353: Good for the Gaggle

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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. Welcome to Dear Hank and John. Who is that preferred to think of it?

You're John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you two of your advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John recently had a friend whose boyfriend actually is in the World Cup of soccer right now. And he plays Gold, Goldy, Gold-tending.

I said, I said, you should marry that guy. He's a real keeper. Oh, okay. I thought you were gonna, I thought it was gonna be like a pun on one of the goalkeeper's names.

Oh, I know enough. The Seneca Lease goalkeeper's name is Mendy. I feel like you could have worked with that. I don't could have worked with Aaron Ramsdale.

Former AFC Wimbledon goalkeeper. Really? Now playing in the World Cup. Not only that, how a current AFC Wimbledon player is playing in the World Cup.

Chris Guntr for Wales. Nice. Who's she coming for? He's coming for England.

So moving on though, Hank. You remember when we were kids there was a late night television show called Late Night with Johnny Carson? Yeah, yes. Sure.

Remember like we'd watch it sometimes. I guess we'd watch Johnny Carson every once in a while. Like very occasionally. It was like, like a late television.

Yeah, we'd have to stay up quite late for that. Yeah, sometimes like mom and dad would watch David Letterman or something like that. Sure, for sure. Yeah.

You remember how Johnny Carson had that guy, that second guy named Ed McMahon? Yeah. And like Johnny Carson was like, Hey, he was exactly there. Johnny Carson would do all the talking and then Ed McMahon would say like one of eight things he would say like, Yeah.

Or he would, or if he'd agree, great. Exactly. Or if he disagreed with something sometimes he'd say, I don't know about that. So he had sort of like eight or nine stock responses and he made like a 45 year career out of having these eight or nine stock responses.

Yeah, good voice. He had a great voice for hello kind of thing. I'll say that sort of that sort of jam. And And John just wants everybody to know that Ed McMahon is going to be on the podcast today.

He died. Okay, I was going to say, I'm not sure that he's with us, but that doesn't necessarily stop you from being on a podcast in an age of AI. But here's the thing. I usually I feel like we're both trying to be Johnny Carson on this show and it works great.

I don't have any criticisms. This particular day, I just want to give you a heads up that I'm going to be a kind of an Ed McMahon figure, if you will. Oh, interesting. Well, I don't know that I love this, but okay, so it's all on my shoulders on the Johnny Carson.

I have to do all the work and you're going to be like, Hey, I don't know about that. Yes, that is correct, sir. Why? Why?

Why am I stuck with such a such a dubious host co-host? You got it. Oh, no. Why?

What's happening? Right? Yes. He's broken.

He's gone. Say, here we go. Got any questions from our listeners today? Yeah, this first one comes from Michaela who has the steer hank and John and Leon, but mostly, mostly for Leon.

I don't have his email, though. I thought I'd ask you to please pass on this question. What would you do, Leon Musk, with $44 billion? Thank you, John.

Please feel free to share question for my friend Leon Musk. Well, it's going to be hard to add McMahon my way through this question, Hank. I feel a little duped. Yeah, well, what happens?

Here's the thing about Leon Musk has anyone in human history been more forward thinking than I was in creating an Elon Musk parody account on Twitter in 2015. I mean, I, why didn't I play the lottery that week? Like, I saw the what do I know today that I don't know that I know? If you don't know what John's talking about for a while, there are a couple of weeks ago, everybody was creating Elon Musk parody accounts and getting banned from Twitter for a very, very still, there are still a ton of Elon Musk parody accounts because they can't bear ban all of them.

And I started, so we had to have a joke on this podcast for a newish listeners that it's not a joke, actually, it's a bet that if there are no humans on Mars by January 1st, 2028, then this podcast might hit quite hard by the last by the last four weeks. Your Mars dream has had a terrible month. If there are no human beings, this was Hank, this is how different the world was in 2016. Hank thought it was totally reasonable 50 50 bet that it I don't know about that.

That was part of it was that like the podcast been called your Hank and John, I'll get a long time out of that and eventually maybe John will get a chance and maybe not. I don't know. Right. Well, we ought to keep podcasting until 2040 first to even out.

Yeah, exactly. For there to be. I know. On yeah, like that.

So I think the first thing Leon Musk would do, obviously, would spend $44 billion on a pro-Earth campaign, which by the way, I think we need not like there are a lot of conversations about Earth and like the killing of Earth and the death of Earth and the life of Earth that I feel like don't adequately acknowledge what we mean when we refer to Earth. Like, do we mean all life? In which case, we mean mostly bacteria and insects. Do we mean all mammalian life?

Do we mean non life? In which case, we mean like rocks and running water rocks that yeah are kind of just like sticking together with gravity kind of hard ruin that. Yeah, although I wouldn't totally put it past us, but I agree. Anyway, I think Leon Musk would make up would spend a $44 billion on a pro-Earth campaign, which would be both we need to do a better job of making this a good place for humans and other animals.

Sure. And we are, as a species, really interesting, really important, really cool. The universe wants, well, this is controversial, but whatever, it's Leon Musk, the universe wants to know the secrets of itself. The universe wants to be observed, and we are observing it in lovely ways, and we should do more of that.

And then I think Leon Musk would save the last billion dollars, spend $43 billion on his pro-Earth campaign, which would also hopefully be like an expansion of healthcare access globally. And then with the last billion dollars, and I realize I'm getting mission creepier, Hank, but whatever, it's Leon Musk not me. With the last billion dollars, Leon Musk would save it. And on January 1st, 2028, he would launch the first manned mission to Mars.

I mean, there's issues. One, it wouldn't get there for a while. Two, a billion dollars isn't enough. Three, I think Leon Musk is way weirder than you think he is.

I think Leon Musk would be like, what if I just get a bunch of Hollywood A-list actors together and we make a movie and it's just for me? And it's called the Mars Mission 14 and starring Leon Musk, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington. No, no, no, no women. It's all dudes.

What's up at do time? And they smoke cigars and they do dude stuff and everybody gets paid $100 million. Everybody comes back. Jay Leno is there, President Biden is there, and McMahon is there, but like dead.

Yeah, just like his boat. It's just my ghost. My ghost. Starring Jay Leno, Denzel Washington, and my ghost is the new hit Musk World.

Yeah, Musk World. Musk World is a much better title. And then, yeah, so yeah, he could, you know, make like the biggest spray paint can ever. Sure.

He could get that paintball. I bet he could get that paintball. Yeah, he could get really into paintball. Yeah.

No, no, no, the paintball in Indiana or wherever. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Large ball paint.

You could go get that. That's his by the world's largest ball of paint for $5 million, but continue to let Michael Carmichael run it. Yeah. That's a great idea.

That's a great use of resources. I just think like all of these things, by the way, can you imagine, I mean, 44 billion dollars. That's all I want to say about it. 44 billion.

All right. This question comes from Ellie. I like it says how well it's Ellie. I was just wondering how important do you think it is to have consistent beliefs?

Is the justification that humanity is absurdly complex enough to rule out my inconsistency? By the way, I love your philosophy, thingo and crash course. It's really changed my life. Thank you, Hank and John.

It does feel a lot like philosophy should be more open with the fact that it's just a bunch of thingos. It's a bunch of thingos. Yeah. Yeah.

In fact, if you think about it, everything is a bunch of thingos. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of little thingos.

It sounds like I don't know if you can hear the background noise in my office, people at home, but it's so cool that I have to have my heater running right now. We understand. You want you to be comfortable. So John, how important do you think it is to have consistent beliefs?

I think it's a worthy goal, but I think it's, I think first off, your beliefs should change over time because the evidence available to you changes over time. And so your beliefs should change over time. But I also, and also just because like your life changes, circumstances, changes, people, you know, change. And so I think like we have to make room for that, which sometimes we struggle to do online.

You know, we struggle to let people change, especially to let people change in public. It's hard. But I think there will always be inconsistencies in almost all lives and value systems. I think there will always be places where we are more alive to certain injustices or certain inequities than others.

And I think the main thing that we can do is be conscious of the fact I just think life is extremely complex. There are tremendous complexities. Once you drill down into the big problems that we face, like I was at the Partners in Health Board of Trustees meeting in Boston last week, and I was reminded that when you drill all the way down to the work that has been done over the decades to expand access to HIV treatment, expand access to multi drug resistant tuberculosis treatment, there's a lot of complexity. It is not easy or straightforward.

It's really hard and complex and difficult and nuanced and involves a ton of listening. And you know, it really isn't as simple as we make it seem from the outside. And I think every problem is like that. Yeah, well, yes.

And I occasionally will run across somebody who has a really well formed view of the world and their place in it and seems to be very consistent over a long period of time. And I think that like that requires a certain amount of sacrifice of nuance, but it's also valuable to them. And I think that it also allows them to do certain jobs well. I am not like that.

I like I want to allow and sort of naturally do allow my perspective to wander and yeah, and my certainty to wander. And I think that there's nothing that we can actually be certain of. They're very little that we can be certain of, you know, you can like sort of say what a square is and what two plus two is. But beyond that, there's there's very little that is for sure not even knowledge.

And I think that we have to allow for that. And I think that it's very normal for us to even even with our views do change to kind of believe that it didn't or that we always kind of believe that we do this is a constant weird thing in psychology that when when a mind actually changes, it's most effective at changing when it doesn't even recognize that it happened. And that's wild. It's wild.

Like our minds are very complicated, very weird. We do not have as much insight into them as we imagine that we do. And I think that we that if I look back on sort of the things that I wrote 10 years ago and think, wow, I really had it all together. And and I am that person exactly feels a little bit like a failure to me.

I like I have I can do this really way of thinking about it. Yeah. And I don't yeah, I think that a consistency of perspective and consistency of worldview is something that we it's like a loyal to to a former self who doesn't exist. And I don't want to have right, right.

Yeah, but I think you become more loyal to that former self who doesn't exist when that former self is still present tense in public in the form of old Instagram posts or old TikToks or whatever. Well, especially things are like observed and brought back to you for you to look at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I was unfortunate that I wasn't on the internet really when I was in high school, at least not in a posty kind of way.

Because like, I mean, like, I don't know anybody who still agrees with their 16 year old self when they're 45 about everything. I would love to talk to them. I would be fascinated because I that's not my experience. Like, I feel like I've learned and changed so much.

Like, I was just thinking about the fact that eight years ago, which the last time the US was in the World Cup, the Fault in the Stars movie had just come out like two weeks early. And that's been a long eight years. I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot about parenthood.

I've learned a lot about adulthood. I've learned a lot about how to conduct myself in public, how to be a member of a community online, like all kinds of different things. And like, if I hadn't, I agree with you. It's a little bit of an indictment of the last eight years, if I didn't learn anything.

If I didn't look back and say like, Oh, I was naive about this. And, you know, a little bit underappreciated the significance of that. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some stuff that's at the root that I think that you can keep consistent. But sure.

Yeah, but also sometimes not, you're always like, we're always updating our frameworks. And like we, our minds are imperfect. There's no doubt about that. Yeah, I love the idea of having a framework that you work with, but that can be updated, you know, like when I look back at who I was in college or in my early 20s, like I thought I was going to become a minister.

And so all of my frame or most of my moral and ethical framework for thinking about the world was came to me from the gospels in the New Testament. And I still think that's an important framework for me. You know, I think, but it would not be accurate to say that it's like the primary framework or like the only way I think about those questions. So yeah, it's like Paul Farmer used to say like, Paul Farmer used to say like, I believe in God, but I also believe in lots of other things.

I thought there's a thing is such a great answer to that question. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, as you believe in lots of other things, like that, that helps inform that value system, that that you grow and change with.

This next question comes from Bill who asks, your hand, John, can you tell me who has the authority to assign collective mounds? My wife told me today that a ballet of swans is a thing. And I was vaguely outraged. Where does this come from?

Pumpkin's and Penguin's bill, Australia. I think you're right, Bill. I think that I think that there was a sudden time. So you got like a school of fish and I'm like, okay, fish are like 86% of animals.

So like, yes, they can have a special word and it can be school. Right. Why not? Right.

You can have a flock of birds and birds are like, again, most just like a huge number of the things. But once you like, suddenly every group had a thing that you got like a Congress of something's and a murder of crows. And then it's like, well, what's the great don't know is called? And I'm like, I don't care.

There aren't any. There's one skin in a museum and it doesn't need a collective noun suddenly, everything in a collective noun. I just don't think it does. I think that the word group exists, but it's it became fun for there to be one for everything.

And then somebody somewhere who had a website thought that they were in charge. I don't think it's you know what, I bet if you drill down, it's probably more complicated than that. Just like everything else. No, yeah, yeah.

Nope. It's just the people that mental floss. It was me, me when I was 24. I was like, what the heck are we going to call that?

I definitely 100% wrote an article about mental floss. I was like, you won't believe these unusual group names for animals. 100%. I don't doubt that for a second.

So if anyone's the blame for that, it's me. This one should make me think of something that is important that I feel like I need to reveal to the public, which is that yesterday, I almost you know how sometimes I get mad at people on Twitter, Hank. I don't know if you don't know. But yeah, sometimes when I'm on Twitter, I get really like emotionally activated.

And I think this is unusual. I don't think anybody else has this problem. But I just I get really angry. And somebody says something mean about me and I get really mad.

And I almost wrote in response to somebody saying that like what one powerful person thinks if they're really powerful and smart and brilliant is what the public should think. I almost wrote what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander because I believed until yesterday that a group of geese was called a gander. Oh, that's I mean, why not? Gander is a really weird word for male goose.

And so I was like, Oh, God, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I've heard that a million times and it means what's good for one thing is good for many of the same things, right? And so I went online. That would actually be if you if you wanted to say that because it's really wild.

Is good for the flock? No, what's good for the goose is good for the gaggle. That's actually so much better. Great.

In fact, you know what? I would like to point a new aphorism. Even though I don't believe it. I do not believe this.

Yeah, but somebody does. What's good for the goose is good for the gaggle. Everybody says it. Everybody knows it's true.

Back in high school. I would have thought that was true. I got a lot of people on Twitter. It's true.

If it's good for the goose, it's good for the guy. It's good for me. It's good for everyone. The goose, you are the gaggle.

And what's good for the goose is good for the gaggle. I'm really into it now. It might be my new favorite sentence. I'm not, I never again will I say what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

I guarantee you that because from now on, I'm only thinking in terms of gaggles. Hey, oh, man, I was good. I liked it a lot. The Oxford English Dictionary has commented on this, John, who decides what collective nouns are for things.

They say who decides the short answer is no one. Love it. Love it. Just really commit their boys.

Yeah. Well, no, I mean, that's probably the truth. They're telling the truth. We all decide together.

That's how language. That's how yeah, I guess it is. Also, there's a graph of the increase in the use of the phrase murder of crows. And it still has nowhere near close to flock of crows in normal use.

Whereas pride of lions really took off in the 1940s and has never come down. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah.

Do you know what a group of blowfish is called? A blue? No, John, it's called a hootie. That's not a joke.

That's not a dad joke. It's true. It's a true fact. Someone decided it.

And now it's called. Yeah. Is it called that or is it called that only on websites that reveal what a group of animals is called? Having written for one of those websites, let me tell you that we don't go out and like pull a thousand adults with a color group of blowfish.

Oh, it is not commonly used in everyday vernacular. Turns out, but can we do it? Can we do it? Can we do it?

Can we do what? Just the during John audience. Can we make it a hootie of blowfish? I don't know if we can make it a hootie of blowfish.

I feel like a hootie of blowfish. That's already kind of like happened or not happened. Is there any animal that is in need of a noun? That's the real question.

Pelicans. Like, is there not a group of what is a group of do pelicans gather in groups? Oh, well, I mean, there's a bunch. There's like five.

What is a group of penguins called? A group of pelicans. One of the one of the group of pelicans collective nouns is brief. A brief of pelicans from the pelican brief.

No, because of pelican brief. Yeah. But far better is a squadron. They are absolutely a squadron of pelicans.

Yeah. They do give off big squadron vibes. What about penguins? Do they have a brand name?

Sure, they do. It's like a huddle of penguins. That sounds great. Yeah.

Yeah. You're right. It could be a raft or a huddle or a waddle. A waddle of penguins is cute.

John, this next question comes from Adia who asks, you're a hank and John, how do I stop swearing without seeming like a dweeb, a when I stop swearing, and like a cool and interesting straight edge way. But sometimes I think that when I replace swearwoods with non-swears, it comes off as stuffy, maybe religious. I live in Utah and doing anything that aligns with dominant religious culture here can be stressful image wise. For those of us who are not religious, it's well said.

Sure. I would say you've just got to have very unusual swear words. Yeah, you got to come up with something good. I'm a big fan of I've been using one lately.

Yeah. Bumble snort. Bumble snort. Bumble snort.

That definitely has big dad vibes. Oh god, that's the one kind of vibes I can deliver right now. Real big. Real big guy.

Yeah, whenever I got kids old enough that I shouldn't curse in front of them vibes. Whenever I say it, my kids do kind of cringe. Yeah. You mention it.

I've always not liked a number of things about curse words. I certainly you come to the wrong place on the because I curse all the time. But there are some things that I don't like about them. They tend to be, they're they spawn from shame around taboos, whether that is sex or body stuff or a lot of that.

So poop is like the curse word for poop. It's very much like a, you know, because there's like taboo around body stuff. But so I like one of my favorite curses is poop on a stick because now it's no long you've not like the curse is no longer that it's the poop that we're ashamed of. It's that this is now like everyone everyone agrees that poop on a stick is bad because you've turned it into a weapon and you're going to get it on somebody and nobody wants that.

So I will occasionally stop my toe and shout out poop on a stick. But it is very difficult. Like there's a lot of complexity around the social understanding of curse words. And I know this having grown up in Florida where cursing, I mean, in my in the social circles I traveled in, it was very normal to curse and very unusual to not curse and would have been noticed.

And now I make content on the internet where anybody can see it. And I do get a lot of feedback from people that's like, I'd really like you to curse less. Non-vogbrothers, we don't curse. We don't curse very much on Dear Hank and John.

But in a lot of places on my TikTok on Twitter, you know, I'm just being me and I'm speaking the way that I speak. And it's very hard. It's both hard for me to not curse. And also it's about the sort of image that I am attempting to project.

And it's very hard to project the image I want to project without using the language that I know how to use to do that with. But I do get lots of people who are like, I don't know why you do that. It turns me off your content. It's also true of my books, which is weird to get like Amazon reviews that are like, this is such a great book, but there were so many curse words.

And I'm like, I just don't see them. They're invisible to me. This is like not a part of my system of taboos. Certainly I understand that it's part of many people's system of taboos.

And so I do try to avoid it in lots of situations. But man, I tell you what, I don't know how to turn it off. So, and also you kind of can't get the curse word thing out of a not curse word because that's like they're powerful because that's their power. So you kind of can't do it.

But I think that you can just instead of replacing them, just a not, you know, you can just not do it. And that's probably what I would suggest in the end that there is a way of using normal language. Well, I don't know. Because oh my god, of course, like that's what I default to is to be like, you stop your toe, you say, oh my god, that hurts.

Well, you can just skip it and just say, oh, it hurts. There's lots of noises that one can make that are not even words. So that might be one of the ways to go is noises like that. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That is a right there. Who do I bow?

Yeah. Yeah. Nope. Not that one.

I think that one was too hard. More like now. That's like kind of a very satisfied cat. Oh, that mad a cat has a hairball.

It's not great. Which reminds me of this podcast is brought to you by a very satisfied cat. Very satisfied cat. His name is Gunny Baron.

He lives in my house and every one of his needs is taken care of. Oh, today's podcast is also brought to you by Ed McMahon's Ghost, Ed McMahon's Ghost, Haunting America since 2009. My guest is also brought to you by the Gaggle. The Gaggle.

What's good for the geese is good for it. It's good for the gaggle. It's what's good for the goose is good for the gag. What did I say?

What's good for the geese is good for the gaggle. Which is true. Also true. But a little bit of an easier observation.

Yeah. And today's podcast is brought to you by watching television while podcasting with your brother. No, not, not, I don't know about that. This episode of Your Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.

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With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. Do you have another question before we get to the young port newsmark? Well, well, well, actually Hank, Hank, I know we have to answer questions and I do want to answer one more question before we get to the news from Mars and answer them but I also want to ask you a question.

Okay. That is from me. It goes deer hank comma. At what point does a correlation become so strong that it starts to suggest some level of causation?

Like is there a point like let's say that you let's say every morning you flip a coin and your days are good when it's head and bad when it's tails. Yeah. Now this is random obviously. Let's say that happens for seven straight years.

At some point that correlation starts to at least maybe be causative in ways that we may not fully understand. Where is that point? I mean, you so like yeah, there are there are various statistical methods to figure that out and it's going to be different in different kinds of sciences. But what what's important there is not that is not that like correlation never implies causation.

It's that correlation does not necessarily imply causation but it does imply that there's something to look at. And so then you do research around that to figure out what the thing is. So if John Green never tweets during an AF-su-milden game and they lose every time and then he doesn't tweet during their scene but in game they win every time. Then you have to like is there a point at which you say let's look and see if maybe there is some connection here.

I would look at that as a scientist and I would say well there is no mechanism for that cause. There's no way for that action to have that effect. And so you can't say you can't. There's no experience understanding of the university.

There's no experiment to do there. And so you would. There is an experiment to do it but I'm not willing to do it. No experiment to do to drill down into the into the deeper into the causality.

So there's no there's no way we could do an experiment on we could do an experiment that would further figure out whether there's correlation. We could continue to define the statistical correlation. We could not do an experiment that would help us figure out causation because there's no hypothesis for how the mechanism of action would work. Which is a trick sometimes in science because if you don't know how a correlation could be being caused but you know that it does exist.

Then that's kind of the end. Like you can't like there isn't that much you can say about it except that the correlation exists until you develop some kind of hypothesis for how the mechanism might actually work. Well let me follow up that question with one more question. That answer is very helpful.

In your experience having been on the podcast with me for a number of years. Would you say that whether AFC Wimbledon win or lose a game is about a 50-50 proposition? I don't I don't have a no. No you would say it's probably not about a 50-50 proposition right which which you think is more likely winning or losing losing.

It's losing. Right. I think we all know that. At least at the moment.

Right. So we're going to let's start from there. It's not a 50-50 proposition but if it were there would be a one in 512 chance that this could have happened. But it's not a 50-50 proposition so there's a less than one in 512 chance that this could have happened.

All right what's our last question? That's weird. Well before we get to our last question this is a project for us a message from Maeve Lindsey Outlaw to Charles Lindsey Outlaw. Charles thank you for a wonderful first year of marriage.

I so appreciate you as a dog dad, a husband and a nerdfighter. In large thanks to your hand and John I'm confident that between our mutually compatible television tastes and Catholic engagement and counter advice we will continue to many years to come. Ellie Rowan and I love you. Oh that's so sweet.

I do love a Catholic engaged encounter. I love about the name of it. Sounds very dramatic. There's no weekend of my life I think about more often than my Catholic engaged encounter.

Yeah it's a good it's probably a good idea. I mean there was a lot to recommend it. There were some there were some parts where I was like I'm not I'm not totally bought in on this. The most notable section being the portion of the program that was hosted by the people who were telling us that the rhythm method worked.

Wow who who were pregnant? That's very Catholic. They were pregnant so we had this whole like one hour we had this whole one hour section of the Catholic engaged encounter. I've probably told this story before on the plot but it never gets old to me.

We had this whole one hour segment where this couple was like hey the rhythm method really works and you don't need to use birth control which is against the teachings of the church because the rhythm method is so effective and at one point Sarah raised her hand and she said I'm sorry if this is inappropriate but aren't you pregnant? And it was like yeah yeah you pregnant with my sixth child. Everyone was entirely a denginal. Yeah I mean like I guess that's how yeah if it works it works.

All right let's let's move on. This next question comes from Emma who asks Dearank and John I'm watching slash re-watching old vlog with his videos and just watch tank's episode on Oumuamua. Can you provide a update? Do we know more about it?

Oh yeah. Not the award. Yeah. Oh yeah I guess that is a name.

All right. Do you what are you adding to me right now? No. Sounds like something I think man would say.

I don't know about that. So you don't know what this is. I did add I had McMangy for like four straight minutes without getting caught while you were talking. What was I talking about?

Well you were talking about correlation and causation because you were into it and now you didn't catch me but then when you're reading I got to be careful how I use how I use super power I've just discovered. It's a little bit like when Spider-Man first gets his power is a little too much on this. So if you remember John Oumuamua was and continues to be this object that visited our solar system from elsewhere came in shot out we could tell from its orbital trajectory that it was not of here. It was like the first time we ever spotted a thing from somewhere else and that's not because it's the first one that's been by it's because it's our telescopes are getting better and so we're better at spotting stuff like that.

In fact we have spotted another one since though it was less weird than Oumuamua which was it behaved strangely and we are still not to the bottom of it and we probably ever will be so like one of the frustrating things about it is that you know we spotted it and then you know you can only get so many telescopes pointed at it so fast and it was always quite far away and then it was going farther and farther away until we couldn't see it anymore. You can't catch up to it so we'll never know probably exactly what it was unless we find some other objects that have very similar characteristics but the good news is seems like other stuff's coming in to the solar system fairly regularly that we can spot and similar stuff not the same so one more it seemed to be really long like almost cigar shaped which is very unusual you wouldn't think that that would happen but the idea is the thought is that these are objects that form in the early stages of solar system formation and then they get kicked out by cold gas giants like Neptune so there's just like gravitational stuff is happening and then there's chunks of stuff that get you know some of them get tossed into the art cloud some of them get tossed all the way out of the solar system some from crash into the planet etc and there's probably a lot of stuff like that in the galaxy that's floating around that just got kicked out of solar systems when they were forming early on and the one thing that has been proposed for Oumuamua that we had not when I made that video had not proposed is that it's basically like condensed hydrogen gas that would have to be in a really specific circumstance and like what they call a molecular cloud so this like before a solar system starts to form there's enough density of atoms and it but it's still very cold so they haven't like crashed into each other and started to like crunch down with gravity so that there's heat so it's very cold but there's still enough stuff that it's starting to collect together and then you get like this maybe this like shard of pure solid hydrogen and that maybe got kicked out in the early stages of a solar systems formation which maybe explains like it's more of a crystal than it is formed under the pressure of gravity so it would maybe like form in a weird shape but I don't know that's that's the that's the sort of like update from the understanding since since I made that video but the only way that that question is going to get answered is this similar object happens by which it seems to me likely like if you get one like the first thing of something looks one way probably it's not a one in a billion chance probably more like a one in a hundred or less right because we haven't been looking that long that widely for things that look like that yeah that makes sense well that's cool science is amazing man it's really cool it's really I think I think sometimes we need to do a better job of and I know that this is like a huge part of your professional life so I'm preaching to the choir but when we do a good job of communicating what science helps us understand about the universe and our place in it I feel like we kind of like make the case for humanity in some ways we're like well we're we're doing interesting stuff together yeah we're we're figuring out cool stuff yeah I mean I think that there are a number of cases we made for humanity but I think that's definitely one of them yeah I'm just trying to think about how to make the case for humanity to humans I feel like weirdly it's pretty easy to make the case for humanity to rocks I feel like yeah they're like that's yeah sounds good man yeah we are the we are among the most difficult to convince of the of the objects on earth yeah I feel like a lot of the mammals are probably like hey it seems this a little out of control yeah dogs are like humans are great you do not have to convince me of that they seem awesome yeah Canada geese are like I don't know about humans as individuals but as a species they tear formed the whole freaking planet for us like this is great like you guys so you guys call it call these things golf courses we call them heaven and you just keep making more of them and as everybody knows what's good for the goose is good for the gag uh John okay tell me what's going on in AFC Wimbledon world we are we are indestructible we are undefeatable as long as I do not tweet while we are playing we are incredibly incredibly good I am so grateful to Phoebe long time AFC Wimbledon fan and listener to this podcast for pointing out to me this correlation as you call it wherein it it does rather seem that when we do so far when I don't tweet during a game we just cannot stop winning we've you tranmere over the weekend a couple things very notable about this game against tranmere this is coming off beating top of the table late norient to nil we won this tranmere game to nil um and tranmere are a little above us in the table and they did get a red card like 20 minutes into the game and boy was it a deserved red card we've got this player he used to play for Wimbledon and now he's back his name's harry pelle like all him hell's pels and harry pelle he knows how to be very difficult and unpleasant to play against and I love it I love that this new Wimbledon is becoming unbearable it's a beautiful thing to watch um so we scored one goal that was good but then we soaked up a ton of pressure even when we went down so we scored one goal it was from ethinschizlet but it was kind of a setup from a yupisall it's just so stinkin good both ethinschizlet and a yupisall are just wonderful players and they're both players who were like told by the big football clubs in england that they were too small to play professionally that they would never make it at this level and now they are they are really really proving themselves but this there was good goal by ethinschizlet then we soaked up a ton of pressure even after they went down to 10 men and then we gave up a penalty and I was like oh I've seen this script before up one nil even though we have an extra man we suddenly are like all disorganized in defense we give up a penalty I know how this script ends we lose 2-1 I've watched this game a hundred times in the last five years but then what happened is that nixxan have saved a penalty wow and it was a really good save wow and so nixxan have saved a penalty and then a yupisall scored a world-class goal some might argue a goal that was too good because after a yupisall scored that goal I felt like a bunch of teams at the premier league and in the second division of english football they were like hey oh wow that was that was a good goal this guy scored nine goals in his last eight appearances and he's not a striker huh there's a little bit of that energy going on there suddenly there's like hey is a yupisall gonna be a Wimbledon player in january yeah good um good good just slow down a little bit put some lead weights in your shoes yeah just yeah and or keep playing this way but like let's not talk about it online you know no one writes stories about this at the very least this is a private this is a private those guys allowed in the arena this is between me a yubisall and every league two defense he's just incredible i mean he's incredible he's so so good he's only 20 years old he's played for Wimbledon since he was nine wow he is he's Wimbledon through and through i love him you'll remember Hank the very first time he made a professional appearance he scored a goal against Shrewsberry and after the game the like AFC Wimbledon media guy was doing an interview with him for youtube and the media person said um you must be very satisfied scoring a goal on your professional debut and 17 year old a yubisall playing as a substitute in the third tier of english football answered i won't be satisfied until i'm the best player in the world all right that's good he's whatever whatever he has in his heart if we could bottle it uh we could solve a lot of human problems i mean he's incredible i'm in i'm a little in love if you haven't noticed do like it it's great i'm happy for you uh we are now uh top of the bottom half of the league two table nice that's right Hank 13th place can't be any higher in the bottom half that's great i can't wait until you're uh i can't wait till your last place on the top half that's gonna be very exciting oh it would be thrilling um i got a hockey fight on twitter i saw i i didn't really completely follow it but it seemed like a hockey player was naughty and you were like this hockey player who was naughty should be suspended for naughtiness yeah and then a lot of fans of the team were like um no naughtiness is an essential part of the way that he approaches the game i mean naughtiness is definitely an essential part i mean look the way that this often works is that when young players come in who are going to be a certain kind of player and they will be and that's fun that's fine if they're that kind of player like they like oh you mean like an enforcer yeah we're just kind of a pest like that's what that's one of the he's more of a pest than an enforcer but anyway um oh a hairy pail if you will you need you need somebody on your team who's like i'm sorry but that's not allowed right like if you elbow me in the face i am going to make the biggest possible deal out of it that's very trusted this which i find entirely inexcusable is that after the play so the the play was over he slipped his stick into the mask of the gold and poked him in the eye no you can't do that that's not like they're not playing hockey you're not making a mistake you're not like amped up you're making a very conscious decision in a moment when hockey isn't even currently happening which is which is almost assault and i didn't like that now a lot of people who are who are kachok fans will say he didn't really hit him in the eye he just was sort of like getting in there to needle him and quicks reaction was way over the top and he didn't actually get poked and i'm like i don't care you don't put a stick inside of the gold mask this man's eyes are his profession it's all he has yeah that i do think that's a very important enough for his all he has let's not let's not say that a professional hockey goalkeeper is only his eyes that's he's just a little bit too very large eyes and pucks hit those eyes there's a famous Emerson poem where or maybe it's a journal entry i don't know but it really is stuck in my mind as being like a naked eyeball walking through the forest like just observing and i've always been like god that is gross like i just so much bark on it i do not like that observation i do not want a naked eyeball yeah it's got to have an eyelid for me it's a really freak out anyway i i do agree with you though like you can't the thing about sports is if you are hurting someone in on purpose you are hurting their ability to play the sport that you both love playing and that's not okay yeah and there's a fair bit of that and often times what happens is when players come in young they kind of have to establish themselves as having that personality and they they mild out after a little while and i'm just hoping that that happens because he's an amazing player it's an amazing player love him he's under his he's under like what he probably should have been for gold score this season but like he's got a huge future ahead of him and i just want him to be like not in total yeah in mars news good what's the mars news uh perseverance uh has gone has traveled an amazing distance and you can look this up you can just type in like where's perseverance now you can see the map of where it has gone um and it's main thing that it wanted to do well i mean it wants to do a lot of things but it wanted to like in terms of roving it wanted to rove up to this delta that you can see in this image it's very clearly a delta and then it's been at this delta sort of moving around and it's just arrived at a new part of the delta it's called the yori pass so it's arrived there and it's gonna be collecting a new set of samples so it had a sort of a little trek that it just took and now it is there uh it's near the base of this uh river delta and dresorot crater and it contains a substance called sandstone which is made from the grains carried there by the water before settling into a stone and that's super useful in the search for organic materials maybe even biosignatures which is why scientists are excited to gather samples from there so very good very exciting great job and it's gone so far and it's i don't know to how long has it been on mars a long time now a long time a couple years yeah that's exciting yeah gosh it's so weird to think about like rivers running on mars it is um but but but it do you think you keep the rivers running on earth yeah we really need to make sure that we do that rivers rivers are huge it's a geological process it's very it's very difficult to stop though it has stopped on earth before um and times when it got very very cold and we were sort of a full on snow place uh but somehow we got out of there such an unstable joint earth like i mean we think our little moment has been reasonably stable compared to others but it's such an unstable joint it's you know honestly i'd say it's fairly stable probably like galactically i'd say we got a pretty pretty nice galactically stable but like on a situation on a human term stable well it's stable and i don't know it just this is this current lack of stability is our doing but it's not something we did i feel the fragility i feel the fragility of earth in a way i didn't as a child whether that's real or perceived i do feel it yes certainly something that changes quite a lot but it hasn't been an ice ball for a long long time billions of years and that's great yay well thank thank you for potting with me it's been a pleasure it's been a pleasure john thank you yes um we're gonna go record our patreon only podcast as we can stuff right now so you can get that patreon.com slash your hank and john if you want to send us questions that's at hankandjohn at gmail.com which is a email address and we cannot make this podcast without those questions so thank you everybody for sending stuff in there's so many good ones this podcast is edited by joseph tuna medish it's produced by rosion holls ross our communication coordinator is brook shot well our editorial assistant is to both each other already the music you're hanging out with the baby the podcast is by the great gonerolla and as they say in our hometown y'all forget to be awesome