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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. There's our first ticket to your John and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast where me and my brother John, we answer your question, give you a question, give you a piece of advice, give you all the weeks from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. How are you John? I'm terrible. My family is covered in flu.
We got our flu vaccines, we were responsible citizens and we got the flu vaccine but it has failed. It has failed and my child, one of my children threw up on me last night and I had a very long night. Also, it's partly the fault of the throwing up on me and like I thought, honestly, at this point I thought maybe we were past the era of my children vomiting on me and so that's a bit of a bummer because I feel like it's just progression and also I stayed up way too late last night in addition to the six-child thing. I was listening to the new podcast, S Town.
Are you familiar with this? Oh my god, it's incredible. I've heard of it. I know that it is the podcast from the makers of cereal.
I feel like I should know but there's so many podcasts John and there are so many good ones. Why does anyone listen to ours? I don't know but this podcast, S Town is more like a Faulkner novel than it is like Dear Hank and John. It is closer to Nobel Prize territory whereas we are closer to Darwin Prize territory.
So yeah, how are you? I'm good. I know that S Town is a big deal, you know how I know it's because I've started to see hot ticks about it. People who are like, S Town is a great podcast that should never have been made and I'm like, oh yeah, there we are.
There we are straight up in the cultural relevancy of today. That's what happens when you get famous enough. Everybody starts to tell you how great you are while also telling you you shouldn't exist. It is, I mean, it is kind of true that if you make it even for a little bit to the White Hot Center of American popular culture, it's sort of a terrible experience because people, they just hate you.
Like they go from, they go from liking the stuff that you made to just thinking it's terrible. I thought S Town was great and I don't care that it's popular. I have stopped being one of these people who says like I only liked Nirvana's early work. Like I just want to like stuff.
It's so it's so hard to find anything in this world that you can just you can just love and I loved S Town. I thought it was fantastic and weird and great and I'm yeah, I'm also very tired because of this flu issue. Would you like a short poem? Yeah, okay.
Yeah, this is from Dorothy Parker. Once when I was young and true, someone left me sad, broke my brittle heart in two and that's very bad. Love is for unlucky folk. Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart, I broke and that I think is worse. Oh, Dorothy Parker. Yeah. Do you know how to twist the knife in that last line?
That's what short poems should be, John. I'm all for that. I understand what Dorothy Parker's talking about. I so rarely understand what a poet is talking about or I'm not quite sure, which is maybe the point but I just want to know just tell me what you mean.
I'm sorry. It's been a while since I've complained about short poems or poetry in general on the pod because you know that gets old but I just wanted to thank Dorothy Parker for doing it the way that works for me individually. Dear John and Hank, my biggest claim to fame is now and probably forever will be that when you Google image search a certain chicken breed quail Antwerp Belgian Vantam for reference. I am the first non-chicken to show up.
I'm obviously pretty proud of this but my question is how do I casually work this into conversations? Pumpkins and quail Antwerp Belgian Vantams? Lauren. Well, I think I've hit myself onto a picture of Lauren here unless Lauren was lying and I assume that she's this person holding the chickens and not the chickens themselves because she said that she was a non-chicken right?
Well, she actually says in the question Hank just to be clear that she's the first non-chicken result and I've also found a picture of Lauren. This is fantastic. Look at all the prizes that her chickens want. It's amazing.
I mean, I don't blame her for wanting to share this news. Yeah, so I guess the way that I would do it is whenever somebody asks, so what do you do? I'm just judging from your picture, Lauren, I think that you're probably a student so I would but I wouldn't say I'm a student. I would say I raise quail Antwerp Belgian Vantam chickens and I'm actually the leading human in the field.
Like, like according to Google, I am the leading human. John, right now I'm scrolling through the results for Hank Green to find out who the first non-hank green person is who comes up. You think I was assuming it wasn't going to be interesting so I wasn't even going to mention it, but it would be you, right? I would have thought it would be me too.
It's not. Who is it? It is Ashley Clemens in the first episode of the Gozibin at Diaries. Well, I think that's great.
She's much cooler and more interesting than I am. We'll get back to this quail Antwerp Belgian Vantam chicken thing because actually what I find most amazing is that if you scroll through all the Google image search results, literally thousands of them, you don't come across any other humans. Lauren is the only human in the quail Antwerp Belgian Vantam chicken world. Well, you don't even see a human hand.
Yeah, this is amazing. This is the longest I have scrolled seeing nothing but chickens in my time. There's some eggs. There's some eggs.
There's some chicks and there's also a number of non-chickens. There's some quails, which is not what we were looking for, but still not humans. I see a horse and a cow. I saw some people's feet.
This is a great bit. No wonder that we're being compared to S-town. Some people say that this is the S-town of advice podcast. Lauren, you just need to get a T-shirt and say, I would just print the picture on the T-shirt actually because then people ask you about your T-shirt and you can just say, listen, as it happens on the leading quail Antwerp Belgian Bentham human being on Google.
Well, sometimes I think it's best to have those things in your back pocket for not leading with. If I had been in like, for example, I've done some cool stuff and I don't tend to start off with my supreme achievement. I start off with like, and then I let it work in and people are like, oh, that's a neat thing, but you're not totally like, you haven't let that seep into you so much that it's like all about who you are. You have this cool thing about yourself that comes up later in the conversation and then people think it's cooler.
So what you hold back is that in 1998 Winter Park High School voted you best dancer. Right, you can't lead with that, but when it comes up and then it's like, oh, he knows this about himself, but he's not putting it on his T-shirt. Though I do kind of want to put it on my T-shirt now that I've said that. I think what you need is a lot of chicken trivia.
You need more than just this. You can just sort of like, this is clearly it's become a big part of your persona, so you just have to run with it, lean in and say, hey, did you know that there are more chickens in America than humans and etc. Is that true? Yes, but that's like the only chicken trivia I have Lauren, so you're going to have to work on the rest of yourself.
John, got another question. All right, give it to me. Dear Hank and John, not that I want to bore you with even more questions about rich people, but something that's been gnawing at my mind lately. Why do rich people like golf so much?
What is it about golf that appeals to them over all other sports? Four, Isaac Loughton. Hank, do you know that a chicken's body temperature normally runs between 100 to 103 degrees Fahrenheit, so a chicken essentially always has a human fever. So if you surrounded yourself with chickens, you'd be toasty, like too hot.
Yeah, it's almost like going in a hot tub. Yeah, it's like a bath temperature. So could you heat a bath with a chicken? Or enough to get something I never want to find out.
Go back to the question. Isaac just simply ends his question for Isaac. So to rich people, do you say do you yell for? Is that a thing?
Or is that like just a trope that like beaming up Scotty? Hey, I have no idea. Like I know people who play golf. My best friend plays a ton of golf, but I don't know anything about it.
My theory is, well, okay, I don't know is the short answer. Okay, me. Yeah, because I used to bowl a lot Hank as you know, like I used to bowl every day for several hours a day. It was like a for about a year.
It was a really intense fascination of mine. And what I loved about Boeing is that you're essentially trying to do the exact same thing over and over and over again. But it's impossible to do over and over and over again. Like you can't right.
You can't quite do the right thing every time. And that's just fascinating. It's pretty amazing. Yeah.
Golf has a little bit of that element. But then you always have to do other things because you have to change clubs. And sometimes you're putting it just seems to me like a nice walk. Well, I think there's a John Feinstein book called a good walk spoiled.
And it's always seemed that way to me like why don't you just walk nine miles with your friends? Yeah, I mean, it is it's a thing that you can do while you're having a meeting. And like you can like it's a way of like I also never go to be clear. This is a guess.
It's like it's a way of having a social experience with people who are colleagues and like mediate it through this activity that then but like there's lots of time for talking about forgetting to know each other. But then you like you have this great opportunity where 90% of the time can be getting to know each other and then 10% of the time can be actually like so so how much is the minimum order quantity for your your manufactured product colleague business person? Right. But I can like bowling is the same way.
Like that's to me you could do that with could be any sort of like chess sport. Basically we don't know it's one of the great mysteries of the human species why all rich people are drawn to golf like moths to the flame. It's also a very expensive sport. So maybe it's a way of establishing a sort of class system.
I don't know. I think it's a little bit less of an expensive sport but like it's designed to take up a bunch of space like you can't play golf without a lot of space and the more space you have the better your golf is. So I think there's a certain amount of this is something that is not accessible to other folk and so it is appealing in that way. And I don't think that's I don't think that's conscious but there may be some kind of subconscious thing there.
I don't want to move on from the question too soon Hank but I would argue that we're actually moving on from it too late. Did you know that chicken sperm can survive in a hen for up to 32 days? What? That is distressing to me.
There's something like that upsets the germaphone part of me. Hank I have another question that comes from Cornelia who asked your John and Hank. Since people are for some reason planning on going to Mars it got me thinking what color is the sky on Mars? The picture I have in my head is that it looks just like the night sky with the exception of one giant star instead of very many small ones.
Is that true? Surely it's not the same color blue that we have here on Earth because of the differences in our atmosphere or something. I love that or something. It's just perfect.
I couldn't agree with you more Cornelia. Hank or something? Yeah it's a different color. Weird it's weird.
So you'd think that we would know the answer to this question. You'd see we know the answer to this one John. You would. And we kind of do.
We kind of do. But we kind of don't. Because look at your sky. What color is the sky on Earth?
It's a bunch of different colors. Sometimes it's black. Sometimes it's blue. Sometimes it's a dark blue or light blue or like a purple or an orange.
This guy's a bunch of different colors. And it is the same way on Mars. But even weirder and more confusing making than that. You've seen like the dress right?
And everybody's like it's yellow and gold or white and gold or blue and black. Our brains when we see like they like we have like a sort of auto white balance system in our brains. So that when we look at like a color it doesn't look like a different color depending on like where the light is hitting it. And so we can we know like that's red and like that entire tablecloth is red.
Despite the fact that like one side of it doesn't have as much light on it and the other side has more light on it. And there's lots of wrinkles. And so like you know though that the whole thing is red. And so there's some speculation and when we take pictures of Mars we kind of have to guess what our eyes would see.
And sometimes we balance it more to what like what it would look like if it were on Earth with Earth's atmosphere. And sometimes we balance it more to like what we think we would see. But at the same time there's this like unknown quantity to what this guy on Mars looks like that we will not really know until we have a human there to look at it. So I'm not a scientist but just a quick question.
Couldn't you know you got that minivan on Mars right now? What if you just turn that little mofo up and had it look up at the sky and took a picture? I mean we've done this. But the thing is they already thought of that.
The thing is you have to you have to white balance it. You have to like decide like what white is on that surface. I mean did we not get a good camera up there? But like we have to choose what white is.
Just like when when I take a picture with my camera I get to choose what white is. They have to choose what white is. And it's not entirely clear what white would be for a person who was standing on the surface of Mars with a very different with a very different sunlight and with very different atmosphere composition. Now we have a pretty good idea.
I've said all of this now and I can say that if you were on the surface of Mars you would look up and on the majority of days at like not sunset or sunrise you would see something like a sort of brownie like a brownie orange even like even sometimes maybe kind of a yellowish color. But there are also times depending on how much like water. Like my son's mom. Like how much water is in the sky?
How much water like ice is in the sky that you would see more of like a blue gray. And they think that like despite the fact that like the color is more like a dark sort of orangey brown you your mind might perceive that more as a gray because your mind is like getting ready to see a different like it's expecting colors to be a certain color. It's just it's weird like colors are weird which we have discovered with the internet getting really obsessed with a dress and what colors it is. You know what else is weird?
Chickens is it chickens? There are 25 billion chickens. That means that chickens are the most successful bird species on earth. There are more chickens than there are any other bird.
And ever have been. That is an impossible number of birds. That is that is nuts. Are there more of anything that of chickens?
Yeah there's more uh krill. Oh that makes sense. That makes sense. I totally buy into that.
Thank you. All that stuff. How did you know that like all the top of your headers that in the article you're skiving from right now? Oh no I know all that these chicken facts.
What even I'm not an article. This is just this is just stuff I know. I've got by the way I'm just getting started. If you thought like oh this was a little bit of a good bit and it's over no wrong it's just beginning.
Hank do you know where the world chicken population is the highest? What nation has the most chickens on earth? Is it the United States of America? No the United States is second with 1.7 billion chickens.
Is it China? It's China with 3.6 billion chickens. What they got like double our chickens. They have and you know what this is something that we never talk about like everybody says oh we need to be worried about our trade imbalance.
What about our chicken imbalance with China? I mean this is this is an issue of national security. We are almost two billion chickens behind. Okay John this question comes from anonymous.
What did I just say who asks this is a kind of a chicken related question John. Why can't we see bird ears? Where are they? Great question.
Have you been on this for not signing that one? Yeah you don't want to. Seriously what's what is the what is the your desire to remain an unnamed source of this story. Birds have ears they are under their feathers they're little holes in the sides of their heads.
It's interesting to think about ears as um as like like a functional thing rather than a physical thing. So I think of an ear and I picture like the thing that Vincent van Gogh cut off his head if he actually did that. And like it's the it's the cartilage that is hanging off the side of your head but functionally an ear is just like the thing you used to hear with and so for other animals there is like the thing that they used to hear with doesn't actually have external physiology. Birds just have like a hole in the side of their head and like a like reptiles have those two.
I don't know what they're called. There's like a different name for for ears that don't have ears but ears. Um what do you know uh do you know how many pounds of chicken the average American eats in a year? It's distressing.
Uh well I I probably eat I don't know maybe maybe two to two to five pounds of chicken a week. What? So I'm gonna say what you eat five pounds chicken a week. I don't know John maybe.
That's crazy. You're telling me that you have on average like 10 to 12 chicken meals per week. That's not possible. Respectfully you don't I don't agree that you eat five pounds of chicken a week.
That's ludicrous. Uh I bet I could do it. I really like chicken. I'm sure you could in an emergency.
I'm saying that in the average week you don't choose. There's three meals a day John. There are three meals a day. One of them I mean I guess eggs are kind of one of the great questions but um I'm just talking about it.
It's not talking sandwiches and egg a chicken. All right well you actually you know what it's it's 84.9 pounds a year and I'm moving on to another question. Even I'm tired of this bit. This question comes from Shane who writes Dear John and Hank a friend of mine recently got a tattoo of a world map on his forearm.
I don't really like tattoos in general but that's not the issue here. The main problem is that the map is a Mercator projection. Should I tell him about all the inaccuracies and problematic socio-cultural viewpoints associated with the Mercator projection or would it be unfair to ruin his forearm for him forever? Yours etc.
Shane. Uh well first of all it's on his forearm so he could just turn it upside down and see it the way like the way that if the world was the other way around. And so you could see like right a bit like hey look doesn't have to be north doesn't that be the top of the map. It could be odd yeah so you got that going for you.
South could be up. I don't think that's really the issue though. I mean I think the projection just makes countries look the wrong size you know. Yes.
Uh all maps have their problems but as that is the most famous map its problems are the most famous problems. Uh yeah obviously Shane the time to have this conversation with your friend was like the hour right two 30 years before the tattoo and I think now is probably not the time to have the conversation. But John if it comes up at some point I think you can share your opinions but I feel like you probably don't want to start that combo. So but so you said all maps have their problems.
Yep. But the globe a globe is a kind of map and it does not have that problem and that like all the things on a globe are the right shape because the earth is round. You don't have to flatten it out so like you get a beach ball and you put a map on it and you're pretty good. What body part?
Well what body part? Yeah you don't have a spherical body part to tattoo a globe. You do. You got no you don't.
Well it's close your whole head. No that's a terrible idea on several levels. You're gonna have to cut an article because you have a neck. But everything else you could get like it's much better than any flat map projection.
So you're gonna like top. Yeah I mean I agree it would be better than any flat map projection but it comes with its own set of problems. You have to like you'd have to largely I think the biggest issue is that you would have to shave your head all the time. Well if you do that.
Otherwise you're gonna be like really biased against one hemisphere or the other and so that's gonna look like I mean you want to talk about Eurocentrism if you choose to put Europe on your forehead. Yeah you know I mean that's what you got to do. You got to put like a Pacific on your face so you don't have too much face tattoo happening because the Pacific is huge. You know just like why why maybe like Japan or one cheek.
I mean I guess that's a good I guess that's a good call Hank like it's an interesting theory. I guess my my biggest concern with it is that you're probably going to have Australia on your jawbone no matter what you do even if you put the Pacific on your face and then on the other side really your whole right cheek is going to be the Americas. And I think I feel like that's gonna look that's gonna look America-centric that's gonna look like you're privileging the Americas over Afro-Eurasia and in the end like nothing against the Americas but Afro-Eurasia historically is where most of the action's been. Eh I don't know about that.
The point is that unless you can spin a map in a globe form it's very and even then you're putting north up instead of north down. So it's just I think it's very hard not to have some level of bias and I would argue that I look I'm all for face tattoos you know but I think I don't know if that's the face tattooed again. Oh I'm looking at pictures of map tattoos on people's forearms right now and they're cool. What one?
This one's pretty good Greenland isn't too huge Africa looks substantial. I'm in it. Hey Hank are you finding yourself thinking more about getting a tattoo because I am. You know I am I don't know when that started but I totally am.
Me neither. I know it's happening and I don't know if it's a I don't know if it's a midlife crisis thing I think I'm a bunch of things that are happening to me or midlife crisis thing so it's totally possible but or if it's just that like tattoos have been so normalized that now I think like maybe I will get a tattoo but I've made it you know probably about half my life without one and I feel like it's also the time when a tattoo would look best on me is probably fast. A little bit of that yeah yes I agree with you. I don't know.
There's so many cool tattoos and people and like I think that the techniques are getting better like tattoos like seem to look cooler now than they used to. Yeah they don't all look like Ryan Gosling's yeah like cactus hand yeah yeah this guy has a bunch of country flags tattooed on his head and face so that's great that's something that's good but I don't see it I haven't found anybody who's tattooed the the globe on onto their head and face unfortunately so you can be the first. Oh my god I mean it's really it's hard to tell you to tell you this in S town. Yeah all right this question I mean no wonder Blue Apron won't sponsor us.
We're crap. That's just a guts from Natalie who asked Dear Hank and John I recently had a few teeth removed an operation which required I be put to sleep with whatever drug they use for that sort of thing anyway whatever I was high on made me cry uncontrollably I didn't feel sad I just felt the need to cry. My mom claims that my reaction to this drug lets her know how I'll act when I've had alcohol. I say those are two different types of intoxication as John is very familiar with the dental operations I was wondering if you would agree Hank I'm not ignoring you I just don't know if you've ever been unesthetized high on life and painkillers Natalie.
Yeah I mean this is one of my areas of expertise because I've had a lot of oral surgeries in which I've been anesthetized in many different ways and I've also had a reasonable amount of alcohol in my life and I would say that your mother is dead wrong about this I do not think that when you have two glasses of wine you will find yourself uncontrollably weeping. No I'm wrong but that's my suspicion. You know they have there's this thing about like oh this person's a happy drunk this person's a sad drunk I don't I don't know about that man I've definitely had both definitely been on both sides of that coin. I've definitely experienced both sides of that coin it's really about what you bring into the experience but I think actually uncontrollable crying is a pretty common side effect of some of the ads yeah it's conscious sedation stuff that they do for oral surgeries these days.
I I prefer just to go with Novocaine and maybe if I'm uncomfortable or scared a little bit of the laughing gas I don't really I don't need to go all the way into a twilight state I like to know what's going on you know I actually like to watch the little screen where I can see them going inside my teeth looking for the secret root canal that failed or whatever god if I hate that history so much I don't want to I mean I just hate it I just I was talking so so I've been anesthetized most recent was from my colonoscopy where they give you that sort of like waking sedation and the nurse was telling me that that like a fair number of people get really sad a fair number of people get really happy and giddy and then there's like a not insignificant people who become entirely like super belligerent like mean and nasty and like they like they like yell and they try to get away and they fight people and and like they like they have like tied them down basically and I did I got super happy the last time to the point where I was like I could definitely see myself abusing this drug don't let me have this don't even tell me what it's called because this is a fun thing and I had a real good time and I didn't remember any of it afterwards but Catherine assures me that I was having a good good old good old high on whatever it was yeah so they've stopped using that drug in the last year Hank I'm also an expert in the field of colonoscopies and increasingly they use a different drug that you don't you don't have the memory loss from but you also don't have that sweet sweet feeling of Demerol coursing through your veins so that's just an update just an update for you well now I know I know I used to like after that experience I was like well I'm not gonna I'm gonna look at four to my next go and ask people I guess now not so much please please steer clear of Demerol it is the bad path the difficult it's a difficult path to fall down okay we got a question from Tess you write steer green brothers my name is Tess and I'm a senior in high score you try to be the new Ryan Tess on the class president and I'll be expected to give a speech my graduation ceremony whenever I sit down to write I just get angry at myself or not being as eloquent and profound as I want to be at other times I listen to podcasts and I'm odd as you give some of the most profound statements as easily as one would read a street sign Tess I believe that you may have written to the wrong podcast I think that you are trying to talk to S town and they do they are doing a great job do you have any advice on how to be more profound also what would you say to a class of 51 graduates hold up I was so impressed with Tess for being the president of her class but it turns out that she had like a two percent chance of being the president of her class there's only 51 people that's like a graduate from the class of 52 and I sure as hell wasn't the president of my class so also what would you say to a class of 51 graduates they enter a world that at times seems more than level than benign well that's the lovely sentiment right there any advice you got to start with us appreciated don't let the bastards get you down Tess you what would you got to say you got to start out with like hey I know that it sometimes seems like the world out there is more than than than benign but I'm Tess my name is Tess and I'm here to tell you what John and Hank Green told me to tell you which is that they have students give the graduation speeches because the adults have heard it all before and so they won't say it because it sounds right to them but it doesn't sound right to us because we're new we're young we're ready we're fresh fresh and so clean and just say exactly these words and you might say that the sky on Mars is red you might think that the cameras on Mars can tell you what that sky color is but s-town is the best podcast John has ever heard his children's puke is a yellowy color and he hates oral surgery and I'm out I mean did you have a colonoscopy between this question and the previous question so yeah I mean basically that so I think Tess I think Hank started out on the right track with I know at times the world seems more malevolent than benign but I think that um after you say that you should just say and you know it probably is more slightly more malevolent than benign and then I think you should just sit down I'm tired of these hopeful optimistic graduation speeches that everything's gonna be okay no it's not no I mean it's like you know the best the best years of your life are ahead of you Tess and I always think a good graduation speech is one that acknowledges that high school was not like merely awesome you know like I always disliked the graduation speeches where they would be like and won't we have wonderful memories of prom like maybe maybe some of us will have good memories of prom others of us will have terrible memories of prom and furthermore like I feel like if you're doing it right like high school isn't the best you know like hopefully the rollercoaster at some point will reach like a higher peak than it did at prom that's what I think about life in American high schools I think it's very easy to romanticize it and we have a strong culture of romanticizing it that many would tell you I have participated in despite my best attempts not to and yeah it's gonna be you know like it gets harder but it also gets more interesting from there don't you think oh I definitely do John I had a mix of high school experiences but the first few years were real bad so yes yeah yeah I also I also had kind of like two high school experiences of which the first was the worst and the second was better and also I would say pretty good but I don't look back on that time as like the happiest time of my life or anything I look back on it as like a really complicated oh yeah you know like pretty much every other time I've had a few years in my life that were pretty great that I could look back to and I think well that was a pretty great year but most of the years in my life have been complicated um well speaking speaking of which John I have to tell you we got to hit our sponsors for the day this podcast brought to you by terrible memories from prom terrible memories from prom yeah probably I don't know I by the way I went to like three different problems and I had three different but all really interesting cool experiences today's podcast also brought to you by s-down s-down it's so much better than this podcast podcast is also brought to you by the quail antwerp belgian bantam a chicken I think oh it is a chicken yeah no it's a chicken but it's most important uh and famous human representative is loren and lastly today's podcast is brought to you by that minivan on mars that minivan on mars not great at setting the white balance apparently it's just complicated okay it's complicated how our eyes work I believe you I just think it's a little stupid that we don't know what color that I don't know I believe you you're a much smarter person than I am I'm sure that you're right let's answer one more question Hank from our listeners uh by the way sorry for all the questions we didn't get to I feel very bad uh all right this episode of your Hank and John is brought to you by Shompify there are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me and that is what shopify makes easier when you start with shopify the tools to design and launch and take payments they're all there from day one you don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business and this is important because you also have to like look good and with shopify's templates you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together and when things look real 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Hey we got a question here from Bastion who writes deer john and hank recent events have made me extremely paranoid about the news I'm consuming there seems to be so much misinformation going around really you think that I feel the need to scientifically fact check everything I read before sharing my friends and family but I simply don't have the time for that how much back checking and cross referencing do you do before you share what's happening in the world and when do you feel confident to share and engage in any discussion some do-be advice would be appreciated greetings from Germany oh bastion ah is there anyone who can send Angela Merkel over here and not I don't mean for a visit I mean for good we need someone with a PhD in physical chemistry to lead our country we've got Justin Trudeau right there he's right there he could just come I don't believe Justin Trudeau even went to graduate school it's true yeah Merkel has a lot going for her Bastion here's what I gotta say like if you're looking at a tweet if you're looking at some like thing that got like sent to you through social media you gotta fact check that stuff it's just yeah but if you're looking at an article that's published by a reputable news organization that is actually about the news rather than about hot takes about the news or about whether or not what someone said was true or not then you're safe and so what generally you're talking about fact checking everything before you send along is whether like is like the discussion of controversy and scandals which to me is seeming less and less like news and more and more like entertainment and so like yes it's almost as if it doesn't really matter whether that fact is true before you that's not really so much what you should think about before you send on though do do that but whether or not that fact is actually helping people understand the world better or is just making them feel a way that they enjoy which tends to be a way that in which they are belittling the people that they dislike I think it's also a question of like is this closer to information that is being you know like carefully reported and vetted which I will say I think right now large media companies do a better job of than internet lone wolves including by the way Hank and John Green or as I've heard of them John and Hank Green I also I also think that you have to consider is this closer in content to information about the ongoing famine in Somalia or is this closer in content to information about Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kanye West because I actually think both of those are important and I understand why people want to be informed about them both but I think the level of fact checking that you have to do for one is different than the level of fact checking you have to do for the other because I just think that yeah it's like you said Hank we are sharing a lot of what we're sharing is not really about the news it's really about yeah trying to find out who we identify with and trying to establish who we are which is important it's just not it's just not news there's a certain amount like what I think the news has become and I think this is not an immediately new thing but a lot of it is about like okay we need to try and convince a larger group of people to be on the right I'm using air quotes side of this conversation and and so the things that we choose to share are the things that influence like what you're like that have a higher chance of influencing someone's opinion rather than just what is the most newsworthy event of the day because and I totally get that because when I'm sharing stuff on the internet I mostly want to share stuff that's like look we need to make better decisions and we need to make we need to have more people who agree that these are the things that are important and that those things that we don't think are important aren't important and so it's almost like we should like there's a much bigger part of what news has become now that's about that's just purely about politics rather than about being informed about something and when the world is as complicated as it is being informed is very difficult and it's much easier to sort of have a worldview and then just accept whatever content fits within that worldview and share that content but I think that it is really started to serve us very poorly by the way this is something that Hank and I both struggle with like we are not the we are oh yeah I do this all the time we are not the wise old men trying to tell you about the world we are the we are with you we are the problem we are the problem yeah it's something that we struggle with a lot in the interest of fact checking though Hank I just want to note that Justin Trudeau started a master's degree in environmental geography but then gave it up and saw it public office and now is of course the prime minister of Canada one of his principal advisors is named Gerald Butts that wasn't that's not super relevant but it's just another thing that's not you have to stay informed on the funny names that that prime minister's advisors have you really I feel like you let me down you let me down on the chicken facts did you just like run out of chicken facts John no I wanted to move I wanted to move on to the Gerald Butts issue which I feel like is one of those things that we're ignoring because we're only paying attention to news about like the current political scandal in the United States rather than paying attention to the news of who is the 14th most powerful Canadian according to a McLean's magazine piece in 2014 Gerald Butts is the 14th most powerful Canadian all right I guess I'm for the news from Mars and AC Wimbledon I'm going to start off with the news from AFC Wimbledon because we lost two nil to Port Vale in League One the League One season is wrapping up and I wouldn't say that AFC Wimbledon is firing on all cylinders at the moment however we want arguably our most important game of the second half of the season against the franchise currently flying its trade Milton Keynes and 41 games into the season with five games to go we are sitting on 54 points which in the world of League One is known as enough that is enough points to stay up so yeah so I don't know that we really we really have much to play for at the moment except for Pride of course Pride is very important but not important enough to be Port Vale well congrats on the enough John what else can we ask for in life than enough that's what no listen if AFC Wimbledon finished 12th in League One after getting promoted last season I am delighted that's great news what's the news for Mars well there's a bit of a of a spat John you know you don't know necessarily that there's drama in the Mars world because well I mean we can't have long debates about what what color this guy is but indeed so you know Elon Musk and you know Neil deGrasse Tyson and I actually I actually literally know both of them I have met both what what did you mean Elon Musk yeah I have I have not to brag but I got texted with Elon Musk you are totally first of all bragging second of all lying right no I'm not lying what you have spoken to me at a party and he said that he really liked my who said it Charlie Sheen or Moa Markedoff video oh my goodness gracious why don't I know this I don't know I can't we've ever told you that before anyway yes I have both Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk are they in it are they in a in a war no they're in a they are in a minimum of spat maximum is there any way that I could be brought in to mediate because I'm ready yeah I would yes I definitely definitely could sit on that stage at the at SpaceCon SpaceCon a thing SpaceCon should be a thing anyway Neil deGrasse Tyson oh my god just what we need to take with another business idea the other guy's asking was doing a Reddit AMA and was asked if he would take take Elon Musk's SpaceX trip to Mars and he said he had a condition which what he said quote I really like Earth so any space trip I take I take I'm double checking that there's sufficient funds for me to return also I'm not taking that trip until Elon Musk sends his mother and brings her back alive then I'm good for it Neil I mean I think that's I think that's perfectly charming I think that it's I think it's charming but I think it's a little unfair maybe not mom maybe somebody who's a little bit like more physically fit than Elon Musk's probably quite aged mother I mean yeah Elon Musk has a brother so maybe yeah but I'm just saying like in general I get the I don't know I get his point I am also a huge fan of Earth so maybe I'm a little bit a little bit biased here by the way Elon Musk's mother is not that old no she's also gorgeous she's rather gorgeous she's a South African-Canadian model and dietitian according according to Wikipedia and she was born in 1948 so she could still go to Mars oh yeah she could totally go to Mars she looks like she may have been there already this picture is amazing yeah no she definitely photographs amazingly um yeah yeah well you know she's saying we can't all be Elon Musk and we can't all be Elon Musk's mother what else did we learn today oh we learned that John knows Elon Musk and he did tell me it's true it's true how the whole thing it's true we learn that chickens sperm can survive for more than a month inside of a chicken and we learned that chickens in China outnumber chickens in America what are the greatest national consensory chicken chickeny tickety tack what happened to me I don't know it was like uh it's like you were a robot that broke down I've long suspected that you might be an artificial intelligence yeah I was it's your child and thought that everybody was fake except you I did I did think that when I was a child and by the way I have never heard a particularly compelling argument about why I was wrong like I I now believe that I was wrong and that every other human is also a human but just to be clear I believe that because I think it makes me a better person not because I think that it is provably true uh and lastly we learned that the podcast out is truly fantastic you should listen to it right away okay okay well I'm worried because I heard the hot take that it shouldn't exist so now I'm worthy or wrong I mean you know maybe that's right and and like I've missed something terrible and I'm promoting some horrific podcast and I'm gonna get a lot of a lot of flashback but I enjoyed it very much and as someone who has lived at times in small town Alabama not too far from where this podcast is said I found it fascinating and quite compelling Hank thank you for podcasting with me it is now our job to go and do this week in ryan's which is available this week in ryan it's available to anybody out there who wants to go to our patreon.com slash dear Hank and john you get a little mini podcast every week and uh yeah I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be a good thing but you don't have to go it's not that good but thanks for body with me thank everybody for listening you can email us at hankandjohnatgmail.com thank you and do the credits.
Dear Hank and John is produced by Rosie Anna Halzerow, Halzerow, Halzerow, and the share of Gibson our editor is Nicholas Jenkins. Victoria Bonsjourno is our head of community and communications and our music. It's by the great Gunnaroll as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.