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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. Nor is that for Think of Dear John and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast where me and my brother John, we answer your questions, give you the advice and give you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. How you doing John? I am doing all right. I'm all right.
Yeah. You know Hank, as you may be aware, I'm a semi-professional player of the video game FIFA, and the two star players on my team, AFC Wimbledon, our name John Green and John Green, they're two people who are married to each other, they co-parent a child named JJ, and I just received terrible, terrible news that ball John Green broke his ankle. Oh gosh. And he's out for three months.
Oh gosh. No man. And I just I don't have a really deep squad because you know it's AFC Wimbledon. Yeah.
We don't have a ton of money and we can't afford to lose a player like ball John Green. So I'm furious with the Oxford United player who made that horrible tackle. I'm furious with the referee for not making it a red card tackle. I'm just I'm just annoyed.
But other than that, I'm doing well. How are you? Oh, if it's in the game, John, it's in the game. I'm good.
I have a sore throat and I'm worried that it's going to get worse. I feel like I'm at the stage where it's like, oh, I'm getting sick, aren't I? What should I do to prevent this from happening? Take all of the pills that don't do anything quick.
And so I do that. And then I get sick anyway because the pills don't actually do anything, but they should are marketed to make us think that they do. And also we will do anything to prevent the sickness. So I'm having that moment.
And I just I just took three very large pills that smelled like the inside of a pipe. And now I've got my fingers crossed. All right, sounds good. You want a short poem for the day?
Tell me a short poem. This poem is from Richard Brownigan. Several people have asked me why I've never read a Richard Brownigan poem. He did write a lot of short poems.
This one is called Love Poem. It's so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don't love them anymore. Love Poem. By Richard Brownigan.
It's my kind of love poem. Hey, oh goodness. Yeah. And you know, I just got back from an amazing vacation with Sarah.
We were in Jamaica for five days. We had an awesome time. We love going to Jamaica. And I'm so incredibly lucky to like my spouse.
It's such it's the biggest thing in a human life, I think, for me at least. Yeah, Catherine and I, you will have if you watch a lot of the other scenes video already, but just last night we recorded a video where we taste test Valentine's day candy? And I was just watching that video, you know, as I was editing it and I was like, boy, do I like her. Yeah, that's something that Richard Brownigan never really had in his life.
I think it was married four times and never particularly successfully. And he died in his forties. So yeah, we've gotten very lucky. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.
Well, first I want to start out with, I guess this is a question, but it is in regards to the last pod in which Andrea asks specifically to John in this week's pod last week's pod. You informed Dahlia that you are really, really not a liberal, but then you and Hank both go on to state so many liberal positions that you agree with. So in what sense are you a conservative? Is it like taxes or what?
Please explain. And then Andrea has put a pumpkin with the Linux penguin carved into it as her sign off. Wow, that's a very, that's a solid sign off. Yeah, so Hank is a proper liberal, right?
Wouldn't you say that Hank? Well, I mean, I'm further left of you, probably. But I would say you're essentially a communist, whereas I believe in markets, I believe that the reason refrigerators are inexpensive today and why so many of us are able to enjoy them is because markets and competition. And I really do think that in many ways markets enrich our lives.
I think that they are part of why poverty has gone down a lot in the last 100 years. And so I do believe that markets can solve a lot of problems. I also think that there are places that markets clearly fail, especially health care. Markets are terrible at dealing with health care.
They are terrible at dealing with crime. They are terrible at dealing with national defense. There are a bunch of things that markets aren't good at, but I do believe in them probably more than than you do. Yeah, I have actually come around more to, especially since, you know, running several businesses of my own there are times when I'm like, boy, these government regulations sure do keep small business down.
And I like, yeah, there are times that are like that. But there's also like what I find extraordinarily frustrating more than anything about running a small business is knowing that I pay much higher corporate taxes than Apple and Google do. And I just hate that. Like I find extraordinarily frustrating.
Like why do we subsidize these massive companies while my company pays 40% corporate tax? Yeah, I mean, the other thing about that is corporate taxes in the USI agree are too high, which is not a problem of health liberal position. Although actually, President Obama felt that corporate taxes in the US were too high. I think that the great thing about small businesses is they create more jobs per dollar of revenue than large businesses do.
So Hank and I privately have always said that we want to ensure that no matter how big or small our enterprise is, that it employs more people per dollar of revenue than Pepsi does. And we are good on that front. Because small businesses are just they're better at employing people. They're better, I think on average, in terms of wages as well.
And I do think that the too often the system is a little bit biased against small businesses. And that is another place where I probably fall a little right of center. That said, there's a lot of things that are politicized in our current political discourse that I just don't think should be political issues. Like I don't think that climate change is a political issue.
I think maybe we can have political disagreements about how government can best contribute to solving the problem of climate change. But I don't think whether climate change is happening and is caused by humans is a political topic. I also think that, you know, for a long time, we didn't politicize refugee resettlement and we didn't politicize foreign aid. And now we do.
And I don't think that those are particularly political issues. I think I think there's a weird left right divide that doesn't need to exist on those issues. So there's a lot of issues where I just feel like, Hank and I both maybe just don't fall. Just don't see these things as political the way that they're politicized in our current discourse.
Yeah, so it's very frustrating to watch something that go from being like, very few people know about this at all. The people who know about it realize that it's quite good and or that it needs to be dealt with or whatever it is. And then suddenly, like somebody finds it and is like, I can score points with this one. Let's quick turn it into an issue.
On either side, either they're like saying, I want to turn this into an issue. Like I'm the champion and defender of this. Or saying like, I have found this issue and I want to tell the world about what a terrible thing it is. Yeah, in general, I mean, and then it scores the points and then the entire topic becomes just another thing on the long list of things that like you're supposed to like sign up for one side or the other.
Yeah, I think that's a lot of my frustration right now is just that we aren't, a lot of times I feel like we're not taking these issues particularly seriously. Like they're being treated as opportunities to score points rather than as places where we need to have difficult discussions. Healthcare is probably the biggest example of that in the United States right now. Where nobody's being very serious about the healthcare conversation because the truth is, it's extremely complicated and it involves big, big trade-offs.
And we're going to have to make this trade-off or that trade-off and we've got to talk about it that way instead of pretending that there's some easy solution that won't result in pain for anybody. Well, I got another question, John. This one is from Amber and it's also for you. So I feel like sometimes I only read the questions that are for me, but I want to give you one, John.
Amber says, Hello, brothers. My favorite author is Charles Bukowski. I unashamedly love his dark humor and honest writing style. And yet, when my friends read his books because I've told them how much I like them, they come back and assume more about my personality and opinions because of my affinity towards him.
Am I a bad for person for reading books written by a bad person? Should I find a new favorite author? Should DH Lawrence take the number one place to compensate to my embarrassment? Do be his advice is welcome, with open arms, sent as to be received lovingly, Amber, UK.
Oh, this is a tough one, Hank. I mean, there's two questions inside of this question. One is, you know, can you separate the artist from the work? Is it possible to love something beautiful written by a deeply flawed or broken person?
And I think the answer to that is yes, although it's complicated and I no longer labor under the delusion that I used to that we can completely separate the author from their work. That, however, does not really apply to Charles Bukowski because his writing is very sexist and racist, just as he himself was as a person. So it's, this is, I think, a somewhat different question. You know, I read Charles Bukowski when I was in high school and I really liked facets of his work.
It felt like honest and raw to me in a way that most other fiction and poetry didn't feel. You know, it had that, that beat poet vibe, but even more down on its luck and something about that really resonated with me. So I, I definitely get what you're saying, Amber. I do think, you know, looking back now at Bukowski's work that it is deeply racist and misogynistic and that is destructive to the social order.
So I think that your friends' concerns are legitimate. And I think this is a tough question. I think it's really, really hard to navigate this. But I think if you can understand why people are hurt by it or feel that it is cruel to them or feel like it's cruel to people who are vulnerable, then I think that may go a long way toward assuaging some of the fears and concerns that you have in that your friends' eyes.
Yeah. I have to say that I'm no good at this question because I know nothing about Charles Bukowski. I also wasn't very good at that. But listen, if people want good advice, they go to other podcasts.
I do think that there's like, like reading things, it's so hard for me to read something that is opinionated and appealing without sort of somewhat incorporating the opinion and being like, I do kind of get where you're coming from. And so that's a hard thing for me, where it's like, like, my brain just can't deal with the fact that I disagree with the perspective, but I really like the writing. And so like, I start to get swayed over. And I think that that's the sort of dangerous thing.
I completely agree. I think that's a great point. Do you want to ask me a science question, John? Since I asked you a literature question?
Sure. I want to ask you a science question, Hank. This is something of a social science question that comes from Christina who writes Dear John and Hank, I'm from Finland and I have a question related to your new president. I'm angry that I need to pay attention to what the president of the United States is doing.
This isn't a science question. It is a science question. It's a history question. He's not my president.
And I feel like I shouldn't have to care about what he does. However, his policies have a wide international impact. And it seems like he's f-ing up the entire planet. I'm actually worried about him starting the next World War or him not stopping Russia from starting it.
I don't know why you'd be worried about that in Finland. And if the problem is not going to be World War, then maybe it's his climate change policies and his delusional opposition to science in general. It seems pretty bad. Why does any country have this much power over the rest of the world?
I think it's unfair. Is it unreasonable of me to think so? Our prime minister is a complete idiot, but at least he can only ruin his own country, not anyone else's. Hopefully we're still live when your next podcast is supposed to air.
Christina. Oh man, there's a lot to go over here. First of all, the part where John said it is a science question. It's history.
Yes, everything is the history of man. Everything is science. Everything is science. But first of all, I mean, I feel like there's a big difference between what has been done and what we're afraid will be done.
And getting those two things locked together as if they are one thing. Like, yes, we need to be concerned about what may be done. And this person does not seem to me to be the best maker of decisions. But there is a difference between what has been done and what we are afraid might be done.
And it seems like you have lumped those into one thing as if the things that we are afraid that are going to happen have already happened. And that's a really scary way of looking at the world. Right. The risk of catastrophizing is that it also deflects attention away from what's actually happening.
I think we have a strong independent judiciary in the United States. I think we separation of power still function in our government. I don't think that a world war is necessarily on the horizon. But I do think that there are lots of legitimate concerns about what's happening right now.
And we need to be serious about them. That said, I think that if you live in Finland, your life on average is pretty good, except for the weather. And I think that in eight years or four years or two years or maybe even just like six months, your life will on average still be pretty good. And so I would try to take some solace in that.
But it is difficult to have your life deeply affected by politicians who you did not choose. However, that is a much bigger problem for I think like people living in refugee camps in Kenya right now than it is for the vast majority of us. And so I want to focus on the people who are being directly affected by the current policies. Yeah, it is a strange thing though that that America is so powerful that the people who vote in America have impacts on pretty much everybody.
And that is a reason why we have to vote carefully and also vote. But I'm happy to be an American citizen because that is not the case for me. At least I get to vote in the elections that affect the whole world. But I will say that I would rather it be America than some other really powerful countries.
I don't know if that's just me being biased. But if we're going to have- No, yeah. If it's going to be us or Putin, I prefer us. Yeah.
Margin away. There's one other thing I wanted to say here Hank, which is there's this great quote from the theologian Mearslov-Vulf that I think about in this context, and that my therapist shared with me recently. Politics touches everything, but politics isn't everything, not by a long shot. I like it.
John, I'm going to ask this question that you've got highlighted right now because I figured that means you want me to ask it. It's from Amelia who asks, Dear Hank and John, I live in Toronto. I've noticed that on major streets. Oh God, Amelia, please take us in.
Just can we please come and visit? Can you just- Is there possible that we could just- can you get me off of the list that says that I'm not welcome in Canada, please Amelia, please? Do you work for Justin Trudeau? Can you talk to someone?
I'm sorry, what is the question? The streetlights alternate sides on major streets while on residential streets. They're all on the same side. The thing is, on my street the streetlights are on the south side until mid-block and then they switch sides, now they're on the north side.
This is madness. Can you help me shed some light, smiley face, on this issue? Who decides these things? Is there any regularity at all in streetlight placing?
Is it different where you guys live? And then Amelia says, Memento Mori as a sign-off. That's my favorite sign-off we've ever had in the history of Dear Hank and John. I'm signing off all of my emails, Memento Mori from now on.
You know what that means, right? I just Googled it. It means remember that you have to die. That's right.
That's the best sign-off. I mean, why would you ever sign off an email best wishes ever again when you can just Memento Mori it and put the email recipient right in the place where they need to be? Anyway, Hank, why do streetlights change places? I only wanted to read this question because of the sign-off.
Yeah, I almost missed it. There are places, John, where a train going across a national border will have to be removed from the train tracks, have new wheels put on it, and then put back onto the differently gauged train tracks that are different with the part because one country started their train tracks and the other country started their train tracks and they were like, oh, we have to bring them together. But then they were like, oh, we've got all these train tracks that are different sizes in our countries. There's only one solution and it's to change the wheels on all the trains.
What does that have to do with streetlights? Streetlights are not that big of a deal. I'm just not super concerned about the streetlights. You're just not answering the question.
There's one person like they were doing the streetlights on one side of the street and they were coming down and they were like, oh, but back there when we started the streetlights, like 50 miles away on that side of the town, we did it on the other street and then like it met halfway in the middle of the block here in Amelia's block. I'm not super concerned about that. It's a thing that happened, but I'm not concerned. I do, in my residential neighborhood, there's one streetlight per block on the intersection and no on the street at all.
That's a very long explanation for an answer that is basically, I don't know. But yeah, we don't know, Amelia. No, it's not. I don't know.
It's not. I don't know. It's, I don't care. Okay, we don't know and we don't care, Amelia, but Memento, Laurie.
All right. Hank, I've got another question. This one comes from Sarah who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a girl scout in the midst of cookie season. Oh, man.
Oh, man. That's my favorite time of year and a controversial one at that. Why is this a controversial cookie season? Oh, no.
Hank, we don't even know the controversy. It's possible that we're waiting deeply into something that we don't understand, but we're just going to do what we usually do and move forward in ignorance. I'm trying to sell Girl Scout cookies is the point. I've run across several problems, such as a foot of snow and the fact that people are less likely to buy cookies from a teenager than a cute little kid.
My initial idea was to send you guys the link to my cookie website so you could share it in exchange for a shipment of 478 boxes of cookies delivered to John or Hank's office. I mean, if you've got to choose Sarah, choose mine. I told this idea to my parents and they responded that they weren't interested in investing $2,390 plus shipping to secure sponsorship deal, which is disappointing. I probably should have done the math beforehand.
So instead of offering cookies, I ask if you could share the link to my cookie website and instead of promoting the cookies, promote the donation of cookies, the boxes of cookies donated would go to a local food pantry. While cookies are not necessarily nutritious, they are a rare treat to people who depend on food from these types of places. My website is, all right, I'm going to get ready to write this down. If you're in your car, don't do that.
Get your pens already, pull over, open up the notes app on your phone, digitalcookie.girlscouts.org. Scout, Scout, Sarah, 755035. They made that easy. How could I forget that URL?
It's basically Google.com. Note cookie sales end of March 12th and the link will become inactive after that. So I think this is a lovely idea, Hank. Let us go buy some Girl Scout cookies and ship them to food pantries around the country.
I think that's a lovely idea. Let's do it. Let's do it, John. I think we're ready to move on to the next question.
I just had for the first time in my life a nerd rope. And what a nerd rope is, what a nerd rope is, is basically like, you know, like how they're those twizzlers that aren't twizzlers and you can like pull up a string from the other. Oh my god, made of nerds with nerd flavoring? Yeah, no.
And then they dip that into something sticky and then they roll that around in a bunch of nerds. Oh my god. Oh my god. And I'm like, can I get four hundred seventy eight of those?
Oh my god. That sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. Wow.
I bet it's an excellent source of vitamin C as well. You know, on the back of the packaging, it said a thoughtful portion is one half a rope. And I was like, well, thank you for letting me know nerd rope. I've come to you for thoughtful portioning.
That's why I bought this thing that's made of only sugar. I mean, my reaction to that would just be like, you know what, you know what I didn't ask? I didn't ask what a thoughtful portion would be. All right.
So don't go interjecting your thoughts about what constitutes a thoughtful portion of nerd rope. I'm gonna have you know, you know, when I'm eating this nerd rope, win my stomach hurts. Yeah, it's like when Netflix is like, are you still watching Jane the Virgin? And I'm like, yes, yes, I am still watching Jane the Virgin Netflix.
Why are you trying to shame me? It's a good show. Yeah, yeah. Like, all I'm doing is using your service.
Sorry. I don't know why I started cursing so much in the last five minutes. I've got there are two really good science questions here that you are refusing to read. So I'm going to read one of them.
I read you a literature question, John. Yeah, that's not really a literature question. That was more of a minefield that you were asking me to navigate. Anyway, what's your science question?
All right. This one's from Jamie who asks dearest Mr. Green. Are bugs as susceptible to microwaves as humans are?
I was microwaving some instant noodles and after the four long minutes, it took us efficiently cook them. I went to take the noodles out and noticed a small, gnat-like creature still alive and crawling in the microwave. I know that the mesh cage on the inside protects humans outside from the microwaves, but this little bug had no such protection. That I just gave up radiation poisoning, feeling incredibly guilty until proven innocent.
Jamie, I believe people sign offs are getting really good. Before you answer this question, I just want to tell you what I think probably happened. And then you can tell me if I'm right. I think that when Jamie hit start on the microwave, there was no living thing in the microwave, but then the radiation caused a living thing to come into existence out of the noodles.
I have, I have, I have, I did my best. I did my best. That was my best guess. That doesn't doesn't radiation cause like evolution or something.
I saw the fly. I saw the movie The Fly. That's what I'm basing. There was already a fly in there with Jeff Goldblum John.
I'd spend a while since I saw it to be perfectly honest. So first, I have good news for you, Jamie. Probably. You did you very, very small chance.
Well, you definitely didn't give the bug radiation poisoning. Radiation poisoning is caused by a different type of radiation that comes out of a microwave. If the bug survived, there's a good chance that the bug's going to be fine. You could have killed that bug, but you didn't.
And I have to say, I did a little bit of research. I'm not sure. And neither is anyone else. And this is a known phenomenon that like an ant in a microwave will not get killed.
They think maybe it's because the, the wavelength of microwaves is large enough that it doesn't really interact with, like if you had a big box of ants, they would get hot, but one ant doesn't get hot. But there's also the possibility that there are areas inside of the microwave that don't really get hit with microwaves as much, which is why there's a, a sort of like a field inside of the thing. And there are hot areas and cold areas of microwave concentration, which is why the little turntables spins to get your food to like hit all of the good, good, good areas of the microwave. And maybe the mat was just hanging out in like a pocket that didn't have so much microwave radiation.
But, but the good news is you should feel innocent because you accidentally almost killed a mat, but you didn't, the mat was fine and will be fine. And in the future, check to make sure that there's no fruit flies hanging out inside your microwave. I mean, I would argue that the microwave failed to do its job, which was to sanitize the situation, right? Like what I'm really asking a microwave to do ultimately is not to heat my food.
I'm asking it to make my food clean. And you've really upset something that's fundamental to my understanding of the universe just now, which is that microwaves make my food not poisonous. So let's just move on. Well, if you microwave it long enough, that will happen just because of the food will get hot and the hot will kill, like if the ant was inside your burrito, then the ant would die because it gives super hot in the burrito and then death ant.
But the ants hanging out where there's less stuff like it's, it's really like, it's remarkable that this is a known phenomenon that we do not have the answer to. I love that. There's a lot of known phenomenon we don't have the answer to. There's so much science out there that we could get to the bottom of.
And we just need people who are curious, you know, like Jamie, maybe doing a little bit of science. So maybe maybe what you should do is put up like start doing some tests, get a bunch of ants, put up in your microwave, see what happens. Don't do that. Don't do that.
That's terrible advice. Let's move on to another question. This question is from Ken who writes, I turned 70 this year and I've written and fought in March for human rights, civil rights, clean water and clean air for more than 50 years. And what I saw it looked so close.
And now it's just crumbling around me. I need some dubious advice. How do I get out of bed, gird up my loins and take up the fight again when it's obvious that so many people don't share my views and will never ever do so no matter how convincing my arguments are. I await your dubious advice.
Ken, here's my advice. I don't know what Hank is going to say, but my advice is that the arc of history is very long. And if you look at where the world was 70 years ago when you were born, more people have more rights, fewer people live in poverty. Human lives are longer and healthier and more productive and better educated than they were 20 years ago or 50 years ago.
And that is partly due to your activism. And so it has not been for not and it still isn't. Yeah, Ken, thank you. First of all, and I'm looking forward to fighting for clean water and clean air for the next 50 years as well.
They'll probably not going to make it that long, am I? It's okay. I like your odds for 50 years. Okay.
All right. Wow. How old are you? 36.
I don't think you're 36, buddy. How are you? God, I'm so old. Yeah, I think so.
I like your odds for 50 years. I don't love my odds for 50 years. But that does remind me, Hank, that today's podcast is brought to you by Memento Mori. Memento Mori, you're going to die.
Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Jeff Goldblum movie, The Fly. John hasn't seen it in a while, but he's pretty sure he knows some stuff about microwaves now. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by the nation of Finland, the nation of Finland, deliciously close to Russia. And this podcast is brought to you by those trains where they have to stop the train at the border of countries and take train off the tracks and put new wheels on the train so they can fit on the train tracks from the other country.
Those train tracks. That was a good one, Hank. That was really solid. That's going to go down in history is one of the best.
Hey, let's answer one more question before I get back. I know I had something else I wanted to say to Kale. You didn't finish my thing to carry. You want to try the sponsorships.
And I just wanted to say that we are all going to be fighting for things that we will never see. And that is how like to me being a human isn't about like getting to a place that like when I die, I can feel good about where we ended up. Humanity is about always making progress forever. And so knowing that the work is never going to be done, but it's going to be better if you take the average over a long period of time.
And I think that that is the case. And I think that we are going to have to keep working toward that goal. And if you're going to accomplish your biggest goals before you die, then your biggest goals aren't big enough. I love this episode of your Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.
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See you website for more details. Of that, Hank. I also want to end on a note of optimism or hope or at least to define maybe what optimism looks like for us, Hank, with this Star Trek question from Francis. He writes, Dear John and Hank, in Star Trek and other utopian science fiction content, the idea that the earth unifies into one country is a popular one and it's sort of the end game for our society.
This seems shocking to me. Clearly, there will never be a time when every person agrees on most ideas. We've seen what happens when countries with different beliefs and values are forced together and this seems like the only way a truly unified country of the earth would happen. In my opinion, the end game would be lots of small countries all unified in a simpler way, like the United Nations.
My question is, what do you think the end game is in terms of countries? Will we one day be a perfectly unified planet? A critical space nerd, Francis. I don't know, man.
Well, in Star Trek, it's worth noting that the only reason we have a unified planet is because we don't have a unified galaxy. Yeah, so like you got the people you're worried about and you're like, okay, we need to consolidate and be like, okay, well, but to be clear, there's like in Star Trek, it's not just a unified planet. It's the United Federation of Planets. So there are there are planets in planets, all with their own, you know, like, but yes, they do have common enemies and they will fight together against those common enemies.
And that is kind of the thing like, you know, there have been lots of times when like disparate groups banded together because they were faced by some outside threat. And that's sort of like the story. But that's not the only story of why people have come together in larger and larger groups. Like, I think maybe what Francis isn't considering is that for most of human history, the largest group of humans was like 100 or 200 people.
And then in the last 10,000 years, our groups have gotten progressively bigger and bigger and bigger. We're now we have groups that are 1.4 billion people or 1 billion people that all identify as part of the same country. To me, there's no reason why we can't have one group that identifies as human instead of there's no reason why that that trend can't continue except for maybe the lack of a common enemy being something to hold us together. But I don't think that's the only thing that holds cultures and groups together.
So I do think it's possible that we could have one big human group in the future. I also think it's possible. I think that there are a couple of unifying forces. One is that there are better ways to live that are objectively better.
And we've seen that. And that was part of the end of the Cold War was just how much better things got in the US. And again, John and I are going to show a little bit of our more conservative stripe here because capitalism was working so well in the US. And communism was not working particularly well in Russia.
Now you can argue that that was not because of communism, it was because of corruption. But the nice thing about capitalism is it sort of has its own systems built into it that prevent certain kinds of corruption. Certainly not all corruption. Not truly.
Well, maybe not corruption then. But things I don't know, John. I don't know either. But I think you're right in general that human lives have improved faster since 1990 than at any point in all of human history.
So something's working. Yeah. And I think that there are better systems and those when the systems work, they can like the appeal of that, like the objective appeal of that is like it exists. Despite the fact that there are going to be lots of different reasons why we also want to be more insular and like hang out with people who are more like us.
But at the same time, I don't think that that means that like a unified humanity would not have diversity, it would have diversity of ideas and types of people and different systems and different economic systems, even the way that, you know, in a very small town like Mizzoua, there are different economic systems and people, you know, interface with the economy in different ways on various small scales and also on global scales. So I think that perfectly unified is a weird, weird phrase. I don't know that it accurately reflects like the actual goal of utopia, but I do think that a kind of utopia is possible. And I don't want to lose that dream.
I feel like we kind of have as a species, you know, it was there for a while in the 70s and 60s and a little bit in the 80s. And then it just, you know, now we're sort of like a little cynical, a little jaded as, you know, as a culture in the culture that I interface with. And I do want to keep the dream of utopia alive. And I think that there are utopias out there.
We just have to try and find them in the best ways we know how. Yeah, I mean, I'm a very pessimistic person in general, but I actually believe that the biggest problems that we face are solvable. Like, I think that absolute poverty, for instance, is not inherent to human beings. And I think we may, there are people listening to this podcast who I hope and believe will see a world within their lifetimes that where absolute poverty is treated as abnormal, and where, you know, under five child mortality is below 1% in every country in the world.
And that's not going to be easy to achieve, but it's possible. And I also believe that we can see a dramatic reduction in the number of conflict deaths. I think we've already seen that in the last 50 years. And so I am hopeful about humanity's ability to accomplish things together, because I think we've shown an ability to accomplish things together.
Speaking of things that we've accomplished together, Hank, of course, the greatest, the greatest achievement in the history of our species was the reformation and then five promotions in nine years of AFC Wimbledon, the greatest fan of an institution on Earth. And I think it's time to move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, even though we have so many good questions that I still want to answer, but we're out of time. So I want to thank the news from AFC Wimbledon. I have to say something, which is that we received an email from Victoria.
And she wrote, Dear John and Hank, I'm a big fan of the podcast, and I listen keenly every week. However, as a citizen at the UK, there is something that I just cannot stand anymore. I'm somewhat paraphrasing this email. As said in the news from AFC Wimbledon in Episode 79, they were supposed to play Gillingham, which John said was like Jiff, in that there was no known way to pronounce it correctly.
This is wrong. It is pronounced Gillingham, soft G like JAM, and that's important, because Gillingham, hard G like girl, is a different town in England. Gillingham is in Dorset, whereas Gillingham, the football team, is from Kent, both of which sound like made up regions of England that you can only access via magic. But yeah, so it's very important, apparently, to pronounce a Gillingham correctly, less people think that I'm referring to a different town spelled the exact same way, but pronounced differently.
With that noted, Hank, yeah, you will recall that AFC Wimbledon after a scoreless draw on January 21 against Chesterfield had two consecutive games that were postponed thanks to one of the greatest institutions in football League 1, which is of course Frozen Pitch and or Waterlog Pitch. However, eventually things had to dry out and they did just in time for AFC Wimbledon to play Sheffield United. And perhaps we should have stuck with Waterlogged Pitch because we lost four-nil and I have to say that scoreline from everything I read rather flatters AFC Wimbledon. It could have been much worse.
So Sheffield United is overwhelmingly the best team in League 1 this year. They're definitely going to get promoted or almost definitely. They're very, very good. And we are not at the moment very, very good.
We're down to 15th after 28 games, only nine points clear of the drop. So that's where things stand at the moment. All right. That was bad news.
Rosie Ana has just texted me to tell me that there is a third Gillingham with this one is also with a hard G. It's in Norfolk. There are three places in England named Gillingham. I mean, Hank, correct me if I'm wrong here.
I haven't been to England that often, but isn't it a country that's like eight square miles big? It doesn't seem super huge to me. How do you have three Gillinghams in eight miles? It's just a very dense, it's a dense country, John.
We're used to America where you can like walk for days and never see a human being. Hank, the population of England is 53 million people. That's about the same as the population of Indiana. That is not true at all.
And about the same, I mean, within one order of magnitude. Yeah. What is the population of Indiana, John? 6.5 million people?
6.6. Thank you. Yeah. It's a dense place.
And there's lots and there's lots of little towns. They're just close by by my standards where the little towns, you know, you need to get into your car with like some granola bars and make sure your gas tanks fall. I have news from Mars, John. If you are all interested in that, I know you aren't, but I'm going to tell you it anyway.
Tell me. I'm excited. So Mars, we have discovered through the Great Work of Curiosity rover, was a very wet place for a long time and it was wet with water, wetness, and that means that it was a warm place because water is only around when it is above 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius. The question then becomes why?
How did that happen? It's farther away from the sun than we are here on Earth. How was there so much water for so long on the surface of this planet? The obvious answer is that it's like Venus or even like Earth where it's being heated up by a blanket of carbon dioxide.
So if you've got carbon dioxide, the solar energy comes in, it has a harder time coming out and then, you know, the whole planet gets warmer. But based on Curiosity's analysis of rocks around these wet areas, there's no evidence that there was carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at these times. They were expecting to find certain chemicals, carbonates, that would have ended up in the soil and they're just not there, which makes them feel like maybe there wasn't a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which leaves a huge question. Like, how?
This isn't water that existed for a little while. Like it was part of a volcanic eruption or something. It was like for a long, long time, potentially hundreds of millions of years. They're thinking maybe other greenhouse gases like sulfur dioxide or methane or nitrous oxide, which are also really strong greenhouse gases, but those greenhouse gases are reactive and they probably wouldn't hang out that long unless there was some new input of them all the time.
So basically, we have found that like with all this data from Curiosity, we have this very strong indication that there was a lot of liquid water for a long time, but not a lot of carbon dioxide, which makes it just like how? Why? Could there have been liquid water all over this earth of this planet and a warm planet for so long without any of the atmospheric systems that we come to know as the reasons why planets stay warm? That's a big, big question.
And hopefully, as Curiosity and other missions continue to gather data, we could have a better idea of why that's happening because it is suddenly a huge mystery in Mars' planet science. So Hank, if it was something other than carbon dioxide, does that also maybe mean that life would if it developed would have developed very differently because it would have had different gases in the atmosphere or not necessarily? Yes, it does mean that. It also means potentially, like if it is methane, that methane could have been produced by the life.
And so the life was itself keeping the planet warm. That is like a way out there theory, by the way, just to be clear. But yeah, if it also, if it was sulfur dioxide, sulfur dioxide is a very reactive chemical that things can metabolize. So that could totally be a different way for life to work and to exist.
Wow. So the idea is that the atmosphere would be would need the life rather than the life needing the atmosphere or I guess both. Well, it would be both ways. Yeah.
That's pretty cool. That's the case here on earth. Like obviously we humans could not exist if there were not plants because there would be no oxygen because oxygen is super reactive and it would go away really fast if it wasn't constantly being produced. Well, we're doing our best thing to find out what life would look like without plants.
We're trying. I wanted to ask you one more question just because I do find that really, really interesting and weird and exciting. I know that cows produce a lot of methane. Is there a chance that there were ancient cows on the earth?
Well, interestingly, John, the cows don't produce the methane. The bacteria in their guts do badness. So it would have been bacteria in the cow guts. What if cows only exist because bacteria from Mars came to earth and then eventually colonize the guts of cows possible?
Yeah, sure. I'm into it. Sure. I like that idea.
You know, Hank, I've done quite a bit of research on what would happen if different animals were completely sterilized of all the bacteria that colonize them because it's a great interest to me personally and professionally. And humans would probably survive, although in an extremely damaged way. Cows, however, would die definitely. They are hugely dependent upon their gut microbes, whereas we are only very dependent on our gut microbes.
Yes. In fact, like when babies are born, they don't have gut microbes and they survive for a little while before they start getting colonized. So it's possible. But yes, you would definitely be messed up and have a shortened life.
Yes. And on that note, Hank, what did we learn today? Oh, God. Everything and nothing.
Everything and nothing. We learned that John would like to talk to a Canadian just any Canadian about whether or not they know their Prime Minister, Justin, Gold Justin, maybe they'd be interested in having a really quite successful author and podcaster to join the ranks or just get me off of the list that doesn't let me into the country without going into a very unpleasant and scary interview process every single time. I understand that I'm extremely lucky and I know Justin is probably listening to this because he's a huge fan of the pod, Hank. And it's a taxing job being the Prime Minister of Canada, but it's not that taxing.
It's only a nation of 30 million people, but 30 million in one. If I have anything to say about it. What else did we learn, John? God, we really didn't answer very many questions.
We learned that Hank does not care why streetlights are on alternate sides of the street. And we also learned that someone once considered sending us $2,400 of Girl Scout cookies and then didn't do it. And lastly and most importantly, Hank, we learned Memento Mori. Memento Mori, John.
Thanks for potting with me. Hank, thanks everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at hankandjohnatgmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter, where I'm John Green and Hank is Hank Green.
If you want to use the hashtag Dear Hank and John over at Twitter. We'll see your questions as well. Our podcast is produced by Rosie on Hoss and Sheraton. Gipps in our editors, Nick, with his name, and Victoria Bonjourno is our head of community and communications.
And our music is by the great Gunnarolla. Thanks everybody for listening and everybody who helps out with the podcast and also everybody who supports us on Patreon, where you can find our podcast patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John. Thanks again for listening and as we say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.