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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 Hike a John. You already know I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank.
It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the reason for ice and wonder whether the but crack exists. And that's it for the next few weeks, just from the rest of the day of C. Wibble and John. John, I have a question.
Did you know why when geese make bees in the sky, there's sometimes like one of the sides is longer than the other side? Now for aerodynamic reasons? No, it's because there's more geese on one side than the other side. Is this like a absurdist humor or is this like one of the geese on the other side?
It's longer because there's more geese. Yeah, so this is just like a pure waiting for Godot joke where there's no punchline. It's because there's more geese. Is there something I'm not getting?
There's no, no, there's not something you're, no, you've got it. You're all the way there. Okay, well congratulations on reinventing the E and S go play. It's fun.
I never really got that stuff in English class and I continue to not really get it now. Why is one of the sides of the V longer because there's more geese. Oh, John, why doesn't Godot ever show up? Well, because he's God.
I mean, ish. First off, we don't have to get to a theological argument right at the top of the podcast. Godot, I mean, I don't want to make it make too big of a thing about it. Yeah, it's our big Godot may not show up because Godot may not exist at all.
Is it our biggest disagreement, the theistic stuff? Uh huh. And by the way, I'm not totally sure we have a disagreement. I was just reading a great piece about an atheist chaplain, a humanist chaplain who served an atheist death row inmate.
And I was, I was fascinated by it because at the end of it, I was like, Am I an atheist chaplain? But I do believe in God, however, tentatively and with a, with a, with a definition of God that doesn't totally line up with a lot of people's. Do you think that's our biggest disagreement or do we have a bigger disagreement, a more fundamental disagreement somewhere along the line? Because people ask us about this a lot, like, how come you guys don't fight or whatever?
And yeah, I mean, we do fight, but never about anything important, really. Yeah, no, we fight about, we fight about like the things that married couples fight about, you know, right? Like, like, are we going to put resources toward this or this? Like, what about the dishes or the laundry?
Yeah, and like, we fight, we have a lot of fights that are some version of who took out the trash or will you take out the trash? No, I took out the trash last time. You took out the trash, I took out the trash last time. Yeah, that's the main, the John and Hank fights.
But, but, but like, yeah, I mean, on philosophical stuff, I don't know, we're pretty in the similar place. Yeah. Like, and like, whether or not souls exist doesn't really come into it most of the time. Doesn't it doesn't, it's like, it still seems really important to prevent people from suffering, whether or not a piece of them is immortal.
Oh, yeah. I mean, almost equally important, regardless, especially according to my faith tradition, which is, which is pretty focused on what's happening here and not too focused on what's happening after. I think after, you know, this is something I think about a lot. I always say to Hank, like, I don't want to do that because then I might go to hell and Hank's like, but hell doesn't exist.
And I'm like, I know, I know, I mean, like, I would go to hell if hell existed and we're exactly like what I think it would be like, if, you know, like, yeah, and I don't think hell would be eternal flames either. I just think it would be sort of like, not something to sound cheesy about it, but I think it'd be like, distance from the divine, you know, which is like kind of what you're creating yourself when you act in a way that's commensurate what would send you to hell. Interesting, interesting. There's something there that does align with me, where there's like, there is like a sacred that is, you know, made up by me.
And like, the things that you get you closer to the sacred things are good things. And I can see things that are appealing that I like, that can be further away from it. And like, that's, that's something to be aware of. Yeah.
Yeah. In your case, it actually just has, it's just one thing, Twitter. No, it's more than Twitter. But Twitter and all the other things like Twitter have the same root of I want the I want to be abused by strangers and also to abuse them.
And that's part of it. But you have another bit of attention and feel feelings. I want a lot of attention. I want a lot of attention and really intense sensations, regardless of whether they're pleasurable or productive, I just want them.
I want them now. And I had not aware. I want to just say that this is a thing that I, that that does not always happen to me, but it sometimes does ends. No, for me, it's mostly when I'm down.
Like I've been sick the last few days and I've spent almost the entire last two days in bed and just like sleeping all the time. And so then I'm already down and then I search my name on tumblr. And why did I search my name? Who dawgler?
Why did I, what, what caused me to do that? Right? Like, now I have made it clear before that I search my tags. So like, it's not total, but I, you know, like, I don't have to, I didn't have to do that.
And then I did it. And then I liked some of what I learned and I didn't like other things that I learned, but I felt things. I felt a bunch of things. I had big feelings and it kind of was replacing some kind of emptiness inside of me.
So there's that part of it. There's that that I think separates me from the sacred. And I think is the kind of thing I would do more of if I wanted to go to hell if hell existed. Then there's, then there's this thing that you don't really have, but I have big time, which is that I am seduced by the things of the world.
What does that mean? Like objects? Like fancy wine? Oh, yeah.
I'm seduced by things of the world. No, you're not different ones than you. No, I can't name a single thing of the world you're seduced by every single time we go somewhere mansey. You're like, I don't know.
I mean, I guess the bed's a little nicer, but it doesn't matter to me. I just put me in a motel six. It's all the same to old Hanky. That's not, no, I like it.
There are things I like. I like, I like, I like to, I like private workout classes, where I have like one person and me and Catherine instead of like the thing. I know I said, as I was saying, John's not gonna think this one counts. But I do.
I think it's a lot of people who like, hey, hey, hold on, I'm sorry, the devil is on the other line. She's got to answer it. Hey, bud, I know you have tempted him with the private workout classes. Wow, what a Faustian bargain you've laid before his feet.
I like, I like a nice dinner. I like expensive food prepared by experts. I like, I like a fancy hotel. I do.
I mean, I do a lot of fancy hotels with you and you are not nearly as sick as I am in the fancy hotel business. I have an illness. Yes. Well, here's the situation.
What I really like is to plan a dope trip for the fan. Like, like our trip to Jamaica or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm gonna make a trip to Denver in Colorado Springs right now. And I'm just like, it's gonna be so fun. We're gonna do all this stuff and here are all the places we're gonna go and all the things we're gonna do.
And but you're right when I'm like, now I'm thinking about the things that we're gonna do and the places we're gonna go. It's like pretty normal stuff. Right. Yeah.
But we're gonna stay in like nice hotels. Yeah. But you're not gonna get like a private tour of the Colorado Rockies baseball stadium. Can I?
I mean, that's the kind of thing that I would seek out because I'm a bad person. I'm deep red. I'm seduced by the things of the world in a big way. You know what I did try to do?
So maybe this counts is I tried to get a tour of the of the I don't know what the organization that runs it. But it's a government lab. That's the ice core lab. So it has like all of the America's ice cores.
Yeah. And I tried it. I tried it. It was like negative 40 inside.
You have to wear special code and they do like very few tours. But I failed. I failed to get in. Even with all of my credibility and sway.
Well, that just goes to show you hang that seeking the things of the world is always trouble. It's like I was reminded of this when I stayed at the Plaza Hotels Gatsby Suite. Not to make it about me. But I say that this I say that the Plaza Hotel and I requested the great Gatsby Suite, which is just like all these props from the movie, the Basler Men movie.
But it's like real over stuffed in there. It's not actually that big of mess. I'm saying this. I hate myself.
It's not actually that big of a room. The Gatsby Suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and and the TV is a little far away from the bed for my for my tastes. I've got. Anyway, that wasn't the issue.
The issue was that I stayed at the fanciest hotel that I could imagine in the fanciest room that I could imagine. And there was this huge chandelier. I've written about this before in the Anthropocene Review, but there was this huge chandelier. And because of the air conditioning, the air conditioning blew through the chandelier.
And so it tingled all night. It was just like, Oh, no. Tingled tingled tingled tingled. And finally at like one o'clock in the morning, I called down and I was like, guys, this is the worst.
I'm so sorry. I can't even barely even imagine that these words are coming out of my mouth. But is there any way that I could be moved from the Gatsby Suite to a regular room here at the Plaza? And they accommodated my request and no more tingled tingled.
Oh, man, I'd be up there with duct tape and cardboard trying to close up the fence somehow. That's how seduced I am by the things of the world. I'm so seduced by the things of the world that I get, the things that are so fancy that they're unpleasant. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes things that are more expensive are worse often. Yeah.
But sometimes you ever seen Kanye West sink looks awful. Looks like a total total total unpleasant like all the time, just water everywhere. I'm so here's what I'll say. I know we should answer questions from our listeners, but on the topic of like over fancy sinks, I think this is such a rich discussion vein because I used to have an over fancy and my old house.
I had an over fancy bathtub, you know, it was like too much. It was too much bathtub for me for what I need in a bathtub, which is to like recreate the experience of when I was 11 years old and we lived in Orlando, Florida, how that bathtub felt. So I do need a bathtub that's bigger than that bathtub because I'm bigger than I was when I was 11. What I don't need is like a bathtub that's a small swimming pool, right?
Right. And so when we were having this house redone, I was like, listen, I know exactly what I want in terms of a bathtub. Like I can tell you the measurements because I've done the measurements of like my relationship between my 11 year old self and that bathtub. Yeah.
And my current self and the bathtub that I'm with. And yeah, you've done a lot of baths to do the experiments. So many. And they were like, that's too small to bathtub.
It won't even like it won't even look right in the room. And I was like, I'm not trying to make it look right in the room. I'm trying to be a little boy again. I just want to have a bath that feels the right size.
And I do I get to have that every day. And I'm so grateful that I do. So sometimes you're right. It's not about the fanciest thing.
It's about the thing that makes you feel like you're 11 again. Yeah, but for me, come to think of it is watching soccer and taking baths, which are the two greatest joys of my life outside of my family. OK, now that we've entirely alienated ourselves from everyone. Oh, there's like people who are listening who are like nodding along.
Like, yeah, I get that. I get that. Sometimes you don't need the biggest possible bathtub. Yeah.
Well, I'm planning like spiritual awakening, in which case, Kanye. We got a lot of work to do. You've got you've got a ton of work to do, my friend. You've got some both internal and external jobs ahead of you.
And I wish you the best. I think you need to do that work. My bathtub is too small. I'm saying that it is way too small.
I cannot get I cannot I can barely straighten my legs in it. And I don't mean like lying down. I mean, sitting up. No, your bathtub is both not deep enough and too short.
Yeah, no, it's sort of like a deepened shower. It's no, it's heard a child. It's so that the child can take baths and it does that job well. And I'm not really a bath guy anyway.
So that's your job. You're the bath one. All right. This is one of our deepest disagreements, John.
Come to think of it. We have settled on one because I think I mean, I'll still take a shower. I understand they get you cleaner. But in terms of relaxation and rejuvenation and feeling reborn into the world, bads man, that's literally recreate the experience of baptism.
I mean, do you want to know what gets me rejuvenated and experiencing the world is like just being in the world? Oh, we're going outside. Well, and we're just like working, just like talking to a part like being alone does not and like silence does not do it for me. I need to be doing something.
That's our biggest disagreement. I don't mind being active, but I want to be alone. Yeah, it doesn't matter if I'm alone or not. I love alone.
Yeah. Like if I'm really tired, I cannot get less tired. I can sleep that will do it. But I cannot get less tired by like quote unquote relaxing.
Hmm, interesting. Well, that explains why you've been so relentless since we were born. Oh, what a thing. All right.
Let's answer some questions from my listeners. Yeah. This first one comes from Lucas who asks Deera Hank and John to mostly Hank. I'm writing this question as I'm trying to listen to one of your podcasts, but my headphones are almost out of battery.
It's if feels like battery life should be longer. Like if we could condense a terabyte of storage onto a chip, why can't we have phones with like a month long battery life? Insufficiently energized Lucas. Lucas, I'm terrible news for you.
Lucas, I think the main answer to your question is actually, I want to throw it back at you. How incredible is it that we have batteries? Right. Any battery.
Like you can take power with you? What? And put it right in your ear and it'll stick there. You just carry power and you put it in your ears and it's like, okay, I have enough power to play you, Dear Hank and John for 14 hours.
And you're like, oh, I needed 16 actually. My mind do not mess that up. But I don't know. I do.
I use I so use plugging headphones. I'm scared of batteries, man. I understand that technology. Super nice headphones that were sent to me by Olivia Rodrigo.
You know, Olivia Rodrigo sent us the nicest care package. It made Amis Cry. It had signed sheet music. It had Olivia O's or standard personal serial.
It had all kinds of vinyl, all kinds of signed stuff. So generous tote bags. It was so cool and I so deeply appreciated it. But what it didn't have were the fancy air pods that you got.
They're really nice. I like them very much. I like them. After comparing our seduction to the things of the world, we just compared our Olivia Rodrigo care packages.
We are the worst. We are the worst. This is it. We're ending our careers.
I mean, look, I hate us. I don't want to be sent this episode. Oh, no. And I'm me.
Look, I was very like, Olivia Rodrigo's care package right at my home and I was like, what's happening? Did they get the spreadsheets mixed up at the care package factory? Like maybe Oreos could send me something. Like send me the Heinz beans people.
Metamuso? Absolutely. Hit me up with your care packages. I'm a 43 year old science guy.
Why is Olivia Rodrigo sending me a care package? I mean, maybe she knows that she writes bangers and those bangers. No, I have crossed like cross all demographic boundaries. Absolutely.
What is the science of Olivia Rodrigo unexplainable? I mean, yeah, it's the rare artist that Alice and I can listen to together without any difference in how enthusiastic we are. The other, of course, T-Swift. But outside of that, there's always going to be a little bit dad's more enthusiastic about this than Alice or Alice's more enthusiastic about this than dad.
So John, do you know why you can't have a phone that has a month long battery life? I have no idea. None. So it's going to sound like a conspiracy at first.
I'm going to explain it. The reason is that they don't want you to have that. But that's not just that they don't want you to have it. It's that they want to do certain things and having a month long battery life isn't on the list, both because you don't want it.
You really want 24 hours or a day long, 18 hours of battery life. That's what you want. And so they'll give you more than that because of the battery dies. It'll last longer than that.
They also kind of don't want you to have that because eventually they want your battery to die so that you get a new phone. So if you have like a two day long battery life, they're optimizing for something that you don't want to start with, but that will decrease the number of phones that you buy. But what they're doing is the batteries are getting better. They're like, they're not getting better as fast as chips get better.
Like chips can hold more stuff, can double the amount of stuff that they do or can hold every 18 months. Whereas the battery life of like a volume to amount of energy is like a four year cycle of doubling, which is still fast. But that means that you could have a phone that had at this point, maybe eight days of battery life. But in the meantime, we make the battery smaller so that the phone weighs less, so that the phone is smaller, and then we pack in more stuff, so the phone can do more things.
We pack in more lenses, we pack in more abilities and chips and whatever else is inside of phones. So the battery takes up less space so that the phone can be smaller, and they're optimizing for a specific amount of battery life, not for the most battery life possible. All right, but why can't they make headphones that have enough battery life to get you through a whole day of listening? Because you're too big and bulky?
Yeah, I mean, these wireless headphones weren't really possible 10 years ago. Because the batteries weren't small enough. So the batteries have only recently gotten small enough. And then also, if you've had your headphones and have done like charge recharge cycles every day for like a year or so, they're going to have less likes than they used to.
I have my AirPods. I finally are at the point where they only have like two hours of battery life, which is I think one of the greatest achievements of my life, that I used a pair of wireless headphones for long enough that I have to replace them because of battery, not because I lost them. That is good. How did I, I will say I lost one of them, but the other one, even the other one I still have.
That's great. And it is at this point, I cannot use those ones. So I thank you to a VFrun Rego for sending me these ones. Very nice.
Currently there in my ear right now. And yeah, but I think that they're getting better and they will continue to get better. But like we are, we only recently arrived in the world where these kinds of headphones were even possible. And now like they're possible for cheap.
Yeah. Yeah, which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by, who's that AirPod maker who advertises on all the YouTube channels? That one, that one, come get advertised on all the YouTube channels with advertisements so effective that I can't remember their name is it like, Boron, Blon, Frickin, Ray Van, Ray Van, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, Cons, Ray Cons. Ray Cons.
Ray Cons. Wow. We got there. It's not too far by Ray Con, an actual brand that makes actual products that are inexpensive wireless headphones.
Should we do a wireless headphone subscription service, Hank? Is that crazy? That's crazy. Yeah, no.
I definitely don't want to get in that business. I did have a business idea earlier today that I would love to share with you, John. Pitch it to me right now. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.
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This podcast is brought to you by my new business idea. If you go to a gallery in your town, the art will be too expensive, probably, because the business model of galleries requires that they only have very expensive art. Yeah, they get 50% of the price of the painting usually. Yeah, and to pay their rent and the staff and such, they can't like me selling stuff for 200 bucks.
That's right. And but there are lots of artists who make great art, but don't make the kind of art that you can sell for $2,000. Right, because it might be very reproducible, for instance. Like one of my favorite groups of artists is the Gorilla girls, and they don't usually make like artworks that cost $50,000.
They're mostly a group of people who are critical of museum and gallery collections and the way that artists are compensated and the relationship between capitalism and the art world. And so most of their stuff is posters that are downloadable or printable, or you can buy them for 50 bucks. Right. And I think that Etsy has abandoned this market to some extent.
It has become like an eBay of lots of, you know, dropshipped stuff from China or really easily sort of customizable products that are, you know, not art, they're products, which is fine. And so like I think that there is a space for a gallery, internet thing that has things for sale from artists that are where you live. So you sort of launch it in localities and you get people to like list their stuff. And it's good art that you can have on your wall in that time when you're moving from your poster phase to your art phase, and you can have art that you can afford.
And those artists who aren't, there's lots of amazing artists who aren't in there, just their business model doesn't fit the gallery business model. And so like most of the people sell by being in and among the art scene in their towns, but art scenes are only so big and a lot of people aren't aware of them. So it's a place where you can go and shop for cool art that is local to you. And then you don't have to get it shipped necessarily.
You can go pick it up from the artist or from a centralized location or something like that. And there are other like raised that this is solved. Like coffee shops oftentimes have art to sell that is like not gallery cost. But I like this because I think that there's a lot of artists who need ways to sell their work.
And there are a lot of people who would buy less expensive art. Yes. I think there are a lot of people with bare walls right now whose lives would be enriched by having art and who either don't know how to get that art or think that like there is no art available for that like $25 to $100 price range. And it's true that it's so okay, I'm going to poke a couple holes in this business idea.
And then I'm going to pitch you an alternate business idea. Okay. Okay. Big hole that I'm going to poke in this business idea.
One thing that is very expensive that it's hard to get around the expense of is framing. For sure. And so you're talking about if you're talking about it. I actually have a solution for this problem.
But if you're talking about, I mean, you can ask artists to create within, yes, that's the solution. Okay. Yeah. And that's and that's something I've seen people do is to ask artists to create within the confines of existing frame sizes, right?
So 18 by 24, whatever, whatever. Okay. So that's all of that problem. I'm going to throw an idea back at you Hank because my big issue is that I think this takes a lot of hallelu to set up and I think is technically that is the bigger problem.
Technologically complicated. And I can see how it might be vulnerable to abuse and all other kinds of things. I'm going to throw out. Yeah.
You have to like curate. You have to like create like you have to get or entrust among artists, all kinds of stuff. And you may have to do some level of curation, which is hard and also like just the tech of it would be hard, I think. Yeah.
Okay. What your idea, what I thought you were going to pitch and an idea that I find really interesting is an art of the month club where a curator is hired maybe for a one-year period to find 12 reproducible artworks, limited edition prints, that come to you framed and ready to go for say $175 per month. No, for the year. You get 12 pieces of art for $175.
Yeah. I mean, I'd be great if you could hit that price point. Maybe I heard especially for framed and shipped. Maybe my math's wrong.
I don't think it's framed and shipped. I think it's not framed. But I think it's the many as you could hit that ready for framing. And I think for an existing frame, you can get a Michael's that's nice.
Ready for an existing frame, you can get it Michael's so that it's yeah, so that it fits. We say like, look, these are the dimensions we're working with. Can you work with that if they say, no, we get it. Right?
Yeah. But like I have an artwork, it's one of my favorite artworks. It's by Robin O'Neill and it's a gravestone and it says, rest in peace 2020. And then underneath that it says 2020 to 2020.
And like, because you can't really say 2019 to 2021, can you? It's just 2020 to 2020. But what a year, you know, like 2020 did not make it to 2021. But it did cram a lot into 2020.
I mean, it really filled that year. And what I love about that is that like it's a way to support independent artists while also populating your walls while also like if you don't like the artwork one month, it's not a huge deal, you can sell it on eBay or you can just, you know, throw it in the trash. But I like the idea that being limited edition like like 1000, you know, 1000 members at any one time, maybe it's maybe it's a little more, maybe it's 25 bucks a month. So it starts to really make sense for the artist.
So the artist can make like $10,000 from doing this. But like for a lot of artists, a $10,000 check is a huge check. Like most most artists, you know, are not showing in galleries and selling their works for hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I just think it could be cool and interesting.
And you could have a big backstory to it about the selection process and just enrich your relationship with art as well by like helping you to understand what contemporary art practice might look like in different countries or, you know, I just I never thought of that before. But I think that idea has potential. What do you think? I like that.
I like that idea too. I think that that's a lot simpler. And I think I think that it has it has, you know, less potential for network effects, less potential for how like, you know, sort of wants to, if you can get it to a big enough size, then it sort of takes care of itself. And it becomes, you know, tech company, E in that way, where you don't have to think about it very much.
And it can grow with little overhead. But that's far more of an achievable idea. Yeah, I think I like my idea because it's achievable. And also because as it happens, we have a business that already does this, but for coffee, we definitely do.
One of my favorite things about the awesome socks club is that it is a surprise. Whereas none of our other things, like you don't want to get surprised by soap, like you want to know what you're so trying to get the coffee, right? Yeah, but this people, I think that you could be surprised by coffee. It's just like you have to be that some people want that coffee the month thing where they're trying out different times.
That's not what I want or what I want to do. But this could be like have an element of delight and also have an element of the curation where you get the art and then you can read something about it to help understand the artist and what they're going for. And that's like, isn't that part of what's fun about having art on your wall anyway, is being able to like look at it and like know that backstory or talk to people when they come over and be like, Oh, I'm a member of this like, you know, Prince of the Month club and like these are the Prince from the last 12 months. And then as at the end of the year, I actually like switch out my posters and put a new and whatever your way of doing it is, and you can like talk like this one because of this backstory and this artist is, you know, from Afghanistan and like this is how they made this, they made it one way or the time, whatever, whatever the story is.
And I just think like that that to me is really, I'm looking for ways to like lower barriers to art entry in general. Like it's very frustrating to me to see like, target succeed in the art market in a way that nobody in the art market does just because like they sell things at a reasonable price point. And I just, I don't know, I think that's a cool idea. And I like that it's a little less complicated, even if it does West, it maybe accomplishes West locally in the communities where it's working.
But I think it could still it could still be a big deal for the artists who are selected. For sure. Yes. And gratefully, we are not the people to choose the art, but there are lots of people out there who are good at that.
Yeah, like I live with a person who would do that for our first year. Yeah. I like this idea a lot. And I want to know if Nerdfighteria likes it, if you're missing this podcast, and you like this idea somehow are still listening, let us know on Twitter if we haven't completely put you off this episode.
This next question and possibly our last question, God, we've just crushed it today, comes from Huxley who writes Dear John and Hank, I'm almost four. Does Spider-Man have to brush his teeth from Huxley? Yeah, I don't think so. Of course he does.
No, I don't Huxley don't let him, don't let him lie to you. That's like, you know what Huxley Hank saying that because he has a little kid like you who he's trying to scam and to brushing his teeth every day. No, why wouldn't why wouldn't spider like maybe Wolverine wouldn't need to brush his teeth because he has like super healing. Yeah, Spider-Man have super healing Spider-Man doesn't have super hearing, but I do think he has those like spider bots that'll get on his teeth and just clean out the black.
Little tiny. He does heal faster than normal when injured, but it's not completely immune to viruses or other human ailments. If he's not immune to viruses, then he would still have an issue with plaque. I think.
Do you want to brush your teeth? Yeah, well that's bacteria, but still. Yeah, but I know I just mean like if he can suffer from immune infections, which it seems like he can't be ill, then he could get gingivitis. Yeah, yeah, he's not just like even if if Wolverine's like, I can't get gingivitis, these bacteria can live and thrive in my mouth, but it will never actually hurt me.
Yeah, like his girlfriend still cares, his family still cares, people around him are still bothered. Yeah, I mean, that's part of it, Huxley, but like the biggest thing is that you yourself, even though you don't like brushing your teeth and I get that man, like I totally understand, I also don't love brushing my teeth making a lot of assumptions about Huxley. Maybe he's just a spider-man. No, no, no, I think I was able to drill down to Huxley's real concern.
I think it lies deeper than Spider-Man. I might be wrong Huxley, but I think that you might be asking about Spider-Man as a proxy for asking about yourself. And while I get it, what you'll come to understand in time, Huxley, is that if you just brush your teeth every day or even twice a day, what you'll notice over time is that you start to like the feeling of having a really kind of clean mouth. So you'll get there, bud.
It's great. You'll get there. It's a bit of a thing to do, but there we are doing it. I do have to say that Venom, Spider-Man's enemy, definitely does not have to brush his teeth and probably doesn't even want to because he does want that smell to follow him around everywhere.
Right. But also is made of, I don't know, what is Venom made of? Ferrofluids? Chemicals?
Maybe not even chemicals. I think he may be made of some other kind of matter that doesn't exist in our universe. That's a good point. That's a good point.
So unless you want to be Venom when you grow up Huxley, go ahead and brush those teethers. That's right. John, can we ask this question about Gis? Please.
It's from Kaya who asks Dear Ankenjana, a goose with a nest near my house recently lit a bunch of eggs and seven of them hatched, seeing seven dozlings made me wonder if animals can count to keep track of their young. Would they notice if one doesn't keep up with them? If so, does that mean that animals can do math? Baya, it's Kaya.
This is off topic, but do you think that Ryan Gosling got his surname because back in the day his people raised Gis? You know, there's got to be a reason. It's got to be something to do with Gis. I guess it's something to do withlings.
It's not. It's just an English variant of Josslyn. No, it's dubious. All right.
Anyway, can animals do math? I mean, I know, yes, we're animals and we can do math, or at least the ones who aren't me can, but can other animals do math? Some animals can do math, but depends on what you mean by math. Again, animals can definitely do less and more.
They know when there's more of something and less of something. Sure. Insects can do that, which is wild. And sometimes scientists will say that counts as math.
You know something about quantities, and that's a basic principle of mathematics. But like, do they? What does no mean? Does anyone know anything?
Am I just a story that I tell to myself? Yeah, I can answer that one. Yeah, you're a bacterial colony that's convinced itself it's an organism. It's incredible.
A bunch of cells that are working together for some reason. But we're not sure specifically about Gis, and there's a weirdness to take these where they seem to have... Gis, we can't really say, but they seem to mourn sometimes. They seem to be sad when a partner goose dies.
They seem to be sad sometimes when eggs go wrong with their eggs or with their babies, they seem to be sad. But also, it's not entirely clear that they consider their children their own. They're kind of a crush behavior where sometimes you'll see ducks with 72 ducklings behind them. There's a documented case of a duck with 72 ducklings.
Obviously, that's not all their ducklings. And so they're all sort of work together and they take care of their kids together. And so early on, you've got to know that a minority of those ducklings are going to survive or goslings are going to survive. And so there's probably less weight.
Now, there's a lot, like the care. They definitely care, definitely trying. But my feeling would be that it's more likely that they got a vibe for that there's now less than their once was, or they can look and be like, that's the same amount rather than being like, they definitely can't say that's seven goslings. Right.
And they do you think they can say like, oh no, we lost a little P.D. You know, that's more interesting. That's also an interesting question. Like, what is the...
Is there an identity where it's like instead of counting, you just like, we've got... We're all here. Yeah. And I know they're all here not because I can count them, but because there's P.D.
and there's Maya and there's Alfonso and yeah. Yeah. It's great. Great work, John.
I love that idea. And I love how much we don't know about animals. Oh, so much. And John has a great book about this.
And the fact that like, we're sharing a planet with an astonishing amount of life that experiences the world in such vast, differently ways than us. Yeah. Yeah. And that we...
It's hard enough to try to get inside the head of another human, like imagine trying to get inside the head of a goose. Yeah. It's hard work. Yeah.
I would love to know if these get happy and sad, but I don't know how to tell, because I can't ask them how they're feeling, and it'd be weird to put them in an FMRI machine and then show them pictures of happy and sad things, because I don't even know what would make a goose happy and sad. Yeah. Well, even that is not that reliable on its own. So it would be very hard to know about animal emotions.
It's not impossible. We have some ways in, but it's hard to know. This Ed Yong book is really good on that front. Y'all should read it.
Oh, you know what else other book before we get to the news from Mars and A.C. Wimbledon for the seven people who are still listening. You know what book just came out that I love so much is my friend Kava Akbar's book, Martyr. So good.
It's his first song that's incredible. It's the last book I recommended to you was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. This book is just as good as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. So instead of being about video games, it's about art and addiction and love and aging and mortality.
It's so good. Oh, my God. I'm excited. I have been having kind of a mistreak on books.
I just assume that it's mostly my brain rather than the books, but I keep DNFing, which I don't like. Yeah. Yeah. My brain also hasn't been finishing books lately, although this book was not a problem to finish.
It's very page journey while still being just gorgeously written. Gorgeous. All right. Hey, it's time for the all important news from Mars and A.C.
Wimbledon. There's a lot of news from A.C. Wimbledon this week. So do you want to go first?
I mean, I can. I don't know if you know this, but the people listening to I because when we recorded it, we recorded the helicopter was fine. Yeah. Three days later, the helicopter is dead forever.
Yeah. I've recorded an update about the helicopter being dead forever. So that I have already delivered the news because I couldn't let that episode go out without. Okay.
With the incorrect news, but that's still the news. Yeah. And it seems like it, like, it got back on its feet, but it seems like it tipped and one of the rotors hit the ground and broke itself. Well, it is when we are sick and elderly that we are at our most vulnerable.
Yeah. Our carbon fiber parts are not indestructible. No. You're telling me you should see the L2 vertebra.
I, uh, I've gotten a lot of scans and one of one of the incidental findings is that I also have a couple of spots that may turn into trouble, but aren't yet. Yep. Good. In your, in your spinal column, you mean?
Yeah. Great. Great. No, which one we love.
We love an incidental find words like L2. Yeah. Use words like L2. It's probably the same one.
We're, we're, we're going to be little disk twinsies, but yeah, hold off as long as you can. It's not comfortable. Yeah. Um, well, I'm sorry about the helicopter, man.
That's a real bummer. It did a, it did a great job. It, it outlasted its mission, but nothing lasts forever. And speaking of nothing lasting forever.
Oh, I know this news too. Our great Iraqi striker, Ali al-Hamedi, the light of many Wimbledon fans life, uh, has left. He has left at the end of the January transfer window to join high flying championship side Ipswich Town favorites to be back in the Premier League next year. Um, really good football club and, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a deal that obviously makes sense for him because not only is he going to be playing in the second tier of English football because they're doing so well this year.
If he plays well, they have a real chance, he has a real chance of being a Premier League footballer next year and he'll still only be 22 years old, which is pretty, pretty special obviously. Um, so it's the right club for him. And I guess the deal makes sense from AFC Wimbledon's perspective because it is over a million, uh, dollars and has the chance depending on, on the add-ons and how many appearances he makes and what not, uh, to be the biggest deal in the history of league two. Um, so it's hard to complain about what his potential is.
I mean, that's like, that makes the news even worse though because it means that, like he was so much of the reason that we've been good. I know, I know. Um, that's what, that's what the, the people with the money are saying. They're saying, look at what he did for this team that isn't very good.
Right. Exactly. So it's, um, it's a real hard pill to swallow. Um, but this is the reality that we're in as long as we're owned by our fans and we have this $10 million debt.
So we have a $10 million debt that we basically owe mostly to ourselves, mostly to fans who put money into, to this bond, including me. And, um, we have to pay it back over the next 20 years and a lot of it is due in the next five years. And so we've just got to figure out ways to generate enough money that we have enough profit that we can pay down this debt. And obviously selling players is the best, easiest way to do that.
It's unbelievable that Ali al-Homadee was only a Wimbledon player for 12 months because he just left a huge imprint on this club and we will miss him so, so much. So that's been a tough pill to swallow. Um, in, in better news, we played Mansfield Town, which is third in the table right now. And we were off on the back of two losses and, uh, they got an early red card.
They're definitely outplayed us that whole game. Uh, we got a good goal from Omar Boogal, our, um, our Lebanese, uh, striker. It's a really good goal, really happy with it. But then we gave up a stupid goal, poorly defended.
Um, we're not working with our best defense right now. Joe Lewis seems a little injured, short shorts, he's a little bit injured. Ryan Johnson has a long term injury. It's just kind of a mess in the back.
And you could tell that on this goal that we gave up. And then it looked like we were actually going to give up a penalty in the last minute of the game and potentially lose. I was really frustrated, but the referee didn't call the penalty, which, uh, great call. Um, and, uh, and then almost immediately we went down the field and, um, scored a goal in the last minute of the game with our brand new striker Ronan Curtis from Ireland.
And I was like, I was like, Oh my God, are we going to be okay after all? Like, is everything going to be fine? Is Ronan Curtis just going to be the new Ali al-Hamadi? Probably not.
But maybe because we won that game and like winning that game, that's a game that we 100% would have lost last season. And winning it this season, I was like, Oh my gosh, like this team, we're still good. Now we have a lot of injuries, a lot more injuries than we had in December. I have a lot less confidence that we're going to make it to the playoffs, but I'll say this, Hank, we are only nine points, three wins for our last 20 games away from making sure that we are not relegated.
And that is awesome. So I try to take the positive. We're, we're still playing well. We've still got a good team.
Let's see if we can build on this and get somewhere by the end of the season. All right. Well, uh, I'm so glad to hear that there's also good news because the Ali al-Hamadi news is brutal. I mean, it's just, oh, I love them so much, but like, you know, inevitable, inevitable, inevitable in our level.
And until we get to a place where we don't have to sell players to make up this debt, you know, it's just the way that it is, like, you know, we're in a position where, um, you know, we need novulist supporters to kick in a little bit of money here and there to keep, keep other players. There's a nobody on, a nobody in AFC, we'll do the roll of decks. He's like, Oh yeah, I'll pay a million and a half dollars for our to keep Ali al-Hamadi at AFC, we'll do that. So we got ways to go.
Yeah. Well, Hank, thank you for party with me. Thanks everybody for your questions. We didn't answer.
We'll try to do better next week. We're at Hank and John at gmail.com. Yes. And if you like any of our ideas, let us know what you think about our ideas.
Because we have enough of those. Let us know if you hate them. That's important information as well. Definitely.
Please poke holes. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna-Mettisitz produced by Rosie Ann Hall's Rojas. Our communication coordinator is Brooke Schottwell, our editorial assistant is the book you talked about already. The music you're hearing now and to begin the podcast is by The Great Gunnarolla and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.