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world. So check it out, Complexly.org slash Learnathon. You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Yours, I prefer to think of Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I've decided that I don't think mountaineering requires very much expertise at all, and I will die on that hill. You certainly will. You certainly will. You know how dad, our dad, has an innate sense of where he is in space?
So he'll just be like, I think we just need to walk west from here. We'll lose a trail because we grew up backpacking with our dad and we would lose a trail and he'd be like, it's just to the west. And I'd be like, which way is west? You don't have to pull out a compass or anything. He would just sense it. What's happening in there? Yeah. It's a reminder that everybody has a different brain, Hank, and that everybody's brain functions differently, even though the only brain that we can experience is our own. And so when we map, when we try to empathize with other people, we, of course, bring our own brain stuff to it. But everybody's brain is a little different. Yeah. Yeah. I had a moment where I was like, maybe I'm like that. And I wasn't.
No, I was with Catherine Oren and we were walking along this like old abandoned railroad line. And I was like, I know what's going on. The good thing about that, though, was we could just walk back on the old abandoned railroad line, which was not fun. But yeah, we weren't like stuck in the wilderness in California. Right. That's why I thought I knew where we were going. And I swear I was super wrong. Speaking of being stuck in the wilderness for the last 23 days, I've been on tour. Yeah. And I'm now home. I'm sure you feel super normal. I do not feel normal. I feel really weird. I feel both sleepy and energized. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I mean, I guess that's pretty normal, actually.
I don't feel great, to be perfectly honest with you, but we're going to nonetheless answer questions from our listeners because that is our job, mostly because I want to talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon. What really motivates me in this podcast, Hank, is the thought that at the end I get to talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon. Yeah, and then more people will care about AFC Wimbledon, and then AFC Wimbledon will be in the Premier League. That's how it works. I would say that's impossible, except...
AFC Wimbledon makes you dream. Let's answer this question from Maddie, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just finished Hollywood Ending and I loved it. Thank you. Thanks for reading it, Maddie. It means a lot to me. My question for you as a fiction writer is, does March 2020 loom as an obstacle if you set something in the past? Also, happy soon to be released date of Andy Warhol never gets old. Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot about that. I tried to make it Sarah's birthday, but it didn't line up with the calendar. So I had to make it a few days later. Pumpkins and Penguins, Maddie. Hank, no spoilers. The fake movie comes out soon. Yeah.
The fake movie comes out soon. And I mean, good luck to Kai and Juniper, because if it's as stressful as having a book about a fake movie come out, then I don't recommend the experience. So when does that book take place? 2019. So in the very first, this is not a spoiler, because on the very first page of the book, it says 2019 in big letters. Because I wanted to set the book in the past, partly because like new Hollywood is even more inscrutable to me than 2019 Hollywood. But partly because, you know, there was a sort of Hollywood that was ending then. The ability to make, you know, $15 million movies about the last year of Andy Warhol's life and release them theatrically was ending.
In fact, I had a producer friend read the book to give me notes, you know? And he said, everything's pretty good, man. Like, there's nothing that's super unrealistic about this, as far as I can tell, except for the idea of an Andy Warhol biopic making $25 million in its opening weekend. Yeah. But did COVID loom large? It did. Yeah. I mean, it looms large for two reasons. You knew it was about to happen to these people? One, it looms large because...
it loomed large in the movie industry. It was very disruptive. Also to an extent that I think sometimes we have, we underappreciate in our current world. It was and is very disruptive period. Like it shifted and has shifted and will continue to shift so much about the experience of being alive, about the relationship between humans and infectious disease, about the trust between human beings and experts and so on. Like it accelerated a lot of what the social internet was already doing, the emergence of COVID. And so it was very much on my mind because it.
didn't just change the movie industry and obviously like human life in general, it also changed the social internet I was writing about. And so I just wanted to put it back there in, in, in what is euphemistically known as the before times. Yeah. Somebody, um, I saw a video essay that was called the, I didn't watch it. Oh, Jesus Christ. I saw a title. I just, I just read a headline. I read a headline, but I didn't actually read a headline. I read a title of the video that was an hour and 30 minutes long. So that's what I, and the title was 2026 is the last normal year. And I was like, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. First of all, there's never been a normal year. It's such a good title. Because it's still on your mind. It's still making you want to click. But I want to make a video essay now called 2016 was the last normal year. No.
2016 was not the last normal year. I know, but there was something that changed around 2016. It was, for me, 2016, like it was starting in 2014 and it completed in 2016, the transition to being a media environment entirely dominated by the internet. And like our brains didn't realize that. We still thought that the mainstream media was in charge for another 10 years, but we were wrong.
Well, our brains realized it in the sense that I remember having conversations with you going back to 2013, 2014, where we were like, I don't know if there's about to be a recession or if there's about to be a social revolution, but something weird is happening. And we were conscious of the fact that something weird was happening because it was happening to the internet. We were sort of patient zero of the change because these highly personalized algorithms were starting to take over people's feeds and people were having less choice in what they watched and therefore what they thought. And I think we did see that coming. We didn't understand. We certainly didn't understand the scope of it, but we were glimpsing. I just remember being on the phone with you and being like, something is really weird now. Yeah.
I also remember, though, like we realized that because we being so online, it started to happen to us in our communities in 2012. I remember the first time that like there was discourse about how bad a year had been was 2012. Right. Everybody was talking about all the celebrities who died that year. And there was like a dumpster fire thing. Yes, there was a dumpster fire. And it's just like looking back.
It's like, well, that's adorable. My kingdom for the dumpster fire. Yeah, we've been through since. But then also what it really was about was we were starting to get exposed constantly to bad news through these systems. And also anything that could be framed as bad news was being framed as bad news by people who were trying to compete in the feeds. And the feeds were selecting that stuff over other things. And of course, local news and cable news have always done that. Yellow journalism did that. It's always been a thing. But that's when it kind of felt like it.
Like when I look back and I'm like, wow, I really thought 2012 was a terrible year. And it was like a very normal kind of average bad year that. And but then then like everybody else was along for the ride by 2016 and you could become president by being a blustering Twitter guy. Right. A professional provocateur and troll. Yeah. Yeah.
And here we are. And here we are. 2016 was the last normal year. It's just a good title. Okay. All right. That implies that like 1348 was a normal year. Right. Right. 1348 was the last normal year. No. 1347 was the last normal year. Right before half of all people in Afro-Eurasia died. I'll make 2016 and then you make 1347 and it'll be funny. Okay. Like, yeah. I mean, if you make that video, I am going to have to make a response video that says that's stupid.
And I'll start it out being like, John, I know that you're going to make a response video with this stupid butt. All right, we got an important question to get to, Hank. It's from Becca. She writes, Dear John and Hank, did you predict the comeback of cottage cheese way back in episode 215? I'll remind you, we're currently on episode 472, Hank. How do we decide if something has officially come back? Thanks, Becca. I know that cottage cheese is back big time, Hank, because the other day Sarah was eating a little bit of granola with cottage cheese. And I was like, what the hell is happening? Is it 1982? I was, the other day I was super hungry and there's like giant tub of cottage cheese in the fridge. And I just...
I just had cottage cheese for like lunch. You can hammer it. I'm not saying cottage cheese isn't great. I'm saying that two years ago or 10 years ago or 22 years ago, there wouldn't have been that tub in the fridge. Just so you know, those tubs don't just arrive in the fridge, Hank. Somebody buys them. You know, cottage cheese, it's just occurred to me. Yeah. Oh, God.
I was actually really good. The more I thought about it, the better it got. So anyway, I feel like we did it. I feel like we answered the question. Yeah, we landed the plane there. But the thing is, I have no idea what we did in episode 251. Did you look this up? No, episode 215, we were like, cottage cheese is going to come back. Okay. Well, we were right. Let's make some more predictions, Hank. You know what's on its way back, Hank? Three hole punches.
I was going to say real life experience. Yeah, yeah. But also three hole punches could be, that's part of real life experience coming back. You know, people are going to start printing out documents again. They're going to need to put them in binders. Print is the future. Yous have been saying print is the future for a while and it has not yet come to pass. It's really not the future. I was really hopeful there that I'd hit on something and print might be the future. Print is not the future. A couple of people have tried out print is the future and they have proven it's not. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to figure out how media works if media isn't the worst people you know are even worse than you thought.
Yeah, that is true. That is true. I'm worried for books, my guy. Oh, not me. I feel good. Okay. I did beat it number one on the New York Times bestseller. What are you talking about? The water in here is fine. It does get a little warmer every year. I am a tiny little frog and I cannot jump out of the water, but things are good. No, things are good in books. Somebody I know from our universe was like, I'm not sure about books. The Mr. Beast book doesn't seem to have sold very well.
Yeah, that's like saying I'm not sure about YouTube. Vlogbrothers isn't doing that great. I mean, I don't want to say anything in particular about the Mr. Beast book, having, of course, not read it. So I don't know. You know, I'm sure that it's got it's got a lot of action and intensity. But but I do have this sense that the Mr. Beast audience isn't like the prime book, the prime book audience. Yeah. In general, Hank, I think it's very important not to have opinions about things we haven't read. It's true. It's true. Maybe it's so good.
I mean, maybe it's like, you know, maybe it's going to win the Pulitzer and we're all going to be stunned. I mean, I guess you can put maybe in front of any sentence. You can. That's the magical thing about maybe. I love cottage cheese. I'm an old man folk wire from Those Darn Squirrels. Cottage cheese with a little black pepper. I'm a happy boy. This next question comes from Michael who asks, here, Hank and John. My friend is getting married in December and she told me that she was going to love her husband, quote, through thick and thin. Is thick the bad times or is thin the bad times? Oh, that's good. Yeah. I actually am not sure. I have a strong opinion, but now that I'm thinking about my strong opinion, I think it might be wrong.
Yeah. Well, sometimes you're going through a thick time and it's just a lot of work to get through it. It's like molasses. You know, you're pushing through that jello of life. It's like when you're walking through the streets of Orlando, Florida in summer and you're wearing a trench coat because that's part of your identity. It's thick out there. Thick out there. And then it's the thin times when you don't have enough food. So it's both. You're with your husband through the bad times and also the bad times.
Sometimes things are bad because they're thick. Sometimes things are bad because they're thin, but they're always bad. Welcome to life on the internet in 2026. Yeah, there's also, well, or it could be both good because now thick is good because that's a body shape people enjoy and thin is good because that's a body shape people enjoy. We now have a diversity of body shapes that we enjoy. Which I would argue is a huge measure of progress. Not as much progress as we should be making when it comes to not being judgmental about the size of the body someone's in, but still progress. At any rate, Hank, I think that it originally meant through thick as in...
Times of plenty. Yeah, plenty of stuff. And through thin, times of want. Yes. That said, I think Michael is asking a very important question. Yeah. Because thin times, as someone who grew up in Orlando in that thick soup of an atmosphere, are good times. Thick times suck. Yeah, I mean.
You know, you're getting bullied. It's humid. It sucks. I don't know. I can't. I'm trying to actually look this up and figure it out. You know how many people have written us about our hatred of Florida, but like they didn't grow up in Florida in the 1980s. So they need to take a seat. I mean, you try getting stuffed into a trash can in sixth grade. Did you actually get stuffed into trash cans? Yeah, man. It was terrible. Middle school sucked so badly. It was thick. It was thick times. So possibly Chaucer. Chaucer. First recorded use of the phrase can be found in Jeffrey Chaucer's famous.
Canterbury Tales. Yeah, I was going to say, if you're going to say something other than the Canterbury Tales, I was going to be duly surprised. And it is a hunting expression through thick and thin wood. Oh, so the thick is bad. The thick is bad. Wow. That's a mind blower. The thick is bad. Yeah. That is not what I would have thought. You want to be hunting through those thin woods. It's probably switched back and forth a bunch of times over the years. People are like, yeah, obviously. Right. The thick is bad. And obviously the thin is bad. Oh, wow.
That's good stuff, Hank. Thicket and Thin Wood. Thicket and Thin Wood sounds awesome. That is a great mouthfeel. It's a good band name, actually. Yeah, Thicket and Thin Wood. Good title for a book. Yeah, it's a pretty good title for a book. But you insist that books are over, which is bad news for me because I don't actually have another job. I think...
that books will be reborn. Oh, okay. Yeah. So books rise like a phoenix from the flames. They have to die so they can be resurrected. Yeah. I definitely don't feel like the book, the book length story is going anywhere. I just think, um, I, I, I strongly disagree with you about the physical object. No, I agree about the physical object. I just think that the, the, the systems that surround the physical object are, are troubling me.
Well, they're a little rickety for sure. A lot of books did not go out to the places they were supposed to go out. Not actually my book primarily, but a lot of other books that came out in the last couple of weeks have not gotten to the bookstores they were supposed to get to, which is an example of rickety-ness for sure. All right, we've got another question. This one's from Vicky who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just read an article with the line, El Nino may cause sea levels along the California coast to rise up a foot in September and October, but wouldn't that mean sea levels rise up everywhere? Are there different sea levels in different areas? I mean, I guess I know tides would increase or decrease sea levels slightly, but doesn't El Nino have to deal with currents? Why would that impact the sea levels only in particular areas? Thanks, Vicky.
So the ocean is so big that if you raise sea levels in one place, it does not necessarily raise sea levels in another place. There's more than one reason for this. So there's one obvious one, and it'll make a total intuitive sense, which if the wind is blowing in a direction, it will push a mass of water. Or if a wind is usually blowing in one direction and it stops blowing in that direction, then everybody sort of expects the sea level to be influenced by the wind that is always there. And if that wind gets weaker or goes away, then the...
ocean will sort of move back toward that area and sea levels will rise in that spot so but then there's the other stuff where like if a bunch of rain falls in an area the water will stay higher in that area for a while and also if the water gets hot it will expand and it will raise rise in that area which is also a big effect during el nino is that the water is hotter on the west coast so warmer water takes up warmer water takes up more space which raises sea levels on its own yeah wow not a ton but like there's a lot of warmth and a lot of water so yeah it can So that's what's going on there. You know, Hank, I used to like visit a beach when we were kids. And I would think to myself, this is what I was made for. I was made to be on the seashore. You know, like I'm comfortable swimming in the ocean. There's lots of food sources. Folks, that's why he moved to Indianapolis. Well, I'm going to get there. I would think this is a good spot to be a hunter-gatherer, you know. But no, Hank, we did not evolve for the beach. We did not evolve for the coasts. We evolved for hardwood forests. And so I moved to Indiana.
specifically a region of Indiana that for the last 12,000 years has been a hardwood forest. And I feel much more at home. Are there softwood forests? Yeah, totally. Is that just a different kind of tree? I don't know. I think I'm making it up. I just, all I know is that I was told that this is a hardwood forest and has been for the last 12,000 years. So the little nook of Indianapolis where I live has been an uninterrupted forest since the last glacier receded. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Have I ever told you about the Indiana State Museum? My favorite thing about the Indiana State Museum? You've been there and you've found your favorite thing.
Yeah, I go there all the time. My favorite thing about the Indiana State Museum is it tells the history of Indiana from the beginning of time. And because there are no fossil records from like 40 million years ago until 12,000 years ago, it just has a little room where it's like, we don't know what happened. It's good. You got to let the unknown remain with us. Yeah, it's like this used to be underwater. It used to do all this other stuff. There used to be ginkgo trees here 200 million years ago. And then the glaciers arrived and we have no idea what happened.
for millions and millions of years. It's hard to know what's going on. Yeah. The thing, I was recently trying to figure out the evolutionary history of fruit bats. Sure, of course, as one does. And that's a big question mark in the world, whereas we know a lot about the non-fruit bats. And I was like, why do we know so much about the history of the non-fruit bats? Where they're just like, not a lot of fruit bats? And maybe. But one thing that's for sure, fruit bats die in places that don't fossilize well. They die in like active rainforest-y type environments where stuff gets turned into more stuff really quickly. Whereas regular bats oftentimes die in like river beds or...
Lake beds where they are much more likely to fossilize. Right. Yeah, it's like how we know very little about the art that humans made before 10,000 years ago, except for the stuff they happen to make in caves. Yeah, because it sticks around. Yeah. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the Lost Fruit Bats of Earth. The Lost Fruit Bats of Earth, never to be heard from again. You can't hear them, Hank. This podcast is also brought to you by Cottage Cheese, of course. Cottage Cheese, which we remain staunch advocates for. And today's podcast is brought to you by The Thicket and Thin Wood. Who knew? And this podcast is brought to you by number one New York Times bestselling book, Hollywood Ending. No spoilers.
The commitment to no spoilers has been wild, John. Oh, I know. It's almost like... too committed. Like people aren't sharing anything about the book because they know that I don't want spoilers. They're just like, I liked it. I liked it a lot. And I'm like, I actually want more than that. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Quince. The things that you want in your closet are the things that when you open your closet, you think this is going to look good and be easy. And it's going to take care of itself. And I'm not really going to have to worry about what pants or shoes I'm going to wear with this. It's just going to look good. I'm going to look put together. And Quince specializes in finding that kind of thing to sell on their website. They focus on high quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold, Italian leather, all timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays.
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Okay, we have a question from Isabel. It's about a Hollywood ending. Dear John and Hank, I reach my right thumb to my left wrist describes taking a pulse in chapter nine of Hollywood ending. So that's a little bit of a spoiler, but not much of one. As an EMT, I am here to inform you that the thumb has its own pulse and for that reason cannot be used to get an adequate reading. Isabel, I know this, okay? But I still take my pulse with my thumb and it works okay. You know what I mean? Like it works okay if you're healthy and your pulse is full-throated. Like I'm doing it right now and I can get my basic pulse. Like I'm in a- You know that there's a pulse there.
Yeah, I know what Isabel means, but especially if you're taking someone else's pulse, you can't do it. But also it complicates things because your thumb has a pulse. I understand. I would apologize, but I don't think I can because that's how I take my pulse. It's good enough for you. That's how Kai takes his pulse. And also it's absolutely possible for a person to slam their boob in a door. Yes. While we're defending.
I know it's possible because if you search Twitter for slamming my boob in the door, there are many people reporting having slammed their boob in doors. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Also, I knew when I was writing The Fault in Our Stars that the number of numbers between one and two is identical to the number of numbers between one and three. I was just having Hazel not know that. And that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do for the author to know something that a 16-year-old doesn't. Okay. However, John did not know that tuberculosis bacteria do not move under the microscope. That's true. That was an actual mistake. When I said that...
What's-His-Face saw tuberculosis squiggling under a microscope. That was an error, and that's an example of an error, as opposed to these other things that we don't have to apologize for to get to Isabel's question. I know for nonfiction books, like Everything is Tuberculosis, there are fact checkers. Apparently, I mean, no disrespect to my fact checker. That's a tough one to get right. That's a tough one to get right, yeah. But what about for fiction? Is there an opt-in system, or do publishers not allow for the cost of fact checkers? Obviously, there's a spectrum of meaningful accuracy in fiction from historical fiction to fantasy, but who decides? I love the book. So excited to keep reading when I finish typing this. Current pulse of 68, Isabel. So there are no fact checkers for novels, except for the editor.
who can fact check unless you hire a fact checker. And that was true for everything is tuberculosis too. Like the publisher wasn't going to pay to fact check that book. I hired a fact checker because I wanted to get the facts right. And by the way, thank God I did because Will caught a lot of errors.
But I don't know of an example of publishers paying for fact-checking for fiction. I don't know if you do, Hank, but I don't. That said, it occurs to me I could have just made it, and I can't remember if it's Juniper or Kai. So whoever it is, I was obviously channeling my own experience when I was doing that. But I could have done it better, right? I could have had it be her finger instead of her thumb, and that would have made it better. The way that publishing works, of course, is completely inscrutable to most people. You get an editor, and you get...
a cover designer and a book designer, but you do not get a sensitivity read. You do not get a fact check. If you're writing a book about like a life on a... cruise ship, you don't get anybody to like the publisher is going to pay you to do interviews with people on cruise ships. Now you can go on a cruise ship and write that off on your taxes. Maybe if you're doing a cruise ship thriller, uh, but you can't, you're not going to get paid. Uh, this is all the author's responsibility to do if they would like to do it. It's just like, what makes the better book? And you have this idea in your head a little bit that like, because it's going in a book, somebody must be in charge of whether the things are right. But let me tell you, there's a lot of things in books that aren't right. That aren't right. They'll put anything in there.
Anything that sells. They're not that, I mean, they do have editorial standards. I want to be clear about that. Well, I mean, yeah, when I say they, I mean like humans, like we'll put anything in there. I've got, I have read some, you know, for research when I'm researching misinformation. I've read some books that are just misinformation, the whole book. For sure. For sure. Yeah, I have two. There's one called Turtles All the Way Down, actually. That's a anti-vaccine book that is just misinformation all the way down. I will say, Hank, I don't think that our experience is universal. And like, I think sometimes publishers do pay for certain things. I think in fact, my publisher paid for some sensitivity reads over the years. So I think it depends on your deal.
I definitely, and my editor did a tremendous amount of fact-checking for everything is tuberculosis and the Anthropocene Reviewed, and so did the copy editor. But ultimately, I also felt that there needed to be a level of just reading for a fact-check. Yeah, but the editor's job isn't fact-checking. You know, a fact-checking is a very specific job. On a nonfiction book, the editor's job is partly making sure that the information is accurate. But, you know, like, whether or not tuberculosis is motile probably does not factor into that read. All right, let's answer this question from Emily, who writes, or Emily.
Yeah, same pronunciation. All right, let's answer this question from Emily who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are so many boys so bad at gossip? If my husband finds out about something interesting, he asks zero follow-up questions. For example, yesterday his brother said he was prepping for a job interview and my husband said good luck and didn't ask any details about the job or why his brother wanted to leave his current company. It drives me crazy. DFTBA, Emily. Is there a thing where we don't care? I don't know that we don't care. I probably would have asked to follow up in that situation like, why are you thinking about leaving your job? I feel like I've had to train myself a little bit to be like, this is my friend. This is his family. These are the things that I know have been going on over the last six months. This is like, and...
Because I don't know, like, I don't want to be the guy who just like sits there and talks. I am legitimately curious. I want to know about their life. And there's almost a sense of like, if you're not volunteering it. Yeah, if you're not volunteering it, maybe you don't want to talk about it. Yeah. I do think that's why I don't ask sometimes is because I feel like if they wanted to talk about it, they would talk about it. But there's something else at work too, which is that...
Like just to pull back the curtain a little, Emily, Hank and I talk probably for like three hours a week on average. And I would say 45 seconds of that time is spent talking about something other than work. Yeah, maybe. No, it's more related to work, related to work. Yeah. We're not usually talking about our families. Sure. Like we do if there's a problem, you know, like obviously, but like if things are good, we don't like gossip. In fact, you recently, you recently posted on threads. You were like, one of my best friends is really going through it. And I thought to myself, I should ask Hank about that, but I haven't.
Yeah. I hope they're doing all right, though. Yeah. Who knows which one that is? Three different people came to mind that I could have meant. I hear you. It could have been you, John. It could have been me. It could have been me. You've been really going through it. A little bit. A little bit.
Yeah, sorry we're not better at asking questions, Emily, but you just, you got to call your brother-in-law and say like, what's the deal? What's the deal, bud? This next question comes from CR who asks, dear Hank and John, my dad recently started chemo and amongst all the things, I have a fear that he will lose his mustache. My dad has had a mustache for my entire life and well before. I have never even seen a picture of my dad sans stache. My brain cannot begin to process what he will look like without it. So I'm here for dubious advice. Should I buy him a pack of fake mustaches? Convince him to die at a wild color before it goes away? Any and all ideas are welcome to help me process this. We were recently in Pilates class. So we've been in the same Pilates building, Catherine and I, for...
ages, you know, 10 years. And one of the Pilates machines wasn't there because it was getting reupholstered or something. And Catherine said, I don't like that. It's like seeing your dad without a mustache. And I was like, holy crap, baby, that kicks ass. Oh my God. It's a great line. It's a great line. And I'm sorry that you're going through this here. That sucks. I think though that the pack of fake mustaches is going to be the way.
Yeah, I will also say that it might not go away. So like, oh, yeah, like it depends on the chemo regimen and it also depends on the person. Some people, facial hair can be different from head hair. You never really know what's going to happen. You roll in a bunch of dice on your whole face when you do chemo. But.
Fake mustache as a stand-in, absolutely. Yeah, and I think you got to go full Burt Reynolds on it, like a really thick fake mustache. They got the good stuff on, it's Spirit Halloween time right now. I don't know if you got time to get into Spirit, but they're going to have all of them. Yeah, yeah, it's a great shouting. In fact, the time you really want to go to Spirit Halloween is like November 2nd. Right, as it's closing down. And you got to be like, what do you want a mustache for? And you're going to be like, my dad has cancer.
Yeah, and they'll be like, just take it. Just take it. I got a whole bag of free mustaches for you. A mustache bag is all for you. All right, Hank. Sierra, we wish you and your dad well. It is time for the all-important news from ours in AFC Wimbledon. Woo-woo! AFC Wimbledon have lost their last two games by a combined 8-0, which is actually, I would say, based on the performances, a flattering scoreline. Wow. We have been dreadful. Dreadful. Wow, you guys are doing so good. We are now in 16th place and looking real bad. Wow. But there is something even more important than the news on the pitch from AFC Wimbledon.
which is, as we're recording this, in about 12 minutes, there is going to be an announcement about who the mysterious investor group is that has said that they would like to come in and purchase 35% of AFC Wimbledon stock. So 51% of AFC Wimbledon has to be owned by the fans, by the Dons Trust. But there is now about 35%, I think, of stock available. And there is someone who wants to come in, buy this stock. and try to invest in the club in such a way that it would lead to the club doing better? This is a big, big question. I mean, probably the biggest question, aside from whether we were going to invest in a new stadium, the biggest question in AFC Wimbledon's history since the loss of the club back in 2001. And I have no idea who they are. No idea. That's terrifying. Mysterious investors, you got like a 90% chance you're not going to love them.
I did ask, I was like, are they the weapons manufacturing business? They were like, no. And I was like, well, that's good. Good first step. That rules out a few people I'd rather not need to work with. Yeah. Do they currently own Paramount Studios? How many satellites do they have? Just real quick. Back of napkin math. What's their satellite situation? Yeah, all that stuff. So we'll see what the announcement is. You can Google it now. I can't Google it yet, but you can as you're listening to this.
And, you know, AFC Wimbledon only has one chance at this because we can only sell this 35% of our club once. Yeah. And so we got to get it right. We got to get it right. If now's the time, now's the time. But if now's not the time, we've got to be patient. Yeah. What's the news from Mars? Is 35% of Mars up for sale? Probably. I mean, there's actually a really weird story there that I couldn't give you the details of, but there's a guy who decided that he could sell all of the planets and he is selling them all, which is fun. No. I don't think it's actually going to work out that way, but it's weird anyway. But in Mars news.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which is Japan's NASA, they have launched the Martian moons exploration probe. It's called like the MMX is what they call it. And the spacecraft is going to reach Mars next August. It's going to orbit Phobos. It's going to get some data and then it's going to land on Phobos, which is one of Mars' moons. And it's going to collect samples of Phobos. And if all goes to plan, some of that sample will come back to Earth, which is exciting and fun. But like, it's so frustrating to me that we can't get a piece of Mars.
It's so much easier to get pieces of Phobos than Mars because- Because there's less atmosphere? Less gravity is the- Right, gravity. You don't have to carry the fuel. I keep hearing about that. I keep hearing about that stuff. It's a real weight, that gravity. You don't feel it, but man, it's heavy. It's heavy stuff. It'd be so much easier. I feel it a little bit as I get older. Yeah, oh yeah. It'd be, you know, sometimes I think about how like if the Earth were twice as big, there's like no way we'd ever get a rocket off of it. Right. But if the Earth were twice as small, we'd be all over the place by now. Right, yeah. Because it would be way easier to get all around. I bet there would be downsides.
This is like the Hink Green theory that all human beings should be about between two and three feet tall. Three and four, but yeah. Listen, I'm not a scientist, but I think one of the scientists who listens to this show can point out why it's not a great idea to make Earth half its current size. Yeah, no, I think that things would have gone very differently for sure. Also, maybe we wouldn't have held onto our atmosphere, which would be a real bummer.
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of our atmosphere. It's probably my favorite atmosphere, even though it does make it nice and humid in Orlando in the summer. I still think it's my favorite atmosphere. Honestly, one of my favorite things. Yeah, top 10 thing. Plants, life, consciousness, language, a little boogie in your soul. Little move to the left and to the right. Yeah, put a foot in, put a foot out, turn yourself around, all that jazz. I think the atmosphere, plants, consciousness, and transforming the raw materials of earth into things that are useful and or beautiful.
Yeah. Or my top four. And a little boogie. And a little boogie. And a little boogie. There you got your top five. Yeah. Great. Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks, everybody, for listening. You can email us your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Michael Polk. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna-Metish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals, Rojas, and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Bradley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trucker Party. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gunnarolla. As they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.