then I'm sure much less than that. Let's say it's a fine hang. Let's say it's a billionth of a, yeah, it's a plank.

It's a plank. One thing. And you have something that somehow has lips small enough. We hire the wigs.

Smallest cricket. Just get out of it. Smallest cricket. I have the sheep into it.

Just places its tiny little cricket lips at the end of this infinite horn and goes, what happens? What happens? I don't see why it doesn't destroy the Rax. I don't see air.

The air just kind of that keeps going and going and going and going and going and building and building and building and building. And then the Rax is hit by a sea note so intense that the Rax blows off the surface of the earth. That's your theory. Yeah.

And Finland might go to. Oh, I was thinking the Rax in Ohio. Oh, well, geez, that's really close to here. Great point.

We should go with the Rax in Finland. No reason. My child is in Indiana right now. I'm not going to blow anything up with an infinite horn in Ohio.

I'm a Finland father. Finland on the other hand. I mean, those forget those kids. Oh, God.

What would happen if you blew Gabriel's horn? Look, I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, I just state the obvious me neither.

All right. Hank, listen, our listeners solved one of the great mysteries of the 21st century, which is what happens when you're standing on a scale and bucket of water on scale and you stick your hand in the bucket of water. Yeah. Counterintuitively, you get less your scale ways less and the water scale ways more.

Yeah. I think that our listeners can solve the problem with what happens if you blow Gabriel's horn at a Rax in Finland. Yeah. But I don't think Hank and I can.

No. Well, the thing is the whole, if it's infinite, if the whole is infinitely small, would the noise be infinitely loud? Would the pressure wave be infinitely strong? That's my question because I don't understand how physics of horns works.

But if that's the case, then yeah, you destroy the earth. I guess the other question, though, is if the whole is infinitely small, can you even get a tiny little cricket? Definitely not. All right.

So then, so then we can't, so there's a number of practical concerns. So then we can't blow Gabriel's horn. Well, obviously you can't create infinite power either. Yes, you can't.

Well, obviously I sounded like that was even worse than me thinking, all right, I can start 12 businesses in three months. I know. Yeah, that might have been even more annoying. What if, okay, all right, I'm going to throw this out there in case this whole Gabriel's horn thing won't work at all because you can't get a tiny cricket on the end of it, right?

But what do you think? You got to cricket go into the top of Gabriel's horn and go around the earth 72 times until it was a very, very, very small horn, not quite infinite solving a problem. That is just a horn. Yeah, but if it's a close to infinite horn, there's nothing, there's nothing, there is no close to infinite.

You're right, man. I'm sorry. I was thinking about infinite as big again, not a non boundlessness. Very hard to not.

Okay. Is it? Orrin says affinity instead of infinity. Yeah, it's pretty cute.

Yeah. You asked him the other day how much you loved you and he said 100. Yeah, there's a lot. And then I said, how much do you love your dad?

And he said affinity. Yeah. And I was like, screw you on. I'm out here trying every day.

Sending you text messages. Yeah. Although I did it the other day, he was talking to his mom about how much you loved her. I'm just kidding.

By the way, I was thrilled to be loved 100. And I've had a real breakthrough. He said affinity Google affinity Google affinity Google so like I'm not even close. Yeah, that's all.

I mean, that is a big difference to be fair. Yeah. Well, except I know math enough to know that actually there's no difference. Well, yeah, if you've been like infinity and I, yeah, and I, right, I live in like Orrin infinity is boundless.

It's not a large number. Come on. Oh man, we went to a cemetery. We went to crown I took Hank to crown Hill Cemetery.

Of course, like, where else am I going to take? You've probably seen the episode already. It's the best cemetery in America. And I took Hank there and we came across, we didn't talk about this in the video, but we came across a headstone and the two people are still alive.

So we felt like we couldn't right totally drag them. But their headstone one, it stated they're like political beliefs. Yeah. Which I just I don't think you should have on your headstone, even if you are a president, like president Benjamin Harrison was great.

He's buried at crown Hill Cemetery. Nowhere does it say like his political party or like how he felt about tariffs, right? Like because it's his grave. Okay, that's not the place we can't wait.

It wasn't like Benjamin Harrison. Cancel culture sucks. Right. Because those are just gonna date terribly.

Yeah. And just and and you're potentially going to alienate starting a whole university based on that idea. Okay. Certainly headstone is cheaper.

We don't need to get into the mental gymnastics that people have to undergo to look at the state of higher education in the United States and think you know what I think would solve this problem. But anyway, this person or people it's a couple when they stated their political beliefs on their headstone and they're not even dead yet. I just feel like isn't the whole point of having a headstone that you hope people walk by and spare you a good thought? Well, you're telling at least 50% of people I'm not like you.

We might not have agreed on some pretty core stuff. But then you want to tell the full story about the quote? What was the quote? The quote was outside of a book.

Oh my God. The quote was outside of the dog. A man's best friend is a book. And that was it.

That was the whole quote. That was the whole quote. It was attributed correctly to Crown Choke marks. But the quote didn't tell half of a joke.

The joke. It's a joke. The joke is outside of a dog. A book is a man's best friend inside of a dog.

It's too dark to read. That's the joke. You can't have the first half of the joke. Maybe you can.

The problem is that it makes it it's like it makes it seem like oh, that's not a very good quote. It's just not like it's really skin on its own. The good part is if you know the joke, like a yeah, yeah, I guess if you know the joke, then you feel like you're in the know. But it's a tombstone.

A hundred years from now. Yes. Who's going to remember this Grout Show marks? Whereas if you include the whole joke, a hundred years from now, somebody might discover a new Grout Show marks.

Yeah. You know, like you could be the one who preserves that Grout Show marks joke for future generations. I have to tell you at the cemetery, there among all the people, there is like six of us there. Yeah, and all the people we we talked a lot about what we would like John Green's gravestone to be like.

And nobody talked about their own graves at all. I didn't find that to be the case at all. I felt like, I mean, first off, I wasn't with you guys. So if you were talking about my gravestone, I wasn't listening.

I was like walking around looking at gravestones. Yeah. I feel like mom gave us hyper specific intentions. Yeah, mom was like, I want plastic flowers and those little whirly gigs.

Pinwheels. She wants the pinwheels to be functioning in the shape of a reef at all times for eternity. I don't know if I can make that promise. Look, look, we're going to work real hard on material science.

We're going to create self-healing pinwheels. I feel like we didn't talk about your gravestone because you're probably not going to be buried at Crown Hill. Unless I can talk you into it. No, I'm definitely getting buried in the moon.

That's unfortunate. Sorry. I would love to see you at Crown Hill. I mean, long after I go.

This man works for the cemetery. Long after I go. You should get commissions. I should.

I want to go first so I can see your grave because I feel like you're going to do a great job. Well, first off, I'm offended by your idea that if you die first, you'll get to see my gravestone. That's not what I meant. I want you to die first.

Okay. For a lot of different ways. Yeah, I want you to die first too. Believe me, it's the appropriate way of things.

I should die first. Yeah. And then you know what Hank, we've got to interrupt this conversation for you now for Tysman. Okay.

Well, let's remind me that this pack is brought to you by Crown Hill Cemetery. Crown Hill Cemetery. At the very top, you find a guy that nobody remembers. It's James Wickham Rileyley and he's at the very top.

And people remember him. He wrote Little Orphan Annie. Oh, sure. I've heard that.

But I mean, does he need to be at the very top of the Hill? Benjamin Harrison is at the bottom of the Hill. The president. Yeah.

I mean, I've often thought and I don't want to get too into my own thinking about my own gravestone Hank because like, this has been the Hank is egotistical episode and I'm not looking to not look into like shift it back, shift it back. But as you know, Hank, all I want is to be buried on top of James Wickham Riley. No, I'm just kidding. Put me at the bottom of the Hill bearing me with the people.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Salzberg murders, the Salzberg murders, the events that immediately preceded my burial at Crown Hill Cemetery. This podcast is also brought to you by Gabriel's horn. Gabriel's horn, the cause of the end of all of our lives. Potentially.

We're not sure. But it could be helped. We all go. That's going to be terrible for the funeral industry.

I think it would be good because so many people died. No, no, we got to have some left. Yeah. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by the Specter of Death, the Specter of Death.

Wow. It's just been it's been all over this episode. I don't know what it is about us being together. Well, it's always there.

It's always there. I'm just glad I'm just glad that our comedy podcast about death is about death again. Really? Yeah, we brought it back.

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Just have to wait until we're 24, only two months left of being 22, Veronica. I thought it's might be a good question for you, Hank, since you once sent blank 182 lyrics for a song that you thought they should record. Look, I have a strong healthy opinion of myself. First of all, as a historian of the lyrics of link 182 songs, it's nobody likes it when you're 23 and you still act like you're in freshman year.

That's it. That's a critical observation. Nobody likes it when you act like you're 18 or 14. That isn't defined.

And I think that is common. Nobody liked me when I was 23 because I acted like I was 14. Nobody liked me when I was 23 because regardless, being 23 actually does quite suck. It's really hard.

I think 23 is one of the hardest times, especially if you did high school straight into college and now you're 23 and you're graduated and it's like what am I supposed to do now? Yeah. And there's always, and there's this weird thing happening simultaneously, which is that all things are possible. Your life could go in a ton of different directions, which is exciting, but also terrifying and overwhelming and difficult to pay.

And there's a sadness. I felt this sadness in knowing, in thinking that like, well, my life is going to have to go one way, which means it's not going to go one way or another. All the other choices I don't make. I don't other friends I don't follow.

Yeah. All the other places I don't live. Yeah. And a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times your core relationships are either like not yet set or at least not yet super strong.

And they're in flux. And the older I get, the more convinced I become that core foundational interpersonal relationships is the meaning of life. It is it is both like why we are here and what we are here for is to like take care of each other. Like I've become a little bit of a von Nogitian humanist in the sense that I do believe that you care for people in your karass, like people who come into your sphere of being for whatever reason.

Like in my case, my children and my friends in Indianapolis, but also, you know, like my friend Shannon who lives in Chicago and my brother who is a Montana and other people who are kind of in that extended network of people like I care about. Like tonight we're having over the great writer Ashley Ford and her husband, Kelly Stacy. And I consider them to be in this, you know, this like extended family isn't the right word. That's what I like about the Vonnogit word karass like that this extended group of people that I have.

And when I was 23, I kind of had that, but there were a lot of fragile relationships and a lot of relationships that like blew apart spectacularly. They were unstable, yes, yeah, they ran very fun and very cold. It could be fun in the way that jumping off of a cliff can be fine in the way that like a roller coaster is fun, but you're barfing. Yeah.

And you're and it's more fun. Like, well, because on the person, some people are like that roller coaster was great. That's true. What I felt like for me, it was not that way.

What I felt like is I was on a roller coaster and I was seated next to an old person who was kind of like shouting at me the whole time we were on the roller coaster that if I didn't like this, I was never going to like anything about being alive. Yes. I was the best part. Exactly.

I was young. I was roller coaster right now. Why are you complaining? I was healthy and I could like go and stay out late and party and I didn't have any responsibilities.

And I'm sitting over there being like, this roller coaster won't end and I can't stop barfing and it's a real bummer for me. And you tell me that this is as good as it gets. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I have since had moments when peers have looked back on that time and or look back at people that age and have said, oh my God, I like, I'm so jealous of them right now. And I'm like, I do not late. I do not relate.

But it is hard. And I and like, that's the age where I worry kind of worry about people the most like like 22 to 26. Or even like 32. I don't know.

I don't stop worrying. I mean, because eventually you do start to settle into adulthood, but it takes a while. I don't know for me. It took a long time.