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323: Hoop Seated episode artwork

Mar 14, 2022 42 min

323: Hoop Seated

from Dear Hank & John

What percentage of total stuff do we know about? What does "net zero carbon emissions" mean? Why does stove-heated soup taste better than microwaved soup? How do I maintain motivation consistency? How do I tell my boss I hate his football team? Is there a way to eat asparagus without your pee smelling weird? John Green and Hank Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

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323: Hoop Seated

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Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.

Friends have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and Moore will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBSEons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.

Tickets go on sale to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. Hey, so before we start the podcast today, we want the podcast to be a place where you get a break and where you are okay. But we do want to say to the many listeners we've heard from who are not okay because they are living in a conflict zone or because they are living with sudden profound fear and insecurity in their lives that we are sorry and we hope that things get better soon.

Yeah, thinking about you. Yes, we are thinking about you and those of us who pray are praying for you. Oh, and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Of course, I prefer to think of the Dear John and Hank.

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions giving me advice and bringing you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, do you know why dad joke rhymes with bad joke? Why? Because they both because like bad and bad rhyme.

It's just lazy. It's just lazy. I just I expect a harder word. You laugh.

I did laugh. I have to tell you I've been doing the stand joke that I'm really fond of where instead of writing an emoji like instead of typing an emoji, I type the words laughing while crying. Yeah, I do that too. I do that too.

Or the words skull emoji. The words praise hands emojis. Yep. I do this because sometimes because it's too hard to find them.

I'm like, I can't go find that emoji, especially when it's in the faces. All the fun. I'm like, I want this one specific face. And it's like, oh, pick it out of these this this huge lineup of acres of yellow circles.

I can't. Yeah, I'm not that I mean. You know, it's interesting you bring that up, Hank, because in a time of really big problems, I like to focus on really small problems. The biggest problems that I can't find an emoji.

I love the idea of going to the emoji people and saying, listen, we feel that there are too many of them. It's gone too far. There are too many faces that we can make. We need to go back to only having 10 to 12 facial expressions.

Yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot of them. I don't. There's a lot of them.

I don't use. I would be curious to know which of the faces are the ones that are least used. And I'm sure that someone in somewhere has that data because they know everything about us, John. Right.

Here's, Valerie also pointed out something recently that is ridiculous about our phones. Do you have the situation where one year alarm clock goes off on your phone, the snooze button is giant and orange and that just turning it off, which is got to be the more common use case. It's like a tiny little button. It's almost impossible to find, especially in the dark.

It's super weird. Like, do people's news more than they stop? Maybe they do snooze more than they stop. So what inevitably happens is that you think you've turned off your alarm.

You go about your day. We really are hitting the big issue. This is the real problem that we face. You think you're going about your day and it turns out that you've only had snooze and your alarm goes off again when you're like in the car on the way to work.

This is these are the crises of our historical moment. It's a little hard for me to make the pod right now. I'm really happy to talk to you because we haven't spoken outside of the project for awesome in like a month because we've both been pretty busy. It's just a pleasure to spend an hour with you.

But gosh, we are here to answer questions that give dubious advice. That reminds me of our first question that comes from a listener named Vlad who writes, Dear Hank and John, should I quit? Yeah. And if by should I quit, you didn't mean your job and you meant something else?

Still yes. Yes. Okay, Hank, we're going to go for a hard tonal shift now and we are going to ask this question from Gabby who writes, Dear John and Hank, what percentage of things do you think we have discovered? It's a real tone shift.

Yeah. Well, it depends on what you mean. If like you're talking about all nouns everywhere, it's definitely basically zero. Oh, I was going to say if you're talking about all nouns everywhere, it's basically 100% because if we've got a word for it, we know what it is.

Oh, well, what? Except for dark matter. The first of all, there's lots of stuff that we have words for, but we don't know what they are. For example, like you, I know you exist.

I know you're called John, you remain, you know, even after all these years, somewhat of a mystery to me. But also you don't like there's things that don't have names yet. And we don't because we know what they are. Like just rocks on other like, also there's lots of things that have names at all.

Like there's lots of rocks on earth that haven't been discovered yet because they're underground. Are there elements we don't know about yet? Now we know about all the elements, which is really interesting. I could explain to you why we know that.

But you're sure. Well, we know about all of the elements that can exist naturally. Yes. There may be some that we could discover.

There's this like very sort of fringe idea that there is a on the other side of a little plateau or an energy hill. There is an island of stability where an element could be created that would actually last maybe for more than a nanosecond. But it's a pretty fringe idea. And mostly when they mean when they say that they mean that it might last milliseconds instead of nanoseconds.

So there's certainly the possibility that we will continue to make new elements that will exist for a short amount of time before they decompose into other elements. But there are none that are out there. Because I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that there's going to be one named after me, but not you. Yeah, I mean, it's possible.

I just think that would be amazing. If they named an element after the one who wasn't the science one, that would just be just his amazing. Well, you know what you could do is sometimes they know after people, but they often name it after like a university or a country. So you would need to found either a university or a country that would then go on to discover that element.

So get started, John. I know that you're not busy. That seems likely. You know, it seems like I could found a university.

I wouldn't put it past you to start a university, honestly. Like in your 60s, I think you could do that. I could absolutely not have a job. I would like less than founder of new university.

Yeah, I don't know. That sounds not good. To get your name on the element, you'd have to call it like John Green University, which I might just go all the way. Hank, just go go real risky and call it John Greenium University.

And the element is already named. It's just up to y'all to discover it. Forget it. I'm not funding a university.

I'm just funding like a group of eight scientists. I'm going to spend my all the Faulkner Stars money. Forget about the Sierra Leone project. All the Faulkner Stars money is going directly into not a university, just a vanity project to discover a new well.

I'll tell you what, John, that's going to get you at least half a percent there. All that. All those resources. I'm not just going to listen to a lot of public donations.

I'm going to try to have to get millions of people on board with this pure, unadulterated vanity project. It's going to be a lot easier to get a microbe named after you. We can have that happen within a year. Oh, I do so badly, actually.

That would be so cool. Are you kidding? That might be cooler than having an element named after you having like as somebody who thinks a lot about microbes, it would be really cool if I could think about the microbe that was me that was also a microbe. Maybe you could even be infected by your own microbe.

I love it. I love it. I love that. I love it up to a point.

And the point is, I don't want to get sick with my microbe. Yeah. Well, this is the great news, John, is almost all small little critters on Earth are not human pathogens. And you could go ahead and put one at somebody else.

And once what happened if you had a dark grade and I was like, it would die, like immediately. Because in order to do the thing where they're really tough, they have to have a little bit of time to prepare for it. So if you just got into that stomach acid, I think that they just crack open pretty quick there. What percentage of things have we discovered?

Oh, again, I think zero. I think that basically zero percent, it depends on your definition of thing. Like if you're talking about like what percentage of like how the universe works, have we discovered that I think that it's a it is a double digit percentage. But if you're like 18 percent, yeah, it could also be 80 percent.

Like this is the weird thing. Like I don't, it's at least 18 percent. I would agree with that. I don't think it's 80 percent.

We don't know, but I think there's a manageable amount. Right. And then we do know what a lot of the matter in the universe is. So like, if we think about it in that what percentage of the stuff that we know what it is, not a huge percentage, but still more than zero.

We know what that stuff is in terms of it's like, like we could have guess about what element it is, but then like on an individual exoplanet, there's going to be a lot of things that we've not we haven't discovered them. We don't know what the rocks look like. We don't know. We like, if you we don't even know a lot where a lot of the rocks on earth are, you know, yeah, like you can find a rock for the first one, be like, I'm the first, I'm the discoverer of this rock.

Yeah, we don't know what a lot of the rocks on earth are. We don't know what a lot of the rocks on Mars are. We never been to Jupiter and all that. We'd only represent like one, one hundred billionth of one, one hundred billionth of the known universe.

So we have a long way to go, which is I think encouraging. That's right. And then we're only talking about universe where we know everything. I just realized we're only talking about the universe as it currently exists because we also have not discovered and are not aware of how things were in the past, especially on planet, especially when it comes to society, like almost all of human history is lost.

All of the things that those people sang about and believed and danced for all the choreography from pre history is just gone. So yeah, we don't really know with any certainty what the size of many pre agricultural communities were like we used to have these really strong guesses and then it turned out that maybe our guesses weren't as strong as we thought. We don't know almost everything, which I think is exciting. It's thrilling.

We can figure new stuff out all the time. And if we lived in a universe where we knew everything, it would be boring and sad, unlike the current world, which is interesting and sad. John, we've got another question. This one comes from Rachel who asks Dear Hank and John, what exactly are companies and governments talking about when they say net zero carbon emissions?

I get the concept of offsetting emissions, but how exactly are we doing how is this measured? I'm not an expert. It seems like maybe there's some cushion room in the data that allows companies to make these claims that aren't necessarily true. Also, how beneficial would net zero be?

I think people hear this and might think zero harm to the planet. Is that accurate? Green, but I'm not on friends. Rachel.

That's Rachel Green was the character that Jennifer Aniston played on friends. Yes, and Rachel is interested in the environment and so is Green, which also we are, but we are actually Greens, very closely related to Rachel Green from friends. John, do you want me to talk about how we measure carbon emissions for the next 30 minutes? I want you to answer the question in less than 30 minutes, Hank.

Okay. So there are a number of different goals that a company or a government could have. You can have net zero without offsets. You can have net zero with offsets.

And both of those things are not as good as you can do. So net zero without offsets is better than net zero with offsets. So net zero with offsets would be saying, we look at all of the energy that we consume that came from fossil fuels. We look at how much carbon dioxide that that produced into the atmosphere.

We do our best to get a lot of it from renewable sources, but that stuff that did come from fossil fuels will offset that by doing carbon capture or by funding projects elsewhere that capture carbon permanently through reforestation or something like that. And that's good because like all these things are good. I should start out by saying all these things are better than doing nothing. You learn new ways to capture carbon that way.

You create new markets for renewable energy and for carbon capture. So that's good. You're spending money to decrease the amount of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. The second thing is you say, we are going to produce all of like the unequal amount of renewable energy as what we consume.

So if you consume 100 kilowatts of electricity this year, and you produce 100 kilowatts of renewable electricity, you call that net zero. But it's not actually not relying on fossil fuels at all. Because almost definitely what you are doing is producing those 100 kilowatts during some portions of the day, but not all portions of the day. So you are selling some of the energy that you produce back to the grid.

And then at night time, when there isn't solar electricity being generated, you are still relying on fossil fuel powered energy. So then you have a third thing that's called 24 seven net zero. And that means every hour of the day you are not relying on fossil fuels. All of these things do different things.

All of these things encourage different innovation. And so if you are doing 24 seven, you're innovating in battery, as well as in solar and other renewables. If you are not doing 24 seven, you're innovating in like grid management. And if you are also doing offsets, then you're innovating in carbon capture.

So all of these things do different things, but they are all definitely better than not doing anything. Was that half an hour? I wasn't quite half an hour. So I appreciate your relative pith.

But I think those are all really important points. It is better than nothing. And it is not enough are those are going to be some of the catchphrases for the next 10 years. We have to do what we can do now.

And we also have to push to do much more. Yeah, I mean, I should say that 24 seven carbonless energy wasn't for a large scale operation. You could obviously do this if you had an off grid home or something. But that's a goal that a lot of bigger, specifically tech companies have now.

And it was not like five years ago, it was not something you could even aspire to. Like the technology did not exist to have it even be possible. So as a person who's been concerned about climate change for decades now, I may be a little bit more hopeful than I used to be because I've seen that change can happen. And I've seen that technology has been pushing the envelope on what's possible.

Obviously, I'm still very worried. So like an increase in optimism is not necessarily optimism. Right. We have to accelerate the speed of change.

And the fact that it has accelerated over the last five years does not mean that it will accelerate fast enough over the next 10 years. And so that's that has to be a shared human goal for us. And I think that's true on a family level. If you can become a zero carbon family, if you can, but it's obviously most true on an institutional level, the level of corporations, the level of governments.

Yeah, we have to accelerate the change. So thanks for explaining that to us. You've got the reason I got solar panels, Hank. It wasn't enough, but it is helping.

And now we are figuring out what we can do to get to that 24 seven no carbon space. Yeah. And I mean, it's it's acting as if the problem is big and real. And it's also encouraging the creation of new technologies that are really moving fast and having big impacts.

Yeah, I love our solar panels. They make me really happy. I like my team to have gamified my electricity usage. In Montana, it's a bit of a bundle when they start getting covered in snow and you're like, Oh, yeah, we had like five days where they recovered in snow and I was I was bummed out.

But yeah, they're going good so far for us. All right. Let's answer this question from Amanda, who asks, you're John and Hank, why does who peed it up on the stove taste better than who who seeded up? I'm just going to stick with it.

Why does who seeded up on the stove taste better than who seeded up in the microwave? Warmly Amanda. Great, great sign off. Great sign off.

Yeah. Do you can you taste the difference between microwave hoop and non microwave hoop? Absolutely not. No.

I can barely taste the difference between peanut butter and jelly. I mean, I can I don't even take the time to receive the hoop sometimes. And Hank in Hank's family, every soup is a guest spot show. Why did I just say guest spot show?

What the way I just said this spot show was so weird. I've got to have to teach myself how to say a spot show. Do you I'm all the way down the rabbit hole now, man. Right now, I'm just thinking about what would have happened if instead of saying good soup, Adam Driver had said good, good hoop, good hoop.

That was really good. You have an Adam Driver? I just have a good soup, John. That's that's that's 100% of my Adam Driver.

I've I've got I've good souped a lot of times. Catherine and I good super regular because you regularly apparently eat cold soup directly out of the fridge. It's called it's sold coop. John.

Thank you very much. That's what we call it in the greenhouse and and I do kind of makes I kind of makes a great chili and I don't I don't mind. You know what cold chili is? It's just great salsa.

It's like stick a chip in there and it's just like honky chalsa. Dang it. That was an enormous honky chalsa. That's my new brand of cold chili.

It's called Hank's honky chalsa. Get it at Albertsons. It's an Albertsons exclusive. You can only buy it in drug stores.

It's actually because of certain regulations. It's not technically food. It's Hank Green's honky chalsa. Yeah, you have to talk to your doctor.

Dr. Darnay. You have to keep it behind the counter with the suit of it. Yeah, you have to fill out a little form when you get it to Amanda.

There's no way that soup tastes like I think that maybe I think that maybe the stove heats it up more evenly. But that's other than that. It's heat. It's just it's just molecules bumping around.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Probably maybe that your house fills up with the smell more if you got it on the stove and then you're like mmm I can't wait to have that soup. I'm so grateful to be able to share with all of you that today's podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor Hank Green's honky chalsa.

Hank Green's honky chalsa. Ask your pharmacist. This podcast is also brought to you by almost everything. Almost everything.

We do not know about it. And of course the podcast is also brought to you by Hank's Adam Driver impression. I'm not letting it go. I'm staying.

I'm keeping I'm keeping who oriented in the sponsor reads today. I appreciate it. And also this podcast is brought to you by knowing too much about how different organizations calculate their emissions. Knowing too much about how different organizations got their emissions.

It's just what is just how I live my life. We also have a project process message from John from Kalamazoo to us Hank John and Hank Green. Thank you for distance community for unironic enthusiasm. Wholesome distraction radical hope and uncomplicated joy.

You two are a large reason I'm a librarian and training hoping to give those benefits to those around me. John you're the reason I've abandoned the social internet. Hank you embody my Judith Butler inspired beliefs about performance and identity. Nerdfighters you are my internet family and I love you not darn you.

John. That's lovely. Thank you so much. That summary Hank distance community unironic enthusiasm wholesome distraction radical hope and uncomplicated joy.

That's just that's exactly what I hope I can bring to the world. That's what I'd like. That's what I'd like to do and I'm sorry that the joy is a little more complicated at the moment. 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 like 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 and it also works on other people's brains to be like this is legitimate. Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet.

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You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. One thing I love about summary is how easy everything feels.

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and that you did not eat lunch. What are you going to do? Are you going to get meal delivery that's going to cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you going to go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts because those are my two choices unless I have a factor in the fridge. You can get smokey barbecue chicken breasts with potato mash, cream corn and peppers.

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See website for more details. No. Hank, I want to ask this question from Thomas because it's also a question I have at the moment. Deer, John and Hank, I have always been a very motivated and hardworking person but I'm noticing as I get to my late 20s that my motivation has become less consistent.

Like from childhood through college I was able to really work hard for any given amount of time you needed to accomplish a goal I had in mind but now I get these bursts of intense motivation that are followed by walls of low ambition where I have trouble bringing myself back into the work mindset. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with peaks and valleys of motivation? I think I can. I think I can.

Thomas. I wanted to ask this question because Hank, I've had a very low motivation period really for the first time in my life. Oh, wow. I guess that's not true.

I had a low motivation period that began in sixth grade and ended when I was a senior in college but since then I've been a pretty highly motivated person. I guess there were a few times when I lost my marbles. I wasn't going to bring it up. Yeah.

I mean, tell me this rings true to you, John. There are a lot of tips and tricks for how to increase productivity and a lot of them are about motivation. But in my experience, mostly what does it is being who I am and doing what I feel like doing. I just don't think none of those tricks have ever worked for me and I am motivated when I am and I am not when I am not and I just kind of chase and I just kind of do what I feel like.

I was just saying, Catherine, this morning that one of the things that has been a really useful skill for me is not something that I learned. It is just how I am that when there is a thing that I have to do that I really don't want to do, I have to do it. I have to do it as fast as I can. That's not a behavior that I see a lot of other people replicating but that is just how I am and it is not something I've worked on.

It's just how I am. I, on the other hand, I was talking recently with my best friend Chris and I was like, you know something we have in common is that we both really don't like doing things we don't like doing and I know people who can do things they don't like doing with a minimum of fuss but I'm not one of them. I really dislike doing things I don't like doing and the more I don't like doing it the less I the more unhappy I am with having to do it. Yeah but do you do it?

Because some people just don't. I have learned to do it and the way that I've learned to do it is to break it up into discrete parts that I can get through and to really celebrate getting through those discrete parts as they come rather than what I used to say to myself when I was in high school and college which was a normal person could do this easily what's wrong with you and why are you so stupid why are you so lazy why are you this and that instead I say oh my god like other people don't have a hard time paying the bills but you sure do and you just paid one and now you're gonna pay another and that's gonna feel amazing and changing that self-talk has been key for me but I I've been in a period and I think it's partly because like I finished a book and the world is weird and I think there's a lot going on but like I just don't feel the urgent need that I once felt to do everything all of the time I just don't and I've seen that in other people around me and I don't so I don't know if it's like a wider phenomenon but I feel like I want I mean I have to do a lot of work like obviously like I have you know I'm a busy person and I have a lot of work to do every week and it's not hard for me to have a 40 hour work week but I don't feel the urge to have an 80 hour work week which I used to feel very strongly maybe I will get there I don't I at the moment I don't 80 hour it but I've never 40 hour it no you never have and but but one of the things that I think maybe is useful is that I I keep things that I will really like to do for when I am experiencing low energy and so like I tend to like put away things that I'm really enjoying so because I know that they will get done because I'm enjoying that's interesting and I that maybe is a habit that I have built up or it is just that like I am scared about some other things that aren't going to get done if I don't do them right now but it is it is nice it is really nice for me to have a lot of different kinds of things that I have to do like I have to do you know budget stuff and I have to do video stuff and I have to do TikTok which obviously is also video but it's a very different kind of video it's just like a lot of different structure to my to my work and then also like you know this stuff that isn't traditionally work but it's still occupation and then it occupies time like you know spending time with family and doing fun things are also I'm motivated to do them yeah because I haven't been doing them all day and I think if you find that you're not motivated to do even the things that you enjoy or that bring you fulfillment then you need to like check in with somebody like that's when you need to sort of reach out and say like oh I feel really kind of disconnected from this stuff or whether that's reaching out to a therapist or whatever some adult you trust but in general I think it's pretty normal to not like doing the things you don't like doing and like a side effect of being in your late 20s is that there are some things that aren't that fun that you have to do like taxes yeah and like some people enjoy doing taxes I don't but I understand that the consequences of not doing that are such that I want to do this right the fuel is uh is thinking about my future self yeah and to me thinking of it in terms of of what my different fuels are for the different things can be helpful um and like why do I want to do these things what is motivating me and sometimes recognizing that it isn't necessarily healthy stuff right and sometimes it is so at least knowing the difference yeah I mean a lot of I think that's been a big adjustment for me for so long I mean my whole the whole first like 10 years of my career was motivated intensely by like resentment and fear and lots of other fuels that burned really really dirty but really really bright and yeah I have you know in the last 10 years I've had to sort of rebuild those fuel structures which has led to like lower productivity but better life yeah I have published fewer books in the last 10 years than I published in the previous 10 years but I'm both like happier with the books and happier with the circumstances that led to their writing yeah well that's for sure I can make it back up with anecdotal evidence oh yeah no I mean I think that but that's yeah it's it you've already experienced this to some extent but like you're uh you're you get older but your books stay the same age you know like yeah I'm not 28 anymore or 27 however old I was when looking for Alaska was published and I'm certainly not 24 which is how old I was when I wrote most of it but it's still that age like it's still me then and that's part of why yeah that you know why why people like it and it's it's just it's a very weird thing that I never imagined would be a problem for me but of course I thought that all of my books would quickly go out of print like most books do um so I'm grateful for this problem but it man it is weird John yeah I have a question that is definitely for you it's from Violet who asks dear Hank and John at the interview for my current job I told the man who has become my boss that I liked the Liverpool Liverpool scarf that was hanging on his wall he asked if I was a fan and I said yes I was nervous and trying to make small talk and I thought that we could bond over our shared love of the EPL what's the EPL the English Premier League the problem is I am in Everton support a big one the problem the other problem is that my interview was two years ago and I have been living a lie ever since how do I explain to my boss that I hate his football team well so hang for context Everton and Liverpool are local rivals I would say as a Liverpool fan that to Everton we are their biggest rivals but for us they're kind of our second biggest rivals right okay to us Everton is an afterthought we don't even think about them but even I mean Everton fans would be so pissed off to hear that um but I mean but it's kind of true like yeah every every year when we beat them in December um they sing a song called Merry Christmas Everton anyway um this is a tough one because at this point yeah it's quite a lie to like I mean you're two years into a pretty serious lie that's one of your only points of connection with the person who probably at least in part decides your compensation uh well don't it doesn't stretch that I normally have do you damn we have dubious advice on this front um here's my dubious advice Hank okay wake up uh-huh go to work you go into your boss's office and you say listen last night I had a blinding light spiritual awakening the word came to me the word came to me on the journey I have gone on like Paul on the road and what he said to me was starting today you have to become a huge Everton fan and I said okay anything else and he said no that's it and then I said okay and so now I am an Everton fan starting today because of my blinding light spiritual awakening thank you for understanding I like the anything else that's really good I want to be because you figured it like I know if God um yeah came to me and was like you need to become an Everton fan I would say okay but like surely that's not the biggest and you'd be like no that's it man everything else is good as far as I can tell yeah maybe yeah like what are the other ways that this can happen you had so like big you had a you had a procedure you went to the doctor and you or you hit your head woke up an Everton fan and you can't fix it or oh marriage you got a new you got a new uh like your it's got but it can be something like I my personality is now fundamentally different I mean the thing is like just like my friend Raj who co-hosts the podcast men and blazers always says that like to be an Everton fan is to be deeply familiar with suffering and it's so true like like there's this Colombian player Hank Louis Diaz who just signed for Liverpool in like mid-January and Louis Diaz has won more trophies playing for Liverpool than Everton have won since Louis Diaz was born like like Liverpool won more trophies in the last year than Everton have won in like the last 30 years sounds sounds tough to be an Everton fan John I think I've got it but maybe like at least if it was the other way around this would be a bigger problem yes at least you're not like a lorry on the term yeah right yeah you're just like I'm a fair weather fan I never I never liked yes so but but this way it's you know there there will be an element of oh poor you yeah yeah totally I think your boss will feel bad for you as any Liverpool fan does for any Everton fan like I think it would be a feeling of like I'm sorry that I love that more than anything else oh man so you're right if it was switched around it would be like well that is really uncool but this way I almost think that you're gonna be okay because you're gonna walk in and you're gonna say I'm an Everton fan and your boss is gonna be like oh god that sucks for you yeah yeah like my condolences but you're not you don't think that you can you don't think you can bring the boss along and be like look I have changed my ways and you can too there is a future for us together where the revolution starts now oh no no but I think it is time to transition to talking about football Hank no I can't I have to ask you this one more question John it's from Emily who asks Dear Hank and John because it's also about personal transformation is there any way to eat asparagus without your peace smelling like asparagus why does this happen and is there an antidote someone is just asked me in a public bathroom if I recently ate asparagus Emily oh yes I had just eaten asparagus this is you you are not the problem you did nothing wrong Emily a crime was committed in that restroom and you did not commit it do not talk do not reference the odor of anyone's bathroom emissions hard stop so so first of all do not concern yourself with a second of all absolutely it is possible you have to do germline genetic engineering on yourself yeah uh which is which is not not impossible but is very difficult and uh it's fairly dangerous definitely it wouldn't definitely it wouldn't have to be germline you could do it somatic but but then you wouldn't confer that benefit on to your children it's a very marginal benefit anyone so it's complicated and I think it's complicated because there isn't just one smell there's a bunch of different smells to asparagus pea one of them is the extra strong one and there's some people who do not produce that smell but they produce other ones and so why don't we've even gotten entirely to the bottom of the complexity of asparagus pea smell though there's a doctor who was interviewed and they said I for one do not produce a urinary odor after eating asparagus and I can definitely confirm that others do this is the person who probably smells a bit of pea so I think they're safe to say that there is a possibility and it's a genetic thing where you just don't produce the smelly compounds but I think they're probably going to be pretty complicated there are at least 871 known genetic variations there are I think it's going to be pretty complicated there are at least 871 known genetic variations that cause the inability to smell the asparagus in your pea so maybe you should just do that to the rude person in the bathroom there you go I like it well now it's time to talk about AFC Wimbledon okay goodness gracious AFC Wimbledon have not won a game in 2022 Hank and it's March it's March you're gonna be so good when you're in the league below the one you're in now or will we will we just still be bad we would not have a particularly good budget in that league currently so after 35 games in the last five seasons AFC Wimbledon has been either 20th or 19th four times and the other time we were 24th so we are currently 20th we are we are two points clear of the relegation zone but only because there are four truly dreadful teams in week one right now and I mean there are 11 games left in the season and we are somehow gonna have to do what we have done for the last five seasons which is find a way in the last 11 games to get in the neighborhood of 15 points so we got to win five of our yeah five of our last 11 games probably to stay up so we're here again we're here every season it's super frustrating it's hard to say that it's the manager's fault when we've had three different managers and been in the situation over and over again but it's a real problem and we just I say this every year but we just have to find a way to stay up and then find a way I mean there are financial problems at the club just because we have a very high interest loan right now for to pay off the rest of the stadium and the only way to kind of get out from under the burden of that debt is by fans loaning the club money so right now the club is doing a second plow lane bond where fans can loan the club money and get an interest rate return that's pretty good actually and but you know of course it comes with a certain set of risks I'm not an investment advisor but but yeah it's just a really difficult situation again so I'm yeah I don't know we had a fairly good performance over the weekend playing Wigan who were second in the league we lost one nil but we looked okay and so maybe we will start to I don't know maybe we'll start to do a little bit better but it's been a very frustrating experience the last few weeks well the news from ours is also frustrating so the the Rosalind Franklin so the Rosalind Franklin Rover is a part of a mission that has already begun with the 2016 trace gas order that was sent to Mars it's a joint project between the European Space Agency ESA and Roscosmos Russia's agency it has been put on hold it will be delayed for clear for clear reasons basically the the launch vehicle is Russian and they design these things to fit in specific launch vehicles you can't like put them in a different one easily so the the basically it's just all up in the air it's it is an exciting mission it it we every every active Rover on the surface of Mars is very exciting but there has not been an official decision made yet but they've made comments specifically of course citing the invasion of Ukraine and sanctions as the reasons behind the delay and what what that means for the future of the mission we do not yet know basically thanks for plotting with me Hank thank you John I appreciate it thanks for being my brother it's always good to have you to talk to when I need some of the same you can email us your questions and please do at hankandjohnajemail.com we don't have a podcast without them this podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Medicians produced by Rosie on a house roha's our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom our editorial assistant is Deboki Trucker Vardy the music you're hearing now and the big of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola and as they say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome

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This episode was published on March 14, 2022.

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