388: Turtle the Moon

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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. And welcome to Dear Hank and John. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions give you to be advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars, the planet, and AFC Wimbledon, a soccer team.

John. Yeah. Well, you get what you get when you cross a turtle in a porcupine. What do you get?

A slowpoke. Oh, slowpoke. Yeah. Maybe that's what you need.

You just need to be cute and not trying that hard. Maybe I need to be, first off, I think that also is what you get when you just have a porcupine. I don't think porcupines are particularly fast, are they? Yeah, but they can poke fast.

Oh, I see. Okay. Well, a couple things are happening, Hank, that I need to talk about. Oh my gosh, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, okay.

One is that the turtle's all the way down movie, the movie adaptation of my book, Turtles All The Way Down. Why I did a turtle joke? Yes. I assumed.

I was looking at turtle jokes specifically. So there was definitely a reason. Yeah, I think that must have been the reason in your heart of hearts. You knew that I'm feverishly promoting the turtles all the way down movie nonstop, both like when I'm awake and when I sleep, by the way, I have to tell you about the, I've been having horrible nightmares.

I have to tell you about one. But the other thing is that, so the turtles all the way down movie comes out May 2nd on Max. I really hope you like it. We got to show it to 1600 people at the LA Times Festival of Books, and it was magical, Hank.

It was such, that room was amazing. It really made me, it really confirmed my opinion that the movie is really good. I hope that you're able to watch it. And I also think you're able to watch it with family and friends.

Like it's just, I think it's best experience with people you love. And I know that HBO Max doesn't want me to say that because it lowers the number of logins, but like that's how I feel. I mean, we should do that more. I love to have friends over for a movie.

And then when you're there, you can, you can celebrate the Turtles All The Way Down movie. There you go. Did you say celebrate? I did because turtles have shells.

I noticed that. I just want you to know I noticed that. The other thing is that I have a new podcast that just came out with Dr. Katie Mack.

She's an astrophysicist and I'm an idiot. And the two of us have made a podcast called Crash Course Pods, the universe, which is a Crash Course on the entire history and future of this, the one universe we all belong to to borrow a line from Mary Oliver. So you should check that out. You might even call it a turtorial.

Oh, God. It's a turtorial. Yes, Hank. Thank you.

How do you do this over and over again? What is your, what does it like to live in your brain? Where the highest form of thought is pun. Anyway, it's a really good podcast.

I love it. I'm very excited. And you should check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Stop listening to this piece of crap and go listen to Crash Course the Universe.

Oh, John, do you know what your favorite pasta is? What is my favorite pasta, Hank? Turtolini. Oh, of course it's turtolini.

What else could it be? Oh, I am, I feel like I've run a marathon and I've just been told. So I've been traveling nonstop. I just got home and I leave again tomorrow morning at 4.30 a.m.

And I just, I feel like I've run a marathon and at the end of the marathon, instead of seeing the finish line, somebody was rooted my year just 20 miles to go, buddy. Well, you know what, John, slow and steady wins the race. It's true. The tortoise does emerge in the head of the hair in the long run.

All right. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. All right. This first question comes from Peter, and I don't know how I'm going to answer it.

I'm going to try how big of a container, but I have to have for the ping pong balls inside to be considered a liquid. If a giant alien went swimming in a galaxy sized pool of ping pong balls, is that a liquid? Thank you, Peter. What do you got, John?

I assume not. I mean, it's a different state of matter. Yeah. So I think like the high school definition of a liquid is anything that any like substance that can take the shape of its container.

Okay. And so you look at it, you're like, ping pong balls are kind of a liquid, but they're also definitely not a liquid. If they were enough ping pong balls, they would basically take the shape of their container. They can act as a liquid.

Like if you have a lot of ping pong balls, like you can like observe that they do fluid dynamics stuff, you know, they like pass over each other, they roll around and they create drag and like you can model them as if they are molecules, which is like the weird part that like little water molecules are like little balls. They don't look like little balls to us. They look like water, but they're little balls. And so a ping pong ball with a giant in it, ping pong ball galaxy size swimming pool with a giant in it is acting like just a regular lake with a boat in it.

But the, but still the ping pong balls will molecularly be a solid. Okay. So there's two definitions of liquid and that's how you're getting your way out of this question. Yeah, I guess what I should say is like a like a solid can act as a fluid, but it's never a liquid.

You know what is weird to me about this whole thing is that this all presupposes that galaxies are real and that the universe is full of these these things. And the truth is that the earth is the only actual heavenly body and it's a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle. Oh yeah, that what is the turtle on? Oh, thanks for asking Hank.

The turtle is resting on yet another turtle. But what's under that turtle? No, you don't understand Hank. It's turtles all the way down.

This next question comes from Rebecca who asks, Hey guys, just a quick clarification about episode 386 plain is some more fiddle. What do you guys mean? There's no free will. Do you guys know something I don't?

All right, my choice is not mine. Thanks by Rebecca. Actually Rebecca, if you're interested in this question and I hate to keep going back to this, you should really, you should really read the hit YA book Turtles All the Way Down, which is concerned so much with free will that the epigraph of the novel is from Schopenhauer, man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. And to me, that is that is the ultimate solution to free will like yeah, you can make whatever choices you can make, but you can't will what you will.

You can't choose what you're choosing. I mean, my own experience of this Rebecca is that there are many times when I do not get to choose my thoughts and many times when I do not get to choose my behaviors. And ergo, not only that a lot of the thinking that I'm doing is actually being done by the bacteria that colonize me. But don't just tell me when to be hungry, but also it seems tell me when I feel sad.

They don't think for you, but they might make it feel sad sometimes. They affect my thoughts and that is thinking on my behalf. If you are affecting my, it's complicated, but they aren't, I don't think that you can say that you're doing entirely your own thinking when you're thinking if half of the cells that constitute you are not yours. I think it is, yeah, like my thinking is affected by many things, including random chance.

But I think that we, like, look, I think that I can make choices. I think I do make choices. But I think that you're right. I cannot really, I don't know how to change how I, I don't really know how to change what I want.

And like, that's, that's tricky. But also I sometimes I feel like I have changed how I want, but not like the way that not like for making a decision, usually by taking an action and by putting myself in a different situation. But anyway, even with all of that, the question of free will remains like, is the universe just sort of like, like the pieces were said in motion and now they are falling down the hill and we are just part of them falling down the hill and all of our decisions are just sort of inevitably decided by the preconditions of the beginning of the universe. Right.

And like, maybe the, the, the raining philosophical perspective at the moment seems to be that we don't really have free will. But the sensation that I feel is that I do. Yeah, this is actually something that we get into that Dr. Mack and I get into in Crash Course the universe, because you're exactly right.

I'm sorry, but it's like half the podcast is about this, because we're trying to understand, I hate to do all this promo. It causes me physical pain, just kidding. I love it. But, but, you know, if the first thing was decided and everything else has happened as a direct result of that first thing, and all of that, all of that is predetermined, then it is hard to argue that like, oh, but we're not predetermined.

And so this is something that I keep running up against in recording with Dr. Mack is that I want to hear that I have some semblance of free will and I want some kind of cosmological proof of this and it just doesn't seem like it's going to emerge. I think instead what we have is that it doesn't really matter whether we have like free will in that like grand universal sense of everything was determined at the very beginning and has been rolling downhill since then what we do have is the experience of choice. It's important to remember though, that like in celebrating the experience of choice that we have that our choices are endlessly limited and our choices are limited by everything from outside forces to interior experiences and that judging people for what you perceive as their choices might be a little bit unfair given how much their choices are in truth restricted.

This next question comes from Joshua who asks to do your hand and John what is toothpaste tasty soap turtles and toothbrushes Joshua? This is I feel like this is secret knowledge that that toothpaste industry doesn't want people to know what is toothpaste now let me answer before I you tell me what toothpaste is let me make a guess toothpaste is fluoride okay yeah yeah and soap and flavoring yeah there's other components but the most important one that you missed is polish. So there is a very fine grit in toothpaste that actually is designed to not be harder than your teeth but to be harder than the stuff on your teeth so that it can polish that tartar and stuff away. So yeah toothpaste is primarily tasty soap it is a surfactant which is what soaps are and that's why it gets foamy in your mouth and I kind of wish I didn't know this so I feel bad telling you but it's tasty so like we figured out how to make tasty soap it cleans the inside of your mouth it's weird but that is the case and then also sometimes in addition to their being polish and soap and flavorings you know there's fluoride which we have added because it shrinks and shrinks and enamel and then there's also other stuff like there might be some whitening compounds in there or there might be like the stuff for sensitive teeth etc right yeah toothpaste is primarily tasty soap slash tasty polish so when we were kids and mom was like if you say that word again I'm gonna wash your mouth out with soap like she what we didn't know was that actually we were washing our mouth out with soap every night.

Well first of all I don't remember that ever happened so I want to stick on behalf of our mother. I honestly feel like we were raised in different households. I do you ever never taste soap did you ever get soap in your mouth? No no no just the threat though just the threat of it was plenty intimidating.

The threat person certainly may have happened. Yeah I think that's the kind of thing I would forget about and you wouldn't. That's so true that's so true. But that's not down to our choices John.

That's just how we are as people. That's right that's right and I was like Lady Gaga born this way. Yeah that's what I always tell my body as an instructor when she's like why can't you stretch more than that? Yeah I know my hamstrings were just God made him like this.

He was like I can. He was like you don't get those. God set the motion, set the universe in motion and as a direct result of that initial nudge I have tight hamstrings. Yeah the particular protons inside of me that are left over from the Big Bang organize themselves into extremely tight hamstrings and that's just the way that it was always going to go.

Why did God do it that way? If I knew I would be God terrified. I would be a monster. I would be a prophet.

I would be Paul Atreides. Oh God don't don't bring up Paul Atre. I love the fact that the first prophet that comes to your mind is Paul Atreides. Well Jesus or Mahalid or Moses.

All the real ones you can't say that they're bad. Oh oh oh oh oh oh I see I see I see. You're not allowed to acknowledge the sort of like horror that accompanies such a such knowledge. Yeah yeah fair enough.

All right good fair enough. Let's answer another question. Is that what we're still about toothpaste? Yeah now we were still on toothpaste believe it or not.

I don't know how we got there. We're real focused on the universe being set in motion and then ever forever after things just were as they are. Annie writes Dear John and Hank I recently visited an independent bookstore that had a rare book room and in that rare book room I found a signed first edition of Turtles All The Way Down on sale for $35. The signature was not unique.

It was a black sharpie. No drawing. No DFTBA. I love the idea of it like if there's a little handkerfish on it then it's worth 35 bucks but otherwise it's like nothing special.

I asked if John had visited to personally sign the book and he had not. This led me to wonder are their universal standards for what books I was going to include in their rare book room does rare mean the same thing to every bookseller because I happen to know there are 250,000 such signed copies of Turtles by my own count. I own at least five things that have been signed by a Green Brother including a plastic turtle that I raised some teenagers through a bio parking lot for in 2018. What am I a bookluctor?

Thanks so much Annie. I mean well whenever we signed those plastic turtles and then we would like hide them and take pictures of them almost like a geocache and people would have to try to find them. Yes I had forgotten about it until now. Yeah that was fun.

We have lived so many lives. We should go on tour again. I know whoever set the universe in motion really did us some favors. Yeah we've lived a lot of lives.

We've gotten to do some fun stuff over the years. For sure. For sure. And shout out to everybody who has one of those Turtles.

Yeah I know that all of you still are hardcore Nerdfighters 10 years later. I'm so glad you have five things signed by a Green Brother Annie. I think that you do have a rare book and a plastic turtle collection. The truth is no there are no rules.

There are no reasons. There is nothing to stop them from selling that book for $70 if they can get a buyer for it. That said like $35 isn't that unreasonable of price given that the book itself was like $23 and if it's in good condition and it hasn't been read and it's you know I could see a justification for that price tag even if there's 250,000 signed first editions out there. Well the thing to know is that this is all about the market and the information that the people who make up the market have access to and you have access to the information that John did this 250,000 times but the bookseller might not and so it's just like put it in there and it's like oh this is a signed one.

The signed one goes in this room and it gets this you know this much markup or whatever or I'll look on eBay and see what they're selling for. The but like you know they're selling for it. What? Five bucks.

Well they didn't look on eBay then. Where they did and they were like I think I could get my pocket probably get 35. I gotta pay rent. Maybe I should buy some of these editions of Turtles all the way down.

I don't have any and they're only five bucks. It's the shipping man. If you could get them all at once. How much is the shipping?

Like four bucks. Always. No. No.

You think that's how they get you? No. I think well I think that that I think that dramatically influences the your ability to get them all. But Annie what you the situation you find yourself in is that you have access to all this information.

So now you are like the Antiques Roadshow appraiser but for John and Hank Green sign things and you can sit down at the Antiques Roadshow and somebody brings up a Turtles all the way down signed by John Green and you can be like this. The reason why this is worth nothing is and then you can tell the whole story of how John Green got obsessed with signing his name more times than any. There will be I will hear people talk about like signing a book hundreds of times and they'll be like I just couldn't do it anymore. So what where am I?

What world are you in? Well maybe they have more complicated signatures than I do. That's the that's the hermeneutic of generosity I try to share with myself. Sure.

Sure. There's one. Okay. So there's one that's 83 dollars and 60 cents.

That's the 199,000th 973rd signature on my way to 200,000. Yeah. Yeah. I wrote that beneath the thing.

Well that seems like it's going to be valuable. There's one that's like 85 bucks that has a Hankord fish. So you're right. The Hankord fish is significantly more valuable.

But I don't these are not things that people have bought. They're just things that people are charging a lot for. So anyway it's somewhere my signature is worth somewhere between negative $10 and $20. Oh look at there's the signed signed first edition of the Faulkner stars 30 bucks 19 bucks nine bucks.

That seems reasonable. Yeah. Okay. Nine bucks were assigned first edition of the Faulkner.

I mean there's 150,000 of them. Like what are they worth? Yeah. It's been 14 years.

They're worth nine bucks. That's yeah. Anyway, long story short hold on to your signed first edition of the Faulkner stars not because it's valuable but because you can't get anything for it on eBay anyway. Oh this signed by Shailene Woodley fault in our Starscript is worth $300.

I have one of those. I offer. Oh or best offer. That's how they get you.

This next question from Nova who asks to your Hank and John but mostly John. I was rereading Turtles all the way down and I live in Canada. So what the heck is Applebee's? What is an Applebee's?

An Applebee's is a sit down restaurant where you have a server and you can buy alcoholic drinks. So that distinguishes it from say a McDonald's but it's also not a super high-end fine dining restaurant where all the entrees are like $30 a piece or whatever. And so it habits that middle space. So it's not I'm going to try to go Canadian on you.

It's not a Tim Hortons but it's also not a fancy Canadian restaurant. It's in the middle. Do you know there's an Applebee's in China? I'm not surprised.

I'm not surprised. I once went to one in London. Do you know that Applebee's was originally a pharmacy? No way.

Seriously. Are you tricking me? TJ Applebee's prescriptions, Edibles, and elixirs in Decatur, Georgia. What?

Are you serious? Edibles and elixirs? That sounds like they sold the real stuff. Yeah, this was also 1980s.

So I don't know. Wait, what? It's like in between when edibles and elixirs were like a thing that people actually did when they were just weed. Wait 1980?

Like 1980? No way. It was a pharmacy in 1980 and then within like a decade it became the world's leading fast casual dining restaurant. Yeah.

Yeah. In 1986 by 1986 it was Applebee's neighborhood grill and bar. Wow. What a journey TJ Applebee went on.

Well, he sold it in between those times. I think I don't know. Where does that word Applebee comes from? I've never heard of it.

No, TJ Applebee is a person, right? No. His name was TJ Palmer. Oh, he just he named it Applebee's the way that something maybe that was his nickname in high school.

People were like Applebee. Yeah. Maybe he got bit by a bee while eating an apple and he was forever after known as TJ Applebee. That would be great.

It seems like it's one of these Matchbox 20 situations where it's just terribly boring and they just sort of like looked in the phone book for a while and came with the name. No, that's disappointing. Is that Matchbox 20 got their name because they just thought it sounded good? I can't tell you.

It's too boring. It would make you a good resource. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

I believe that anything is interesting if you pay the right kind of attention to it. But maybe the name of Matchbox 20 is an exception. I don't know if I could write a whole episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed on it, but I'd be willing to try. Well, maybe Matchbox 20 got named in an Applebee's and that makes it interesting.

All right. So that's Applebee's. It's really good. It's prominently featured in the Turtles All The Way Down movie.

It really is. There's quite a lot of Applebees in it. And you know, the waitress in the Applebee's is played by our director, Hannah Marks. She's like, Quentin, she gave herself a little role.

Quentin Tarantino's a weird pull for that one. Isn't that like famously the Hitchcock thing? Yeah, but I just feel like Hitchcock often just gives himself a little cameo. She got a real role.

Oh, okay. Which reminds me of this back. I just brought to you by Applebee's as if you didn't already do enough work for them already. We've just given them a free sponsorship in the face.

That's part of our podcast. I do really appreciate how cool they were about us making Applebee's jokes. They were reasonably self-aware about Applebees. Situation re-applebees.

It's a good restaurant. I go there. Applebees. Is it a great?

No. Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Rare Books Room where my signed books are $35. That Rare Books Room, I mean, a little bit of a markup. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Everybody's trying to make it work. As my guest is also brought to you by a galaxy sized swimming pool full of ping pong balls. Sure. Not a liquid.

No. Well, except maybe. A fluid. And of course, this podcast is brought to you by the universe, the universe.

Determined? Ah. All right. We also have some project roster messages to read, including this one from Marinda to Ellie and Ed.

Dear honking John, this message comes to you in three parts one today. I learned that bees have five eyes, wild, too. The passage of time of friends said, why not? Time continues.

How wonderful and how terrifying. Three. Hope perseveres and I am in love with living. I'm lucky enough now that I can afford the luxury of spending all my birthdays and dandelions wishing the same for others.

So lovely, Marinda. Thank you. And also we have a message from Krista who wants to write to Nerdfighteria. Every year when we come together to the P4A, I am reminded that I am a small part of a greater whole.

This community is the place I go to when hope is difficult to come by. My song, without the words, if you will, thank you all for being a part of Nerdfighteria with me, DFTBA. Not so lovely, Krista. Hell yeah.

At this episode of Dear Hank and John's Bronte is by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me. And that is what Shopify makes easier. When you start with Shopify, the tools, to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one.

You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business. And this is important because you also have to look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing. It also works on other people's brains to be like, this is legitimate.

Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet. It's built to help customers finish the purchase effectively and efficiently without a bunch of roadblocks. Returning customers can check out with a single click. That means less friction and fewer abandoned carts and a smoother experience for everybody.

That stuff gives you confidence early on and it gives other people confidence in what you're doing. You're not wondering whether the payment system is going to work. You're not wondering whether customers can get through the process. Shopify handles that foundation so you can focus on the thing that you're actually trying to do.

It's really kind of amazing to me that Shopify is a tool that works from the first day your store launches when you're just starting to get customers all the way up to being the size of good.store or dftv.com or being the size of like Mattel and Gymshark. When you build a Shopify, you're building with tools that already work at every scale. All you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest. You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash DearHank.

Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash DearHank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. Those summer nights cool down. So that's why I'm wearing Quince this summer and you can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to Quince.com slash DearHank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

Now available in Canada too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash DearHank for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash DearHank. This episode of DearHank and John is brought to you by Factor.

Imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and that you did not eat lunch. What are you going to do? Are you going to get meal delivery that's going to cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you going to go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts? Those are my two choices unless I have a factor in the fridge.

You can get Smoky BBQ Chicken breast with potato mash, cream corn and peppers. You can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice, peel off broccoli and carrots. This has the fiber I need. It has the protein I need and it has the deliciousness I need.

What about garlic herb roasted barramundi with potato zucchini and burr blanc sauce? I don't really know what that means but it sounds delicious. What about a black bean taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema? A delicious high fiber high protein meal that no animals had to die for.

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With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. I've been reading through the Nerdfighteria census which went out. If you have not filled it out, you can go fill it out.

There's a link in the description of my most recent vlog for this video or not my most recent one but there's, look, I'll put it in the most recent one as well. Take that because I haven't done it yet. But it's just, it's always so lovely to read through the census and to hear people's thoughts on all the things that we've done and to see how the community continues to change and how like we respond to the world being this world and yeah, yeah. And I'm so grateful to everybody who spends a little time filling it out and also writing little messages so that we know what you're thinking.

It's a great thing to be a part of and a lot of the things that I've heard is like that people really like it when we act as a community together and we do that in a lot of different ways and so I want to have ideas, we have ideas for how to keep doing it in the field. Yeah, it always makes me think of the fact that a lot of attention goes to the leaders of a community, especially like an online community is that resemble fandoms. A lot of the attention goes to Taylor Swift or whoever or Hank and John. But the truth is that the community accomplishes things that have very little to do with that creator and most of what they accomplish together isn't about the creator and it certainly is it doesn't come from the creator.

The community accomplishes stuff together and what we really are if we're lucky Hank and me is parts of Nerdfighteria not leaders of Nerdfighteria. All right Hank, let's answer some more questions before we get to the on board news from Mars and ASE. We'll be beginning with this one from Anonymous who writes Dear John and Hank, John have read all your books when I first read Turtles All The Way Down quite a few years ago, I found it a fascinating read. However, after watching the trailer for the film adaptation, the story is taken on a much deeper meaning because my partner of three and a half years has OCD and has been going through a particularly tough period over the last year, particularly with relationship oriented OCD.

And so I found myself sobbing after watching the trailer. I think I'm so moved because it gives voice to the pain we both experience from the strain OCD puts on our life together. They're naturally more her than me and it gives me hope that the story will highlight to society just how truly debilitating living with OCD can be while also offering hope to people like my amazing girlfriend. And that I just wanted to read that Hank because it means a lot to me and as we go into this experience, I just needed to be reminded that like as like overwhelming as this is and everything.

I'm ultimately doing it because of that because I think the story matters and can matter to people and I wouldn't be pushing so hard myself and also nice people who work with me if I didn't really think that it could be a useful thing in the world. Like there's a lot of debate over whether art needs to be useful to be good and I don't know exactly where I sit on that debate but I do know that I like it more personally to make art that can be useful to people and I really hope that this is a movie that can help people in the way that so many people have told me the book did. So I just wanted to read that and just kind of be reminded of why I'm why I'm doing what I'm going to have to do over the next couple weeks. Yeah.

Yeah. This next question comes from Marie who says, Hello, Hank and John, that's not a Danish accent. Then he'll say Marie. Hank, what is your Danish accent?

Tell me in a Danish accent how excited you are to see the turtles all the way down moving on May 2nd. No, I will not do this. I cannot do I cannot do I cannot do Dutch. I do German instead.

I can do you can't do Dutch. Not even good. It's not even good to German. It's not particularly good German but it's definitely not Danish which is definitely different from Dutch.

Did I say Dutch? You did. Look, it's not my fault. Where is Danish from?

Denmark. Which does not start with a syllable Dane. Where's Dutch from? Dutchland.

The Netherlands which is not start with Dutch. It's not my fault. All right. I'm going to do all three.

All right. I'm going to do all three. I'm going to do all three, Hank. Are you ready?

So this is this is just a kind of a tutorial for you for people who maybe aren't experts in Northern European accents. I'm going to just help you through them. This is German. Yeah.

Yeah. The eat the read cells. Yeah. The eat the the sausages.

No, I'm going to judge you for skipping through this part of the podcast. All right. That was German. This is Dutch.

Hello. It's very nice here. Yeah. It's very nice.

I like it. Yeah. And thank you. Very good.

Very nice. That seems right to me. Seems right to me, man. And this is Danish.

Ready? Hold on. It's going to take me a second. I got to get in character.

I got to get I got to grow by six inches. I'm six foot six. I'm blonde. I'm maybe like I think I think I work in private finance Hello.

Hello. Yeah. You see over the next six weeks, we will look at this these problems and try to get some problems solved for you. That does sound like the last one.

But okay. Those are my three accents. I got three looks and that's it. Sure.

Not as much as you can to that. Can we look at the way that English has named languages? Sure. If you are from Italy, what do you speak?

Italiano. Oh my God. No, in English. Italian.

Oh my God. Look, I'm trying to do something here. Keep going. Keep going.

If you're from Sweden, do you speak Swedenian? No, you speak a Swedish. Oh my God. I don't know if I can do this.

Swedish? No. That's kind of your from France. Do you speak Swedish?

One more time. Give me Sweden. And if you're from Sweden, do you speak Swedenian? No, you speak Swedish.

Okay. This is great. I don't know. No, we're offending everyone.

This is great. This is this is we're working. We're working our way through the only accents we're allowed to butcher. Now give me one more.

Do France. I just don't know why we could. What about if you're from France? Do you speak French?

I don't know. I do know what you speak if you're from France. I just know that I just we. Yeah, we speak French.

I mean, the part where no matter what accent you're doing, the character you're playing is just like, no, yes, no. That's all I can say in these four languages. We don't. See.

Oh, yeah. I can laugh. I can laugh in all those languages. All right.

Now do American laugh. Yeah. Great. That's perfect.

That seems right. Can you do a dot? They don't laugh. That's a great joke.

Don't you people everywhere just birded laughing. All right. John. Yeah.

Abby asks before we lose everyone. So you're hanging John ahead of dream last night that a massive turtle can from space, another space turtle, John, and attached itself to the moon. And then it took the moon out of our orbit. My question is what would happen if a turtle or any object the size of the moon became attached to the moon?

Totally curious. Totally curious. It wouldn't be great, Abby. No, it depends on what actually happened.

Like, did it smack into the moon? Then definitely bad. If a moon sized object smashed into the moon, that would be objectively bad. And there is no other way.

So your other argument is that this moon sized object somehow like gently attaches itself to the moon. Yeah. I'm just imagining like a moon sized piece of slime, you know, okay, after hurtling through space, it somehow doesn't smash into the moon. It just settles up.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's like.

So imagine the turtle from the Godzilla movies, Gamera. And Gamera is he's up there and he's the size of the moon. And he's like, I love that thing. I'm gonna live there.

And he gives the moon a big hug and he just sort of hangs out. And that case, things would change. So tides, obviously, we get stronger, which would be very bad for anyone living on the coast. Yeah.

Also be very bad for coastal ecosystems that are not designed for tides to be twice as strong as they currently are. There would probably be some amount of like long term changes to, but I think that like long term, my guess is long term enough that it would not affect us to like the length of the day. And and also the like the distance of the moon to like from the earth. But I think that that would probably happen slow enough that that wouldn't be a big deal in the next few thousand years, which is mostly the scale that we think on.

I think that the big concern probably just be the tides, but I might be wrong. I'm curious to hear if anybody else, if you submit your thoughts on this, what am I missing? That might really mess things up if the moon became suddenly much more massive. Now, I know that if the moon ceased to exist, we would have a massive problem, like Yeah, pun intended, because the the earth's tilt would increase really dramatically.

So we would have these like ice ages in some places and we would be way wobblier. Yeah, we'd be wobbly. We're bigger. We'd be less wobbly.

So we might actually get fewer climate variations from wobbles, though we have another sort of climate variation we have to deal with right now. Yeah, it would not be helped by that. Right. It wouldn't solve.

So we couldn't solve climate. That's what I was going to ask you is can we solve climate change with a bigger moon? No, I mean, if like, honestly, if there's like a giant space turtle, I feel like he's going to have just advice. Oh, can you imagine?

Yeah, then just the mass. Yeah, can you imagine him like shouting? It would be really loud, shouting from the moon, just like, Hey guys, I don't want to come down there because I know that I would mess things up if I got any closer. Well, like you need to work some stuff out.

You all need to collaborate more effectively and build systems that include more people. Yeah. Why are you creating outside? Why are you why are you so obsessed with creating outsiders?

Yeah, like obviously, there's a great deal of untapped potential down there. You need to provide resources for more folks. Like those are the folks that could be solving the problems. You're stifling the number of potential future innovators you have by not giving people educational opportunities and treating some people like they're more special than other people.

That's very weird from the perspective of this one turtle. That's not how we do things at all where I come from. Though I will say that my planet has to be so big for there to be an organism the size of me that likely there aren't that many of us. And we move very slowly and make decisions on a very long time scale, which I understand probably is difficult for you little wet, soft ant things.

You know what that giant space turtle would also say? Yeah. He'd be like, you're being really cool to your turtles, right? Like, how cool are you being to the turtles?

You better be cool to those turtles if you catch my drift. John, can we, I know that you're busy? Yeah. And maybe we should, because you're so busy, we should turn this to the community.

Yeah. Can we write some kind of space turtle zine? I love it. I love it real fast.

This week. People say, first of all, send your drawings of your space turtles. If you made it through the accent portion of the program, to get to this portion of the program, your reward is that you can contribute to our hit new charity zine space turtle. Right.

So you can either submit and you can do this twice, but not together. So it's going to be like a game where we're going to pair captions with space turtles. So we need people to draw space turtles and we need people to send captions. And then we're going to match the caption to the space turtle.

And the caption is like whatever the space turtle is thinking or saying. Right. What is the space turtle saying to the people of Earth? And then what does the space turtle look like, sidled up to the moon?

Yeah. Yeah. These are the questions we have for you. And we need you to email us at hankandjohn at gmail.com with the subject line space turtle.

Yes. Yes. Bank. You've made a major discovery.

You were just talking about how as a community, we need more projects. And then you found our most important project of all space turtles. Forget about bullying, large corporations introducing their price of their particular tests. Now we're on to something.

There's a there's a first of all, we're not bullying or as we respectfully and nicely second. I can't wait to show off all the space turtles in our we're here. The newsletter of Nerdfighteria, which you could sign up for by searching for that, I guess. But also maybe I'll make a video with it.

We could review them on the next episode of the pod. I really hope we get some space. We might not get it. In which case, we might will be sad and I'll be feverishly drawing my own to make up for it.

All right. So we got to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon because I have a meeting. Yes. And the news from AFC Wimbledon is both brilliant and terrible.

I'll start with the terrible news. AFC Wimbledon men's team are their season is over. They still have two games left to play technically, but they don't matter because we can't make the playoffs and we can't get relegated. Now, in a way, if you told me at the beginning of the season, we were going to have two stress free games.

I would have been I would have been like, that's wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah, because there were some times when we didn't have any of those exactly many years where we have no stress free games because we're facing relegation until the last day and then sometimes we do get relegated. So yeah, it's it's great.

We had a successful season, but it's a little bit of a bummer. However, the women's team who wear partners in health on the back of their jerseys sponsored by Rosiana and myself just won their division, which means they also, in addition to winning the trophy, get promoted, which means also that they will next year be a third tier English football team, incredibly exciting for so many years. The women have finished second in their league, they're up against big teams like QPR and Norwich like Norwich might be in the Premier League next year, the men's team, but the women's team got beat by AFC Wimbledon. And so AFC Wimbledon's women's team, an incredible group of women who many of them have been playing together for many years.

It's just really remarkable what they've managed to achieve. They finally have the financial support to be successful. And so they have been successful. And it's awesome, awesome to see.

And so I'm so excited for the promoted women's team. And by the way, if you live in London on May 5th, so just a few days after this podcast comes out, you can see the final women's game of the season at Plowlane, celebrate the champions. It's going to be like a packed house. It's going to be awesome.

So, and it's only like five pounds to get in. So the transit might cost you more than the game. If you're under 18, it's actually free. So check that out at just Google AFC Wimbledon women's team.

All right. That's so cool. What's the news for Mars? Well, sample return is the thing that we want to do.

The rover's perseverance has been dropping these vials for maybe some future mission to come pick them up and take them back so that we can study these rocks here on Earth where we have whole labs and not just one robot car. This is tricky and difficult. And NASA was going to send that and they were designing the mission. And the European Space Agency was going to build some of the stuff and it was a whole thing.

In 2020, there was a report that estimated the cost of this to be between like three and four billion dollars-ish. It's now estimated that mission would cost eight point four to ten point nine billion dollars, which everything's like, actually, we love rock so much, but not maybe that much. Last fall, an independent review board said the mission would need to be overhauled. And in the past few weeks, NASA has announced that they're looking at proposals to help make the mission faster and cheaper.

So, the good news is that for now, NASA is looking to continue with the mission. It's just not clear what that mission's going to look like or how they're going to do it. Because, yeah, there's some price sensitivity. Inflation obviously happened, but not that much.

And these things don't tend to come in on budget either. So, well, I mean, that's a bummer. It feels like we just send people at this point. And maybe in the past couple of years, if at all possible.

Just send people to retrieve those rocks by 2027. I tell you what, that seemed like such a long way away when we made that bet. I know. I know.

And now what do you think? Do you think 2040 is realistic? For humans on ours? Yeah.

No. Oh, it's really a story of Hank and John going from being excessively optimistic to relentlessly determined to remain optimistic. Yeah. No, I mean, look, things could certainly happen.

It's just very hard. We've learned more about Mars than in the last 10 years that has made the prospect of people going to Mars harder. And so, it hasn't gotten easier in the last 10 years. It's gotten harder because we understand more about Mars and how what it's made of and how hazardous that stuff is to people.

So, it's tricky. Well, Hank, I still believe that we're going to live to see it. And I can't wait to live to see it. So, I haven't given up that hope.

Even if I have, and I hope you have as well, given up all hope that this podcast will always be called Dear Hank and John. I have. I have. All right.

Hank, well, thank you for potting with me. Thanks everybody for listening. We look forward to your space turtles. Oh, gosh, I'm going to draw mine right now.

It doesn't have to be good. No, it should be bad. Or it can be good. It's up to you.

Okay. Read the credits. Oh, of course, that's my job. This podcast is edited by Joseph to an image.

It's produced by Rosie on a Hoss. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell, our editorial assistant is Debukit Rarkarvadi, the music you're hearing now. And at the beginning, the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.