53: The Worst Episode Ever

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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. Hello and welcome to Dear Haggad John. I said can we do a cold open?

It's a cold open. With no theme music. We're just doing a cold open. So I feel like on especially important Dear Haggad John episodes when we have especially important news we should start with a cold open instead of starting with the music.

I didn't realize there was especially important news. Oh yeah. Hello. This is Hank and John Green.

No, no. We're already in the cold open, Hank. Okay. What's the especially important news?

Why are you looking at your phone? I'm at VidCon. I'm organizing things. The especially important news, well there's two pieces of especially important news that we have to get to before I think we start the podcast.

Okay. The first is that in the last episode of Dear Haggad John, I slightly undercut my argument that I am acquainted with the Pope by misnaming the Pope. Yes, you did call him Benedict. In fact his name is Francis.

I want to apologize to my friend the Pope for using the wrong name. The second and most important news, Hank, is that in our last episode you and I made a bet about whether humans will get to Mars by 2027. Okay. And I said that I was going to start Twitter.

Yeah. Leon Musk. Yeah, for Earth. Leon Musk for Earth.

Number four. Leon Musk for Earth. And that Twitter, which you said I was not serious about. I didn't say what I was serious about.

I said you weren't going to follow through and I do not call this a week later following through. First off Leon Musk for Earth. Number four. Leon Musk at Leon Musk.

Number four. Earth has 1265 Twitter followers. Hank, do you know how many accounts he follows? One.

One. You know what that account is? NASA Earth. NASA Earth.

NASA's greatest work. NASA does do a lot of important earth science. I would argue it's actually the only important science they do. I am so committed, Hank.

Why is this before the intro? Because on big, big days we need to do cold opens. Leon Musk for Earth is the biggest development in vlogbrothers since arguably 2007. All right.

Should we enter the podcast now? All right. Let's launch the theme music. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Now I prefer to think of Dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast for me and my brother John. Give you dubious advice, answer your questions, bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. And we are together right now in Anaheim, California.

Yep. We're here for VidCon. VidCon. It's happening.

We get to have one of those lovely Hank and John are in the same place podcasts which are some of my favorites. Are we recording? We are. I was just looking at the thing to make sure.

Leon Musk asks question time. What's your favorite thing about Earth? For me, it's how much better it is that supporting life than Mars. How are you doing, John?

I'm doing great. Hank, I've never been so committed to a project as I am committed to the Leon Musk for Earth project. You know, Leon Musk has even invented a hashtag to support his cause. Hashtag Yes Earth.

Hashtag Earth Life. That's his other one that he really likes to use. And then of course, hashtag not till 2028. I'm going to win this bet.

There will be no humans on Mars till 2028 at the very earliest thanks to the hard work on Twitter of noted Earth activist Leon Musk. And all of the 1200 something people following Leon. I mean, it's going to be more by the time this is uploaded. In fact, Hank, just while we've been having this conversation, Leon Musk for Earth got a new follower.

Oh, I'm very excited for him. Don't worry. I'm going to name them. Kira Carey.

I just want to say thank you. Thanks for standing for Earth. Hashtag. Hashtag Yes Earth.

All right. Hashtag No Earth Yes Mars. No. No, why both?

We've got a great planet. I can't wait to win this bet. We still haven't decided what the terms are going to be. Lots of people had great suggestions, but keep sending in your suggestions for what you would like the terms of my bet with Hank to be over whether or not A, AFC Wimbledon will make it to the Premier League by 2027 and B, whether or not humans will make it to Mars by 2027.

So we've got a suggestion from Jess who says, if there are no humans on Mars in 10 years, the podcast shall be renamed Dear John and Hank. Oh, that's a fantastic idea. That is a fantastic idea. That's it.

We found it. So we are just 11 short years away from my dream coming true in this podcast being called Dear John and Hank. The nature of the universe shall change. I mean, that's the best possible victory.

All right, John. Do you want to do some questions or do you have a short poem for us? No, let's just go. You know, I could just read one short poem, Hank.

Okay. Well, that's usually how you do it. Do you mind? Yeah, don't do two.

I won't do two. I'm just going to do one short poem for the day. It's a prose poem. It's a Bileon Musk.

It's Bileon Musk. It writes, it's a poem by Leon Musk. It's on his Twitter at Leon Musk number four Earth. People often ask me, Leon Musk, should we send humans to Mars?

And I always tell them, yes, in 2028 and not a day sooner. It's a great, beautiful poem. You're welcome for the short poem. I've already had born fun on this podcast and I usually have all week long.

Hey, let's answer some questions from our listeners. All right, this one is from Nottano and Noah in Israel. Nottano asks, my wife keeps asking me to ask you guys the question in the subject line, which is, why does the urge to be increased as I get closer to my apartment? And even more so, right at the door.

Is there a reason for this thing? Is there a sign to this? I have to do. I have to do.

We're like the closer you get to the bathroom, the more you have to pee. In fact, the most recent time I peed my pants was precisely because of this phenomenon. Yeah. I didn't pee my pants, but I did pee in a non-ideal location because I realized that I was either going to pee in my pants or I was going to pee in the non-ideal location while not getting pee in my pants.

Yeah. When I was on the set of the Paper Towns movie and we had apartments, all of us had apartments in the same apartment building and I had the really intense urge to pee as I got closer to the apartment. It got more intense. It got more intense.

It got more intense. And then I realized I didn't have a key. So you just peed on your apartment? No, so I just ran outside and I peed.

I can't tell the story. You didn't get it. No, it's too late. I'm checking off.

I'm back away. I'm walking away from the story. The short answer is that we don't know. No, I do know.

Oh Hank doesn't know. Oh Hank doesn't know. Along your urethra. Oh, have a series of 86 sphincters.

Wow. And I'm making this up. You had me sold. I was like I had no idea that I had 86 urethral sphincters.

That's one of the most dubious advice we've ever offered. You do. There are some, so I think, I think, I haven't looked this up, but there are some that are controlled by your sympathetic nervous system. They're like, like, just like your body doing body things and there are some that are controlled by your mind.

And when your body says it's time to pee, you only have one mind controllable do not pee system thing that actually you control. And if your body lets go of all of them, it can be very difficult to keep that one. I think it can even relax, intentionally relax the last one without your permission. And that is as much as I know.

But I mean, that seems very dubious. I'm just going to tell you the truth. I think, you know, your body is just like, oh, it's the time. We're here.

We'll go. It's time. But yeah, I do. I, this is absolutely a thing.

All of us agree. Yep, it's definitely a thing. Let's move on to another question, though. Hank, this question is hugely important and difficult and complicated.

It comes from Anthony who writes, dear John and Hank, should I delete the sent from my iPhone in emails I send from my iPhone? What? You know how at the bottom of, when you send an email from your iPhone it says sent from my iPhone? Yeah.

Should you have that signature in an email sent from your mobile device, or should you have no mobile device signifier at all? Here's what you should do. So I have some friends who do a thing, which is they will leave a message like, excuse any any type was I wrote this on my phone. I don't like sent from my iPhone, because it seems a little bit like, I'm so special I have an iPhone.

It's like I don't want a brand integration in my email. Right, agreed. I should be getting paid for that. I don't have anything though, I just cut it off completely.

You know what I have? John. That way I don't have to write my name at the end of the email. 100% of the time, it just says John.

So Andy has an idea, how about I put in my email signature sent from my iPhone? That would be super busy. And so important that I wrote this five page email on my iPhone. That's a good idea, but, Andy, if I can make one recommendation, it would be to change your iPhone email signature to just say John.

Because I think that's the statement you want to make, is that this was sent from John. Hank, I have another question. OK. This one comes from Grace, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a high school senior, and it is now the time of year when everyone is asking for signatures in their yearbooks to remember you by.

This question might be a little bit dated, but don't worry, we're still going to answer it. However, I don't know half of these people. Currently, I'm drawing random internet memes, and the yearbooks of people I don't know to avoid writing the cliche responses like never change or have a great summer. What do you write in the yearbooks of people you hardly know?

I think writing never changed, by the way, is a huge mistake. Yeah, because you should definitely use change. If I could say one thing to my 16-year-old self, it would be change. Just one word, change.

Maybe that's what you should write, Grace, in big capital letters. Be different from the way you were. I didn't like it that much. I didn't know you, but I bet you need to change.

Yeah. Grow up. No, just grow. Not grow up.

Just grow. Why are you writing in the Strangers books anyway? Hank, do you not remember high school? This was a huge part of high school experience that you have to sign yearbooks for people with whom you are not terribly well acquainted.

Yeah, not terribly well acquainted. This is something we actually have experience in, because on a pretty regular basis, we sign items for people whom we don't know about. And so we have a strategy for doing this. And I think it's actually quite a good strategy.

I don't know what your strategy is. Mine is that I write best wishes, exclamation point, and I sign my name. I have a couple. Yeah.

So it helps if you can come up with something cute that you can draw quickly. Right, like a hankler fish. Like a hankler fish. But it's good to have that in general.

Then you can draw something. And then that's nice. You made them a thing. And then sometimes I'll write, just keep swimming, because it's a fish.

Next to the fish. That's good. Or I will write DFTBA. It is a winner for me, because it's five characters long.

So you can get it done pretty quickly. And don't forget to be awesome, is reasonably good advice to more or less everyone. Yeah. Yep.

So Grace, we're going to say, either draw a fish and say, just keep swimming. No, it's mine. Don't do that. That's also good advice to be fair.

Get a draw giraffe and say, reach for the highest apple. Don't think giraffe's eat apples. Well, yeah, they're still cute. Except you don't eat this advice.

Yeah. Fish don't swim. This is the worst episode of your Hank and John ever. This is the one that we've got, context.

Fish don't Swim. This is the one that we've made entirely for ourselves and 0% for our listeners. We're clearly like punch drunk on VidCon anxiety. And we need to move on to another question.

But Grace, congratulations on finishing another year of school. Good job. If it sounds like we're getting a lot of text messages, it's because we are. All right.

This one's from Iris, who asks, dear Hank and John. I have a lot of red curly hair. And people always tell me how beautiful it is, which is flattering. However, total strangers also seem to think it's OK to touch my hair without asking permission.

I find this uncomfortable. And it makes me anxious. But I never know what to say. So my question is, what's the polite way to tell someone that you don't want them to touch you?

I have a version of this. I don't have beautiful curly red hair. But I have a version of this, which is that people often ask to touch my puff when I meet them. Because you've got a puffy hair.

Even when I was at a bar last night, someone just touched it without asking or anything. And it also makes me anxious. I think anytime a stranger is punching you without your permission, it's a little bit of an imposition. Yeah.

I don't know if it can't be done with a facial expression. Maybe not to everybody. But to some people, I think there are certain facial expressions that will tell them that, in fact, the thing you have done is incorrect. Yeah.

And then maybe they won't do it in the future. But it doesn't help you for, like, you've maybe taught them an important lesson. But you haven't solved your problem, which is that you don't like your red hair being touched by strangers who haven't asked for permission. So first off, let's just establish, as a rule, the same way we have the armrest rule, that deer-hand-conjean listeners, or deer-hand-hand-hand-listeners is like, for the thing of them, do not touch strangers without asking for permission.

Let's just not do it. OK. I mean, you're in a subway and you jostle against one or two. If you're at a mosh pit at a conference, you're on a concert.

That's what I meant. Or if you're at a mosh pit, if you go to a really great dentistry conference, and they have one of those great dentists mosh pits. Those are the best. Those are the best.

Those people know how to party. Oh, man. They've got a laughing gas. And also, they can just fix their teeth if they get knocked out.

That's true. Very easy to have to worry. Yeah. This is the worst episode.

It's real bad. I know it. We should have this mosh pit. I know what we're going to call it.

The worst episode ever. No, I thought we were going to call it the worst episode ever. Oh, that's better. That's better.

That's good. You're clever. You're a clever chap. In summary, unless you're in a mosh pit, don't touch strangers, especially if they have curly red hair, because they've probably been treated as weird objects of fetishization and objectification for their entire lives.

And it's unpleasant for them. OK. Sorry that happened to you, Rebecca. I've got another question.

John. I can't wait. It's from Kylie, who asks Dear Hank and John. I know that dust is particles of air dirt.

Yep. Go back clean my house pretty often. And yet it always gets all over my things. What is dust anyways?

And how can I keep potentially harmful substance? And how can I keep this potentially harmful substance from collecting so often and invading my nostrils? Any dubious advices greatly appreciated? First off, my understanding is that dust is made out of like human leftovers.

A great deal of it is indeed a little bits of skin. Oh, god. Hank, I recently recadled. Some of its other stuff, does that make you feel any better?

Not really. I recently recadled my home library, which was an extraordinarily fulfilling experience, as I'm sure you can imagine. And in the process, I dusted each of my books individually and then dusted all the shelves and everything. And it is astonishing how much dust collects on items.

Yes. It's also like we shouldn't have items. It's also like we shouldn't have horizontal surfaces in our homes. We're trying to not have any horizontal surfaces to get some live in an elevator shaft.

Well, you need a floor. Yeah, I need a floor. Yeah, it's true. It's a good point, Hank.

Clearly. Live in a bottomless bit. I'm not an architect. I'm not an architect.

I'm not an architect. I mean, it doesn't work. Here's your new home. Good news, bad news.

Good news, not a dust problem. Bad news, it is an eternally falling pit. So this is a bit of eventually, I think, it used to it. But cellphone surface is going to be a problem.

How long could you fall? If there were a theoretical hole through the entire Earth, how long could you fall? I know you would die because you would get very warm. Well, if you would, you would, in an air condition fall.

I'd go fall forever in a way. Because you would fall. Yeah. And then you would reach the other side, and you would fall back, and sort of yo-yo back and forth.

So it is, I mean, eventually you would settle in the middle of the gravitational center of the Earth. Yeah. And then you would just sit there. And so you would have and no dust.

There would be dust. It would just like they have dust on the space station, and they have to control for it, but it doesn't settle the same way. It just gets into everything. Oh, great.

All right, so. Problem not solved. Cutting a hole through the Earth is not going to work as a solution to our dust problem. OK.

Yeah, having a smaller home space does help, because it's easy to keep clean. And also, what I will say about dusting is that a great deal of dusting is just pulling the dust back into the air, where it will once again fall. Correct. So doing things that actually absorb the dust and then washing that thing is much better than just fluffing the dust off so that it can once again land upon all of your things.

That's my home maintenance tip from Hank Green, home maintenance expert. I mean, that's just extraordinarily dubious advice. Hey, we're recording Dear Hank and John. Hey, MidCon.

It's not hey, John. Oh, are you Snapchatting? Yes. All right, Hank, let's move on to a slightly more serious question.

Although dust is a very serious problem. I don't want to minimize it. This question comes from Lauren who asks, Dear John and Hank, every once in a while, I have this feeling creep inexplicably up on me. And the only way I can describe it is homesickness.

It's a bit of a tight feeling in the chest and stomach that's part nostalgia and part anxiety. The thing is I'm 36, and I'm actually not homesick, nor would going to my own home or my parents' home make the feeling go away. Do you ever have this sort of feeling? And if so, what the heck?

I do have this feeling. And reading this question felt like someone was seeing very specifically inside of me, which is not a feeling I have that often, that somebody was feeling something that feels to me quite private. And so I was fascinated by the question, do you have this feeling, Hank? Is it a kind of nostalgia?

Is that what we're talking about? It's not quite nostalgia. I actually usually describe it as dread or longing, or like a place between dread and longing. But it is a very specific feeling in my chest and stomach where I feel a distance from something that I want to feel close to, but I don't quite know what the thing is.

It's a very, I used to when I was a kid, I had it when I was a kid too, and when I was a kid I would call it the night feeling, because I had it mostly at night, which was when I sort of like my anxieties would be allowed to like run wild. You don't have this feeling. Don't think so. I think that's good news for you.

Although it's not a holy bad feeling. The other time I get it, maybe this will help you, is when I'm driving alone on a highway at night, and I feel a sort of mix of poignancy and yearning, but I don't quite know for what. Is this at all helpful? Nope.

Hanks doesn't have feelings like the rest of us have feelings. All right, don't have to. I'm sorry. Lauren Hank, obviously, not qualified to answer this question, but then again, that doesn't usually stop him.

Oh, I will say, what do we have 86 urethral sphincters? I will say you are not alone in this feeling. I know you're not alone, because I also have it. And I think maybe it's part of being a person that you yearn for something that you don't quite know what it is.

And I think just being OK with that makes the feeling less scary, at least for me. So that is my dubious advice. And now we will move on to a question that Hank feels that he can't answer because it's not about feelings. All right.

This one's from Gerardo, who asks, Dear Hank and John. I work as a lifeguard every summer. And over the course of this past year, I gained some weight, which had the unexpected consequence that there is a spot on my back. I cannot reach to apply sunscreen.

I don't want to ask the other guard because it's embarrassing. But I would also not like to get skin cancer on that one spot in my back. Any of you advise us to how to cover your entire back of sunscreen as a larger slash less flexible person? Yes.

You got this one? Oh, yeah. Well, this is a problem that I have. I also have a spot in my back that I can't reach.

And I use the spray on sunscreen, which I think is A, fantastic. It's underappreciated as a product. And B, it's extremely effective. You can spray it at least 10 inches away from the spot.

So if you can get within 10 inches of the spot, you can get you with the spray on sunscreen. So that's what I would say. I just put some sunscreen on the wall and then I just rub up against it. No.

I do like the spray on sunscreen. I have a problem with it. What is it? That they put something in it that makes it taste bad.

And I'm not saying I'm spraying it in my mouth. I was going to say it seems like a pretty easy problem to avoid. The thing, it also doesn't recommend that you eat sunscreen. Problem is it tastes, it smells like delicious coconut, but it tastes awful.

Let me ask you this, Hank. How does regular sunscreen taste? Does it delicious? Do you like that?

I think that they put some kind of bitter in it so that people don't huff it. They put it really serious. I think that they put something in it and makes it. And every time I use it, there's this very strong bitter taste in my mouth if I breathe it all while I'm happening.

Well, again, I don't want to underscore this, Hank, but you shouldn't huff the sunscreen. That's the problem. I hope you put it in the mind of the future. But yeah, this spray on stuff, you don't have to, because it's a little more expensive.

You don't have to use it on your whole body. Just use it on that one spot and then use the cheap sunscreen for the rest of your body. That is exactly what I do, by the way, because I think the spray on sunscreen is a bit of a scam because it feels like it's a lot of sunscreen, but it's really not. It's just like a highly pressurized can.

All right, I'm glad that we're on the same page about sunscreen, even if we aren't on the same page about the yearning feeling that one sometimes gets unless one is Hank. All right, we've got another question from Lauren who asks, dear Hank and John, help. Do you know how to kick my head from cord from getting tangled? No, no, no, no, no, no.

And I try my best and I have a system. I wrap it up around my hand and then I wrap it around the wrap and I put it in my pocket. And then I take it out of my pocket and it's made of knots. So Hank, this is actually a subject of a pretty intensely studied subject in mathematics because it's a weird pattern and there is this thing called spontaneous knotting of an agitated string.

Like over time an agitated headphone cord or other string will tie itself into like incredibly complicated knots. And the short answer is that there is some awareness that this happens, but we don't really know why. At least like the math, the like my understanding, and I mean, I am definitely not a mathematician, is that this is still like a fertile ground of research rather than a settled question. Right, I understand the specifics of it is actually important for biology because understanding how DNA, which is a very long string, keeps itself organized and when it does not, what happens?

Because it does happen and that actually creates disease. But the sort of like broad top level reason why headphones get tangled is because there are more ways, infinitely more ways for a string to be knotted than to be knotted. There's only one way for a string to not have knots in it. It has one state.

There are an infinite number of ways for it to be knotted. Literally incident? Yes, well, no, not if it was a line and did not have like. Oh, if it was an infinitely long line, there would be infinite number of ways.

Or even if it didn't have thickness. It was just like a sort of imaginary string that did not have a width. OK, all right, now my mind is pretty blown. So that's a good feeling.

That's always nice. By the way, Hank's wearing turkey leg socks today. That's a controversial choice. Well, they are turkey legs with legs.

They're walking around. I got them as a gift. They're great. I love them.

Speaking of gifts, Hank, I just want to do one quick follow up. Amy wrote back, Dear John and Hank, thank you for answering my question concerning the inherently un-sexy pizza John T-shirt. You remember Amy Hank? She was the one who was having trouble kissing her boyfriend because he was having to stare at my face in the pizza John shirt.

I've taken your advice and purchased the shirt from tftba.com that doesn't have John's face on it. As you can see from the attached photo, which we'll post at the Patreon, Matthew and I are thrilled. Pizza John, meanwhile, has not been abandoned, but he has been relegated to the cuddling sector. Thanks again, Amy.

Please. John, you made a mistake when reading the original question. At the time I was asking, Matthew and I had been dating for two months, not two years. But here's to two years and beyond, thanks to your dubious advice.

And then there's a lovely picture of Amy and Matthew. And Amy's new giraffe love t-shirt from tftba.com. But I designed. You did design it.

I will wear that shirt and people will say, I love your shirt. And then I will have to say, because it's true, I did this. Technically, you don't have to say that. But it doesn't mind me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's Ego.

Oh, no. Hank's Ego. I've been delivering high quality podcasting since 2015. I have no idea what we talked about.

I've talked a lot about Leon Musk. This podcast is not brought to you by Leon Musk. That's a lie. We are not sponsored.

These are the number one sponsor. That would be a conflict of interest. Twitter.com slash Leon Musk number four Earth. I don't know what it's considered.

Literally the best Twitter on Earth. This podcast is also brought to you by Spray On Sunscreen. It tastes bad. That's a terrible advertisement for Spray On Sunscreen.

Spray On Sunscreen. Spray On Sunscreen. It tastes bad. Hard to huff.

Don't huff it. And today's podcast is also brought to you by the longing homesickness deep in your chest. The longing homesickness deep in your chest. A feeling that Hank has never had.

And finally, this podcast is brought to you by all 86 of your urethral sphincters. Loosening up one by one as you get closer to your apartment. This episode of Your Hank and John's Brandt View by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea.

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All right, Hank, we've got time for one last question. I'm wondering if we can try to steer this episode of the podcast backwards, something vaguely redeemable. So this question comes from... Don't spend this question comes from Jordan who writes, Dear John and Hank, I am sitting in my car in the parking lot of my workplace and I can't motivate myself to walk inside right now.

I hate my job and the thought of doing it today has me in tears. Do be us advice? So look, I've had this feeling a few times in my life. I've had an incredibly lucky and privileged professional life, but I have had this feeling in my younger years.

And the first thing that I would say is that this is an opportunity to begin to try to find a new job. It may be that you cannot find a new job today. It may be that it's not practical or possible for you to leave this job that you hate today, but this is probably, this is dubious advice, but I think this is probably a message from yourself that it is time to try to start finding some other kind of work. Yeah, I mean, yes, and hopefully that will give you some hope as you go into doing the thing that you have to do in order to make it work, because I assume that this is part of you making it work, that having that knowledge that you are working toward something more than the current state.

Yeah, I think there were two things that were helpful to me when I felt that way. One was I am doing this job for a specific reason, which is to pay my bills, which is to take care of myself and people I care about, which is to meet my obligations. And while it is difficult and unfun, and it is not forever, it is for right now today, the thing that I can do to meet those obligations to myself and to the people I love. And the second thing was to find something that I was passionate about, that I cared about, that I could get better at by doing in the time when I wasn't working, which for me was writing the book that became Looking for Alaska.

And that really helped. In the time when I had this feeling most profoundly was when I was working as a chaplain, when I really, I was really bad at that job, and it's a horrible job to be bad at, and it's impossible not to dread going to work unless you are a saint, when you know that kids might die and that you're not going to be very good at helping people in that situation. I think it's possible to enjoy that work when you know that you can be helpful and useful, but I knew that I wasn't that good at it. And it really helped me to say, well, this is what I'm doing right now because I made a commitment to do it, but I am also going to go home tonight and I'm going to do this thing that I love, which is writing.

And working during the day is what facilitates me being able to do this job, or do this work that I love at night. Right, and even if you can just do, like work on something that you are progressing at, just an hour a day is huge, because I think that's what we all want, is to be getting better at being people. And sometimes our work that we get paid for does not allow us to do that. And that can be very frustrating.

And so much so that it's hard to have the energy or the willpower to do anything active when you're not at work, but finding that thing and getting through the initial stages of definitely being bad at it, that's usually how it starts out unless you're very lucky. So being very bad at it and working until you are manageable, it becomes fun and you understand and can see your own progression, which has been really great for me creatively, just to play guitar badly. It's just such a nice thing to be able to do. Or not even play guitar, like whether it's running or whatever it is.

I don't think it has to be something creative necessarily. I think lots of people find fulfillment in sports or in all kinds of different human activities. But that sense of being able to get better at something, that sense of being able to have something in your life that isn't work that's important to you, can make work more manageable. But I also don't want to minimize this.

This sucks and I know there are lots of people who feel this way every morning when they go to work and it sucks. And I think part of what maybe makes it survivable is acknowledging that it does suck. Yeah, and also acknowledging that if you want to trade this bad job for another bad job, your other bad job might not be as bad. Because in my experience, it's usually the people you're working with more than the job itself.

And if you can find a place, even if it's a crappy job, if there's good people there, it makes it a lot more manageable. The only exception to that is when you have to do a lot of cold calling, that it doesn't matter if you work. It's always terrible. I'm sure there's lots of exceptions to that.

That's true. The only exception in my personal experience is when there's cold calling involved. But yeah, I'm sure there's lots of jobs. Where it isn't about the people you work with.

But having better coworkers definitely makes a huge difference. Like I worked at a few restaurants. And whether the job was fun or OK or absolutely horrible, depended entirely on whether I was able to get along with my coworkers. Yeah.

All right, Hank, it's time to move on to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Do you want me to start? Or would you like to start? I always start.

All right, Hank, news from AFC Wimbledon is that this week, AFC Wimbledon's League One third tier schedule was announced. We are playing the likes of Swindon Town, Oxford United, Gillingham. Mm. Sounds delicious.

Your favorite ham. And of course, Port Vale, Bristol Rovers, some big clubs. But the Marquis Manchamp, the franchise from Milton Keynes, is also down in League One. AFC Wimbledon have worked their way up from the ninth tier to the third tier.

The hard-working franchise at Milton Keynes have worked their way in the same period all the way from the third tier of English football to the third tier. Big football. And those games will be on March 14th is when the franchise will come to visit AFC Wimbledon. And on December 10th, AFC Wimbledon will be playing in Milton Keynes.

Big games for me include the game against Swindon Town, the home game against Swindon Town on October 15th, long time Swindon Town fan as well. And I'm excited to go to a game. I know I'm going to at least one game this season, October 1st, home to Gillingham. Pretty excited about that.

Fired up. Very, very excited for AFC Wimbledon's League One schedule. We'll post the whole schedule on the Patreon so you can enjoy it. And if you want to go to one of the games.

Yeah, you should go to more than one of the games, Hank. Any of the games. So Hank, Leon, must for Earth has a question for you. Oh, God.

Are we closer? You're not going to just let me. Or farther away to getting to Mars this week. Well, physically we're farther away from Mars this week.

Huzzah. Because it's moving away from us now. Another solid week? We've got to come back around again in a couple of years.

In Earthness. But practically we're a little bit closer. Because NASA has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates, sharing information and technology in the hopes of collaborating on a bunch of stuff. But the prime objective, according to the announcement, is the exploration of Mars.

By humans or by robots? By humans. Ah, it's disappointing. But this is NASA's plan.

So its goal is to get to Mars by 2030. Perfect. I've always loved NASA. And that plan has been criticized for its ambitiousness.

No. I'm all for getting to Mars in 2030. I think that'd be great. That way we could get humans to Mars and have a podcast called Dear John and Hank.

So as part of that, which could cost upwards of a trillion dollars, they're partnering with a number of different countries. And the United Arab Emirates is a wealthy oil state. And they are working on some of their own Mars missions. They have a plan to send an unmanned probe to Mars by 2021.

And NASA is signing similar cooperative agreements with, or has signed, with China, Russia, and the UK. And knowing that, if we're going to do this, it's going to cost a lot of money. And it's not just going to be something that one country is going to do by itself. So NASA's working behind the scenes to, here's what Charlie Bolden says, the director of NASA.

Together we can bring humanity to the face of Mars and reach new heights for the benefit of all humankind. In 2028. And we will. In 2028?

Really should have pushed it to 2030. Hank, we got an interesting question from Bobby, who wrote in to say, I was listening to the episode where Hank was talking about the Mars mission that they're planning where there's 40 people and they're going to narrow it down to 26 people, and then send them to Mars four at a time. And I couldn't help but notice that 26 is not divisible by four. Any ideas on how that will work?

I think that one of the missions will have two people. I think that they're just assuming that some people will die. They're just building it in. Yeah.

No, I think that maybe the first mission is planned to be just two. But I'm not sure. Oh, that'd be great. I've always wanted to go to Mars with just one other person and then die there.

Well, the thing is maybe you really like them. You get along real well. I mean, I play a lot of FIFA. Can you play FIFA on Mars?

Of course. Do they have Wi-Fi? No, but you can play two player on the same box. Oh.

You're going to have Wi-Fi. But they're not going to. You can't play like you could not play FIFA with someone on Earth if you were on Mars. You couldn't?

I mean, the lag would be a little chess. You could play chess maybe. So what you're saying is they will have Wi-Fi on Mars, but I won't be able to Skype. Do you know that the internet used to be a capital I, according to the AP Style Guide that they recently pushed it to lowercase?

I mean, this is huge news for me, Hank, because I have always styled internet with a capital I, because I believe the AP Style Guide in all of my books is Capital I. And even sometimes my coffee editors would be like, this is technically a capital I, but nobody really uses the Capital I, and I would be like, we use the Capital I, because we believe the AP Style Guide. So it was a little bit of a betrayal. I thought it would be a huge relief.

It is both a relief and a betrayal, because I stood up for the Capital I internet for so long that now I agree with them that it should be a lowercase I thing. But it's made now my books look dated. Yeah. As opposed to before when they were just full of a bunch of references to bands like the flaming lips.

Flaming lips are still relevant, John. I've always thought that the internet should be a lowercase because there can be more than one of them. And if we do go to Mars, there will be a Mars internet and an Earth internet, there will be two. I bet the Martian internet isn't going to be as good.

No, definitely not. I mean, yet one more reason. Why try to build an internet from scratch asks Leon Moss. You should tweet it when we've got an internet working right here.

Yeah. I've got to go, actually, because I did just discover a GIF that I want to tweet as Leon Moss. All right. Well, what did we learn today, John?

Well, we learned that Leon Moss for Earth number four is your number one news source for not getting to Mars before 2028. Just tell me when I'm kicking the dead horse. I know it's not yet. I know that horse is alive.

But you also tell me when I jump the shark on the Leon Moss stuff. All right. We also learned that John, on the set of paper towns, peed on something. We don't know what.

But something he was not supposed to pee on. We learned that Hank Hough's spray on sunscreen. Not true. On purpose.