Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.
Friends have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and more will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBSEons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we've become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets go on sale to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.
Where's that prefer to think of a Dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers offer you do be as advice and answer your questions and bring you all in weeks news for both Mars and Hank. I'm in a very echoey space because I'm in a concrete box right now on vacation with my family but I took the day off because they were going on a long boat ride and I just got done with the tour for everything as tuberculosis and there were a lot of planes, trains and automobiles with less than a hundred words. I don't need another method of transportation this week.
I've had too many. Yeah, recently Catherine wanted to go on vacation and I wanted to go on more of a staycation so we compromised and had an altercation. That's pretty funny. That's not bad.
You just got back from vacation as well. I did actually. And we in fact both of us very much wanted to go on vacation. Yeah, yeah.
Well the big news in my world, the big news in my world is that my book Everything is to Brookulosas is out in the world. It's gotten great reviews. It's the number one New York Times bestseller. It's the first book Hank to be at the top of New York Times bestseller list about tuberculosis in some time.
You know, previously you mostly launched books aimed at teenagers and you had to stop because you kept hitting them. Nope, nope. We only get one of those per week buddy. Because you're just Celtic teenagers with it.
And then if you try to do a second one, you're a got too good. You're a see this is this is the problem with you is that you tell a joke and if it doesn't land, you double down on it. And if it does land, you also double down. It's one of the things you need to learn as a young comedian.
I guess you always got to have another joke. Yeah, how are you how are you doing in general, man? Uh, yeah, I think I mean vacation was really good. I'm good.
I'm of course when you do go and don't work for a while, you come back and then there's a bunch of work that you didn't do. This is the problem with working for yourself is that, um, you know, a lot of people have that experience, but yeah, I mean, ideally somebody steps into your shoes, right? Like the ideal situation is your, sure, say a managing director at a firm that moves the pile of money around. I assume that seems like the best job in the world.
Somebody and somebody else is moving the piles of money around exactly and they're like, exactly, you get back from your vacation and they're like, Hey, the piles of money have been moved left, right, center, front, they are larger as a result of the movement and you're welcome. Yeah, whereas I get back and they're like, Hank, it turns out that only, only you are the one who can record this advertisement and the future Hank segments for asking anything and also the, uh, do the, the review to make sure that you settle the things that you wanted to say in this episode of this thing. And that's just like, yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. It's a lot of work.
Your job, um, my job is a little less work, but also a lot of work. I was very grateful to be on tour for the last few weeks. I thought that I would be exhausted because it was a different city every day, a different plane every day, and that is kind of tiring, but I wasn't exhausted. I was really energized actually because I got to see 14,000 people in our community and I got to be with people who are very active in the fight against tuberculosis and other diseases of injustice.
And it was really, instead of getting tired, I came away from, I mean, I did get tired. Like I'm on vacation now and I didn't get to sleep in my bed and I miss my bed. I haven't been in my bed in like over three weeks and I am a little tired, but like at the same time, it was very encouraging and encouraging and it's a little hard for me to come by right now, but I was very encouraged by this. Yes, I've been, I've been thinking a lot about how, how we are both, I don't know, we're lucky to have to have found the sort of space that we have.
I was in a year podcast with Chris Hayes and you know, just sort of like talking to like an MSNBC anchor and you're like just sort of off-handing, bleed mentioning, you know, our community and the work that they that we have done to build this, to help build this hospital on Sierra Leone and and like that is such like a weird thing that I don't think like, like, because to like the average Chris Hayes viewer, like, what would they even think that meant? But it's such like a concrete foundational thing in my life. Right. And the way, and the way that it happened was just so organic and but also with an eye toward actually trying to be like constructive and live in a society.
Yeah. And in a long term open-ended commitment kind of way. Yeah. Like you will never not live in the society.
Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like we sort of like swung, like the pendulum has swung a little bit like pretty far away from living in a society here for a moment. And yeah, I think maybe they're actually, there actually is a swing back where like certain really anti-social behaviors are taboo again.
Right. Yeah. That'd be great to see. Anyway, let's answer some questions from our listeners.
Okay. John, this first question comes from Lydia. Dear honking John. So here's the thing.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It's my favorite poem. And I've considered getting a tattoo to represent it, but this has led me to wonder, do you think the eponymous wild geese are Canada geese? That's certainly the only type of wild goose I see in my Midwestern city.
John, I have a relatively low opinion of Canada geese, which does interfere somewhat with my interpretation of the poem. For example, I have a hard time reconciling the aggression of a Canada goose with quote, the soft animal of my body. You do not have to be good, but you do have to answer me, Lydia. What do you think, John?
Are they Canada geese? I've always assumed so. And I've always assumed that they're sort of the great poem that tries to rehabilitate the Canada goose, right? Yes.
Do you know the poem in question? I don't. Is it in the public domain? It is today, buddy.
It is today. It goes like this. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal with your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination calls to you like the wild geese harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things. So what we know about the geese is that they fly very high in the clean blue air and that they're headed home again. So they are definitely migratory geese.
Now, most Canada geese are migratory, although some now just live full-time in Indianapolis, crapping in my backyard. The other thing we know about them is that like the wild geese, the call is harsh and exciting. Now, harsh, certainly exciting, I would say marginally. Yeah, I'm going to go having listened to it and to have and living in a place where I hear two different types of geese.
I would probably say that this could definitely be Canada geese, but it could also be snow geese, which also has a very exciting call. And look, I think that on average, if you spent, if you like, if you ask the average person like, what's the better goose, Canada goose or snow goose, they'd say snow goose, but they're not spending time up close with snow geese. If snow geese were on in the park all the time, pooping their little logs of half digested grass and defending their territory to you, you'd also hate snow geese. I don't get why we don't like Canada geese except that they are successful.
Right. Well, they're successful, but they also remind us of the fact that they are successful because we built the world for them, which reminds us that we're terraformers of Earth, which is a horrifying reality that we have to confront, that we don't like to confront. I think some people probably are having that reaction. I think a lot of people are just like, I'd really rather not be little logs of half digested grass all over the place.
Yeah, there's that as well. So here's the difference over the average versus Mary Oliver, lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Canada geese. Almost certainly Canada geese, although there are occasional ocean going geese that make their way to Provincetown and do fly high in the blue sky.
And so it's possible. But I think it's almost certainly Canada geese. Yeah. And I think that we should love them for the successful species that they are.
We're successful. They're sharing a little bit of space. We have a soft animal part of our bodies. They have a soft animal part of their bodies.
They have that belly that's exposed just like we have an exposed belly. And they are vulnerable and fragile creatures just like us. I guess the main difference is that we know what's keeping the stars apart and they don't. Yeah, as far as we know, they do have that glint of intelligence sometimes.
They don't. They absolutely do not have that glint of intelligence. I love a bird. I'm a bird enthusiast, but you're gonna have a hard time making the case to me that birds other than like crows and ravens have that glint of intelligence.
They do seem to have little families though. So that's nice and cute. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's great.
All right. I have a question for you comes from Ani who asks, dear John and Hank, given the extensive nature of movie promo nowadays, well, I don't know, Ani, it really depends on the movie. Some movies don't get extensive promo, but I know what you mean. In addition to several iterations of strategically released trailers, what purpose do movie taglines on posters served?
Are they remnants of a bygone era? What do you think they added a movie going experience? Also, what would the tagline for your biopic be in a world? Ani.
So Hank, you may not know this, but the Faulkner stars originally had a tagline that they ended up grabbing. I was on the movie poster, but it was only on the first run of the movie posters. And then they took it off the movie poster because everybody hated it except for me who found it hilarious. Oh God.
Who wrote this? Do you know? Somebody at a movie studio and the tagline was one sick love story. Oh, I've seen that.
Yeah. Maybe I've seen an old movie poster that didn't get released. Do you have one with it? I think you probably did.
I have one downstairs. So you probably see it when you come say in my house. They didn't use that. They didn't use that.
And it totally makes sense that they didn't use it because it's a very earnest, you know, and I want to make art that's earnest. So like, I don't want to use that layer of irony to protect against the expectations of people. But I also wanted the movie to be funny. And I think it is funny in parts.
Obviously, it's not a comedy, but like it has its funny moments. And like, because what I really wanted for that movie and for that book was for Hazel and Gus to be people with full rich, complex lives that contained everything that a life can contain, you know, including lots of humor. Like I worked at a children's hospital and it was one of the funniest places I've ever worked was also by far the saddest place I've ever worked. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
Like people can be funny and sad even at the same time. And yes. So anyway, it did have a tagline, but then they cut it, which was the right call. And I can't remember if paper town said, I think paper town said it had a call, had a tagline as well, it was get lost, get found.
Which is not really the moral of the story. No, that's not what the book or the movie is about. But you know, there isn't some getting lost in it. And I guess there's not really, but like whatever, it seems like a movie tagline, you know.
I don't know why they do them now, because it seems like totally irrelevant to the contemporary movie experience, unless it's like, unless it like feeds into socials, the way that like the Avengers and game most ambitious crossover of all time tagline fed into socials where people were like, no, the most ambitious crossover of all time is Hank Green and Dan Howell making content together or whatever. So are we supposed to try and figure out like our life story tagline? Yeah, what would your bio what would the tagline be for your biopic? He came, he saw, he forgot why he came or saw and then had to walk back to the other room to remember what he was doing in that room.
That's why he was. I mean, it's not succinct. That would be my life. Well, it is this is a difficult copywriting task.
My name would be something something definitely hyper-condryical like, does my eye look funny? Oh, really? Yeah, it looks funny. Something in that category, you know, something where it's like, this guy is clearly struggling with his mental and his physical health.
That's what I want to communicate in my tagline. I want to communicate like, like just that, just that like special combination of of just like haphazard energy, like like an ambition, but for nothing in particular. Right. Right.
Like not like ambition to take over the world, but ambition to do weird stuff. Like, really ambition that you and I have is an ambition to do weird stuff. Like part of that is like, there's ways in which that's cool and super productive. Like building a maternal hospital in Sierra Leone is the greatest example of that.
Right. Yeah. Like that happened in part because you and I had ambition to do something weird and different. But then like, there are other ways in which are ambition to do something weird and different is not at all productive.
Like, for instance, if you have an ambition to see AFC, one of them become a third-tier English soccer team and you give up resources to that, like, that's a weird ambition. You know, and like people will be like, oh, that's kind of weird and cool. But they won't be like, oh, that's a good use of resources. Yeah.
Uh huh. Yes. Uh, too weird to fail. Too weird to fail.
That's a great tagline. You got there. Because that's great. Because it actually makes sense because if you're just trying to be weird, you kind of can't fail.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's like, well, it's weird.
Right. If it's exceeded and being weird, it's succeeded. Right. Yeah.
Like having a podcast for the last eight years where we literally unironically share the news from AFC Wimbledon and Mars. Yeah. And the podcast is still kind of a hit is proper. Yeah.
Yeah. We got a lot of that. You remember when we for like eight months, only titled our videos, Lines from Smash Mouth's All-Star? And our views didn't go down at all.
We were like, you know what, YouTube, everybody's talking about title optimization. What if we can prove that thumbnails and titles don't matter at all? Really? Yeah.
I mean, they matter for like, but they don't, but like what if you could prove that there's another way? This is what I, this is what I want everyone to be doing, honestly. There's just not enough experimentation. Not enough weird.
Yeah. I agree. We need to lean harder into weird, especially weird stuff that doesn't hurt anybody. Because we've got a fair amount of weird stuff that does hurt people.
Yeah. But that's not the kind of weird we're looking for. In fact, this reminds me of our next question, Hank, from Taylor, who writes, Dear John and Hank, does Joe Lewis, who I helped pay for, he was a real-life AFC Wimbledon player, gets specially made shorts. Does he take them to a tailor or do the normal shorts that the rest of them wear just look like that on him?
Taylor. I think that that's just, I think his body does it to the shorts. I don't think the shorts do it to his body. That is correct.
He gets the same shorts. Yeah. But his body does that to the shorts. And what his body does to the shorts is magnificent.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And I know Joe listens to the podcast. So, hi, Joe. Oh, wow.
The other day we couldn't, a friend of mine and I couldn't think of the name of the band, Greta Van Fleet. And so we are asking a friend and I said, you know, the cute little guy with the weird voice. And he was like, Oh, Greta Van Fleet. So you just do what you do what the first thing and you put ideas into other people's heads.
I don't think though that I've ever done anything very special to a pair of shorts. No. No, nothing for the immediate response. Well, I just know you have collides.
Oh, man. I don't, I don't, I've, I basically don't own shorts. It's been a long process for me with the, with the visible legs. Yeah, I'm wearing shorts right now, but they always make me uncomfortable.
I always feel like I'm performing for like, I'm performing as someone else, like I'm cosplaying a middle aged man who's on vacation. That's so weird, isn't it? That's sort of like, like, the personas that, and we of course think about this like way more than anyone else. But we're, so we, our vacation, we were in Ireland, we did a bunch of cool stuff.
And Catherine was like, you should get a fat cap, like a wool Ireland style. I put it on. I was like, that looks pretty good. And Catherine was like, I love that.
And I was like, but I can't wear it. Right. I can't buy an Irish style hat and wear it around Ireland. What is, I start speaking in a very good Irish accent all of the time.
Yes, you and your Irish broke. I'm sure it would impress me. The fact that you were able to go to Ireland for two weeks and come back not with an Irish brogue is actually very proud of you. You've matured a lot.
But yeah, I think we are probably more hyper aware of performance than most people that like all identities performative because we've been performing our identities and living our identities for a long time. I think it's kind of like that though. Here's what I think. I think you can go into a store and you can see a shirt and be like, I could never pull that shirt off and you could put that shirt on and no one would even think for a second about that shirt.
Well, they wouldn't think that you can't pull it off. They would think the fact that you're wearing it indicates that you can pull it off. Yeah. I think the most part they would, they kind of wouldn't think about the shirt.
I think that's sure probably wouldn't even be that weird. It depends on how good the shirt is. If the shirt, for example, we have another question from Sarah who has a pot who has a bumper sticker that says, honk, if you're letting the small animal of your body love what it loves, I guess this is the Mary Oliver special. And that, if you put that on a t-shirt, everybody would look at the t-shirt and be like, I love your Mary Oliver t-shirt.
So people would notice it, but they wouldn't think like, oh, you can't pull off a Mary Oliver t-shirt. The mere fact that you're wearing it means that you can pull it off. Yeah. That's my contention.
And I experienced this when I go to a casino hank. You can be a person other than who you are. What? Yeah.
Like I go to a casino and I have a made-up name and a made-up identity. I've never told you this before. Wow. Maybe you have, but we've had a lot of conversations.
It's true. But that's just a weird way to say that. But you only do it in casinos? Yeah.
Yeah. It'd be weird to do it anywhere else. Who are you? What's the name?
Is it like Ben Gens McShane? No, no, it depends. So Sarah and I will create a character. Like one time we created this character who made research beyond meat, like meat alternative for salmon.
And so when I got into a conversation about it at the Blackjack table, I was just like, yeah, you know, the texture is really challenging. That's one of the things really hard about the flavor profile, it's really straightforward, but the flaky texture of salmon is harder to recreate with a vegetable-based protein. And I mean, I had a whole conversation where I was this guy. And then the money part of it was at the end of the night, when I was wrapping up at the Blackjack table, the D.R.K.
ought to be and said, it's nice to meet you, Mr. Green. Now, this is why this is why they're not recruiting you to be in the CIA. No, no, but I think I had the other table mates trick to the people who were in their 70s and 80s.
I love that. I love that. I love that for that person. Can I tell you a little story about a little thing that happened to me today?
Please. I got a burrito, but in a bowl, because I didn't want to have a burrito part. And, and the guy who made the burrito, as he was handing me the burrito bowl, he said, I would try to make this one look like it was good enough to go on the website. And I was like, I love that.
This is the greatest little, this is a great little moment. I'm going to really enjoy looking at this burrito bowl. Yeah. That's a lot of it.
I'm like, thanks for it. You might say that to all the guys, but like, it still matters though. Yeah. Just like I, some care and attention went into the making of this.
Yeah. Hank, that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the burrito bowl on the website, the burrito bowl on the website, getting recreated in Missoula Montana every single day. It's by us also brought to you by the Fault in Our Stars, the Fault in Our Stars. One sick love story because we always do taglines, but now I got to do the tagline.
Today's podcast is also brought to you by Joe Lewis's shorts. Joe Lewis's shorts. It ain't the shorts. It's the man.
And this podcast is brought to you by the soft animal body of Del Goose, the Canada Goose. This episode of Your Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me. And that is what Shopify makes it 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 with 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 deerhank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. One thing I love about summary is how easy everything feels.
The days are a little more relaxed. My kids don't have to wake up at five in the morning and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again which is why I keep coming back to quince. I often wear either a long sleeve or a short sleeve button down from quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints. In fact sometimes I get compliments about it.
I was at the airport a couple days ago. I often find myself in airports and someone said I like your shirt and I said thanks. It's from quince. Quince is 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable, easy to throw on and the summer upgrade your rotation needs starting at just $34.
Their tees are soft enough to live in all day and the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when 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 deer hank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too that's qunce.com slash deer hank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deer hank. This episode of Dear Hank 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 p.m.
and that you did not eat lunch. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna get meal delivery that's gonna cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you gonna 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 barbecue chicken breast with potato mashed 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 delicious ness I need.
What about garlic herb roasted baromundi 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?
Any of those can be ready in two minutes. Fresh, never frozen, over 100 rotating weekly meals, including globally inspired flavors like Mediterranean and Asian, factor shops, preps, cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything. You love this spring. Head to factormeals.com slash deer hank 50 off and use the code deerhank50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box.
With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. Alright John, another question comes from George who asks deerhank and John, how do people come with alphabetical order? Why is ABCDF the order and not like BYFLKMW?
Rhymes with orange, George, sorry I mispronounced your name at the beginning there, George. We do not know, of course, why the original people put the alphabet into alphabetical order but it was not a very long time ago and we have been using it in the same order for a long, long time. There isn't a sense to it. All the vowels are mixed in.
There's a sense to some of it like you and W are in V are all close to each other because they came from the same letter. So you used to have all those letters and so those are all descendants of the same letter. What? That's the letter.
Oh yeah. Dr. He was making an upset noise. No, no, no.
That's how that's how the people express their dissatisfaction with this. All those letters when you put it together. That was the original letter. And I can't stop.
I know but I can't stop. I want to believe it. You think I want to be doing this? Alright, we're going to move on then.
I was talking to Boke about this before because we have a little call where we talk about the science stuff and she was like, she told me that in Bengali, which her mother speaks and she speaks a little bit of that alphabet of order actually has an order. So it like I like of course cannot tell you the order. But it's based on a logic. There's a logic to it.
Yes. And like she did it for me and I was like, oh, that sounds very logical. So like certain like there's a there's a rhythm to the sort of beginning of each letter and then the sound after the letter. And so you do all of those in order and then you start with a new beginning and then the same sounds and then a new beginning and the same sounds.
That's smart. I like that more than just random, let's separate out the vowels. But we don't separate out the vowels by like the same number. There's no consistency at all about our alphabet.
Yeah, we do have AEO like we have a separate order for vowels, which is is it the alphabetical order of the vowels? It's the alphabetical order of the vowels. Well, again, the alphabet doesn't matter. So it could be UI, EA, it wouldn't be any different.
Yeah. Right. Right. Except we have to keep the U and W and the V together.
We do. We could. I don't know how we do it. I'll be here.
Maybe I could figure out if we took the English alphabet and we did it more the way that Bengali does it. What would it be like? I can't do that for you right now, but I bet I could with a little bit of time. So let me work on it.
Okay. Come back to us. You don't seem busy enough. So please work on recreating alphabetical order, which is exactly the kind of weird, highly specific project that I love for you in your retirement.
Like I really hope that you retire someday and you call me and you're like, yeah, so listen, man, it starts with D. Who knew? Who knew? I didn't expect it either.
Yeah. Well, it also is inconsistent in how the letters work, right? So like W is just a word. It doesn't have anything to do with the sound of W.
Right? Like in Bengali, it would be like, whoa, like you'd make them and then like D would be to and T would be to and like, but instead we have like a bunch of different ways of doing it. Well, I mean, other like CT, but then we have F, which is right, we should be feet. In other languages, a lot of the, a lot of the letters are pronounced differently.
So like that is in no way consistent, even in languages that use the Latin alphabet and put it in the same order that we put it in. No, the only solution and I've been saying this for years is for you to retire and devote yourself full time to coming up with a new order to the alphabet that is based on reason and logic. I'm going to standardize everything and I'm going to do it with an iron fist after taking over everything. Like Rokes Pierre in the French Revolution.
You're like, this is year one, you heard me year one. How do I know? Because it's because I'm doing it. And it's gonna be a hundred seconds in a minute.
It's year one of what turned out to be three. Hey, look, that's a, that's a last. He lasted a while. Yeah, I don't know that he was alive for that entire three, but the calendar was, oh man, it was a bad time to be a politically powerful person in France or or really anybody in France come to me.
Avoid the French Revolution. Maybe that'll be the tagline for my biopic. That's my recommendation for you. Just trying to avoid the French Revolution.
Don't go full French Revolution. Yeah, that's my world historical advice as a student of world history. This next question comes from Bella who writes Dear John and Hank, I live in the Northeast of the United States and I always take great joy in watching the migrating Canada geese. This is our geese episode.
Hank, it's goosisess in the spring and fall. Whenever I see a lone candidate goose flying by itself, I always experience some amount of worry about its fate. Will it just find another flock to latch onto? Does it need to find its original flock?
Do geese have families? Are we ultimately all alone on this cosmic journey between Canada and slightly slightly south of Canada? It's great. Bella, that is our preferred designation these days, south Canada.
Be geese and Gosling's Bella. They're gonna have so many provinces. They're not gonna know what to do with all their provinces when they take over for America. Oh man, they're gonna have so many they're gonna have a North Dakota and province and a South Dakota and province.
I bet the logic I'll make one Dakota province actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're gonna first do the alphabet. Then all of the North, South East, West, that's just gonna be one state each. There's just one Virginia.
There's just one Carolina. And then they're gonna make Tulsa the capital of Oklahoma. Yep. Each one of the Hawaiian Islands is a different state now.
Oh really? Yep, that's what Canada's gonna do that too. Even the one that Larry Ellison owns, can we have one not owned by a person? Yeah, that one's gonna be, we're gonna kick him off though.
Oh great, cool. Yeah, yeah, it's actually just gonna be Beavers now. And can they vote? Yeah, of course.
They vote by whether or not they come out of their little huts or dogs. Yeah, exactly. I love it. You know, like the face of these Prime Minister candidates who tree and then whichever one they nibble on, that's that and actually that decides it for the whole country.
We're getting out of the human's voting business. Yeah, and it's year one of the era of Beaver. But anyway, as for the geese, I love you. The humans can do all the steps like we nominate the candidates.
We like the political parties. We do all the steps up to the last step and then we're like, listen, we can't be trusted with the last vote. That's why we give it to the Beavers. Uh huh.
If I mean, the one of the real problems is that there are times when it does feel like it's just a beaver. Yeah, it does. Like I want fewer 50 50s going on in American politics because I just feel like, yeah, we need more 80 20s. We need more 80 20s.
And right now we don't have a lot of 80 20s. But anyway, Hank, should we worry about the lone Canada goose? Probably not. So Canada is are certainly very social.
They travel in family groups. It isn't like they're just like sort of flying around and glommen on to whatever group of geese they see. They hang out with a specific group that are often, you know, in some way, have like family familial relations and they also make for life. So if you just see a lone goose, it may be that they are in a situation where they've lost their mate, but it could also very easily be a situation where their group has settled down and they are doing something specific or they might have like a partner who is nesting and they're off flying to goose work.
Yeah, I get to do in the work of the geese. But you do often see them together and that is that is why. So is there is a potential that if you see a goose all by itself and it's sort of like always by itself, that that is a sad situation for that goose. It's a lonely goose.
But oftentimes, when you see a lonely goose, in fact, there will be other geese that it is going either going away from or coming back to and it will return and reconnect with them because these family units don't they tend to be self perpetuating. And so they don't like die out. So there's but like there also might be like a male like a young male thing, which is often a thing and like a social species is that young males will sort of head off into their own and make it happen. 49s in the wilderness and all that.
Yeah, yeah. All right. Hank, before we get to the on board news from Mars and ASE Wimbledon, I want to ask you one more question and believe it or not, it is a goose question. It comes from Kelsey, who writes, Dear John and Hank, your CBC interview with Matt Galloway this morning was fantastic.
My pre-order copy of Everything Is To Break Ulysses is writing Monday. I can't wait. That's great. Thank you for listening.
And I should also mention, Nick, I was on another podcast that I really enjoyed. Matt Galloway, a goose. Is that why this is looped back to the goose thing? Hold on a second.
It was wild card with Rachel Martin and it was probably the best single best interview I've ever done. I love that Chris Hayes podcast. I had so many great interviews on this tour, but that Rachel Martin podcast was incredible. She just like gave you so many gifts in that conversation.
But anyway, Kelsey goes on to say, however, I am also reeling from listening to your podcast episode 259 Infinite Bird where you suggested that Canada is secretly part of the US, given the current political situation. Are you sure about that? Take a back. And just checking in as a non-51st state or Kelsey.
So Hank, I never realized that I would have to be in this position. Yes, but I would like to leave for the record that I was 100% serious. 51st state, baby. Red, white and blue.
Kelsey, I think Canada, and again, this is a weird situation to be in, but I think Canada is a sovereign nation. No, John, the 51st state of some Maple Leaf, they get that. That's all they get. Put that on the 50, 51 stars on the flag, but actually just 50 because one of them is Maple Leaf.
Yeah, anyway, right. 50 stars in one Maple Leaf. That's how we're going to settle this thing. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry if my joke about the United States and Canada having a deeper than usual relationship was misinterpreted into a political movement where Canada becomes the 51st state, which obviously it shouldn't become. And now we know that Donald Trump is a listener to the pot. So unfortunately, we've given him the wrong idea. And we just like to say, Don, we think that there's a number of mistakes you've made.
And also just like, how did you listen to the podcast and take that away, but not the values of the podcast? That the last shall be first and the first shall be last and the Mixxian, here at the earth and et cetera, Don anyway, moving on Hank, God, I watched three football games while I was on vacation and they were all infuriating. That's not good. Oh my God.
Is this the new? The last six goals that AFC one was going to have given up have been given up in the 85th, 90th, 90th, and 96 minutes. What the boy? We were winning that letter.
We were winning another game one nil. We were winning another game one nil. And in all those in two of those occasions, we tied the game in one of those occasions, we managed to lose the game. So we went from a potential nine points down to two points.
And this is the run in. This is when we have to be good because teams around us are good. And it's just been devastating. So right now, we're still in the playoff hunt.
We are still in, I believe fifth place and so fifth place, sixth place and seventh place, they all go to the, they all go to the playoffs. But I don't want to go to the playoffs, Hank. I wanted to go up through the automatic promotion ranks. So we don't have to worry about the playoffs, but that looks like a distance dream.
Now we're five points off the automatic promotion spots with only six games to go. So it's not looking, it's not looking perfect, if I'm being honest. Just when all those games, well, if we won all those games, if we won all six of those games, we would indeed be promoted. In fact, if we won four of them, I think we would be promoted, but I don't are they getting bad things.
It's a mix. It's a mix. There are some bad teams. So the next team we play, Harrogate Town is not very good.
So there's some hope there. And then I'm going to see us play. They're like, they're like, they're like, Hank Green and shorts, not very good. Like, like, green and short.
They don't, they don't, they don't fill out the uniform, if you will. Not like Joe Lewis does. Then you've got Doncaster, who are promotion candidates, Chester Field, Jillingham or Gillingham, depending on your worldview, Port Vale and our last game is against Grinsby Town. So that game against Port Vale could be huge.
They're currently in the playoff spots, and then that game against Grinsby Town on May 4th is going to be huge. I'm going to be at the game on April 18th. If anybody's there, please say hi. But in the meantime, it's looking tense for AFC Wimbledon only one win in our last five games.
Well, news from Mars, the Curiosity River has found the largest organic molecules on Mars ever found. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean life? No, not necessarily.
There are ways that these molecules can be made geologically. So, but they're made in interesting ways, geologically, when they're made geologically. So it was an amazing, a rock sample called Cumberland. Remember Cumberland Farms, Sean?
We were growing up. Sure, of course. It was the one that I was a little bit more worried to go to. Yeah.
Rather than 711. 711 felt safer than the Cumberland Farms. Yeah. 711 felt like, Cumberland Farms was across the street.
And so you actually had to cross the busy road twice to get to Cumberland Farms, where I 711, you didn't have to cross the busy street at all. Yeah, but it also was like, it was like literally safer. But also it felt a little vibe. There was a vibe at Cumberland Farms, where you'd be like, don't drink the milk from there.
Yeah, it was a little more cigarette centric of a store. It was more of a cigarette shop than a convenience store in the old fashion sense. Do you know that there's still Cumberland Farms out there? Look at that.
It's colloquial. Where's the nearest one to make? Cumbies. Is it's colloquial name, which I do not love?
No, that's terrible. There are no more in Orlando. There's three in the state of Florida. They are almost entirely in looks like New England area.
Yeah, they're on the beach out there in Florida. You know, there's one, there's one like, if you drive a couple of Miami counties. Yeah, there's a cumbie in a rock lidge. That's the kind of vibe.
Oh boy. Cumbies. I got a lot of it back in time before I knew that. Against the deer, Hank, and John Cumbies edition.
What's the news from Mars? Right. So we don't know that these aren't living organisms, but they're large organic molecules. The rock is called Cumberland, and I don't know why.
But they were looking for amino acids, and they not find any, but they found small bits of decade, undecane, and dodecane, which are basically just 10, 11, 12 carbon long carbon chains. And they hypothesized that these are actually fragments of fatty acids. And they, so they, so what they did is they mixed some of fatty acid with, I think, an 11 carbon chain with Mars like clay and then heated it up and found that decade was released from that. They did that here on Earth to see if the end date is probably these fatty acids.
A fatty acids are very important for life. Your cell membranes are made out of them. And so, and we think that that they, when they are made geologically on Earth, they are made when water mixes with minerals from hydrothermal vents. So we are continuing our little, little trek down the journey of Mars, early Mars being more and more Earth-like in its infancy.
Yeah, because we had hydrothermal vents, right? And that's probably where life first emerged. That's what we think. Yeah, that's the leading candidate.
That's where I know. So the idea that they also had hydrothermal vents means that probably life would inevitably emerge there. We don't know. We own the thing about life is that it happened one time, and so you can't actually learn very much from it happening one time.
You know, if it happened twice, you can say something about how common it is, but when something only happens once, you can't say anything about how common it is. So we've only, so life has only emerged on Earth once, we think. As far as we know, if it emerged a separate time, then the version of it that we have now consumed and out competed at the other forms to extinction. Okay.
Okay. That's wild though. That like, yeah, I mean, first off, it's wild that life emerged here. I mean, I guess it's probably common.
Life is very strange. We have no idea. And we do not, we still do not have a chemical explanation for how it happened, like a physical explanation for how it happened. We're working on it.
We were when I was when I was in school, but don't we sort of not fully understand even what life is? Like, don't we not really have a strong definition of life? Because, you know, there's lots of things that challenge it like viruses and whatnot. Yeah, I think that, I mean, there's different ways you can draw the line, but like life is definitely a thing.
And we have, we have an understanding of what that thing is like, there's like a fuzzy line between like a rock and you, like you are definitely alive. And so we know that like life exists and is a thing. And there are there are just several different and different disciplines, there are different ways to draw that line. And some of them kind of do draw it where virus is included and some don't.
Right. Okay. But we don't know what whether life is a thing or what thing like this, because we it's like, some of it is vibes based by some of it is pretty unambiguous, like viruses might be vibes based, but the rest of it's kind of unambiguous. Yeah, my opinion is that like the fuzziness of a border between things, like there's there's fairly really fuzzy borders between some things like really fuzzy border between what's a shrub and what's a tree, like very fuzzy.
But there's a little bit of fuzz when it comes to life, but it's not, but like there's a fuzz everywhere. It's always a little fuzzy, but it's pretty actually sharper than maybe you might imagine. Okay. Well, I just imagine it is fuzzy because I imagine like all human built language categories as fuzzy.
Yeah. So like I imagine the category is vicious. Well, this is right. Right.
Right. Fuzzy. Yeah. Fish.
Fish. Fish don't exist. I mean, fish only exist in the sense of like you look at it and like that looks like a fish, which is also like a fine category system. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. This is helpful for me.
There might be life on Mars, but we don't know life is only evolved once that we know of. And so it could be common or it could be rare. We just don't know. Yeah.
I mean, the big question, I think that when we end up on Mars doing science, the thing that will probably answer, well, if we answered, it will be answered in the positive. Otherwise, we'll just keep searching and not know for sure is whether life existed in the distant past there. And there's probably, you know, based on how based on the fact that like Mars isn't geologically active, so it's not like chewing up its own crust all the time, like it earth is, then we'll probably actually be able to figure that out because the old stuff is still there. The evidence is probably still around.
Right. We should need to dig down and get those sweet Martian skeletons. Yeah. Or probably like fossilized bacterial mats.
Yeah. That's not going to be quite as exciting for me, but it'll still be cool. Yeah. I mean, based on how life went on Earth is a really, really low chance of a skeleton of any kind of like hard multi-cell Earth.
It took so long to get from one cell to two. It took a huge amount of time. It took more time to get from one cell to two than it took to get from two cells to humans by a wide margin. Basically, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And pretty much like life on Earth, at the outside, maybe four billion years old.
And like every time you look up how old something that you think of as a life form, it's never more than a billion. You know, because like before that, it's like just not much going on. Yeah. I know.
We are very unlikely and very valuable as a result. That is something to remember about humans. It could be that life is quite common, but life like us is quite rare. I don't know.
I was never hit with this as like a young interested in science kid, but it's really wild that it took almost a third of the life of the universe for life to go from existing to capable of making a hat, you know. Right. Or capable of understanding what a star is. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a long time for life to need to exist uninterrupted. Yeah.
And we are one of the only life forms in the history of the known universe that knows what a star is. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be interested to know if there are any, I mean, I think it seems like other animals can appreciate beauty in a way.
Yeah. No, I believe that they can look at the stars, but they can't know that the stars are on another part of the galaxy. Yeah. We're the only currently existing life from that that is capable of knowing that, I think.
Yeah. Maybe Neanderthals could have known that. But almost definitely. Yeah.
But they don't know it now because we know them. Or a problem. Maybe. Yeah.
There's been some. There's been some good debate about that one. Yeah. For sure.