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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 Hank and John. Where's that for?
Dear, Dear, John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast when you remember the John answer your questions, give you two a piece of advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. How you doing, John? I'm doing well.
How are you? I'm good. I just had some Thai food. It's beautiful outside.
It is a solid eight or nine degrees and I'm wearing quite a coat, my friend. We should add that it's eight or nine degrees Fahrenheit. Correct. Celsius, it's like negative 60.
Sorry to all the people who have this bizarre system of calculating temperature where zero degrees is cold and a hundred degrees is very, very dead. Hank, how are you doing overall other than the cold? Things good. How's fatherhood?
It's good. Things are good. He's getting to be, he really likes me singing as far as I can tell. He just wants me to sing all the time and that may just be me being like, oh, this is a fantastic, I get an excuse to sing in my house all the time, which I never had before.
But it seems to make him smile. Yeah, I have to say, my children never loved the sound of my singing voice, but that may ultimately be because nobody does. I do have a problem with John. I tend to sing him whatever song just pops into my head.
So I'll be like, I'll be like singing Rocky Horror songs, maybe a little inappropriate being like, let's give him something to talk about baby. And I'm like, like your big poops or something, not like what we're talking about in the song. Hank, we should also say that the 2016 Project for Awesome was a tremendous success. And thank you to all the listeners of the pod who contributed.
We raised more than 2.1 million dollars for charity. And thanks to everybody who was part of that. It was an amazing weekend. We felt very grateful for it.
And it distracted from the not so great news from AFC Whibbledon. I'm sorry about your one nil loss, but we'll get to that eventually. All right, would you like a short poem for the day? It's from Emily Dickinson.
Yeah, sure. All right. This poem's no frigate like a book. There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, nor any coarser is like a page of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take without a press of toll. How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul. I just love a good poem about a book. I love that books are still, as Emily Dickinson points out, a very frugal chariot to bear the human soul.
So I thought I'd read that poem. Do you have any questions from our listeners? Yeah, here's a song about frugal chariot's John. It's from Danja who asks, Dear Hank and John, I cannot throw out my frugal chariot's ever.
It doesn't matter if I think it's a terrible frugal chariot or if it's actually falling apart, I can never bring myself actually to dispose of any of my beloved volumes of frugality in their charioticity. But I have shelves full of old, unsalvageable frugal chariots, which have become unreadable. What should I do? Do I need to just get over this and throw them out?
I may not survive this ordeal, just to bring death in here somewhere. Any dubious advice is needed. Hank, I don't know if you've ever gone through someone's house after they died in order to figure out what to do with all of their stuff. But it is one of the least fun things I have ever done, and I have done some unfun things.
So my advice to Danja is to throw away your books so that other people won't have to later. I also want to find out what Danja's doing to her books to make them so unsalvageable and how many of them are. Presumably reading them in the bath. That's what I always do.
Reading them in the bath, yes. I mean, I've probably destroyed of the books I own like three in my entire and it has usually has to do with water. Like a water bottle opened up in my back and I was like, well, this copy. I do.
Look, I also hang on to a lot of my books, obviously, and I have a very difficult time letting go of them. And it can be a nice thing to be able to go through old books and read your notes in them or to remember the experience of reading them. There are lots of books that I might want to reread someday, but I'm always trying to call. The person I look up to most of this is Rosiana, who always despite being one of the best read people I know never has more than 50 physical books at a time.
She only keeps 50 books. Well, I don't know. I have such the attachment. There's so many books in my shelf that I haven't read in more than 10 years, but I'm just like, I want you.
I love you. I you are such a great thing that I. Yeah, no, I mean, and like I think that's fine. If a physical object brings you joy, there's no reason to get rid of it.
But if it's stressing you out, then I think there is a reason to get rid of it. And then there is also the consideration of the people who will come after you. But I don't think that's necessarily like a pressing concern for Daniel, which you know, on the upside, you've got that going for you. Yeah, not right.
I have a question for you. It's from Claudia, but I don't know that I know the answer to it. So I thought that I would ask it and see if you do know the answer to it. She writes, dear John and Hank, if you have a 2D object and you look at it from the side, can you actually see it or is it just invisible?
Well, first of all, Claudia, you don't have a 2D object. They don't exist. Gampt exists. But if it did exist and you did put one of like one point of vision on the edge of it, it would be invisible.
It would not exist. It would be impossible to have that happen with both of your eyes at the same time. But yeah, you don't though unless you do have a 2D object in which I would step slowly away because I don't like the idea of what you have done with our dimensions. I don't know.
I feel like I feel like we haven't been particularly good to three dimensions. Maybe we don't deserve all of them anymore. Hank, maybe at this point humanity just hasn't earned that third dimension and we should be reduced to two so that we are all invisible to each other from the side. It's going to be real hard to breathe and function in that universe, John.
But we'll make it work. I've got another question, John. It's from Hannah who asks, Dear Hank and John. So one of my greatest fears has always been that I will somehow end up on a desert island or kidnapped or something and I'll be wearing my contacts and I won't have my glasses or contacts solution with me.
I'll just have to wear these contacts for the rest of my life. Yeah, no, I'm going to stop you right there, Hank, because this is also one of my greatest fears. So Hannah and I have this in common and there is an easy solution to it, which is that you should never not wear glasses. Get lysic also is a potential solution.
No, never not wear glasses. That way, even if you're on the desert island and your glasses break, you can use little palm fronds to remake your glasses and they would be very hip. Yeah, we're just like make a monocle out of them. Right.
Be like, Oh, hello, I'm posh desert island man. I've made a monocle with my eyeglass piece and a bunch of strands of palm. Very good. You can have a real bad fake British accent.
Wonderful, wonderful. The future for you on the desert island. This is a multi-part question, though, John. Okay.
Hannah goes on to ask. Also, did cavemen need glasses? Also, could animals use them? Like Simon and Alvin in the chipmunks?
That is a good separate question. Good, good separate question. Simon from Alvin in the chipmunks doesn't apparently need glasses. It may just be a fashion choice, so he could be like, Hey, just to be clear, I'm the nerdy one.
So they put these on me. But yes, I think that animals, it's hard to tell because you can't be like, Okay, what letter is that? Jeffrey the dog. But there are definitely animals that have worse vision than other animals.
Like beavers have really bad eyesight. Lots of animals that tend to use their eyes as much have bad eyesight. And it does take a lot of sort of fine tuning, evolutionarily, to get to really sharp vision. So my guess is that there are a lot of dogs out there who have bad eyesight and you're like, Why don't you get the ball?
And it's like, my dog's always been really bad at getting the ball. It's like, Well, maybe you're talking these glasses, but that's not actually a thing that you can figure out. It'd be wonderful. You could figure out how to figure it out, though.
I'm interested in that. Can we give dogs a lasek? Don't get dog lasek. I mean, that's the last that's the last thing we need to add to the world of veterinary science.
And of course, early humans did often need glasses. And that was just, but they didn't have them. And then you just make it work. That's my understanding.
Anyway, that's kind of what I did when I was a kid, actually, I had really poor eyesight as a child and often like an hour or two into summer camp, I would lose my glasses and then I would have no glasses for three weeks and I would just kind of make it work. Yeah. I also think that I don't, there's no way to test for this, but my guess is that people before eyeglasses and before sort of modern modern ways of taking care of ourselves and feeding ourselves, they died more if they didn't have good eyesight. And so overall, the number of people with good eyesight was higher because it was selecting for that.
We were no longer selecting for that. Yeah, in general, I would not have fared particularly well in a prehistoric humanity. Yeah, I probably be dead too. Oh, no, I would definitely be dead.
You would have died at the age of like five. I just think like, I don't have the like genetic toughness that allows you to become a successful early human. I am extremely susceptible to all physical and mental health problems. What do you think made Simon's glasses from Simon and the Chipmunks?
Did you have like name brand, were they Ray Vans? Did he get him from some mail order place? Or at least he's very homemade to me? Well, I think as it happens right now, I am at the Alvin and the Chipmunks Wikipedia, which is actually called Monkipedia, of course, because it's called Monkipedia because they're Chipmunks and also because Chipmunks movies love a good pun like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Road Chip, Alvin and the Chipmunks Chip wrecked.
They all have fantastic puns in them. I should also say that the folks at Fox 2000 who made the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies also made the Faulkner-Star's and Paper Towns movies. So I'm a little bit biased, but I do really like those movies. So you know those people, according to the CGI films at Monkipedia, Alvin's eyesight is extremely poor as he is unable to see a toaster waffle fall directly in front of him without his glasses.
Did you mean Simon when you said Alvin? I did. I'm sorry. I'm not that much.
Okay, you got another question for us. I'm just going to stay with Monkipedia for a moment if I can. In Alvin, exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point in the Chipmunks, that was the first time that Alvin, which one has glasses again? Simon.
That was the first time that Simon wore glasses with blue rims. So that was an innovation. Usually it's black rims glasses, but they went with blue rims in Alvin three exclamation points and the Chipmunks. Well, I mean, they don't you think that Simon made that decision?
It's not clear to me how much creative input Simon has into the films. My understanding is probably not a lot. Although I have heard that Simon is responsible for the title of the second movie, which was of course Alvin and the Chipmunks the squeakable. Oh, well, I mean, he is he is the smart one.
I am now at the Alvin and Chipmunks, Monkipedia wiki. And I have to say that the falling snow is a really wonderful effect. It is wintertime, but in addition to that, it's showing the four sort of like main or at least four of the iterations of Alvin and Chipmunks. And on the upper left hand corner of the background, we have what is probably the original Alvin and Chipmunks drawings, and they are fine.
And then there was a slightly evolved version of that version of that where they look quite quite nice. And this is actually sort of what I remember as a child. And then on the right hand side, we have the CGI versions, which are very different from each other. One is much more anthropomorphized than the other, but both are, I find to be extremely unsettling, and I don't want to be in the same world as them anymore.
So can we move on? Unfortunately, we can't, because I've just found out that there is an episode of Alvin and Chipmunks called For Whom the Bell Tolls. And I'm trying to determine how similar it is to the Hemingway novel. And the answer seems to be not that much, but you would be stunned by the complexity and length of the individual episode explanations over at Moncapedia, your number one source for Alvin and the Chipmunks, trivia and information.
Do you want to know where Simon's name came from? Shh. I mean, it's a name that many people have. It was a, it came from Simon Walrunker, Walrunker, I'm not very good at names, who was a violinist and record producer from 1939 to 1955.
Walrunker recorded music for 20th Century Fox films until he chose to enter the recording industry independently, co-founding Liberty Records. One of the major acts who recorded on Liberty Records was Alvin and the Chipmunks. And so that's why they named Simon Simon. Theodore was named after Theodore Keap, who was also a co-founder of Liberty Records.
So there you go. We've gone all the way down the Alvin and the Chipmunks rabbit hole. I'm so excited about our new podcast, Hank, Moncapedia, a guide to the guide to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Okay, I'm gonna move away real fast before I accidentally make another Alvin and the Chipmunks joke and we continue talking about this.
This question is from Sonya, who asked Dear Hank and John, if one finds oneself in a forest with no memory of how they got there, what is the correct course of action to take? Does she be walking in the hopes that she will stumble across some form of civilization risking wandering away from it or should one remain in the spot where she is in hope of rescue? Again, she has absolutely no memory of the forest or how she may have gotten there or whether she came alone or not. Please help as this question is bothering me.
I hope it's just bothering you because it's just like you are afraid that this unlikely circumstance will occur and not because you are currently emailing us from the forest. If so, I have some suggestions for other people you should have emailed first. Right, or maybe just use the GPS to walk out of the forest. Right, Google Maps is your friend.
If you got a data connection, you're gonna be okay. I know that I always think of Dear Hank and John as the number one source for wilderness survival tips. So I'm excited to find out what you think Hank, but of course I know that if you find yourself in the middle of a forest, you should just and you don't know how you got there, you should just give up. Everyone loves that.
Just give in. Speaking of giving in, John, do you want to know a sad story about giving in? Yes. Sorry, I'm right now on the Monk of and P.D.
of Phage for Simon's alternate identities. And did you know that in the original Alvin and the Chipmunks TV show, there was a Cinderella episode where Simon plays the fairy god Monk? No, John. I didn't know that about Simon being the fairy god monk.
But you interrupted my intro into this story. I wanted to tell about hopelessness and giving up. Okay, great. Please tell me.
Well, so you remember in 1980 when I hadn't been born yet or I had just barely been born and Mount St. Helens erupted? I do. Well, some scientists had had a pretty good idea that this was gonna happen.
And they had closed down the park around Mount St. Helens and for the most part, there was nobody nearby. But a couple of people had decided that they were going to not heed those warnings, whether they were scientists or adventurers or photographers. And they were going to go and document as the impending eruption arrived.
And one guy, I can't tell you his name because I forgotten it, was there. He saw the eruption beginning. He took some photographs of it. He took some photographs until he could no longer see, and then realizing that he was not going to escape.
He he unwound the film, put it in its canister, put the canister in his backpack, and then laid down on his backpack so that the film would stay safe so that people could see the photographs that he took. And then he lay there and died and was covered in Ash and Famine 17 days later. Right. I remember that story.
It's very, very sad. And I don't know why you felt like you had to sell it on our podcast, your Hank and John, when we could have been making very happy, monkopedia jokes. And now we're in a dark place. Well, at least we got those photos.
It is kind of a beautiful story. But at the same time, I do wish that no one had died in the Mount St. Helens disaster. Hank, what do you actually do if you're in a forest and you don't know where you are?
Don't you stay still and wait for rescue? You would make a base camp where you are and make some sign of where you went. In fact, there was another guy and his name I do remember because his name was Dave Crockett. And he his car got trapped as he was trying to drive away.
And he marched off and he wrote on his car door in the ash, like went uphill. And he managed to manage to outrun the ash flow and survived. So if you are Dave Crockett, and in fact, you can go on YouTube and you can listen to the video blog he made back in 1980 where he's talking to the camera about how he thinks he's going to die. It's very eerie.
And then he's going to be okay. And he's very happy. I feel so weird. Like we have suddenly inhabited opposite consciousnesses.
Like we're in a freaky Friday situation or something because you're the one who's obsessively talking about extreme darkness. And all I want to do is tell you an astonishing fact that you cannot possibly be ready for, which is that in the 80s chipmunk show, there was an episode where they recreated Star Trek. Yeah, no, I believe that I think I've seen that one. It was called Star Trek, the absolutely final frontier.
And Simon played Mr. Speck. There was also a spinoff of Robocop called Robomunk where Simon played Dr. Simon Eyes.
Some of these puns are not very good. And there was a spinoff of a splash called Sploosh in which Simon played Trusty and a spinoff of Batman in which Simon played Batmunk slash Bryce Wayne. That's not even a pun as far as I can tell. No, it doesn't feel like at a certain point in the eighth and final season of the 80s chipmunk television show, it does feel kind of like they were giving up.
But let's move on, Hank, to another question from our listeners. This one is from Louise who asks Dear Hank and John, do Santa and his elves have the right to make trademarked products? Because you asked for things from Santa and it's like, okay, but isn't that made by Nerf and not by the elves? Right.
That's a great question. And the answer is of course that Santa can do whatever Santa wants to do. Well, he has a deal. He has a deal with Nerf and Nerf has factories that make Nerf guns and then Santa has the exact same capabilities as those factories only at the North Pole with elves.
Correct. And he has a deal with all the major companies. He even has a deal with Mac or Apple and Western Digital, the people who make hard drives. He's got a deal with every single company.
It's pretty remarkable. He's got a deal with DF-DB as soon as we start a company. He was like, okay, well, we, Santa at the North Pole also has to make these products so that when a child asks Santa for them, he can make them. So we, you know, sign up to do that.
It's a little bit of an uncomfortable licensing conversation, of course, because you can't go into it the way you would with a normal licensing partner on account of how, you know, like we all love Santa. But we found a solution that works for us. And it's been great. And I know that every company in the world is similarly.
Did you know that Alvin and the Chipmunks actually has a last name? It's Seville. Like the, I believe that's what Dave's last name is. Yeah, that's what Dave's last name is.
It's because Dave's last name is Seville. Well, there's got his last name. But why is Dave's last name Seville? He said, knowing that the answer is somewhere on Moncapedia.
Oh, God, it's almost like I know more than you about, about Alvin and the Chipmunks. Not for long, but not at the end of this hour. Okay, this question is from Hannah. I'm going to ask a question from Hannah while you look up why Dave Seville's last name is Seville.
Dear Hank and John, I have a difficult decision to make in my career. I am a software engineer and I'm currently interviewing for a job as a build engineer, which is a non-coding role that requires slightly less technical expertise, at least in my field. The build engineer job sounds boring and unfulfilling, but for some reason, the salary is $12,000 more than my current job. A huge increase for me.
I'd be able to pay off my student loans a year early, two years instead of three years, Hannah. Two years. Incredible impressive being able to pay off your student loans in two years or three years. Yeah.
Have you been paying them off for the last 25 years, like the rest of us? Two years instead of three years. And finally, move on with my life. No, you can move on with your life before you pay off your student loans, too.
Like, there are things that you don't have to be completely tied down. I don't think. There are other things that you could do. Anyway, my question is this.
Should I willingly accept a boring job for significantly more money? I really feel like I will be selling out by taking a non-programming job. Also, my job to work would be 15 minutes longer. Why didn't you start out with that?
No. No. Don't take a job that you're going to like less that's going to put you in a car for 30 minutes times 365 days a year. No, it's not that many.
It's more like 250, but still. Hannah, I'd like to tell you a story. I'd like to tell you a story about a man named Ross, back to sorry and senior. What's happening?
Ross also faced a choice when he got home from World War II. He faced a choice between going and living a normal life and having a normal job and following his passion, which was to speed up the sound of his own voice using a voice recorder that he had bought and sing songs in a voice that sounded like a chipmunk voice. Ross had been stationed in Seville, Spain during World War II, by the way. Do you know the choice that he made?
Did he make the choice to take the non-programming job that paid somewhat more, but only for a little while and who knows what the future holds and if you are making a living doing what you love to do and saving 30 minutes a day, isn't that wonderful? I'm sorry. I lost myself in trying to make the connection here, but the point is that he chose to follow his dreams, which were not like totally random dreams. They were the completely realistic dreams of a man who just wanted to make a living singing with a sped up voice that sounded like chipmunks and he did it.
He did it, Hannah. He did it and that is the whole reason that we have Alvin in the Chipmunks, the squeak wall. The whole reason that we have Alvin in the Chipmunks shipwrecked. The whole reason that we have Alvin in the Chipmunks, the road ship, which for a while I think also had the tentative name, Plains, Trains and Automoscweels.
I think the answer here is very clear, Hannah, that if you're making a living doing something that you like and find fulfilling, that you will over time find more opportunities in that and an extra year paying off your student loans is not going to be a huge deal in the scheme of things. That is my opinion. I think you should go to Moncapedia, look up Ross, Bag, Dessarion Sr. and just be inspired.
Just be inspired as I have been. Well, I do. I did the math and I do want to say that just if you're spending that time in that extra time at car, that's about 125 hours per year, that you'll be extra spending in that car for $12,000. It's about $100 an hour to drive to your job, so that's not nothing.
But if it's not a job you want to take, don't take it. Do the things that you want to do. The only advantage, Hank, is that it does make it more likely that Hannah will continue to be a listener of Dear Hank and John if you're spending more time in the car every day. That's very true.
Additionally, it also is sometimes, especially if you can move back, if there's a potential for you to be like, I don't like this that much. I can please go back to my old job. It might be interesting to see if you do actually do this job as a build engineer more. You don't actually know how, whether you're going to like it or not until you do it.
I don't think that it's selling out to not be on the ground doing the thing. You might just be doing a different thing that you also like, and that's also interesting. I definitely wouldn't. I worry about people being like, but I want to be on the ground doing the thing.
But also organizing people to do the thing is a different kind of doing the thing. And also an important part of doing the thing. So I wouldn't discount it just because you think that it's not like the work that you have previously in your life sort of idolized as like, this is the work that I should be doing. You don't really know.
And there will always be a new pass being laid out in front of you. And you get to choose which of those paths you go down. And choosing before you know which paths are there, I think is something that causes a lot of people stress and anxiety. And also gets them locked into stuff.
Right. But it sounds like Hannah knows what she wants to do with her life. She knows that she likes working and programming. And I would encourage her to continue doing that.
Maybe though, you can always try the strategy of going into your boss and saying, I have another job offer. It's for 12 grand more. Can I squeeze you for a little bit extra? But I don't know.
I'm not an expert in that Hannah. I don't want you to get fired or anything. Well, maybe it may be that this is the same company. It's what I was assuming.
Well, I mean, who knows? The point is that if you look at the career of Ross Bank, Desarion, Sr., I think you have a good model for how to build a good life inside of tech companies as well. That is a good point. This podcast, of course, is brought to you by Ross Bagdissari and the creator of Alvin and Chipmunks, also Defender of Liberty in World War II, Defender of Seville, and Defender of the Idea that you can accomplish anything if you have a vision and just a tiny, tiny bit of modern technology.
And of course, this podcast is also brought to you by Ross Bagdissarian, Jr., who has kept the Chipmunks dream alive. Thanks, Ross. Thanks, Ross. Podcast is also brought to you by Santa, strong arming small businesses into great licensing deals since the beginning of time.
I'm just getting Santa's licensing deal is actually very, very beneficial, which is why everybody signs up to do it. That's exactly right. And of course, lastly, this podcast is brought to you by Frugal Chariots. Frugal Chariots, available now at your local independent Frugal Chariot store.
You know, John, we actually have a real sponsor this week, and that is NerdCon Nerd by Dariot, the event that we are running and going to be at. And I know that it's weird that it's not, it's not actually sponsorship because we're not paying ourselves. But we would love if you would be interested in coming up to NerdCon Nerd by Dariot. We will be recording a live episode of the Ear Hank and John.
We will be hanging out doing all kinds of other things, Q&As and being on panels, and there's going to be a bunch of cool people there like Nathan Zedd and Charlie McDonald and many others, which you can find out at NerdCon Nerd by Terry. And it's in February in Boston, and you can get tickets at NerdCon Nerd by Terry.com. Hey, can I ask you another question? February 25th and 26th in Boston, Massachusetts, and tickets are $60.
Please come. We'd love to see you. Yes, you can ask me another question. All right.
We have a question from Barbara in Germany who asks, you're John, and Hank, in the last few months, I've had some mental health issues with help. I'm slowly getting better. But as I do get better, I've started to ask myself, why me? Am I not as strong as others?
Take care, Barbara. I am familiar with that feeling, and also with the feeling of, oh, if I were just a little bit more mentally strong, I wouldn't have to deal with this. And I think some of that is received from messages in the culture, but I also think some of it is probably your brain talking to you in a way that's not kind or generous. Different people have to deal with different things in their lives.
Different people have different sets of problems. And you have yours and comparing yourself to other people or constructing your illness as weakness. I don't think it's helpful in the end. I think having a mental illness doesn't mean that you're weak anymore than having any other illness means that you're weak.
All it means is that you're sick and you need treatment and you need to get better and focus on that rather than on the sickness. It's very difficult to deal with the why me question because it's always there. I think it's there for people who have any kind of illness. But I find that trying to focus on being well and getting well and taking good care of myself and being nice to myself is helpful on those fronts.
I think that was a good answer, John. I've got another question from an anonymous and I like this question and I think that it's fascinating. And I've been wondering when it was going to happen. And so here it is, Dear Hank and John.
First, know that I am a fan and generally love everything you do. I may however have one issue, which is it seems that John has a personal vendetta against my father's place of employment, Jardin Zink products. You see? Oh, the number one maker of things in the many blinks for the US Mint.
Being a fan, I have listened to countless discussions from John about the penny and don't even necessarily disagree that the penny is bad for the economy. However, I am very pro penny for a very selfish reason. My dad is old enough that he would have a hard time finding gainful employment at a place he has not worked for 35 plus years. So my question is, and I think this is the biggest question as well, how do we reconcile the things that we agree with in principle when the result of that principle would lead to a major personal loss?
It's one thing to say that we have to be willing to compromise the good of the many for the few. Yeah, I mean, this is a really interesting, difficult question. Hank and I have run into this a few times in our own careers and lives, most notably when the US Congress was debating a bill that would have made it very complicated and expensive for dftba.com to continue to do business because of the complexities of local sales tax in the United States. So consumption taxes in the US are not national.
They are they are by state or by city or by county. There are literally thousands of different sales taxes in the United States. So if and when e-tailers like dftba.com have to calculate sales tax, it's just going to be a huge expense on them. On the other hand, not having to pay sales tax means that companies like dftba.com don't contribute to the places where our goods are purchased, which is not fair.
So Hank and I are in favor of people paying sales tax on stuff they buy online, even though it is not in our best interest. However, we are also coming at all of this from an extremely privileged position that's different from the position that your data is in in making that consideration because dftba.com is not the only way that Hank and I, you know, have of making a living. So I also think that we're running up against this on a much larger scale in the way that we're talking about globalization. Like we know that globalization has been good for the economy overall.
We know that it's created lots of jobs both inside the United States and outside of it. But we also know that it is probably part of what's increasing the global disparity of wealth. It's part of what's increasing the number of people who feel left behind in the economy. And that wealth inequality is bad.
It's not it's not just like ethically bad. It's bad for the economy. It's it's bad for the cohesiveness of social institutions. It's just objectively bad.
So you've got to balance that knowledge with wanting, you know, an efficient well-run economy, which in my opinion would involve no pennies. Yeah, yeah, this is and I think in particular like I would like to think that there's a world where like, you know, there are people need zinc for stuff and if you know, yeah, but not on that scale, Hank. Like, I mean, that's the thing, like on some level, a lot of pennies, right? We have we have this all over our economy.
Penies are one example, but we have lots of examples of this, right? We spend way too much money on health care. Well, spending way too much money on health care creates jobs. It creates lots of jobs and lots of fairly high paying jobs relative to a lot of the economy.
But we spend way, way, way too much of our total economy on health care. So if we were to make that more efficient and have a health care spending level that was closer to say Australia or Canada or France or Germany or literally anywhere else on Earth, then there would be a lot of jobs lost and a lot of those jobs would be good jobs that would be lost. And so it's really difficult. I don't know is my only answer.
Like, I don't know how to manage that. I don't know how to, you know, I don't know. And I love your question and we wanted to read it because we love it not because we have answers. Correct.
I also have just done a little bit of research John, the company that owns this penny like making operation also owns one of your favorite companies in the world, John, makers of the Sharpie Pen. Oh, God, I love Sharpies. I mean, I don't understand why I don't have a brand deal with Diet Dr. Pepper and Sharpies.
It is totally unjust to me. How is it that I'm able to have a wonderful and fulfilling corporate relationship with my friends at the Mars company, maker of my personal candy bar Snickers and not have a relationship with Diet Dr. Pepper and the people at Sharpie? I signed 150,000 copies of The Fault in Our Stars with Sharpies.
I should be able to get some free Sharpies out of that, man. I'm still paying for my Sharpies, Hank. I go to CVS and I buy my own Sharpies. And I feel like I should be getting them for free.
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Head to factormills.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 while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. Oh John, I just had a thought. What if we could create something that the economy would be really, really into that would cost more than a penny but it would use the penny blank that the US Mint had stopped using to create new pennies.
So we just need to create a product that people are going to be really into and they'll buy a lot of and they'll cost like two or three cents so that we can get rid of pennies but then people will have a product that they will love and want to be a part of their lives and will bring them satisfaction and continue to have people consuming these things that are already being made. What is that? It's like marbles, like it should be a game that just sweeps the nation and there's a dance that goes with it. What is it going to be a game that sweeps the nation and like 200 million penny blanks are going to be used every year?
I just I don't know I appreciate your enthusiasm and your optimism but in general I feel I feel in a bit of a place of discouragement when it comes to capital markets and what they can do well and what they can do poorly. Can I read you one response that we got? We got a wonderful email from a fan of AFC Wimbledon whose dad has both the AFC Wimbledon and the Wimbledon FC crest tattooed on his body who suggested that I get an AFC Wimbledon tattoo which I'm not taking off the table but I really wanted to read this one email from you I hope I'm saying your name right in the United Kingdom who wrote a few days ago I celebrated my 30th birthday moving one year closer to my demise. Anyway one of the gifts I received was the new Amazon Echo Dot and we randomly shouted very important questions such as asking the distance to the nearest Yoshi restaurant for which it tried to direct us to Houston, Texas and then last night my girlfriend and I decided to ask Alexa to play your latest podcast.
A bit later that evening we received an email from Amazon to say that we had purchased a large teddy bear and thank you. The next 10 minutes we were ranting about being hacked and how Amazon was rubbish and how they're taking over the world and then we paused to consider for a moment and decided to look into this further. This was when we became aware that the machines and corporations have finally started their revolution and are out to get us or at least our wallets. Looking into the history of our device I was able to find out that during the time we were out of the living room Alexa was able to construct some form of conversation while you John were discussing your refusal to use Mac keyboards and Kenny Loggin's albums which somehow Alexa interpreted as do you like being here with your big bear?
So my question would be do you do you like being here with your big bear? We now have a large plush bear and since you did request it from our new machine overwards can we please have a forwarding address to send it to think of it as a gift to your children. Oh my god absolutely we will send along a P.O. box that you can send the bear to if you really want to although feel no obligation please seriously and I am delighted that Alexa has purchased you a bear against your will.
We are living in a strange strange future where we no longer have to even want things for Amazon to send them to us. I got to say hey I have an Alexa but I also have a Google home and Google home is so much better. Okay so here's my question could we right now say a string of letters of words that would result in thousands of people's Amazon Alexa's sending sharpies to your home. Yes absolutely here we go.
Here we go. Ready? No don't do it don't do it. Yes I'm doing it right now.
Alexa no no no. I really like a hardcover copy of the fault in our stars sent to my home. Thank you. What about the Google?
I want to purchase the fault in our stars by John Green right now. Hardcover. I don't think you actually do that like I think that that's like that actually might result in it happening. No way really.
I don't know it would happen for this person. No it's gonna be fine Hank. Everything's fine. It's no big deal.
I mean the worst thing that's gonna happen is that people are gonna get a lovely book and I'm gonna get 60 cents. Okay what about this? What about this? Okay Google.
Who is the creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks? I really want to know if that works. Alexa can you play Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas please? Thank you.
Well now the podcast is off. Now the podcast is off. Nobody's listening anymore but they are enjoying what I would argue is the greatest Christmas album of all time not recorded by John Denver. Oh man you haven't heard my Christmas album then.
Alright Hank let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll get the news out from AFC Wimbledon out of the way quickly. AFC Wimbledon played the franchise currently applying their trade in Milton Keynes over the weekend. They lost one nail.
Life is long and full of minor disappointments but that is certainly one of them. AFC Wimbledon should have won that game maybe. I don't know. Who knows?
The point is that now we're 10th in the table sitting on 29 points after 21 games. So you know not there at the top but also not there at the bottom. We're just right comfortably in 10th. John the news from Mars is very good very exciting.
Curiosity has left the lake basin and is now traveling up the side of Mount Sharp. It has recently sent back some data that people have analyzed and determined. John do you know what boron is? Boron is a chemical element and as I'm sure you will wear now that I've told you that boron is a chemical element.
It is a chemical element that is very water-soluble and but it is water-soluble in neutral water. So it doesn't like super alkaline water. It doesn't like super acidic water and it is clear that there was a ton of groundwater moving around in the Mount Sharp basin after the lake just even after the lake disappeared. So this lake existed for a long time but then there was an active groundwater system that was moving elements around and it was pH neutral like close to pH neutral.
So this is like perfect conditions for life. Not just that as the Curiosity has been traveling up the side of the mountain the composition of the rocks have changed which means that there are chemical gradients on Mars. So there are areas that are different like substantially different geologically from nearby areas which is also a great condition for life because it means that life could be feeding off of those chemical differentials. And then finally we have like this situation is making us think that the horizon for when Mars was a nice place for life for when there was liquid water and it was warm, pH neutral liquid water could have been in the hundreds of millions of years which on Earth by hundreds of millions of years in Earth like Earth life was happening.
So I just want to advocate because there's only so much that robots can do though I'm in favor of them doing more. If we could get humans to Mars by like I don't know 2027 it would be amazing opportunity to find what might be a completely unique ecosystem based on different biology. That probably doesn't exist anymore it may exist in very small pockets probably doesn't exist anymore but I'm starting to feel like probably did exist and that's a weird crazy thing for me to say because I have not been super like into exobiology but like the conditions for life were very good for a very long time on the surface of Mars it seems and this is all information that we never would have had in the Curiosity doing great work and the scientists doing great work with that and what a fantastic mission Curiosity now and it's I think third year on the planet it has been accomplishing it's so fantastic the kind of stuff we've been learning from this mission. Well Hank I'd like you to explain to me why it's so important to do this by 2027 if the life is in all likelihood already gone and will be equally gone in say 2028.
You know I think it's just I don't have to explain myself to you. All right Hank what did we learn today? Oh god I don't know. I mean you learned that what do you mean you don't know?
You learned so much about chipmunks. We did we learned a lot about Ross Bakdasarian and also Simon and Theodore at Liberty Records and and the color of Simon's glasses and their increasing progression into creepier and creepier forms as as 3D technology has gotten better for some reason it only makes chipmunks worse but we also learned that if you are found in the middle of the forest you should take pictures then put the film in your backpack roll up onto it and get covered by layers of volcanic ash. That is of course terrible advice like everything in our podcast. We also learned that if you are looking at a 2D object you should be concerned.
Yes very concerned and finally we learned that Santa is an extraordinarily accomplished business person in addition to being one of the most giving and sweet entities upon this earth. I know Hank there is so much to be discouraged about in this world but there is also much to be encouraged about. Thank you for pausing with me. Thanks everybody for listening thanks to Nick West Jenkins for editing the podcast Rosie on Hall's Warehouse and Victoria Bonjourneau help out as well.
Our theme music is by gunnerollor you can email us at hankandjohnatgmail.com or check us out on twitter at hankgreenandjohngreen and of course did I say our theme music is by gunnerollor because it is even if I said that twice I'm that proud of it. Thanks again for listening and as we say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.