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Friends have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and more will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS Eons and Crash Course in Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we've 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. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John! Doors I prefer to think of it to your John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your question, give you the advice and venue all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
John, as you may or may not know, when you got COVID, like I did, it's really important to eat a lot of ants, because as you may know, they have antibodies. I, as a pity laugh, I want to be very clear about that. I'm sorry that you got COVID, and not only that you got COVID, but that you've been quite ill with it for several weeks, and as a result, this entire episode, I will be deferential and kind to you, and pretend that your jokes are funny even when they're not. I want to be clear though, Hank.
I want you to feel the pity dripping through the phone right now. I can feel it from you. I can feel it from everybody else listening. Whenever I'm really sick.
Whenever I'm really sick. Should he even be doing this? Whenever I'm really sick, there's a fascinating phenomenon where the only thing people are able to give me is the one thing I really don't want, which is their sympathy. I mostly want them to be outraged on my behalf.
This is horrible. I'm so sorry that you're sick, not in a pitying way, but in a somewhat angry way. How could an only arguably alive virus have upended your life in such a profound way? Anyway, I'm sorry you got COVID, not in a sympathetic pitying way, but in an actively angry way.
It's not fair. You shouldn't have gotten COVID. Mostly all I want from people is what I have been given, which is the grace of them being like, please don't feel like we leave you right now. This is not on you.
Don't worry about it. We're good. This is not your fault, which is a thing that we do a lot to people who are sick, and I get it with colitis. Sometimes people are like, have you tried this diet?
I'm like, what I'm getting from that is that I have a severe autoimmune disease that's very complicated, and the doctors are still working to understand. When you say, have you tried apples, that makes me feel a little bit like you think this is my fault, and it's not my fault. I need us all to be on that page together. Or when people blame you for individual flares by saying something like, did you eat seeds?
Did you get stressed out? And it's like, oh, did I get stressed out? I don't know if you've seen things? It's like the classic thing that airline pilots say when they come in over the intercom and they're like, please remain calm.
And you're like, no, no, like, I can't remain calm. Not there. Because the moment I heard your voice click in with its slight quiver, I got very scared. You know, panic is not the correct response.
Panic is never the correct response. That's why it's called panic. I'm not panicked because I think it's the right thing to do. Exactly.
I'm not a robot. I wasn't nobody programmed to me and said, don't panic in this moment. In fact, my programming says panic, please, by all means. Well, John, this disease sucks and we should do what we can to prevent ourselves from getting it.
I'm so sorry that you've been so sick. And it's so important to mask, which I didn't do enough. Well, Hank, we're not blaming. We're not blaming the sufferer for the disease.
Here's what I will say about it. It has been really hard to see you be so sick. And I'm really glad that you're starting to feel better. I have at times felt, especially with mom and dad, like they were almost unaware of who is the main character of the story because they kept coming to me and being like, how is Hank feeling?
How is Hank doing? How is Hank's family doing with all of this? And I was like, what about me, mom? How am I doing?
The protagonist of our family's story. Do you think that this is not hard for me? I am going through a difficult period. I am having to worry about my brother, who is arguably the second or third most important character in the story.
You know? Like, we should worry about anybody asking about me. Well, honestly, I do think that's important. I think it's important that we look at that.
Like, this is legit. I think it's important that we look at the people around who are also having to deal with hard things and allow them, even because their hard thing isn't the hardest thing nearby, does not mean that it's not a hard thing. And I've been reading this book that you've been talking about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Oh my God.
And what? A great thing so far. It is such a good book. You know, only a third of the way through it.
But, oh my gosh. Thank you for suggesting. The book is called Tomorrow and Tomorrow It's by Gabrielle Zevin. And it is truly extraordinary.
It's like reading the Adventures of Gavilir and Clay or something. It's just a phenomenal book. It's been years and years since I read something that struck me so profoundly. And I know Gabrielle a little bit, you know, like her first novel elsewhere came out around the same time as looking for Alaska.
We sort of walked in the same circles for a while. And it is really wild to read a book that good that you think could be like in print in 100 years and think, kind of know that person. Yeah. You know, like they seem like a fairly regular person, but this, you know, this regular human wrote a novel that is just extraordinary.
Yeah. It's been super comforting and interesting to have be a COVID companion. And yeah, I'm coming off of reading a lot of like classics and it doesn't feel like I've shifted gears at all. It feels like I'm still reading a classic.
Yeah. Yeah, it really does. I mean, it also has a lot to teach us, I think, because the book is so much about creative collaborations and how they work and how they break down and how they have to be nurtured. And something when I mean, I don't want to get sentimental, but the last few weeks have forced me into a little bit of sentiment.
And something that I've been thinking a lot about is that we have actually done a pretty good job of nurturing our creative connection over the years, but it is something that has to be paid attention to. Like it doesn't happen on its own. It's easy for fissures to develop and for distance to be created. And I just, I feel so lucky that after 15 years of working so closely together, I just want to keep doing it for as long as I'm here.
Well, I know that it's been a lot of work on both of our parts, but I want to give a special shout out to me for having done most of work. It's so true. I mean, Hank, on the subject of how challenging I am to work with, and I do understand that you have done some of the work on that front. Can I read to you a recent Goodreads review of the Anthropocene Review?
Okay, yes. I love Goodreads Reviews with the Anthropocene Review. It's my favorite literary genre. I know that it's bad for me, but I can't tell myself.
He quotes too much poetry and complains a lot. That was the full review. John, do you want to go deeper into the history of logbrothers with this question from Heffi? Sure.
Who asks Dear Hank and John, hello, I'm a fairly new nerd fighter, despite love and crash course. And I was just wondering, why are the majority of popular vlogbrothers' videos about giraffesecks and goat birth? Was this a popular topic back in the day? Or did many people watch them because they were simply curious?
I loved it there was like a past. Right. It was like, you know, that phase in the early 2010s when people were just really into giraffesecks. Yeah.
It was like that in Gangnam Style, you know. Right. And now we're nostalgic for it. Like, that's how Badgley got in there.
We're like, can we just go back to the world of Gangnam Style and giraffesecs videos? This is a great question. Honestly, that sounds like a fantastic idea. I would like that.
There was a comment on a vlogbrothers video that I think about almost every day, and it was a comment in one of the giraffesecks' videos, and the comment was, please make more hot videos about animals and other. I remember that comment. And I think about... That's legendary.
That's a legend status comment. And I think about and other almost every day. What was... What was and other?
Why have all the adjectives of the English language? Did you pick hot? Etcetera. I think a lot about that comment.
So in the early days... Yeah. YouTube picked your thumbnail, and you did not have any say. You could not upload a custom thumbnail.
The thumbnail had to be from the video. And in the early, early days, YouTube always picked the exact central frame of your video, the exact middle of your video. And can you believe it? It was controversial.
Like, they didn't want to let creators pick their thumbnails. Creators had to advocate for that. And it was just a wild thought to me now. But I was making a video.
And I had a book. I don't even know where I got this book. That was illustrations. Like, like pretty colored pencil illustrations of animals having sex.
And I intentionally held up the giraffe sex page during the exact middle. And I did it in a way that you couldn't... You wouldn't notice if it was just... Right.
You were watching it. But I knew exactly what I was doing. Because creators would make their central frame something that was more eye-catching. And I thought that would be hilarious.
And I talked about animal sex in that video. I think it's a very important thing. Very well. It did great.
It was our best performing video other than the video that got featured on the front page of YouTube and our first year on YouTube. I think it's really important to note that even though now we are thought of as like these sort of old school creators who do it the right way and aren't in it for the audience and just want to make the world better. I hope that that is true of us. But we contain multitudes.
Hank and I click-baited not all the time. But we click-baited some of the time for sure. And we did it because we wanted audience. And that video is now not in our top.
So that was the first... It was early on. And I remember getting an email from one of our people at YouTube. And that was like, disappointed.
They were like, not in this one but in a different one. And they were like, why would you do this? And it's like, oh, because I really wanted to use. And by the way, there are a lot of Nerdfighters.
Hundreds, maybe even over a thousand who trace their own journeys into Nerdfighteria through a go-giving birth. And the reason- Honestly, a go-giving birth better than the giraffe. And the reason we made go-giving birth videos was because our parents owned goats. And like, we would be visiting our parents and there would be a go-giving birth.
And we would be like, well, I guess that's going to make a really popular YouTube video. I got to make some kind of video today. Right. But the other thing, Hank, is sometimes when I think about how did we start making educational content on YouTube, I think you held up this picture that for a flash showed giraffe mating, it got a lot of views.
And then one of us, I think it was you, made a video that was actually all about giraffe mating, which turns out fascinating. So after that video did well, intentionally, so that video wasn't even about giraffesex. It just had the thumbnail. And then after that one did well, we started to make video, like we made at least two videos about giraffesex.
And one of them made you more. You did two of them. You have the two most popular ones. I think you did the giraffesex videos, John.
I think you were jealous of mine doing well, and you were like, I'm going to take yours, they got a million views, and I'm going to make one that gets 16 million views. Very positive. Our most viewed video. But the same.
The other piece of this puzzle is that for a long time, YouTube measured the success of a video based on one factor, and that's whether or not someone clicked on it. They did not measure how much people disliked it once they watched it, or how long they spent watching it. All they cared about is whether it got clicked on. When that changed, those videos ceased getting views.
So now, those giraffesex videos get no views, because YouTube doesn't show it to anybody, because people actually click on it and they don't want the whole video, because they thought they were going to get to watch giraffesex. And instead, they just get a description of how it happens, which I guess it does. Not really what they want. Quite as thrilling.
I was going to say that when I look at when we started making truly educational content on YouTube, I turned to the giraffesex videos. That was the first time really trying to explore and explain complicated issues of biology in relatively straightforward terms. And so did giraffesex inevitably lead to Crash Course? Kinda?
Sure. And if that's the case, then I think we made the right choice. Yeah, we could have made an animating channel, but instead we made Crash Course. Yeah, that's right.
Please make more hot videos about animals and other. Oh my gosh. It's a world, John. We exist inside of it.
Alright, obviously Hank and I would be happy to sit in our rocking chairs and chat about the good old days of YouTube to our grandchildren, but let's move on and answer at least one other question from our listeners. Beginning with this one from L, who writes Dear John and Hank, while on holiday in Paris, I wrote a bicycle. This is something I haven't done since I was a child, and contrary to popular belief, it was not very easy to pick up again. In fact, I fell off many times.
Why is it that when a bicycle is stationary, it tips over, but when moving, it stays upright? Sounds like the letter L. L. Oh, nice.
That's clear something's up. So this is, you can watch YouTube videos about how about this, and it will explain it to you in ways that will be more intuitive because you'll get the visual component, but basically, a bicycle is structured in such a way that the front tips, when it's moving, or even when it's not, the front tips faster than the back. And when this happens, when it's moving, the front tips before the back tips and that allows the wheel to turn, and that actually gets the bicycle's center of gravity back under itself. And then it will turn the other way and it will, it self stabilizes in this way.
So when it's, when it's starting to lean, the wheel will turn and into the lean and that will move the bicycle center of gravity back on top of itself. And that obviously can't happen. When it's moving, when it's not moving, it doesn't have the ability to correct, to sort of move into the turn that allows it to do the self stabilization, which is really cool. And they are constructed this way intentionally, and that is why vicycles are sort of like, you know, if we hadn't seen a bunch of people writing vicycles, it would be like, are you serious?
That's going to work? That's going to work. Because it would seem to our sort of subconsciously, it would be as hard to write as a unicycle, which is possible, but much harder than a bicycle. But because of the way that they are constructed, it allows for the self stabilization that makes writing a bicycle much easier than it would otherwise be.
And you can build a bicycle that doesn't have that property, and it is very, very hard to write. Fascinating. Well, there you go. Proper answers to your proper questions.
Next question comes from Sam who asks, Dear Anken John, a hoy there. I was just sitting on the ground when my stomach told me it wanted food quite loudly. How does my stomach do this? Like, does my microbiome get on the intercom to tell me that it's hungry?
I'm going to go eat food now, stomach rumbling, Sam. I asked, I answered this question because as I was talking to the bokeh about it, it became clear that the tummy is not rumbling. It's not the tummy. And this upset me.
Oh, is it the intestines? Is it the intestines? The tummy doesn't do the rumbling. That's not good.
Do you want me to go back in time and make it so that I didn't tell you about that? Because I kind of wish I didn't know about that either because it feels like my tummy. No. It feels like a tummy, John.
It does, but it's not. It's the intestines. They're saying like, fill us. Nah.
I'm a big snake in your body. I just want, I just want, I just want goop to pass through so I can suck out the parts that are your food and leave in the parts that are pooping out. That's what an intestine sounds like. That is a voice.
I was like, it's like, you'll be covered. Ever since you told me that we are basically just worms and that we have a tube that the stuff goes in and then the stuff goes through the tube and then the stuff goes through the tube and then the stuff goes through the tube and then the stuff goes through the tube. And we use what we need of it and the rest of it, we poop out the other end of the tube and that we're just, all the flesh that's around the tube is just a glorified worm. I have not been able to stop thinking about the fact that we're just worms with limbs pretending like every day, acting as if we are not flesh covered tubes.
Yeah. Well, look, it's, it's, we're not just flesh covered tubes, John. We are more than that. We're flesh covered tubes that like sing, you know, watermelon sugar.
So that's good. Like that's, that's more. That's bigger than just a flesh tube. Like a worms never done that.
Right. But we literally use the tube to sing watermelon sugar like Harry's tiles. Absolutely. Use the way.
Tell me about Harry's tiles. It's poop tube. He's using his flesh tube to be to like send air through the tube so that the air comes out sounding like watermelon sugar, which is amazing. I don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying I'm not impressed with humans. It's incredible that we've been able to do what we've been able to do so far because we are basically worms. That is what makes it so amazing. Yeah.
So, so the amazing, amazing thing going on right now, the James Loves Space Telescope peering farther back in time. And it is, this is compounded by the fact that that was made possible by a bunch of tubes of flesh. All the literally everyone involved in making the James Wendspace telescope is a flesh tube. It's like a glorified worm.
And we put that thing in space. Yeah. We basically we turned a bunch of chicken and carrots into the ideas for a telescope. Yeah.
Yeah. That, that, I think it's always that's celebrating humanity. You know what? Thank God.
Our intestines are rumbling. What a wonder. Hooray. Huzzah rumbling intestines everywhere.
I need to ask you a more important question. Okay. At the very beginning of Sam's email, Sam writes, Ahoy there, Hank and John, I was sitting on the ground at work. Now, there are two things that I'd like to point out here, Hank.
The first is sitting on the ground. And the second is Ahoy there. Are you allowed to say Ahoy there when you are on land or is that exclusively a sea based greeting? So you're saying that like we have proof that Sam is on the ground.
That's Sam is on the ground. Gotcha. Not. I thought you were just going to be like, why do you sit on the ground at work?
And I'm like, there's all kinds of work, John. Oh, I'm literally sitting on the ground at work right now. So no, don't judge me there. So you're saying, this is a ground based person and they're saying Ahoy there.
Okay. Ahoy there. I definitely like in my mind, if I if I picture someone saying Ahoy there, they are flip. Yeah.
Like, yeah, that's my that is what my brain has said. But I don't think there's any reason why that needs to be the case. I believe that Ahoy does not it is now a nautical greeting, but does not need to be and was not always. Well, I'm glad that we have found something that we can disagree about vehemently because I strongly feel that Ahoy should be reserved for maydies.
All right, John, according to maydy stuff, according to dictionary.com, there are two there are two x ways that you can use the exclamation Ahoy there's nautical and humerus. So your puzzle is this same intended humerus rather than yes. That's what I'm what I'm implying. All right, I'll all allow it.
But if you have a serious land based Ahoy, just remember that is according to dictionary.com incorrect. It either has to be not a court force. The linguists, please don't you villas, please we're trying to be we're not trying to be prescriptivist. I promise.
Please don't leave for yellow. This next question comes from Angie who writes here John and Hank. Hello, see that works. Neither not at all nor humorous.
I've been watching a fabulous series on dinosaurs and it occurred to me that many dinosaurs were very big, like so big. My question is how do they get to be so big and also why aren't animals that big anymore? What could have changed in the last 200 million or so years? I mean a lot.
I can't see so much. I wasn't really able to get to the bottom of this one though I tried. So there's two pieces to this of course. There's like why is it better to be bigger?
Like what's the evolutionary pressure towards giant giganticness and I think that was mostly I think an arms race between the predators and the prey. And so the predators kept getting bigger as the as the prey animals kept getting bigger and then to protect themselves against the more the giant or and giant or predators they kept getting bigger and bigger. So that's probably I think I'm not I'm not entirely sure but I think that's part of it. And so like if you're super big and your children are super big also that decreases the opportunity for you to get predated.
And then there's also what a polite word for eaten predated. I really like that. I think we should I think we should only refer to it as predated like what would you like for dinner. I think I'd like to predate a chicken.
I don't know that word exists. I think I may have made it up. I'm going to predate the word this evening. I'll be predating duck.
Now it's a word. It's a word. Yeah. I don't think we should get rid of eating all together and refer only to the act of predation.
That might make more people be vegetarian more of the time. If you weren't allowed to say eating anymore and you had to say predated and you weren't allowed to say pork you had to say pig. You had to say the specific thing. I'm going to be predating some ham hocks this evening.
It's absolutely true. That is what is occurring. Just to continue to tear down the layers of you feeling like a human you're a worm and you predate pigs. It's a gigantic worm predating slightly smaller worms.
You are apparently in an arms race to get bigger so that you can predate ever bigger potential prey. There's also the reality that you're in an arms race against other sauropods. So I'm talking about the biggest dinosaurs right here. So you're an arm.
So there's other sauropods to reach beyond what they can reach for food. Yeah. So there's that pressure and then there's functionally how can you be that big which is not easy because if you have a head that's really far away from your heart you've got to get blood all that way. If you're really heavy you have to have and it turns out there's nothing special about the bones of sauropods.
They are structured very similarly to cow bones. So they are at the limit at their biggest. They were at the limit of what bones could support. And also people think that probably they maybe supported themselves by being in the water a lot which would counterbalance some of that weight of that.
But so it seems like it was some kind of pressure toward getting bigger and bigger and bigger and functionally how to do it. Like you had to do things like they made their heads like sauropods heads are super small so that there isn't as much like stuff to carry. They didn't have a lot of teeth up there. So like obviously like the thing on the very end of the neck.
That's like the end of the fulcrum. And so you have to make sure that that's like least heavy in order to get it to be longer. And so they just like made their head smaller and smaller which allowed their necks to be bigger and bigger which is wild. So there isn't any like functional reason why a sauropod couldn't exist on our current earth but the dynamics of the diversity of life that is able to capture nutrients all around both from sauropods and from like the leaves of trees or trees being better at sort of not wanting to be eaten.
All sort of like led to that strategy not being duplicated after the extinction event. Although we should say two things. One, the largest animal ever to live is currently alive. That's true.
Not a land animal. Not a land animal. Not primarily. It's been like five minutes on land.
Last five minutes but still. Just like the rest of us. It's just a worm. What does it matter?
It's a big worm. Secondly, sorry to get so nihilistic. Secondly, we should note that implied in Hank's answer is the possibility of cows the size of an Apatosaurus. Which is extremely exciting.
And I think I can't believe we've been wasting all of this time fighting with each other about whether there should be a live action Aladdin and everything else that we've been arguing about over the last say 500 years when we could have been focusing all of our resources on making gigantic cows that will inevitably crush us and take over the planet. It probably wouldn't work with a warm blooded lifestyle. But look, we could make cold blooded cows. They just have to just they have to figure out a new way.
Gigantic cold blooded cows are now getting predated. Reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by gigantic cold blooded cows. They are there's a new lobby. They're out to they're out to make themselves exist.
One bizarre and unethical experiment at a time. Today's podcast is brought to you by the humorous Ohoy. The humorous Ohoy. One of only two Ohoy's allowable.
That's my guest is also brought to you by antibodies antibodies get them in your mouth. That's the only way to protect yourself from COVID only way. And of course, this podcast is brought to you by your rumbling flesh tube your rumbling flesh tube. It is all you will ever be.
Oh, gosh, John. We're also going to seamlessly transition to this project for also message. From Emily, which we must apologize from Emily who's just a flesh to Christopher who is also in spite of everything just a flesh tube. Thank you for sliding into my DMs three years ago for listening to the Anthropocene review a week later upon my recommendation and then declaring it your favorite podcast and joining me in this Nerdfighter community with vlogbrothers and all their other content ever since.
I had always wished that I'd marry a Nerdfighter so I felt even more sure you were the one when it was so easy to convert. You can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you, Emily. Wow. I'm on the edge, John.
I'm on the edge. Yeah, emotionally. And that almost did it to me. I almost went over.
It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. In fact, I need to rerecord the intro so that Emily and Christopher can actually have a nice moment instead of that. Okay.
We also have a project for us at Message from Emily from Singapore to Christopher and it's so lovely. This episode of Your 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.
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Oh, why? Because my doctor told me that I literally can't smell anymore. I didn't realize this was going to be a surprise second dad joke. So grateful.
I just, I had to come up with COVID dad jokes. So it's good. I like it. I can smell your pity.
Thank you. The more tortured version of it that I might like more for its depth goes back to our earlier discussion about who's the main character. I was able to throw away all of my deodorant because I the only person who matters can't smell myself. I literally realized that I had not thought of that side effect of not having a sense of smell and realized quite quickly that it actually was a problem.
How is your sense of smell these days? It's improving. It's definitely coming back. It's probably like at maybe 30 40% now.
Black licorice and blue cheese both taste bad again, which is kind of too bad because I have quite a lot of both lefts. Well, next time I visit, I can consume both for you. No problem. I'll hold on to my blue cheese for a few months.
John, this next question comes from Morgan who asks Dear Hank and John, I have some free time this summer. So I've decided to try some new things in order to make myself a more interesting person. Learn to juggle, play ukulele, memorize the presidents in order and maintain my skills in Spanish and Latin. Do you have any suggestions or do be used for not of cool, interesting, but fairly simple hobbies of things I could try to do this summer?
Stay crabulous, Morgan. Thank you for, thank you so much for reminding us to stay crabulous. I don't know why we have been doing such a bad job of that. I think that juggling is something that you can get done pretty quick that you hold on to pretty well.
And you don't want to do is, well, I'll far break it from me. But what seems unlikely is that you'll get beyond three balls. So like, I feel like the gap between being able to juggle three balls and like being a really sort of exceptional juggler is very wide. Oh, it's huge.
Whereas like it's quite, quite quick to get to three balls, but very, very, very hard to get to like, oh, you are good at this. You want to have that base level of competency where anytime you find three oranges, you can impress your friends. You may not just like be occupied. You may not want to spend like the 30,000 or whatever hours needed to become an expert juggler.
And I think within a hundred hours, you could become a good enough juggler that you can impress people in a small way for the rest of your life, which seems to be based on the email, the goal. The other thing I would recommend is either memorizing digits of pie or what I did when I was a kid to call myself. And this is totally normal. And not at all indicative of a pathology.
I would double numbers. So I would say like two, four, eight, 16, 30, two, 64, 128, two, 56, five, 12, 1004, 2048, et cetera. And I could go up all the way to like 16,384 by the time I was, I don't know, like 10. And that 16,384 is enough where when you do it, people are like, okay, yeah, no, that's a little weird.
Here's my suggestion, Morgan. Yeah. You like, and this is for me as well, take something if you have anything that you're like already maybe 50% there on, because I do this all the time where I'm like, I'm going to learn how to juggle. And then I get like halfway there and you hit that first plateau where you don't feel like you're getting any better.
And then you stop. So like find the thing that you've already got something and you already invested in. Yes. Yeah.
Pull it out. I'm going to close it. It's drumming. Like I'm not a bad like drum set, like drum kit drummer, but I am a little ways away.
Or maybe a pretty far ways away from like being able to do it in a way where somebody would be like, oh, Hank's actually quite good at that. And but like not, not nearly as far away as a person who's never done it. Right. And I just need to spend the like six months and then I will never not have that anymore.
And also it's so, this is the other thing. It's so fun. It's so fun to be a little bit good at drumming. It's, and it's true with a lot of music.
It's so fun to be a little bit good at guitar. And, and I, you know, it's not like practically useful in work. The way that having Spanish would be, but, but it is like, it's just a lot of fun, but also language. And so that's the other thing.
Those are the two things that I would like to personally spend more time on is getting a little bit better in drumming and getting sort of like walking walk, walk around Mexico City comfortable with Spanish. 32,768 is the next one. All right. Before we get to the all important news for Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I need to let you know something important that came in to our inbox from Sarah who writes, Dear John and Hank, I thought I'd include some of my other crab flyers since you guys got a kick out of the crab US one.
I made an Instagram at crab, you know, at crab, you know, at crab, you know, at us to share any further crab flyers and the crab flyers are amazing. There's one that says beware and it's a crab coming out of a toilet. And there's one that says no man, no woman, only crab. Also one that says shellfish allergies are proof that God is a crab.
Oh, well, there's also one that's not a crab one that I really, really love. It says help. I was a giraffe and now I'm a human and I hate it. And then there's all these like, you know, those little pull off things that come with flyers sometimes and they're all links to the email address giraffe help at Hotmail.com.
Do you think if you turn a giraffe into a human, like the first thing they would say is like, please turn me back into a giraffe? Really? Really like the help that was a giraffe and not me even a hater. It really, like, you don't get it until you see it.
There's a lot of little tear off strips. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of the tear off strips.
It's anticipating a great deal of demand. Yeah. Yeah. This person really needs help with their problem, which is that they used to be a giraffe another human and they hate it.
I think that if you gave a giraffe a consciousness and a voice, you put them inside of a human body, they would look up at you and they would immediately say, um, thanks, but no thanks. Why did you do this? I would like to be a giraffe again. Yeah.
I was basically a mammal sauropod. Like, look at me. I had it all worked out. I was the cow that was a dinosaur.
I was supposed to get. And now you're putting me inside of a tiny, now you're going to make me a tiny little worm. I was such a big worm before. Now I have to think about stuff.
I have to think about, oh, first of all, you're putting me into a tiny worm. Second. Really? I think that's the main thing is that dogs know how to be dogs, giraffes know how to be giraffes, and humans just don't know how to be humans.
Oh, yeah. Hello, Sarah. Giraffe would take one look at our system and be like, you call that a separation of powers? Are you kidding me?
So this purportedly independent judiciary system is appointed by the other systems? I don't understand. And for life and at random? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and you're telling me that you get like way more votes if you live in the middle of nowhere.
That's a way. That is dubious, sir. 600,000 people in Idaho matter as much as 55 million people in California. I think I will go back to being a giraffe.
Thank you. Where we have proper equity. We just do it based on how our piece smells. It's way better.
And that is just a little glimpse of what you can learn at youtube.com slash vlogbrothers. If you search for giraffes. Look at our most popular videos. Hey, what's the news for Mars?
The news for Mars is that the James O'Space that was going by now, the people of the world who are listening have seen images that I have not seen. I'm very jealous of you future people. We're recording this. We're about to get the first one today and then tomorrow we'll get the other three slash four depending on how you count the spectrum from an exoplanet.
And I am so excited and oh my god, like I made our like I made a video about it was just telescope on vlogbrothers more than a decade ago about how exciting it was. And it, you know, it just watching it all have worked so well. And also, you know, even having seen the test images that have come out it's extremely exciting and we are going to learn so much about our universe and also just see. I don't know, I think that will potentially see ourselves in a really different way because of this.
So I love that part of being a human. Giraffes got nothing on that. I'm so excited to see these images tomorrow in the past as people are hearing this, but tomorrow is recording it. You've done a great job of like prepping me and getting me excited.
So thank you. Well, Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon is slightly less joyous. We played our first friendlies like our first preseason friendlies to get a get a sense of where we are. Our first preseason friendly was against Eastborn Burrow, applying their trade in the sixth tier of English football.
We lost that game one nil. Now it's preseason. You know, we weren't necessarily playing all of our best players, but I can't help but notice that we were playing a lot of our best players. And failing to score against the sixth tier English soccer team does rather raise a question that I think has been on the mind of most AFC Wimbledon supporters lately, which is who precisely is going to score the goals.
Right. Yes. Who loses to us? Do we have a strike?
That doesn't happen without goals. Do we have a striker who isn't literally 15? No, nothing against our hardworking 15 year old strikers, but can we sign? Is he actually 15?
Oh, yeah. Can we sign an adult for chance? John. So it's a little bit of a worry.
We need a grown up striker who can score goals in the fourth tier of English football. That seems like a critical signing to me. Do you think that you have it in you to get in there, become the new manager and really shape that club up? I do not think for one second that I would be a better manager of AFC Wimbledon than Johnny Jackson, the man whose name you must say in an American accent.
I am rooting for Johnny Jackson so hard just over the next five years on this podcast. I can say, Johnny Jackson. Yeah. So we'll see.
What, what we, so in 2028 when we arrive on Mars, what league will AFC Wimbledon be in? The third tier or the second tier. We really need some outside investors. Why are there no billionaires who listen to this podcast?
It's very frustrating. I don't really get, I don't get why Ryan Reynolds saw your great passion and was like, I will invest in a different team. Well, I think Ryan, there were a lot of factors that play. That's what you were about to say.
That said, Ryan, if you're listening, you know, and you want to do us a favor, you know. Yeah. I don't know how, I don't know how well you're doing, but I feel like probably pretty good. Um, no, I was thinking more of like a tech billionaire who's starting to feel a little bit lonely and meaningless and aimless and listens to this podcast.
I'm like there daily two hour long self punishment, sweat yoga, crossfit workout. And maybe they're like, I don't know if I should be running Twitter and growing a beard anymore. Maybe I should be investing in a fourth tier English soccer team. Oh, wow.
You're going to get in league. Oh, I would get in league with, I would get in league with, I would be, there is no money so dirty that I wouldn't get in business with it for the good of Wimbledon. Give me a call, Elon. Thank you for popping with me.
Thanks everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com. Sorry, we didn't answer more than today. You can also follow us on patreon patreon.com slash beer hankandjohn where we have a weekly podcast called this week and stuff that we're off to record right now.
This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Manish, produced by Rosie Anna Halzer-Ohas. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Debukhi Trappi-Farti, the music you're hearing now, and the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.