417: You’ll Be Okay in the Medium Run

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You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Hello and welcome to dear Hank and John.

Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you DBs advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

John, I fell in love with a banker.

Oh.

But when she had low interest, I was so interested in her.

But then when she had high interest,

I just...

You lost your interest.

I lost my interest.

It's interesting because I find with bankers that when they have high interest is when I am more interested.

Why?

Oh, because

I was thinking about it.

You were thinking about a loan.

No, I was thinking about giving money to this bag.

We have money bags.

We're in money bags over in here.

Hey, listen, we're in the same place at the same time.

If we sound a little different, that's because we're recording on an iPhone, unless you're on Patreon, in which case we're recording on Hank's vlogging camera.

We're actually going to use whichever audio sounds better, and I have no idea which it will be.

Great, but we're in the same place at the same time.

A rare treat, it has to be said.

Hank, has been visiting me in Indianapolis.

It's been lovely.

It's been lovely.

I would love to just come here for...

a month and make podcasts.

Well, and you know, we live in a forest.

It's everything is great.

I don't understand why you don't come here for a month and make podcasts.

In the summertime, you need a swimming pool or something.

It's so hot.

It's a little hot here.

But other than that, it's humid.

It's a little humid.

I'd just be in the river, but it's dirty.

The river is a little dirty.

We recently had a canoe capsize, however, and so I experienced the river up close and personally.

It's not that bad.

I didn't get GRD or anything yet.

I mean, just don't give it up your nose.

Yep.

All right.

Should we answer questions from our listeners or should we continue to banter?

I don't know.

How does it work?

Okay, this question comes from Elizabeth, who writes, I'm a PhD student working on my master's thesis.

And during my master's thesis proposal, I was accused of using AI to write my thesis document by someone on my committee.

I did not use AI to write any part of my thesis document.

And I stressed that to my mentor.

He told me that he did not believe that I used AI and that I wasn't in any trouble because it couldn't be proven.

But what do I do if they accuse me again during my defense?

Oh my god, Elizabeth, you must be so nervous right now.

Hopefully we've gotten to you in time because we're going to be able to solve this problem.

We can solve the AI problem right now, right here, hanging.

Great, because I was feeling very much like, what are we gonna do?

I have all my version histories and I use toggle to track how long I work.

But God, I mean, the fact that you have to do that to prove that you're not using AI in the year of our word 2025.

I use toggle.

I don't even know what that is.

It sounds stressful, though.

I love the word, though.

How do I prove that?

How do I prove that I didn't use AI when AI detectors are notoriously bad?

Not the Queen Elizabeth.

AI detectors are so bad.

Are they?

I have never used one.

At the beginning, they were okay.

Right, but now...

Now it's so, it's like you could do a bunch of stuff to make the AI

create stuff that doesn't get detected by AI detectors.

Sure.

And then, like, what is it picking out when it is detecting that it's made by AI?

That it's like

a good bunch of logical words in a row?

There are some things when you're just like getting

stock right out of the model that it can sound really like the same.

Yeah.

But honestly, I think that like like human, human detection is better at this point than AI detection, but it's all a game and it's all faulty.

And it's like at this point, I don't think that AI detection is fit for purpose.

I don't think that it works.

What do we do, Hank?

I don't know.

You said you had a solution.

Oh, yeah.

No, my solution, Elizabeth, is to not stress out about this because your mentor is right.

Yeah.

If your mentor believes you that you didn't use AI, if you've logged the work time.

This is so great.

This is like an opposite Hank and John moment where you stayed in the problem.

yeah and i zoomed way out usually i'm the one who zooms way out yeah and i was like i don't know what we're gonna do about anything it's all too big it is like let's just focus on our problem the ai thing is very scary very powerful and i worry that the people who are uh have the most power around it are are not the people we would want to have the most power around it just

whoever showed up that day what like i don't like that's how i feel oh no it's very smart people are working on working on ai but like

But the people who ended up in charge.

The people with the most power.

Yeah.

Like, it worries me that Elon Musk, for instance, has a lot of power in the world of AI.

Yeah, I think that's a legitimate concern.

Yeah, I'm concerned about that, but I'm not concerned about Elizabeth.

So like, we are not going to solve the AI problem.

We're going to solve Elizabeth's problem.

Right.

So first of all, you don't have that much of a problem because your mentor is right and you are right and you know the truth.

And second, what you need to do is interject some real humanity onto the page.

Is that really what's no?

Because it's a master's thesis.

But a lot of times you can't do that.

A lot of times you can't like talk about like, here's why I personally even if you did that you could just totally have an AI do that.

Absolutely.

You could be like, get real goofy here.

Yeah, make it, make this super personal.

That was good, but make it more personal.

I think that maybe the future is apps like Toggle, where you prove how long you were inside the work.

But even that isn't.

The truth is, we're going to live in a different world.

and i don't know how it's going to shake out but i do know how it's going to shake out for elizabeth which is that elizabeth is going to be okay i mean in the medium run in the long run elizabeth i have terrible news not about your master's thesis but about the ubiquity of death

that did sound like you thought that the world was going to end no no no just elizabeth's yeah and mine and yours and each of ours yeah and all the trees and everything we love and the oceans will boil and etc right but man not yet.

My biology is telling me this all matters and so I'm going to listen to it.

We've got another question from a master.

It's from Sarah who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm about to graduate from my master's and with my master's and don't get me wrong, I'm proud of myself, but I can't help but wonder if I completed a master's because it sounded good to me to say that I have a master's degree or if I actually wanted to.

Isn't wanting to be somebody who has a master's degree like still like having a master's?

I feel empty after this huge milestone because I want to be doing other things like creative writing.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, why is it so hard to do the things you really want to do that feed your soul?

How much does free will really guide us or are we just constantly predicting the path that brings us the most happiness from a biased perspective, even if it might actually be true?

Always existential and seeking Sarah Tonin, Sarah.

Sarah, you did it.

You went from the narrow problem to the big problem.

The big problem.

That's a classic move, Sarah.

That's a classic John Green move.

I congratulate you on John Greening it.

Yeah.

Pro tip.

Try not to do that.

Yeah,

stay in the moment and in the problem.

And if you want to be writing creatively, write creatively.

Having a master's degree doesn't prevent you from writing creatively.

Having a job doesn't prevent you from writing creatively.

You know, I wrote my first novel.

at night and on the weekends and my second novel at night and on the weekends while working at a job.

And that is the story for most creative writers.

The vast majority of creative writers don't make creative writing the center of their professional life, but still it's very fulfilling.

As for why you became a master, you became a master so that you could say that you were a master of anthropology or whatever you study.

And if you did that because you thought it would sound cool, let me tell you something, Sarah, as somebody who isn't a master,

it does sound cool.

Yeah.

It sounds cool as heck.

Well, and this is also, for me,

it's true of everything, where it's like, why did it, like,

the main reason for many years I wanted to write a book was to have written a book.

Oh my God.

To like be a man who's...

People always talk to me when they're like, I really want to write a book.

I feel like just the dream of having, like, walking to a bookstore and seeing my name on the shelf.

Yeah.

They're not thinking about the contents of the book.

No.

They're like, that's a big part of why I wanted to write.

I call this the yellow bus phenomenon.

So when I was nine years old, I won a competition for writing in Central Florida.

Not to brag, I beat on all the other third graders.

Now, I recently reread this book, Hank.

It's called It Just Isn't Fair.

It's about death, like all of my work.

And it's not very good.

It doesn't show any particular promise.

It's very standard third grade work.

Nothing exceptional about it at all.

But they put me on a big yellow school bus and sent me all the way from Orlando to Tampa, Florida to attend the Florida Young Writers Conference.

Wow.

And that was incredibly exciting.

And what was cool about it was not writing the story.

Yeah.

What was or winning the award?

What was cool about it was the big yellow school bus.

And that is exactly what you're describing is the feeling that you want is like the feeling of being a writer, not the feeling of like writing a book or what the particular book is or reaching readers or all that stuff.

And what I've had to do in my life is shed the big yellow bus enthusiasm and try to find meaning in wanting to reach readers, wanting to tell a particular story, wanting like just

in the process, like in the

walk through the woods of sitting in front of a blank page.

In the getting characters through a room to open doors, et cetera, of writing.

That's what I've had to find joy in.

Because if you're only seeking the other stuff, there will never be enough of it.

Like, I won the Prince Award and it wasn't enough.

And I won an LA Times Book Prize and it wasn't enough.

There will never be enough of that stuff unless you can find joy and pleasure in the process.

Right.

And what, like, so much of what I find

drove me is not what I enjoy about where I am.

I've always been very driven by like wanting to be like a hero.

But then then when I become like a hero, I'm like, oh, this is unpleasant.

This isn't particularly great.

Yeah, I don't like people looking up to me in this weird, weird, uncomfortable way.

Yeah, I mean, there's parts of it that are like lots of it that's nice, but it's just like what I thought would be nice is just being me.

Yeah.

But that's not nice.

It's all the like parts of the job that I like doing that are nice.

Right.

I think that to walk into a bookstore, I'm just going to tell you the truth.

Yeah.

And look at the bookstore and think, you know what this place needs?

Is a book by me?

Is itself like

it requires a measure of hubris.

That's not what I'm thinking about.

No, no, no.

I'm not.

Like, I'm saying this of myself as much as I am of you.

Like, it requires a measure of hubris to think that.

But, like, at the same time, what's actually fulfilling in that work turns out not to be the fulfillment of the hubris.

It turns out to be the work.

And this is...

Well, and the, I mean, success is a big part of it.

Like actually having people read the work.

Of course, yeah, but

what's fulfilling about that is reaching readers and hopefully, you know, having an impact on them in a deep and meaningful and ongoing way.

That's what's interesting about it, not even like.

To quit your day job.

And absolutely.

The financial part of it is huge.

Yeah.

But like, the, if you can quit your day job, which I think like 60 writers can.

Yeah.

But like the

rest of it isn't that good.

The like

the prizes and the whatever and the acclaim, like all that stuff.

Just he, here is an interesting thing.

I just read a book about me.

Oh, wow.

I don't think I've told you about this.

Weird.

Yeah.

So I read a book about me.

I suspect it will be published at some point.

It's very good.

And it's not entirely about me.

But of course, like I was very interested in the parts that were about me.

Yeah.

And it's kind of about that like 2010s Tumblr era.

So I'm in there too, probably.

You are in there.

Yeah.

It's also a book about you.

It's more a book about me, but it's partly a book about you.

As far as you can tell.

So true.

So I'm reading this book.

And this person, unfortunately, did a lot of very good research and found something I wrote in like 2003 where I was like, I will do anything for fans.

I will mortgage my mother's house for fans.

And I totally meant that.

I was completely sincere.

I wanted to be famous so, so badly.

Yeah.

And then I got famous and it turns out that like almost no one on earth is less equipped to be famous than I am.

I have a book of the letters of Isaac Asimov.

Yeah.

And there's these two letters and it's in that, they're like organized by topic,

not by time.

Yeah.

So there's these two letters that are just like in the section about like having fans.

And one letter is from early in his career where he talks, he just gushes about how lovely it is to sign an autograph or to sign a book.

And then 20 years later, he's like, if one more person asks me to sign a book, I may very well move to the moon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like,

it's good to know that Isaac Asimov also wasn't particularly well equipped for fame.

But there is something about it that, like, the thing that I most wanted turns out to be the least fulfilling part of the job that I have now.

What's really fulfilling is like getting to do a make-a-wish like I get to do next week or getting to hear from readers, hearing from Elizabeth about Elizabeth's problems with AI and having to think about that, like thinking about stuff, working on stuff with other people in the community.

As a leader of that community is really, really fulfilling.

And so

as much as we can do to be a part of each other's communities,

to connect over work, like if you can find people who are also doing stuff, and that's the other thing, right?

And like,

and be waiting, like have a per like be the person who's waiting for that other person to finish that next chapter because you're invested in it.

So like having somebody who's invested in your work and being invested in the work of others really can drive you forward.

Like finding that somewhere, I think it's very important for communities to not.

all be 200,000 people, you know, like most of them should be like five to twenty.

Yeah.

The number one fulfillment from my work is working with you

and working with my editor and working like and working working with Rosiano.

Like the greatest fulfillment I get from my work is working with a relatively small group of people on projects that I really care about.

And it's in that collaboration and cooperation that I find the most joy.

That's where I really find and and also consolation like I feel less alone when I'm working with you.

Could I hit you you with something that I think you'll disagree with me on?

Or like we'll just have a different perspective.

Like

we will have a different way of working.

Yeah.

I think that in this world of, you know, I just got my master's degree

and.

Oh, it's just such a terrible time in life, by the way.

Yeah.

Being 20, like being in your early 20s and like finishing school or finishing grad school or whenever you finish grad school, it's such a weird time of life.

Yeah, because you're like, okay, now I have to like do life.

I saw Sarah go through it.

Yeah.

Thankfully, I never went to grad school because I dropped out on day one.

I just became a freelance web developer after having my biochemistry degree.

Anyway, the thing that you're going to be programmed for a little bit

is to create works of mastery.

And the thing that you should do

is

instead of a sniper rifle, just like a handheld machine gun where you're just like blasting out ideas.

Just doing lots of stuff in lots of directions.

Get it all out of there.

Yeah.

Instead of trying to be highly specialized, just like.

The pots.

The pots.

The pots.

What about the pots?

There's this parable, and I don't know if it's true.

Tell me the parable.

That

if you ask a person to make one perfect pot and give them a year,

they will make a worse pot than if you ask a person to make a thousand pots in one year.

I completely agree with that.

Yeah.

As a potter.

Oh.

I completely agree with that.

you ask, if you ask me to make a thousand mugs, the thousandth mug will be better than if you asked me to make one great mug, yeah, not least because of the pressure of making the one great mug.

Yeah, and that's what we do.

We do that to ourselves, yep, absolutely.

We think we're we always think we're making the one perfect mug, and then I go back and I like look at the videos I made or the stories I wrote, or the you know, the science communication I did when I thought I was working on the one perfect thing, and I was like, oh, this was one of the shitty pots along the way.

And it like, I thought I was, I worked so, and like, there was value in all of that work.

Yeah.

And by the way, as somebody who makes a Vlogbrothers video every Tuesday, so I've made a lot of pots.

I've made 1,200 Vlogbrothers pots over the last 18 years.

Yeah.

And many of them are not great.

Yeah.

But I still make one every Tuesday because sometimes I make a really good one.

And the most interesting thing to me is like what motivated us to make.

1,200 of these.

And it really is, like in the beginning it was each other.

It's still each other to some extent.

Well, yeah, yeah.

But in the beginning, it was just each other.

Just each other.

And then like the

richness of the obligation has continued to increase.

Yeah, for sure.

But having someone you're responsible to is very helpful.

So this is a lot.

Yeah, I almost told you about my secret Patreon just now, but I decided not to.

Let's move on to this question from Amanda.

Dear John and Hank, I don't know if it's just me, but it feels like every man in my life takes forever to poop.

For me as a woman, I don't go in in the first minute, or if I don't go in the first minute or so of sitting down, it's just not happening.

Now, I may just be not noticing how long women take in the bathroom, but it does seem like men disappear in the bathroom all the time, forever.

Is there something different about men's colons that requires them to sit a long time to poop, or are they really just disappearing to get away from everything?

Not a man, duh, Amanda.

Really great name-specific sign-off.

Wow, so specific to the question and specific to the name.

Yes, really good sign-off.

Somebody asked us recently if the questions on the pod are real or if we fake them.

Because they all end in puns.

So it seems like we must be faking them.

As if we are clever punsters.

Have you heard Hank's dad jokes?

No.

No, that's all Amanda right there.

That's Amanda's work.

Hank, as somebody who takes a long time to poop, I thought you might be interested in this question.

I think that there's a variety of explanations for this phenomenon.

There are some times when it just takes a long time to poop.

I don't know what this is called,

but

gastroenterologist refers to it as

dry heaves of the butt.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I know what that is.

Yeah.

And...

We're really covering all the major topics today.

You know, I don't have the healthiest colon, obviously.

Yeah.

No, you have ulcerative colitis, just for context.

Yes.

There will be times when I'll like think I'm done.

And

I will have pooped.

And then I'll be like, I got to go again.

Yeah.

A little more happens.

Yeah.

I'm like ready to go.

So there's some of that.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's specific to men.

Yeah.

But there is also an element, I think, sometimes of wanting to escape things.

Right.

Wanting to take a break.

That's a good point.

Have quietly not specific to men.

Have quiet time.

That's not specific to men either.

No.

I don't think any of this is specific to men.

I think that there might be a bunch of, there might be

a greater proportion of guys who are like, I don't feel the need to leave this bathroom right now, even though I am done.

Oh, I don't know.

Even though I'm done.

Oh, yeah.

I'm done.

Oh, when I'm done, I'm done.

Well, okay.

I'm out.

What are you thinking?

Like, I think these people just want, like, they're just like, want a little more time for themselves.

But

that's not good for your chronic health.

No, it's not.

So that's why I don't do that.

I'm a very, I don't know if you know this about me, Hank, but I'm very nervous about disease and illness.

Yeah.

And the idea of like unnecessarily spending time near fecal matter just doesn't resonate with me.

Well, then you won't be able to answer this question well.

Well, that's why I was fascinated by the question because it doesn't resonate with me at all.

No, I think that there's a fair amount, and I do this, there's a fair amount of just like, well, I'm here, I'm scrolling.

Yeah.

You're just going to keep scrolling.

I'm just going to keep, yeah.

I think if I go out there, there's going to be stuff to do.

Now, I very rarely will scroll or bring my phone into this whole endeavor precisely because I don't want to spend unnecessary time in the bathroom.

That's the thing to do.

All right, we're moving on to this question from Ain,

I think.

I might be mispronouncing this person's name, and they didn't give me a name-specific sign-off, to be sure.

Dear John and Hank, I grew up Catholic and never really thought too much about the details regarding relics.

I just accepted it as part of the whole shebang.

But looking back, I have a few questions.

Like, how did people go about collecting relics or figuring out what had belonged to whom?

Was there a process for discerning the saintly teeth from the non-saintly?

Was it grave robbing or just snatching a bone or belonging at the time of death?

I wonder if Hank even knows what relics are.

This feels somehow like something John would have read about and I'm sure can connect to tuberculosis somehow, acolytes and axial skeletons.

Ain't uh give me your knowledge of relics.

So sometimes you go to an old church in Europe, and there will be a thing.

Not just in Europe.

Well, sometimes I will go to an old church in Europe.

Yeah.

I did this.

Sure.

And

there's a pillar in the middle of the church, and inside of the pillar is a box, and inside of the box, theoretically, is like the finger of John the Baptist.

Right.

John the Baptist, by the way, a many-fingered man.

Yeah.

Had at least 30 fingers.

One thing I know is that there's a lot of fingers

and not a lot of John the Baptists.

Just the one.

This is a problem with relics: is that sometimes the number of relics, you know, like Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists and tooth pain, because she had her teeth crushed by pincers as part of her martyrdom.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of, a lot of dark stuff

that people have suffered from religion.

Let's say it like it is.

Anyway, point being, St.

Apollonia has more teeth than she has teeth.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's a lot of teeth.

They got crushed, so they're all in the woods.

Well, but there's a lot of

crushed tooth relics out there that aren't necessarily St.

Aponia.

I think I would wager that none of them are.

No, some of them are.

Really?

Some of them are, for sure.

Did St.

Apollonia die in the last thousand years?

No.

Then I said none of them are.

Oh, maybe none of those, but there are relics that are legitimate.

Oh, okay.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, but there are some relics that are legitimate.

But, like, it's so easy to convince people of something.

It is like, like, convincing people, if you can benefit from having a finger

and convincing somebody that this finger is a special thing, sure.

Then people will figure out how to do it.

Of course.

That is not just true for religion and relics.

Oh, no, yeah.

That is true for Natson.

I'm just saying that

con con artists are a thing.

My position is that it doesn't matter if it's St.

Apollonia's tooth.

Literally, if you go to that tooth and believe that it is St.

Apollonia's and you are in terrible dental pain and you ask St.

I'm not a Catholic, but if you ask St.

Apollonia to intercede on your behalf with the pain, that is a way of trying to take the pain outside of yourself and

share it.

And pain is almost impossible to share, and there may be meaning and usefulness in that.

The actual designation of the tooth matters less to me personally.

I think that that's fair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's fair, especially if no one is currently trying to convince me to pay a bunch of money for a tooth.

Now, as is well known, while I don't enjoy being famous, I would love to be a saint.

Oh.

Oh, I'd love to be one.

But you don't get to be one.

What do you mean you don't get to be one?

I'm not Catholic.

Well, that's one of the issues.

But there are other issues that I like that I don't deserve it.

I want you to be a saint too.

I can auction off all these parts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the thing I was going to say.

I was like, man, I want a diamond-encrusted tooth that contains your teeth.

I want a Hank Green.

One for every 32 teeth in my relic auctioneer.

Oh, yeah.

Because you are a salesperson.

Oh, yeah.

You can

rock a dog off the bone.

And then you will make me donate all of the money.

I will.

I'll make you donate all the money to Partners in Health.

I absolutely absolutely will.

You're right.

Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by John's Teeth one day to be donated

to be used to raise money that will then be donated to Partners in Health.

This podcast is also brought to you by the concept of interest.

It goes both ways.

Yeah, and today's podcast is additionally brought to you by dry heaving of the butt.

Dry heaving of the butt, a phrase that I will not soon forget.

This podcast is brought to you by a largemouth bass the size of a man.

man.

That was actually not in this podcast.

That was in a video that we made before this.

But good job.

Good job.

Good job.

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All right, we've got another question.

This one's from Eleanor.

Eleanor says, why is it that short stories are less popular than novels?

Don't people have short attention spans?

Shouldn't we love short stories?

That's a great question.

Eleanor, they're too long.

That's the problem with short stories.

There's two things going on with short stories.

One is that they tend to be a little more literary.

And I think people are suspicious of literariness.

Like they're suspicious of high-falutin art, and it makes them feel like this isn't the F1 movie.

This is something that I'm supposed to eat, like broadband.

Yeah, and

like the short stories that I can think of that have like caught fire

are often not very literary.

No, no, they're fun.

Yeah.

Because here's the thing.

This is a very important thing to understand when it comes to art.

Easy and fun are not opposites.

The opposite of easy is not fun.

It's hard.

And so you can have something that is that is fun while also being like

worthy of critical reading.

Complex.

Complex, multitudinous.

You know, like a lot of pop fiction is fun, but also interesting.

Like whatever you think of my year of rest and relaxation, you can't argue that that book isn't interesting.

But like it's also, you know, like it also holds up to critical reading and stuff.

Yeah.

And I always am surprised by this.

Oftentimes I'll like hit it, I'll be like, fine, I'll read it.

And I'll think that it was going to be like you'll think it's going to be like broccoli.

Because everyone's been telling you how good it is.

And you're like, oh, great.

Good fiction is like hard work fiction.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I felt I never read a Kurt Vonnegut book.

Oh, so fun.

And like the first time I was like, Kurt Vonnegut,

it's all literature.

Yeah.

And it's just, I mean, it's a good time.

It's, yeah, Tony Morrison.

You don't win the Nobel Prize by being merely hard.

Yeah.

Like Toni Morrison is incredibly fun to read.

Now, like, not like fun in the sense of like going down a slip and slide, but like, you know, interesting, compelling.

You want to keep reading.

The sentences are pleasurable to interact with.

Like, yeah, they're not work.

They're not merely work.

Right.

Like, and when they're work, they're so rewarding that it doesn't feel like work, right?

Like, whether we're talking about Toni Morrison or we're talking about Gatsby or we're talking about The Catcher in the Rye, or we're talking about Speak by Laurie Haltz Anderson, like, like, all these books

are good.

Like, they're, they're, like, there's a real, like, you don't become a classic because you're not good.

You become a classic because it's good.

It's fun to read.

Of Mice and Men is interesting to read.

Yeah.

Yeah, all these books.

The Scarlet Ladder.

I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Nathaniel Hawthorne never did it for me.

You know who doesn't do it for me on a big level?

Edith Wharton.

You're not going to catch me knowing who that is.

Okay.

Well, and I feel bad because I know Edith Wharton has a lot of big supporters in our community, but it's just not, it's not my thing.

That's the thing.

But yeah, I am a little bit surprised that there isn't more of a short story culture in one way or another.

I listen to a podcast of short stories.

Yeah.

The Clarksworld podcast.

And

it's great.

You know, of course, it's hit and miss.

Sure.

They're not all bangers.

Yeah.

But it's such an interesting way to spend a half an hour walk, like listening to some

new science fiction writers

take on First Contact or

pandemic fiction or climate fiction.

Is it all science fiction?

Yeah.

Okay.

What's it called?

Clark's World.

Clark's World.

It's a sci-fi literary magazine, and they have a

fiction podcast.

A fiction podcast.

Yeah.

And it's great but i think that it can often be a little unsatisfying to a person who's used to reading novels right because with a novel you have much more time to get engaged in the world you get that like yeah and and you're almost like you like

hit the end and you're like oh i liked this though yeah when it's a good one you're like but what do they do next what are the rock eaters gonna be up to whereas with a novel you can have that feeling of real overarching fulfillment because you spent like 10 hours with the story Yeah.

But I don't know.

I think there's a lot of value to short stories.

I think we should read them more, and it's a bummer to me that we don't.

And I include myself in that.

Hank, before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we have an urgent complaint.

Oh.

From Lily and about 500 other people.

Oh, not about us.

Great.

No, it is about us.

Oh.

We had a huge failure in a previous episode of The Pod, and we had a lot of people.

Oh, that's about 500 other people.

I thought she was coming out.

No, no, no.

She's complaining about us.

Dear John and only John.

Oh, good.

So that's good.

That's my favorite kind of letter that we get when people are complaining.

I did well.

I have paused the most recent episode of the pod to write to you because the original doctor who said sneezing is never normal was a woman.

You keep saying he, and it is understandable because the name Never Sneezer Scrooge is excellent and does suggest a man.

But the last thing we need in this day and age is to bury the historical contribution of yet another woman in medicine, especially one so important.

Thank you, Lily.

And everybody else.

Lily and everybody else, I am extremely sorry for forgetting that Dr.

Never Sneezer Scrooge is, in fact, a woman and has made an important contribution to medicine by pointing out that sneezing is not, has never been, and will never be normal.

And I apologize for failing on the bit.

Usually I commit to a bit.

This time I failed on a bit, and I am sorry.

We've been at this for too long, John.

Dr.

Never Sneezer Scrooge was and always has been a woman.

And a fish.

And a fish, like the rest of us.

Again, Hank is referencing a video that we made, which is not part of this podcast, and is very confusing to the many listeners of this podcast who do not watch vloggers.

I think it's going to stay in place, though.

Hank, think about the person who said, can you describe your faces because I'll never see you.

Yeah.

Think about that person when you're thinking about this pond.

Remember when you first saw like a radio DJ who you'd listen to?

Oh, yeah.

Devastating.

Devastating.

We get to be that for some people.

We get to be that for some people.

And don't Google what we look like.

Just, I think we look exactly how we sound.

Have us be sounds.

This is what I want to be most in the world, is to be made of waves and particles, to be like made of light and sound.

Peter Thiel's going to deliver that for you.

All right, Hick, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

I'll go first since I had some pretty significant AFC Wimbledon news.

I don't even know if you know this, but

along with 10 of my friends, I have acquired 3.7% of AFC Wimbledon.

That's a pretty big deal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So my friends and I.

I didn't know that was possible because

it's not owned.

It's a fan-owned club.

75% of the shares are owned by the Dons Trust,

which is the fan ownership group that everybody gets the same votes on.

And then 25% of the club is purchasable and has been purchased by a bunch of people over the years

and by a lot of fans.

And I've bought a little bit.

Now, this doesn't affect, it doesn't mean that you can control what happens with AFC Wimbledon.

It's a fan-owned club.

That 75% controls controls everything.

But you can contribute to the club by owning shares in the club up to 25% at the moment.

There's some movement to move that to 50% to

49%.

For now, it's 25%.

And there were still some shares left.

And so a bunch of my friends, most of them in Indianapolis, but some around the country,

have come together and we have bought 3.7% of the football club.

This is incredibly exciting for me because I get to invest in a thing that I love.

And I don't, you know, in the...

You're the news.

I'm the news.

Also, our forward Osmond Foyo has just been charged with 238 counts of betting on football.

But that's not the news.

The news is me.

And yeah, so 3.7% of the football club.

And I'm excited.

And that's it.

That's bad.

It's not great.

But the news about me is good.

And we're investing in the football club because

you just bought some shares in a football club that is is currently.

I mean,

that's a handleable problem.

It's a handleable problem.

Charging is not the same thing as being convicted of, and I have no idea what's going on, and I don't want to know.

The point is, we own 3.7% of the football club.

We invested because AFC Wimbledon is a fan-owned club.

We don't want to change that, of course.

But we're excited, and the money is going to go toward improvements to the stadium and paying down debt because we incurred a lot of debt, mostly to ourselves, to finance the stadium.

And so we're going to help pay that down.

Sweet.

All right.

What's the news from Mars?

It's up there doing, it's just chilling.

Mars

is

stable in a way that I wish Earth were stable, but I don't wish Earth were stable.

You don't want that.

Like part of the world.

I do want that on a superficial level, but if I think about it more deeply, I don't want that.

I want Earth to be an unstable, unpredictable environment with a film of life which includes Peter Thiel.

What you know about any 4 billion-year-old

system of living chemistry is that it is built on trillions of corpses.

Wow.

Well, you were just telling me about the mass extinction that was caused by trees, which was ultimately caused by trees decaying, forming what we now know to be soil.

Yeah, and then that soil

and breaking up rocks, and that soil and rock matter then getting into oceans and lakes and causing these massive algae blooms because of over-oxygenation, which killed 75% of species.

We think of trees as being so friendly and innocuous, but once they killed 75% of species on Earth.

Yeah, no, they went hard.

They were like whole when Lignin evolved, man, it was a whole different ballgame.

Meanwhile, we've killed, what, like 8%?

We got a long way to go if we want to be trees.

They

had more time than we've got.

We've got more time.

hopefully well, I mean hopefully not to cause mass extinctions, but yes, we are

We're smarter than trees, so we should be able to reign it in Should we we could it's theoretically possible trees couldn't and I believe that we will we are the first creature to do what we are doing and know that we are doing it And I believe that we are also the first creature that will be able to make the choice to do less of what we are doing that is harmful.

Or maybe

we won't make the choice.

It'll just happen anyway.

Yeah.

Well, that is sort of the stark reality that we face at the moment.

Anyway, we don't want to be Mars.

We also don't want to be this Earth.

We want to be a better Earth.

We want to be a better Earth.

But the fact that we know that

is new.

It's relatively new.

Well, geologically, it's extremely new.

Geologically, it's new.

Even in terms of human history, it's extremely new.

It's very new.

And we're getting used to it.

And we're not doing a very good job, but we can do a better job together.

Thank you for coming to my second TED Talk.

This episode of Dear Hanging Donaldson is edited by Ben Swordout, mixed by Joseph Tutametish.

Marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosiana Halster-Rohasa and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti.

The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnar Roll Up.

And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.