318: Opposing Squirrel Vibes

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It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you some advice and bring you all the news from both Mars and as you have lived in John, Groundhog's Day is upon us and I've recently discovered that Groundhogs and Woodshucks are the same thing and also I recently discovered that Woodshucks, when they're male, are called He-Chucks and when they're female, they're called She-Chucks and when a She-Chuck decides to devote her life to religious service, that's called a Nunchuck. How much of that was true? Woodshucks and Groundhogs are the same. Okay, but the He-Chuck and the She-Chuck, that's made up, right?

As far as I know, there might be some people who call them He-Chucks and She-Chucks. I didn't check. Well, I thought the joke was going in a different direction. I thought it was headed for an up-chuck of some kind.

I was looking for a vomit-related pun, so I was delighted and surprised by Nunchuck. It's very funny. I've never liked Groundhog Day, Hank. I've always thought, except for the film, which I think is wonderful.

I've always thought it's a completely BS holiday and not just for the obvious reason that whether or not a Groundhog does or does not see a shadow, which anyway, we can't know because we cannot know what the Groundhog is seeing. We can't access Groundhog consciousness even putting that aside. Having Groundhog Day on February 2nd and then being like, there will or won't be six more weeks of winter is, at least in Indiana, and I suspect in Montana, inherently ludicrous because there will be at least six more weeks of winter and likely 12 more weeks of winter. It always makes it, in my mind, on February 2nd, I always think to myself, oh, winter might be nearing an end because it is Groundhog Day and sometimes not.

But it's February is the second worst month winter wise. And March is the worst because in March, you think it's over and it's just not. Yeah, March is when the names of the months start to get longer, but the weather does not really get warmer, which is it feels, to my mind, shorter month names, warmer weather. And it's like, oh, we're going to March, April, these names are short.

These are short month names. It's like, no, I live in Montana. Yeah, only May. May is a short month name that is also...

And then it's like, all right, that is when it finally relents. And so what the Groundhog should be saying by seeing or not seeing its shadow is there will either be six more weeks of really epically miserable winter or six more weeks of just normal winter. Yeah. What if the Groundhog is saying, either way, it's just an apology, just like, here I am.

Everybody look at me, my name is Phil, and I want you to know that I feel bad for you because you are not covered in this ridiculously thick, awesome coat that I have. Did you know, John, for example, that of the many names for the Groundhog includes the thick wood badger, which is great, just great. Do you want to know some other Marmot names? Well, they're kind of Marmot.

Can I just briefly first tell you that I wrote about this in the Anthropocene Review, but I had a long time rivalry, a deep animosity toward a particular Groundhog that lived underneath the shed where I keep a lot of my gardening tools. And you never know how much you love the ones you hate until they're gone. You never know how much that animosity is giving you in terms of life force until suddenly all your Edamame is growing with no problem because stupid Groundhog that was your nemesis didn't make it through last winter because not to take it back to the beginning, last winter lasted forever, even though the Groundhog ostensibly did not see a shadow. John, I'm going to tell you the names, the various names of Groundhogs, and I want you to choose your favorite.

Okay, here are names that normal people, not exceptional people, these are just regional names for a Groundhog. You got a Chuck, you got a wood shock, you got a ground pig, you got a whistle pig, a wistler, a thick wood badger, Canada Marmot, a Monax or a Monax, you got a Red Monk, a land beaver, well also a Wienisk is an option, and then for a young Groundhog, you can call them Chucklings. And that's not something I made up, that's a real thing. I mean, what was your favorite?

Wienisk by a very wide margin. It's hard not to go with Wienisk, I like that wood badger a lot. I mean, for me, we've got Wienisk and then we have like the distance between Jupiter and Mars, and then we have Thicwood Badger. I like that Red Monk is one of them, which is just like you got Red Monks and you got Nunchucks, like they're just, you know, both of their lives to religious service.

Very dedicated. I just have to tell you something that I just now found out about Groundhog's day and it's going to blow your mind, or it's not going to do with Winter at all. At least it blew my mind. Okay.

Okay. So do you know why they say about the shadow that whether he can see a shadow? Yeah. It's because it's whether it's a sunny day.

Yeah, I didn't know that. I thought it was whether or not like he glanced over his shoulder and saw his shadow in that single moment that the mayor of Pucksatani, Pennsylvania, or whatever was staring at the Groundhog on Groundhog Day. Well, if it's a sunny day on February 2nd, that is a good portend for the rest of the whatever. Which isn't like, I'd love to see the graph, but I guess it has nothing to do with it.

Like whether it's sunny on a particular day does not influence whether or not the rest of the next six weeks will be cold. Is Groundhog Day. But regardless, does he, when he goes back when he goes back in, is that mean that it's summer that like less? I thought that minute was more because then it was sunny and he runs back in because he sees his shadow.

Hey, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not a Groundhog Day expert. Just for my just for my own benefit. How do you spell weenas?

It's WEN. U.S.K. Weenas. I'm quite fond of I'm also I'm also a fond of land beaver because that is what they resemble for me more than anything.

You're like, that's a beaver. And there's like no, it's not in the water. Yeah. But they have some similar Sure habits.

They're both they're both rodents too. They're big roads. I'm also pretty fond of the term whistle pig. I don't really know what it means, but I will say that in my opinion, a Groundhog is pretty similar to a pig, not in terms of genetically maybe, but vibe wise.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh sure. Yeah.

They're energy. It's close to the ground. It's a little waddling is similar. Do you know what kind of animal a Groundhog is?

Is it a socialist? Okay. I haven't done a poll. No, I'm not of other animals.

Groundhogs are actually squirrels. Are they really? They really are the largest squirrel by far. Are you kidding?

Well, no, I don't know if they're the largest squirrel, but they are squirrels. But they are squirrels. Okay. All right.

So this is interesting, Hank, because I was just thinking that you know how like some people vibe wise are more like squirrels and other people are more like Groundhogs. Like you're more of a Groundhog and I'm more of a squirrel, you know, holding nervous. I always reminded that onion headline last moments of roadkill squirrel frantic comma indecisive. Like I have a frantic indecisive energy and you have that like Groundhog.

I've seen it all, you know, the world ain't going to impress me kind of energy. Okay. That's it. That's the joke.

I just think like I'm more of a squirrel and you're more of a Groundhog, but we're both squirrels man deep down. We're both squirrels. We're brothers. It's just you're a big wadily squirrel and I'm a tiny nervous squirrel inside of a big body.

Yeah, they're big squirrels. They're so big. It says basically a gigantic North American ground squirrel. It's funny that none of these names for Groundhogs come anywhere close to capturing the name that I used for the Groundhog that was constantly attacking my garden, which was not mentioned on the podcast.

I tended to call it. I don't know if we can say that on the podcast and your negative energy finally got him. I know. And then immediately I was so sad.

Oh, well, he'll be okay. He won't be Hank. That's the whole point. Okay.

Oh, no, I also won't be. You know, this is going to blow your mind. The fate that awaited the Groundhog also awaits me. John, I have a couple of questions from our listeners that I want to answer.

Great. I'm going to get into the first, the second one by asking the first one was comes from Maya who asks Dear Hank and John, is it possible for something to have no temperature? Remember, you're going to die in all that Maya. Maya, thank you.

I hadn't thought about it since seconds ago. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about a Marmot dying in John's life is that it just reminds me of his own inevitable mortality.

And the thing about a Marmot dying in Hank's life is that it makes him feel nothing. Look, if all Marmot's lived, the world would be entirely Marmot in like four years. Yeah, I know. I understand.

I understand. But I just think it's hilarious that like you're like, Oh, whenever a Marmot dies, John thinks about his own mortality. And you think whenever a Marmot dies, well, that's not bad. That's not sure.

That's the thing that occurs. Well, we're different people. I'm a squirrel or I'm not sure. You're a Marmot.

I'm a squirrel. Okay. Maya, is it possible for something to have no temperature? John, what do you think?

I think not because isn't really temperature just I mean, I guess you're doing it for something to have no temperature, but isn't temperature really just energy? Yeah, yeah, it's it's movement of particles, but also if particles don't move at all, that's still a temperature because it's like the lowest temperature. Yeah, the the but but there are things that don't have particles like a shadow, a the idea of Groundhog's Day, love, the literal vacuum of space in which a pure vacuum in which there are no particles, all those things don't have a temperature. But are they things?

Kind of. They're not things that are made out of stuff. Like something that has no temperature, for example, would be the groundhog that died in my garden because it doesn't exist anymore. Not a body cell temperature, of course, but like the groundhog itself no longer exists.

It's life force no longer has a temperature. And so I guess you could say that like, but did it ever? Yeah, no, I'm okay. Oh, that's a great way of thinking about it.

The only things with temperature are things that have always had a temperature. Right. If you have a temperature, you can't go from having a temperature to not having a temperature. Correct.

You also can't interestingly go from not having a temperature to having a temperature. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so like, so technically, either you know, me has a temperature because whatever makes us us isn't in this body, but it also is so it does also have a temperature.

So it's I've gotten I've gotten to the point where I think you can take something that has no temperature and give it a temperature. How's that? You just have to turn it from energy into a particle through a nuclear reaction of some kind. Oh, okay.

So just just energy. Well, it's a photon or an electron. I think on their own, they don't really have heat. It's only when they're moving.

Well, no, because they're not they are a vector for heat, but they are not heat. Because to be hot, I think you have to be an atom. I don't think like a neutron on its own or a proton on its own can be hot. Sure.

But I'm not sure. So we don't really know the answer, but when you say to be hot, you have to be an atom. Are you thinking more of like an atom Sandler or are you thinking more of like, like helium? Everyone knows.

And just I do you ever see a joke at its irresistible to you, even though you know it's bad and you know, it's not worth anyone's effort anyway, you still can't not go there. That's like a human story, like going to a place we know we shouldn't visit and where we won't have a good time and no one will benefit, but we're like, right, still kind of want to go. So to summarize, things have temperature, but only things that are made out of things. Correct.

And this next question, it leads into that is from Sierra who asks dear brothers green, why is space not hot? If energy from the sun travels through space and he eats the earth, how is space cold? Wouldn't it make sense for the space between the sun and the earth to also be warm? Not the soda or the mountain Sierra?

Sierra. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing point.

John, I did not know this and I had to look it up. Yeah. The space around earth. So like in the same orbit as earth that particles in space of which are very spaced apart are what temperature 50 degrees Fahrenheit?

Really? So like not particularly warm, but not cold. Like 50 is great. I'd I'd I'd I'd love to spend the weekend up there actually.

It's miserable here in Indianapolis. Give me some oxygen all head right up there. So so space is inhospitable for a lot of reasons. But one of the things about this is that so those particles are heating up, but then they are radiating their heat away.

So there is the equilibrium that they have a right like nearby earth is 50 degrees. It's more than that closer to the sun. It's less than that farther from the sun. But space is cold, mostly for two reasons.

One, if you're in the shadow of anything, all of that, all those particles immediately radiates its heat away and it becomes very cold. If there's nothing heating up so very quickly cools down. But mostly when we talk about how cold spaces were mean like interstellar space. So like the vast majority of space is very far away from stars.

And that space is very cold. But our like solar system space, especially in the inner solar system, isn't cold. It's just it's not cold. Now it's also not very much stuff.

So it can't heat you up or cool you down very easily. So if you're in space, you would not feel hot or cold because your body would not be able to get rid of its heat very efficiently. What you do feel though is your body would heat up very quickly because of the radiation of the sun. So actually in space, the problem is oftentimes managing heat because the sun hits you and you do not have a way to radiate that that heat away as quickly as like an individual little particle on its own wood.

So you heat up very quickly. In fact, we'd experience lots of negative consequences from that heat. So I can't spend the weekend in near earth orbit warming up. No, you know, there's there's better places easier to get to, easier to get to places where you could have a nice warm time.

That reminds me actually Hank of this question from Ellie who writes Dear John and Hank, if all humans lived in one city, how big would that city be? Like, could we all fit into France? Or would we need a city that's like as big as the United States for us to all fit into? I know this wouldn't work practically.

That's true. But I still wonder if there would be some kind of consequence, like what it would mean for the planet peanut butter and Ellie. So, so Hank, what do you think? If all of humanity lived in a city with a density of say New York City, how big do you think it would take to make that city?

And then what about if it were like the density of say a more suburban American city like Houston? Well, so I actually decided to go ahead and do the math on this one. If it's Manhattan and not New York City, the density is about 75,000 people per square mile, which is both a lot and not that much. Not that much.

Yeah, but it's a lot though. In fact, the if you count like whole city boundaries, that's about the densest city that we have, which I think is Manila, which is 75,000 people per square mile in a whole whole city. So Manhattan has ways in which I don't think that the scale of Manhattan would work because obviously people live outside of Manhattan and move into to do a lot of the services there. But if you did this, the city, if it was the density of Manhattan would be about the size of Wyoming, which is about half the size of France.

So you could have a much less dense city than Manhattan, more like the density of New York City as a whole and have it fit in France, which is really huge for a city. Like a city the size of Wyoming being a person who's driven across Wyoming is an upsetting thought. But it's also less than a half a percent of the earth's surface. Yeah, you know what this question made me think about Hank is that over time, far more people are living in cities.

Like if you look at the percentage of people who live in urban areas now versus 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, the trend has really only gone in one direction for a number of millennia, which does make it possible to imagine a world where all humans are like, you know what? We are a big problem for the globe. And we should probably increase our density pretty significantly and have most humans live in a few population centers. Like that could happen.

I mean, there are going to be cities of 50 to 100 million people within a century. And so I don't know, I mean, this question really kind of blew my mind a little bit because I started thinking, well, why don't we all live? Why don't we make Indianapolis a city of 75,000 people per square mile and have 200 million people live in Indiana. It'd be great for tax revenue.

I think there are people who wouldn't like it. I looked it up and Houston is is 21 times less dense than Manhattan. So that's a very different number. So 21 times 21 Wyoming's.

Yeah, you would need most of the continental United States to fit all the people in a Houston-sized city and a Houston dense city. Yeah. So Hank, do you think it's possible that percentage of people who live in urban centers will just increase forever? And eventually, most people will live in one of a few cities?

I think it depends on a couple of things. My guess is that there is there's a reason why that trend reverses in some circumstances. So like, I'm taking this question really seriously. I think that probably is the right thing to do because it's very interesting.

Is the reason why people go to cities? Is it because, we don't know the answer to this question, because there are a lot of reasons why people did it in the past, despite the fact that it was very likely to have a negative impact on their lives? Yeah. Well, we don't really.

This is one of the great unanswered questions, in my opinion, in the world of history, is why have people chosen to live in cities so many times when it doesn't really make sense? And I say that as someone who was in a city, so does Hank, in the sense of not within the rural community. Yeah. So the, is there, I think there's an element of status seeking to it, where this is like a thing that all humans do, is we want to be a part of a story, be a part of the thing that is happening, and I think that there's a piece of it that is that.

And so the question, and there's also an economic piece to it and the potential of being able to help serve your family back home. And so the question becomes like, will there be a better or bigger way or just an alternative way to go after those same things in the future that do not involve heading to a place of increased physical population density? Right. And my feeling is yes, there will just be ways to go after that without leaving the comfort of the thing that you are already a part of, flash, leaving behind a quality of life that you can't maintain as easily in a city.

So your argument is that technology may lead to some level of de-urbanization. Yes. Well, I don't think that it means that, I think that it means less for maybe big, big cities, maybe not, we're just like slower growth. It means more for smaller cities that have a lot of the same services, but don't have, that provides sort of a more specific vibe to that people will be wanting.

Yeah. I will say that the urbanization rate over the last 15 years has been incredibly stable, at least according to our world and data. And the rural population of Earth is pretty much flat. Like in 2001, there were 3.2 billion people living in rural areas, and now there are 3.4.

And in that time, the urbanization, the urban population has gone up by over a billion people. So it's been steady so far. But I agree with you that we don't really know the long-term consequences of any of our technology revolutions. Yeah.

It feels different, but doesn't everything. Basically. Yeah. And every other time people were freaking out about technological change, they were on some level wrong.

I try to remind myself about that as I forgot about it. There's also things that are right. Usually they're wrong about why it's a big deal, but oftentimes it is actually quite a big deal. Right.

It's just very complicated. Like the human interface with technology, especially communication technology, is very complicated. Yeah. This is a weird thing.

We're inside of your ears right now. I don't want to call attention to how weird that is, but that's super weird. Like you're doing something that we don't know about and you put us in your ears. I don't like it.

Which reminds me actually, it tastes podcast, which apparently we're not answering any questions brought to you by your ears, your ears. You put us in there. Oh gosh. This podcast is also brought to you by things that don't have feet.

Things that don't have feet. They include almost all of the ideas. And of course, this podcast is brought to you by weenusks. Weenusks.

Weenusks. Weenusks. It's almost like the okay, okay thing from the fault of their stars, their tagline is weenusks. Weenusks.

And finally, this podcast is brought to you by a Wyoming-sized Manhattan. I don't know why, but it really upsets me to think about. Yeah. Yeah.

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Hey, I want to try to steer us toward a slightly more serious direction. Just briefly, to answer this question from anonymous who writes, here's John and Hank, I've been having an ongoing disagreement with my parents about restrictions they put on my life. I really need to talk to them about it and reach some sort of reconciliation but whenever I broach the subject, they always seem extremely hurt. How do I dress this issue without making my parents feel bad?

I really want to disagree with them but every time I do that, I just feel awful and guilty. So how do I do it gently? Sorry for kind of a heavy question sincerely anonymous. This is not easy but Hank, you remember when we had Ryan Reynolds on the podcast?

Yes. And he was like, when you're in conflict with somebody, you need to listen and understand their perspective and mirror their perspective back to them and empathize with them and validate their perspective and then only then once you really deeply understand their perspective and are able to mirror it back to them so that you're able to express what they're saying and they're able to hear that you're hearing what they're saying only then. Do you ask them to do you the same favor and listen to your perspective? Yes.

That is like a cheat code. It's hard to do too because it's hard not to escalate in general because we always kind of think more of our pain than other people's, not always, but it's very easy to do. Because of that, we don't know the insecurities or fears of another person and so we amplify ours and discredit theirs and so that is the reason why this is so powerful because it is kind of unnatural to do to give those other people that that space and that credit to be like, I will take, I will do this work and it is a lot of work. So it sounds like you're a pretty emotionally intelligent, thoughtful person having written that version of that question, a lot of less empathetic versions of that question.

So probably this is something that you can do. At the same time, there are sometimes, I don't know because I have a five-year-old so I don't know where I come down on this but like there are times when there are rules and you have to live inside of rules that you don't like. Yeah, absolutely. And that's part of living in a family that can be difficult, especially when you're a kid, especially when you're a kid who is now a grown-up but is also still someone's kid.

And so I, this person didn't say how well they were so I don't know any of that but for me, when this stuff gets addressed well, it begins with, hey, I really want to understand why these restrictions are in place and what's driving them for you because if you can understand what they're afraid of and what their insecurities are and what they want and you can really understand it and empathize with it and validate it, that isn't a guarantee that they're going to listen to your perspective but it is a good first step, at least in my experience. Yeah, I mean, I hope so much that my child can do that for me someday because right now he cannot. Right, yeah, no, I mean, right now, yeah, I mean, even now, my kids are pretty mature and relatively grown up for their age but of course, I'm doing a lot more listening than I'm doing being listened to and that's appropriate. It would be weird if that weren't the case.

And that's the other thing. It's hard to remember this but there's some conflict in a parent-child relationship that's just developmentally appropriate to adolescents. Oh, yeah. And we had great parents and I annoyed the crap out of them and they annoyed the crap out of me when I was 16 and that wasn't because they weren't great parents or because I wasn't a good kid, it was because that was developmentally appropriate.

Yeah, you got to stretch against a boundary. Yeah, that's, you know, otherwise you don't know where they are. Yeah, and it's exhausting for parents to try to maintain those boundaries and exhausting for kids to feel like they have to push up against them all the time and like that's hard. And the other thing that I would recommend if it's really serious is saying to your parents like, I would like to include someone else in this conversation.

Like I would like to, you know, talk to a therapist or, you know, have somebody else we trust try to mediate this for us because I don't think we're in a good place right now. Yeah, interesting. John, I have three responses to things that I want to get to. Okay, this was the no question episode and I really enjoyed it after the no episode.

We had no questions. These are all kinds of questions. This one is from Christian who asks Dear Hank and John, I come to you in tears. Oh, no.

I don't know. Oh geez. I don't know why. Christian, I think you are unnecessarily worried.

I was pooping. I'm listening to the podcast and there was a seven on the James West face telescope and you mentioned that everyone who was working on it is so relieved. So from that statement, I infer that at one point the government hired a lot of smart people to create this telescope. But where are they now?

What happened to them after they were done building this telescope? Were they fired? Are they out of the job? Can you give them a job?

Punk gets in penguins, Christian. The great thing about working on a on a on a one of the greatest engineering achievements of so far of humans is this pretty easy to get a job. The next job comes along and it's not hard to get it as a highly skilled engineer who was built a space telescope. That is good.

Just want to kind of call that person down say the tears are unwarranted. Everybody is doing okay. Yeah, unless the tears were just something else, maybe it was just a bit of relief that the telescope was in the air combined with it would be a big bummer to be like, hey, congrats on the telescope building. You're fired.

And of course, a lot of people continue to work on it. Yeah, there's other stuff to work on. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a long mission, hopefully. This one, this response comes from Val who asks during a John, I'm so confused. I was just with Ryan Reynolds and you imply that paper routes are a thing of the past. I'm on my paper route right now with my German mother during the German winter didn't actually say my German mother.

My mother is a male lady and I help her do it. Do people in America not have male people anymore? How do you get your letters and your newspapers? So Val, in America, we still do have people who deliver mail for sure and also the newspaper, but the newspaper is delivered by a separate person who works for the newspaper, not the male people.

And I never thought about how weird this was until this moment, me neither. It is weird. Why would we do it that way? Just give it to the male people to do it.

I'm sure there's a reason, but I don't know what it is. Maybe it's so that we can get the newspaper faster, faster. Same day, it gets printed at three o'clock in the morning and it's on your doorstep by five o'clock in the morning. And so you mean it's like this is the news right now, right now.

If you have a base of your business decisions on this, you need to know what's going on right this instant business America. But now we're like, that's not good enough. Yeah, not this instant like six hours ago. Yeah, which used to be like right up to the moment and now we're like, no, no, no, no, no.

I need to know what's going on before there anybody has any idea what's going on. I need to know if there's going to be a war three weeks before the war starts or I want to be really worried about something that might not happen and I can't control. Yes. I want to recreate the experience that John had for three months before COVID started, where John was constantly ceaselessly worried that there might be a global disease pandemic.

And yet at the same time, did absolutely nothing to prepare for the possibility of a global disease pandemic. That's the vibe that I'm going for in my news. Yeah, such a little squirrel. I'm such a big one.

Just doing squirrel stuff. Just like a massive North American ground squirrel squirreling away my acorns and worrying over them but not doing anything to protect them. Just a tiny little squirrel frantically running about thinking, Oh my God, I'm going to die. Yeah, you also run.

And I do that like squirrels and squirrels and never see you sometimes I would see the groundhog lightly jogging. You know, sure. Like, yeah, I would run toward it, like waving a broom or whatever and screaming and it would sort of look up from the edamame and be like, Oh, hello again. And then it would sort of be like, God, I guess just to like honor this person's anger, I will lightly jog back to the shed.

Yeah, you know what's so so squirrel is calling your soybeans edamame, which I would never do that. No, I mean, but they are edamame. Hank, because they once you they're edamame once you cook them and sprinkle. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, when you spend $7 growing a single pod of soybeans, that's the definition of edamame.

That's no, it's a soybeans until it's prepared. And then no, no, no, it's how much did it cost to make that single pod of soybeans. And if it's over a dollar, it's edamame. That's the definition.

Okay, I have one more, John. It's also about the James O'Bass face telescope. Great. Who asks, I was listening to this week's episode of the pod.

And during the Mars News, Hank mentioned that the telescope has 18 mirrors, all of which focus themselves. What? Now, it could be wrong here, but I was under the impression that mirrors were inanimate objects, at least the ones that I am looking at. My eyes are the things that do the focusing, not the mirrors, not a Hepburn Audrey.

Yes, sorry, I have some of them, but it's sucking right now. Fair enough. In fact, in fact, the mirrors do the focusing on the James O'Bass telescope. And each of them does it in their own way in two different ways.

So one, they can move themselves up, down side, so that they just pivot a little bit. But they can also actually change their concavity. So they can very slightly, but just a little bit, even though there's very large, strong mirrors, they can change their shape a little bit to do the focusing. Basically, eyeglasses that would work for more than one person would be the analogy there.

And so they don't focus themselves, though, like the scientists know where they're doing a bunch of tests to figure out exactly the right shape for all the mirrors to be in it. And then they focus them. And each one focuses, has its own set of motors that control its exact alignment and its exact focus. And they are tremendously precise little motors.

And that step has been accomplished. At least the initial part of getting them all aligned correctly, and now they're going through and making sure, they can get a really good image for us, which will be coming in the coming months. Wow. Wow.

Well, that's really cool. Would you like to hear the news from AFC Whittle and Hank? Yes. You know Ryan Reynolds.

Do I? You know Ryan Reynolds, Hank? Ryan, our friend. I think he's very calm.

He's come up already. He's come up already. And this is our acquaintance, Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, he's our live coach, Ryan Reynolds.

My former friend, Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds just bought AFC Whittle that's best striker, Ollie Palmer. No, are you joking? No, I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not joking at all. Oh my God. This is that is cruel.

John, how do you you have to get Ryan Reynolds rich? So she can buy back. That's true. The next five years of my life is all going to be motivated purely by cash.

The hopes of eventually having enough cash. Not even cash is just all the Palmer. Every every piece of work you do, you're going to think of in units of Ollie Palmer. It's like, well, this is one three hundred and forty second of an Ollie Palmer.

So what's doing? Yeah, like there's a movie contract currently on my desk, not to. But it's not a Ryan Reynolds movie contract. I'll tell you that.

It's it's barely worth one Ollie Palmer. Yeah. Golly gee. Yeah.

So Ollie Palmer is apparently headed for Rexham. We're getting a lot of money for him, which is great. But like he just scored a goal for us yesterday. And I saw him a little bit of you needed that goal.

That was an important goal. We needed that goal because as it turns out, as as usually happens when AFC Whittle then go one nil up, we were about to concede. So we ended up tying against Burton one one before that two consecutive nil nil draws before that a one nil loss against the franchise currently applying a trade in Milton Keynes, which means that we went a total of about nine hours between goals, which to me, and listen, I'm not a soccer guy, but to me, it makes it seem like maybe we shouldn't sell our striker. But we did.

But we did. You buy another one? Well, I hope so. Because currently, as you know, Hank, it is very important for the success of any football team to have in the attacking group, one big bottom small, which is a smaller person with a bigger bottom, and one small bottom big, which is a bigger person with a smaller bottom.

Ollie Palmer was an excellent small bottom big. And I don't know where we're going to find another one like him. And you are very small bottomed. Yeah, that was leaving that part on set.

Yeah, I mean, I just have the I feel like here's what I think, John, as a striker would be very, very bad. And I say that with all due respect, you're too much of a groundhog way too much of a groundhog. Yeah, no, I think I think I would bring everyone down with me. I have a tendency when on a soccer field to hurt myself and others.

That's my experience from the last 10 years, at least. Here's what I think happened, John. I think Ryan Reynolds came on our podcast and he was like, those people were so lovely. What can I do for them?

And he was like, I can way overpay for Ollie Palmer. And now, he's gonna have so much money that they're gonna be able to get a big bottom big, or whatever is the best thing. Maybe, maybe. I can't anyway, best wishes to Ollie Palmer, who's gonna apparently get a big raise to go play in the fifth tier of English football and said in the third tier.

I do wish him the best. Real Ryan Reynolds move. He's not a he's not a young man. So you cannot begrudge anybody in professional football, getting a big payday.

I hope that it all works out well for him. I mean, he's certainly the kind of player that will just dominate the league. So I wish him all the best, but I'm so I who's gonna score our goals, hopefully, but you basalt. I mean, maybe a you basalt is about to just have a breakout.

Yeah, just jump it onto a you get it to hold the rest. I mean, he has a special player. I'm not sure that he's a 30 goal special player, but anyway, anyway, I guess we can still be friends. Ryan Reynolds, you tweeted about this one minute ago.

I did. Well, I was talking to you. You're just mothering away. Yeah.

Well, in Mars news, Ryan Reynolds, no. The damn if he didn't buy the Perseverance Rover. So it is it is Rover news. So first of all, Percy has gotten the pebbles out.

Hurray. Yes. I'm gonna do that as a show. That would normally be a full Mars news, but there is other Mars news.

For example, carbon is a really great element. It does a fantastic job of bonding to stuff. But carbon comes in with multiple flavors. You got different isotopes.

You got carbon 12, which has six protons and six neutrons. You got carbon 13 that has six protons and seven neutrons. Other flavors, but we know that carbon exists in a really static quantity of isotope, of isotopic ratios. So the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 13 is a really steady thing, except when it comes to living things.

So in our bodies, we have way more carbon 12 than is in the natural environment. So like I'm not more like a greater ratio of carbon 12, because that extra neutron actually gets in the way of bonding with all of the fancy carbon chemistry that we do. So it makes the chemistry a little bit slower. And so we use it less.

It's just like, it's not like a decision that life makes as much as it is just like a thing that happens, because when you're doing a bunch of like complicated carbon chemistry, there's less uptake of carbon 13. And so a living body has a higher proportion of carbon 12 to carbon 13. Recently, and that goes for a body, it also goes for a bacteria. Recently, the Curiosity rover, did an analysis of isotopic ratios of some dirt on Mars and it found a really like surprisingly high concentration of carbon 12 to carbon 13, different from other areas of Mars, it is measured, and is like what is up with this.

And the if we found that on Earth, we'd be like, does that rock has a bunch of life in it? Because there's a bunch of like old life that's fossilized in there. Let me just cut you off real quick, Hank. Yeah, this is actually bigger news than Ryan Reynolds buying our striker.

I mean, it's a big news week, that's for sure. This is the first time I've been like, whoa, the news for Mars is way more important than the news for Bambi Wible this week. Our news is that we scored our first goal in nine hours. Your news is that like, well, that's a lot of carbon 12 to carbon 13 for a cold dead rock.

Yeah, so there are other theories about why this could happen. And we're going to end and we're going to and unfortunately they are also like consistent with the experimental results. So like you can you can imagine other ways for this carbon 12 isotopic ratio to happen. But it's a very intriguing clue and would definitely creates opportunity and interest for further scrutiny and more study of this particular area of Mars.

So that's neat. And I feel like flew under the radar, maybe because like isotopic ratios are like just like one step too complicated, but like it's not that complicated. And the yeah, the implications are there. And people are very very interested in that.

That is really interesting. Hank, it makes me feel like we should be in a hurry to get to Mars. Like we need to find out if there's a different way that life can form because if it is, that would be the biggest discovery ever. So far, I mean, you know, it's it's it's interesting.

It's both big and small. It's big in that it has massive implications for our story of the universe, but it's small in that it like doesn't really have massive implications for, you know, Tuesday. And that's so as such an interesting thing where like our deepening knowledge of the universe exists alongside really important problems that we have to face here on Earth, making sure that everybody has what they need that we have a future that is more stable rather than less stable for people and et cetera. Yeah, not only that, I mean, but on Tuesday, ASU will then play Ipswich Town.

Also, that is important, you know, will be unaffected by the existence of life on Mars. Unless. Unless right. Let's make a last second decision to put all of his wealth into Mars exploration efforts and cancels the deal for Ollie Palmer.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, what a big news in Mars and AFC Wimbledon week is big.

I can't believe it was of all of the fifth-tier soccer teams. It's weird. It feels intentional. They are the only rich fifth-tier soccer team.

Okay. The only one that is owned by some Hollywood fancy pants who's very good at conflict resolution. John, thank you for making a podcast. It's been a pleasure.

It's been a wild one. I mean, I feel like the people are hearing half of what we said. Yeah. We didn't do a great job.

We did not. We didn't. It wasn't our best work. But here we are.

Here we are. If you want to email us your questions so that we can continue to have a podcast, we love them very much. Even if we don't get to all of them, you can email us at hankandjohnedgmail.com. That's the email address.

We're up to record our Patreon-only podcast this week in stuff where we talk about things that are enjoyable to us right now. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Manish. It's produced by Rosie Anna Hoss-Rohoss. Our communication coordinator is Julia Bloom.

Our editorial assistant is Debukie Chocolate-Vardy. Let me see Gary now with the great-good-a-roll-up. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.