416: The Free Will Episode

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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 dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

John, recently, there was a theft of $20,000 of college textbooks from the University of Montana bookstore.

Wow.

Luckily, luckily, the authorities were able to get both of those books back.

See,

that's a good joke because it's not a pun.

No, it's not.

It's a cultural commentary.

Exactly.

It's analysis.

It's biting analysis of what's broken about the college system in the United States.

No, it gets, it keeps getting worse.

They were so expensive when I was in school.

I like paid for an entire summer of food by dumpster diving textbooks.

I know, I remember.

You also would dumpster dive for electronics that just needed a little bit of repair and then repair them and sell them on eBay.

But mostly, actually, you paid for that summer of food by selling my baseball cards on eBay without my permission.

That was a separate summer.

I can't believe you did.

And

it led to the entrepreneurial spirit that has brought us so much as brothers.

It's true.

Without those baseball cards, I would never have learned the first lesson of business, which is steal.

Steal.

Steal.

Steal.

Steal fearlessly from.

I mean, you were stealing from me, but I'd stolen from you too, I guess.

But it still annoys me.

I don't think I've ever told you this story, but my great friend Kava Akbar, who wrote the brilliant book Martyr, which was, you know, like a Pulitzer finalist and National Book Board finalist, all that stuff.

It's a great book.

Anyway, I told him once that story and how he sold my Johnny Bench rookie card, which was the most egregious.

I thought Karl Ustremski was the biggest deal in there.

Carl Ustremski was the most expensive one, but Johnny Bench was a player I had a real affection for.

Carl Ustremski was just, that was an investment play.

Yeah, well, it turned it worked out.

The Johnny Bench card was just pure love, you know, pure love of the catcher game.

And

so apropos of nothing, because he is the loveliest person.

I tell Kava this story.

We're having a great conversation.

The conversation moves on to other topics.

Three weeks later, what should arrive in my mailbox, but a Johnny Bench rookie card?

Whoa.

John, I honestly, people got to stop that.

It's so thoughtful.

He's such a thoughtful friend.

I feel so bad all the time because I know people like that

and I will never be like that.

I go, I drive by my friends' houses and you know what I feel?

Hmm.

Guilt.

Yeah.

I feel like, oh, that person, that person told me about that thing and I was going to do that thing for them.

And then I was just, I forgot about it.

And then i'll never i'll never do it because this thought is going to be in my mind for a total of 45 seconds and i'll just take the negative feeling of guilt with me out of that thought and then uh that's all i'll have left from that thought i won't have the impetus to actually do the nice thing i will just carry the guilt and negative self-talk forward and

i'll put it on the pile Put it on the pile.

I love the idea that you just blame people for being really good gift givers.

I do.

People got to be worse.

Like me.

They got to be more like me, less thoughtful.

More stealing.

More stealing, less thoughtfulness.

I got a thank you letter from Amy Krauss Rosenthal once, the late great writer,

and it was about yay big.

I realize that most people listen to this on podcast form, not on Patreon, but it was about, I would say, one inch by one inch, and it came with a gigantic magnifying glass.

And only by using the gigantic magnifying glass could you read the thank you letter.

Now, see, that is a classy thank you letter.

If you need paraphernalia to read the thank you letter, that's how you know it's classy.

This is one of my favorite thank you letters I've ever gotten.

It is on,

since we're talking to the Patreon people now, it's on a quarter of a paper plate that has been ripped up.

Yeah.

Because it was at a at like a barbecue, and my friend Britt ripped this piece off of it and wrote a nice thank-you letter.

on it.

See, that's nice.

I keep it on my shelf.

And you keep that one.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, that's great.

The first gift Amy Krauss Rosenthal ever gave me was when we first got to know each other, when we first became friends.

So you know our late great-grandmother, Billy Grace Goodrich, Nanny.

Of course, of course, yes.

When I moved to Chicago, Nanny told me to keep $40 in my left pocket at all times for when I got mugged.

That's a good plan, just in case.

I would argue that it was a little bit of fear of urban environments that pervaded Nanny's life.

Anyway,

so I was telling Amy Krauss Rosenthal about this.

The next time I saw her, she gave me two money clips.

One said JMG and the other said MM for mugging money.

That's so weird.

It's so thoughtful.

This is the future

that maybe will be delivered by AI.

If AI does all the work, that we can just be nice to each other full-time.

Yeah, I think that

I don't particularly...

Love the idea of like,

oh,

I got you this gift.

It was suggested by ChatGPT.

Like, that does take time.

It's going to be doing all the laundry and stuff, right?

And then we'll have time to just be nice.

We'll have time to be kind to each other and thoughtful and generous because ChatGPT will be doing the dishes.

But unfortunately,

apparently it cannot do the dishes.

I was going to say, based on my interactions with ChatGPT so far, I've seen very little evidence that it can do the dishes.

It can tell you how.

Exactly.

It's going to give me orders in the greatest.

But Sam Allman did.

He did learn my first rule of business.

Steal.

All right, John.

We got a bunch of questions from our listeners.

Do you want to hear one?

Yeah.

This one comes from Anna, who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm sitting on the shore of beautiful Table Rock Lake in southwest Missouri.

While admiring the water and enjoying the sound of the waves, I suddenly saw a fish.

jump out of the water.

Why do they do this?

Clearly, fish need water to survive.

So are they just just wanting to catch a small glimpse of our world or are they going full on aerial and trying to become the where the people are

well let me answer this with what i suspect is true and then you can tell me the science answer which is going to be boring

i suspect fish are playing

I suspect they're having a good time.

Nobody asks, like, why do John and Hank get in the water sometimes, even though they're fundamentally land creatures?

Why are they doing that?

They're going to die in there.

We would die in there, but we're doing it to play.

We want to have a good time.

And also maybe to cool off a little bit, but mostly just to have a good time.

So there are some fish that jump and we don't know why.

Yeah, it's because they're having fun.

And we can't accept that.

So we say maybe they're trying to knock parasites off their body or they're practicing in case in the future they have to escape.

So like sometimes fish jump out of water, of course, because they're being chased by a bigger fish.

And so maybe they're practicing for that eventuality.

And so they need to do it even when they're not being chased by a bigger fish so that they are are good at it when the big fish shows up.

And then in this case, in the case of this particular fish, almost certainly that fish was going for a snack.

So there was something at the top of the water that they snuck up on and ate.

They're just like getting an insect, a water bug or whatever.

Yeah, like those videos you see on Shark Week of a giant great white popping out of the water with half a seal in its mouth.

Like that, but for a mayfly.

Yeah, that's not.

I think you're underrating the extent to which fish, look, obviously, fish don't have free will, none of us do, but like the extent to which fish are able to

no, that's all, that's that's just the way of the podcast, that's all.

Uh, but I think you're underestimating the extent to which fish are able to like wish to express themselves through the only vehicle they have, which is their bodies.

Come at you with a theory, yeah.

Um, here's my theory:

I don't think it matters if my biology is telling me that free will exists.

I think that

there's not enough attention being paid to my subjective experience as a valid piece of the equation here.

Whether or not I have free will doesn't really matter if I feel like I do.

Just like it doesn't really matter if the universe is a simulation, if it feels real and I am acting inside of it.

And I think that this can go for a number of sort of big big philosophical questions where it's like, well, am I being told by my biology that all of this is the case?

How much does the objective experience matter if the subjective experience is

the whole thing for me?

Like I only have the subjective experience.

Yeah, there's a part of me that would like to know if I'm merely my biology, but I think for you, that's a solved question because you think you are merely your biology.

I do, I do.

Yeah, which seems like a way to live.

But if your subjective experience is all that matters, like why not why not embrace a subjective experience that has a little more flavor to it?

I know a lot of people do that.

Like drink Dr.

Pepper instead of water,

if you were, but the spiritual version.

And instead I'm having like La Croix over here, you think?

Yeah, you're like, you're drinking LaCroix and you could be drinking sweet, sweet Dr.

Pepper.

Yeah, and it's not even bad for you.

Meh.

I mean, some people would argue it's kind of bad for you.

It's done good and bad.

It's done, I mean, it's done a lot of bad.

If we're going to talk about religion on this podcast again, let's just acknowledge, as the religious person, I feel like I should acknowledge it has driven quite a lot of stuff.

It doesn't give you diabetes, but it does.

Sometimes I'll be listening to a podcast, like a history podcast, and they'll be talking about burning people at the stake or whatever, or like trial by fire, where they would have people walk through a fire.

And if they made it, then they were blessed by God.

And if they didn't, then they were damned anyway.

And I'll be like, oh my goodness.

Like it's very helpful to come to that my particular church was formed entirely by the most powerful person in all of the world arguably wanting to get a divorce.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, like that helps me center my religion right where it ought to be, which is that like this is a function of like, this is a thing that people in power use to get what they want.

There's a lot here that's earth-based.

A lot are earth-based.

So I think that there is, I think there's some advantage to objective reality.

I think you slightly are underestimating the benefits of knowing objective reality.

But there's like something about free will in particular that's like, I do, like my biology is telling me very clearly that I have choices and that I exercise them.

And I, and like, that's so

like

in my face.

That's so in the face of my consciousness.

Like, my consciousness is constantly having that shoved in its face.

And I don't know by what, but it, like, that is, I feel like that is a thing.

Yeah, I mean, you are on a journey of meeting, and you're getting perilously close to my relationship with the divine, which is that if I experience it, it is real.

I just don't experience it.

Well, maybe you will someday.

Got it.

Maybe you'll be driving through Michigan with your buddy Rob in freshman year of college, and you'll see a sign for the world's largest wooden crucifix, and you'll be like, that sounds funny.

And you'll go there, and you'll be overwhelmed by an experience of the divine and literally fall to your knees looking at the world's largest wooden crucifix, even though you are yourself.

He is going to get me back for selling Carl Ustremsky by giving me a religious experience.

That's right.

You're going to end up tithing.

That's how I'm going to get that Karl Ustremski money back.

All right, we got to get to another question.

This one comes from Anna, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just started therapy, mostly because I'm in college and it's free and also because I have a friend who definitely needs therapy.

So I keep saying that everyone can benefit from therapy, so I figure I should take my own word on it.

However, I feel like I'm mostly emotional stable and don't have one major thing I want to work on, so I don't know what to say.

So far, we've had a fair amount of awkward silences.

Do I just start blabbing about other things I'm thinking about?

Would it be weird for me to ask my therapist questions?

Not an attorney, an attorney.

Ha!

Are you serious?

How could I make that up?

I'm not clever enough.

I don't need the dashboard.

An attorney.

That must have been on purpose.

An attorney, attorney, I regret to inform you on a few levels that you only have one career option after college.

You must.

I'm not telling you what kind of law to practice.

I'm just telling you that you absolutely have to be an attorney and attorney.

It's like Bob Wadlaw from Rested Development.

Like you have to be an attorney.

That is messed up.

I had a friend in high school named Amanda Lynn.

Oh, like Amanda.

The instruments.

Yeah.

And I don't know that she ever got into the instruments, but

an attorney.

An attorney?

An attorney?

I'm sorry.

That's your whole question should be.

It's hard to get over.

Like, my parents

dearly wanted me to choose a profession that they named me an attorney.

And I don't want to be an attorney.

What do I do?

And we'd be like, it doesn't matter what you want.

No free will.

You're an attorney.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It's like if you were named, I'm a gymnast.

Like, you're a gymnast.

Sorry.

I knew a kid when I was growing up in Alabama named Tiger Blange,

the first name, middle name.

Tiger, of course, being the Auburn Tigers and Blanch being a mix of blue and orange, the color of the Auburn Tigers.

And then they went to Alabama.

Wow.

That's

champion.

So like it turns out you can.

You're messing with me.

You can defy your parents, An attorney, and you don't have to become an attorney, although I think you should.

Tell me this person's name again.

Tiger Blanche.

No.

Yeah.

No.

They know.

I wonder if I can Google them right now.

They name

this person, their middle name is Blanche.

No.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Hank, you don't understand how people in the South like college football.

It's like the way I like AFC Wimbledon.

That's...

That's wild.

Now,

Tiger may have gotten married and may have lost their middle name in the process uh that does sometimes happen but that that's that's how i knew them uh let's get to anna's actual i'm trying to figure out what what which is

what the

if if it was named after the college football team in my town what it would be because they're maroon and silver and the mascot is the grizzly so it would be grizzly

milver maruvil

milver grizzly milver is a better name than maruville grizzly milver grizzly milver isn't even that weird of a name.

If I met a guy and he was like, hey, my name is Grizzly Milver Smith, I would be like, oh, that makes sense.

Yeah.

I'd be like, I got a cousin named Sanders.

That's just like somebody named Grizzly.

That's my mother's maiden name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Milver.

Milver.

Milver.

Probably some Milvers out there.

Probably some Milvers out there.

So I don't think it's that unlikely.

Here in Indiana, of course.

Everybody, send us.

What it would be for you, but John's going to tell you what it would be for him.

What it would be for me is naming a kid Indiana, which isn't that weird.

I actually know some kids named Indiana.

Oh, it's the mascot.

No, it's the mascot, Tiger.

What's the mascot?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'd be the Indiana.

Oh, right.

Okay.

So it would be the Hoosier.

It'd be Hoosier.

Hoosier's great.

Which is a weird first name.

Hoosier's great.

Hoosier's a big first name, but it's not an impossible first name.

And then it'd be red and white.

So it'd be Hoosier Right.

Who's your right?

I mean, that seems like a person.

If you told me, like, what's your name?

Who's your right?

I'd be like, well, that's a little weird that your name's Hoosier, but like, right, totally.

It fixes it.

It fixes it.

All right, everybody.

Honestly, I'd be like, why don't you go by Wright?

Okay, you got to send us in what your college football name would be if you were named after your dad's favorite college football team or the one where you live.

There you go.

Okay.

What's the question?

What do you do in therapy if you don't feel like you have anything to work on?

An attorney, with respect, you have something to work on.

Yeah.

I mean, you've got to talk to your therapist about what you're going to do.

Parents, like, I wanted me to be an attorney.

So bad.

So bad.

They named me Anne Attorney,

which is dramatically correct.

Right.

They didn't name you attorney.

No.

No.

Ann attorney.

They named you Anne Attorney.

You've got to talk to your therapist about this for at least a little bit.

And usually the way I find therapy works is you open like a top shelf and that leads to a lower shelf.

And then eventually you get to the bottom shelf, which is like,

have my parents attempted to take away my free will and prescribe my entire life?

Yes.

All right.

We answered the question.

I've been very interested.

Therapy has been fascinating for me.

I'm fascinated by my therapist who tells me nothing about her.

I've heard that other people hear a lot about their therapists in their session.

I know

very little about them.

I know nothing.

And also, I recently did our first telehealth session.

And I talk all the time about like my job and what I do for a living.

And

that it's a lot of pressure.

And And then I have all these sort of like what I consider to be unique difficulties that, you know, I think she sees as somewhat universal.

And I did our first telehealth.

And she was like, is that what your office really looks like?

Or is that like a green screen?

And I was like, no, that's actually my office.

Which indicates to me that over the six months that we've been talking, she's never watched one of my videos.

She's never been like, ah, I'm curious enough to go and like see what this guy's up to.

Does she she think that

I'm lying about having a giant audience and lots of pressures?

No, but

I don't think she does, but my psychiatrist initially thought that I had delusions of grandeur because I came in there and I was like, listen, I'm a best-selling author and everybody on Tumblr hates me.

And he was like, I've heard that one before.

But

it turns out that you are a best-selling author, but like 60% of Tumblr hated you.

And that's me.

Exactly.

I was exaggerating, to be fair.

I always had a little group of people on Tumblr who stood by me.

Yeah, thank you so much.

But yeah, seriously, no joke.

But yeah,

I think it's good that your therapist doesn't watch your videos, and I think it's probably a conscious choice.

I think you are correct.

And I appreciate it, which reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by my therapist, currently accepting new clients in Missoula, Montana.

And not listening to this podcast.

No idea it even exists.

Yeah, because you don't have to talk about this podcast in therapy because it's active.

No, it does not come up.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by an attorney.

An attorney, that's where you go to get legal advice.

In addition, this podcast is brought to you by the world's biggest crucifix.

It's on the side of the road in a state of America.

The world's biggest wooden crucifix, to be fair.

Okay, let's get to this.

Where is it?

Michigan, I believe.

It's on the side of the road in Michigan, somewhere, probably from somewhere in the middle, would be my guess, or near Chicago, probably.

Where is it?

On the way to Chicago.

And today's podcast is, finally, today's podcast.

I'm just going to roll right through that.

Finally, today's podcast is brought to you by sitting on the shore of a beautiful table rock lake in southwest Missouri, wondering why fish jump out of the water only to learn that they do it for the pure joy of having free will-ish.

Podcast is also brought to you by Theft.

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All right, John, this next question comes from Hannah, who asks, Dear Hank and John, if the whole world quarantined themselves for four to six or whatever weeks, would all viruses like the common cold, etc., die out?

How long do viruses live?

If they all need a host to reproduce, surely they would die somewhere when there are no no new hosts.

Or can they survive in our bodies indefinitely?

Neither a hypochondriac nor a scientist, just Hannah.

Well, I have great news for you, Hannah.

So little pressure on you to choose a specific career.

Yeah, that's true.

Although it just occurred to me that the huh in Hannah actually is pronounced.

I always thought that the hu in the second hu in Hannah was silent, but actually there it is right at the end.

Hannah.

And if it wasn't, would it be Hannah?

Like Anna?

Anna.

Anna.

Anna also ends in an H.

Anna.

All right.

We've just made a discovery.

I don't know that we would be the first.

Linguists pay a ridiculous amount of attention to the noises we make.

No, no, no.

I'm going to publish this in a linguistics journal and blow everybody's mind.

The field is about to be turned upside down by this Hannah news.

I have terrible news with regards to the eradicability of viruses.

It's real hard.

There are some that we could quarantine our way out of,

but only if we really did it.

And that would be basically impossible.

But most we couldn't.

Most

either have

a long reservoir in the human body, where especially like some people might clear it very quickly, but others might have that disease for

months and still have enough to transmit it to someone else.

But some are in there forever,

basically, and will hang out and reactivate.

And in those situations,

you can reinfect people.

And then there are...

Yeah, like how you get chickenpox again.

You get a chickenpox back.

And then

you can get that from.

I don't know if you can get chickenpox from someone with shingles.

I assume that you can, but I don't know that for sure.

I don't know.

That seems like something that would be a hank thing.

Yeah.

And then there are many, many viruses that have wild reservoirs.

And unfortunately, the animals are not going to quarantine along with us so they'll keep passing it back and forth between each other and then can reinfect us when it's time to for the quarantine to end so there are i i do kind of think of uh viruses as either being eradicable or ineradicable based on the wild reservoir wild reservoir is a great phrase yeah

it's a good it's a good title for a book or something yeah and wild reservoirs covered for example has has many wild reservoirs and so uh is is you know it has a lot of wild reservoirs

Tuberculosis, man.

Everybody can get sharks, can get tuberculosis, aquariums, yeah, they can get aquarium things.

You told me once that they thought maybe tuberculosis like arrived in the Americas by seals, it did, it went from Japan, probably, or somewhere in Eurasia, to the Americas via seal.

And then the seals, when they were being butchered in the Americas, gave somebody tuberculosis who then spread it in their communities.

And then it pretty much spread.

Tuberculosis was one of the only diseases from Afro-Eurasia that had already gotten to the Americas before

the Columbian Exchange and the Great Dying.

And so

it was one of the diseases that there was actually

a little more experience with in

Indigenous American populations than there was for, for instance, like smallpox.

Wild.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Tuberculosis, man, it was everywhere, and it still is everywhere.

We have 10,000 cases in the U.S.

every year, even though we don't talk about it much.

So we need to be talking about TB more, which reminds me of this question from Audrey, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but but mostly John, this is my favorite kind of question.

If I want to donate to the TB cause, what is the best organization to do that with pumpkins and penguins?

Audrey, I think, I mean, I'm biased, Audrey, because Hank and I are working on a big project, anti-TB project with Partners in Health and Lesotho.

But I think PIH, Partners in Health,

they do really good work in tuberculosis, and they've also sort of led the charge on tuberculosis since the 1990s when they began providing multi-drug resistant TB care in Peru.

And so I think that if you want to be on the leading edge of the people who are making the blueprints for what the future might look like with TB care,

I would say partners in health.

We got this message from Sarah, and that's very important for me to read because it allows me to tell you a story about myself.

Sarah says, Dear John and Hank,

I've had Ello Langley's song Weren't for the Wind stuck in my head this morning.

And it made me think: if this guy wants her to stick around, he just needs to move somewhere without wind.

Does such a place exist?

May the wind always be at your back, Sarah.

Hank, is there a place without wind?

Wow.

Not, I don't, I mean, not entirely.

Well, there are places without wind.

Space,

right?

Mercury has solar wind, but that's not that's not wind.

That's a totally different thing.

But on Earth, I think it's going to under the water, never mind.

Under the sea in a submarine, there's probably still going to be a little bit of ventilation or else things are going to be real unpleasant.

But like the International Space Station, not as windy as you'd like.

They have a lot of fans actually up there.

You don't want to fall, like you can fall asleep on the International Space Station and create a bubble of carbon dioxide around your face, and you wake up like choking.

Oh, that's terrifying.

So bad.

So they like fall asleep.

Well, there's the

fan at themselves,

which is around the equator and has very little wind.

Right.

But it does have some wind.

Yeah, there are definitely areas that have very little wind.

And I think that

a very consistent middle-of-the-ocean situation where there's no Coriolis effect creating wind, which would be right at the equator, would be your best bet for an unwindy place?

All right, let's go.

Let's go.

Let's

caves.

Caves don't have wind.

They got to move to the caves.

You got to move to the curves.

Very deep caves that do not have outlets.

Some caves, of course, have wind,

but there are definitely caves that don't have wind.

And also collapsed mines.

That would be a place to move.

Seems like a good life.

Down there in a hot, wet, humid, dark, collapsed mine, Just hunting for old denim like that guy on YouTube.

I love that guy on YouTube.

I can't believe you also watched that guy on YouTube who owns the ghost town.

He owns a ghost town and he searches for old denim because the

old jeans are very valuable.

Old jeans are worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

That's how he makes a living is going down into the mine and finding old denim.

Why do people leave their denim in the mine?

They just got too hot.

They took them off, folded them up, put them on a shelf, lost them.

It's hard in a mine.

We've all been there walking around pantsless in the dark.

Yeah, we don't know what people got up to in those old days of mine.

It is frankly none of our business.

It's time to transition to a question from Emma, who writes, Dear John and Hank, why does Diet Dr.

Pepper taste so vastly differently when it is cold versus when it is room temperature?

It's like a different soda.

Both are good, but what is going on?

I won't try it hot because I'm not a monster, but does it taste extremely different than two?

In a dill, Emma, she's in a dilemma.

It's pretty good.

It's not as good as Anatorne, Emma, unfortunately.

John.

Yeah.

I think that this must be true of all, of all sodas.

It totally is, but I think it is more true of Dr.

Pepper simply because Dr.

Pepper has more convergent flavors and different ones come out at different temperatures.

One thing I've also noticed, and this is going to make me sound weird, it's going to make it sound like I drink a lot of Dr.

Pepper in different circumstances, which I do, is that Diet Dr.

Pepper tastes very different outside than inside.

Like the exact same Dr.

Pepper can drunk outside tastes different than inside because you're just ingesting different chemicals along with it.

You're ingesting fresh air instead of store-bought air-conditioned air.

And I am 100% convinced that more of the complexity of Dr.

Pepper comes out.

This is making me sound weird.

More of the complexity of Dr.

Pepper comes out when you drink it outside than when you drink it inside.

And I think that you actually taste more of the flavors when you drink at room temperature than when you drink it cold.

Now, it's not as refreshing.

I think that that is

correct.

It's not as fun to drink, but

you can taste more of the complexity.

It's almost like drinking a red wine.

where there's a certain temperature that's perfect and that temperature isn't ice cold.

Well, I mean, this is a known effect.

So when a thing is warmer, there's two things are going to happen.

First, your taste buds will be more active because they will be warmer and molecules move around more.

And two, more things will volatilize.

So when it's warmer, it's easier for those smells to leap off of the drink.

And Dr.

Pepper is, I would imagine,

formulated to be tastiest when cold, because that's what we want.

And there's another effect here, which is that warm water can hold less carbon dioxide.

So it's going to fizz more when you're drinking warm water.

Definitely fizzes more.

Yeah.

Definitely fizzes more.

And that's going to have a number of effects.

It's going to make it, I think, like less easy to drink, more, like there's going to be more like

volatilization because of that, because it's creating a bunch of surface area.

It's going to be like weird in the mouth.

Yeah.

So

definitely different.

Warm Dr.

Pepper doesn't taste it's precisely for those reasons.

Warm Dr.

Pepper, I think, isn't as like refreshing or as fulfilling to drink, but I'm telling you, there is more complexity on the palate than cold Dr.

Pepper.

For sure.

You would get more flavor.

But as for whether it's different inside or outside,

you maybe are warmer outside, and that's making it sort of a nicer experience.

I don't see

what else is happening there.

But I well, I'm just telling you, something's happening.

Your biology is experiencing it.

And if so, what does the objective reality matter when the subjective reality is your experiences?

Boom.

Boom.

I mean, back to the theme of today's video, the free will episode.

The free will episode.

I think we didn't name the religion episode the religion episode.

I think that was a huge mess.

I think this should be called the free will episode.

Yeah.

That's what people want.

They want us to hit the hard, complicated issues of humanity, but in ways that don't solve anything or get deep at all

or

actually create any kind of new insight.

Well, when we try to provide proper advice,

it's always a boardwalk.

You wouldn't want to do that.

No, it's extremely dubious and fast, which reminds me to take on this important question from Melissa, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm listening to episode 226 of the pod.

It is the monkey, in which you two frequently use the phrase, not my circus, not my monkeys.

And I've been thinking throughout the episode, what do I do when it is my circus, but they are not my monkeys?

Alternately, what do I do when my monkeys end up in someone else's circus?

Melissa, very good question.

John, have you heard of Mel Robbins?

Oh, sure, The Let Them Theory.

The Let Them Theory is just Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys.

We could have been Mel Robbins.

We could have been Villains.

We just had to.

I mean, Mel Robbins.

We had to focus on the monkeys.

We had to make a book called Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys.

Actually, it would be called Not My Monkeys.

Not My Monkeys.

Because that's a catchier title.

Not My Monkeys.

People will be like, what's Not My Monkeys about?

Maybe we could have called it the Not My Monkeys theory.

They'd stop in their tracks and they they would not my monkeys, especially if it's in that like big business bouffant.

Yeah.

Not my.

And then it's just like on yellow with one of those clapping monkeys from the

past with the wind-up on them on the bottom.

Yeah.

Or maybe one of the flying monkeys.

Wind up clapper monkey.

From

Mary Poppins, no, the Wizard of Oz.

And

just

some kind of monkey down there.

Some would argue that Mary Poppins would have been improved by flying monkeys.

And in a way, isn't Mary Poppins a flying monkey?

Herself a flying primate.

Yes.

Great point, Hank.

Thank you.

So you got Mary Poppins on there.

You got those whole blind up monkeys.

And it says, not my monkeys in big letters by John and Hank Green, authors of The Let Them Theory.

You can take...

Theft!

Steal.

Steal.

The number one lesson in business.

Oh, my God.

What were we talking about?

sometimes, well, sometimes it is your circus, but it's not your monkeys.

And then you have to tell the person whose monkeys they are that you actually don't need monkeys in this particular circus.

And sometimes they are your monkeys, and it's not your circus.

And then you have to listen when someone says, I'm sorry, but this is not your circus.

These are your monkeys, but this is not your overall circus.

The overall circus is mine, and therefore you can take your monkeys if you want, or you can let them be in my circus, but you cannot have control over the circus just because you own the monkeys.

Yeah, this is going to be great stuff for our new book, The Let Them Monkeys Theory.

Oh, man.

The Let Them Monkeys do what those monkeys are up to.

Theory.

I just see Mel Robbins a lot because we're both on the bestseller list right now, and I have no idea.

I have no idea if Mel Robbins is male or female, if Mel Robbins is 20 or 70.

I have no idea who Mel Robbins is, I have to confess.

I, yeah, I do.

I'm too online.

I haven't read the Let Them Theory, but I love the idea of letting other people make their own mistakes.

There is.

If that's the thesis.

That is the thesis.

You might wonder whether it needs a whole book, but that is how these things work.

Yeah, well, I mean,

the Not My Monkeys thesis is going to be like a 350, 400-page book.

It's going to be long.

That's actually not what you want to do.

You want it.

Oh, you want it to be nice and

you want it to be an approachable length.

Who moved my cheese kind of thing?

Who moved my cheese length, for sure.

Okay.

So 150 pages, heavily illustrated, kind of like line drawing illustrated, but also graphs, but hand-drawn graphs.

And citations.

Citations that take you to papers that don't actually say what you say they say.

No, come on now.

I'm just saying this.

No, that's not how we're going to do it.

The Not My Monkeys book is going to be a big hit because of the quality of its citations.

All right.

And the citations are just going to be two websites that are us saying the thing that we said.

I love that.

Yeah.

That's brilliant.

That's brilliant.

It'll be, it'll be all the citations will link to Vlogbrothers videos where we say things with great confidence.

And then some of the citations, but only like five of them are just going to be me dancing.

I love that.

Occasionally you'll get Hank doing

never going to give you a

but dancing like a monkey while doing

yes.

Love it.

With symbols.

Love it.

Anyway, Anyway, John, do we do a good job?

I mean,

this is hard.

How can you just anyway

our first million-dollar idea in weeks?

John, I really do want to write a book with you.

I think that we would be good at it.

I just think that, I think that we need to figure out the system.

Yeah, we need to figure out the time,

the time and the system, and that's not easy.

It's not.

No, our time schedules schedules don't often overlap in terms of exercise.

No, I think that the book that we write together is probably going to have to be done in our 60s when we're retired from the other stuff, except for this, because I want to call it Dear John and Hank forever.

You're going to immediately make me some bet that I'm going to win.

All right, Hank, it's time to get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

You want to go first?

Nah, you go first.

All right, AFC Wimbledon, keep signing players, Hank.

We can't stop signing new players.

Yes.

But the most important player we signed, Marcus Brown, Nerdfighteria's own Marcus Brown is coming back for two more years.

Marcus Brown just signed a two-year contract, our central attacking midfielder, and we signed a new keeper, Nathan Bishop, on a three-year contract.

He came from Sunderland, a team now in the Premier League, actually.

But he didn't really play for them.

He was on loan last year.

Anyway, he looks like he's going to be really good.

And I don't know if you've seen our kits, Hank, but our kits have come out here.

I'll text them to you.

They are gorgeous.

Take a look at these

AFC Wimbledon home away and third kits.

I I don't know about the third kit that's green and black, but the blue and yellow kits are massive.

Massive?

Looks very nice.

Looks fairly similar to what the last one looked like, I got to say.

Strongly disagree.

Didn't have that collar.

Wasn't made by Lotto.

Didn't have that cool diamondy background that we've got now.

Yeah, that's cool.

I like that a lot.

These are classic.

I like the green.

That's awesome.

Okay.

You like the green one.

What do you think of the yellow one at the bottom there?

Not as much.

Not as much.

It doesn't

have a ton going on.

Yeah, but I kind of like the fact that it doesn't have a ton going on.

The only thing I don't like is that it has those side panels.

And anytime it's a side panel for me, when I'm wearing it as an extra large, those are significant side panels.

When the players wear them, they look great, but I'm not a professional footballer.

Okay.

Well.

All right, so that's the news.

We got Marcus Brown.

We got a goalkeeper, which is huge.

Having a goalkeeper is really an essential part of having a soccer team.

And especially for a club like Wimbledon, who does take on a lot of shots.

I'd do it if they asked.

Yeah, but respectfully, I don't think that you'd keep us in league one.

I would let a lot of balls

into the net.

People would be like, wow.

Like,

we're actually in a situation where we could pick somebody out of the stands who would be a better keeper.

I played goal.

I played goal when I was

little.

I think that I'd have some knee issues.

And also,

here's what I predict, that the ball would hit my hands and I'd be like, I got it.

I stopped, but it would keep going.

Just keep right through the hands.

I don't have the strongest wrists.

No.

No, I've got those soy boy wrists.

So boy.

Yeah, I don't have them.

I think that also the diving would be an issue.

Every time the goalkeeping coach was like, why didn't you dive for that one?

I'd be like, are you kidding?

We're trying to avoid injuries, right?

Because every dive is an injury.

Do you want me to break a rib?

Like, who's the goalkeeper behind me, for God's sakes?

The last guy.

If I'm in here, I'm the last guy.

Exactly.

If I'm playing, you know, I really can't get it.

It's on the bench.

Well, in Mars news, John, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been orbiting.

Mars for almost 20 years.

It's got five instruments on board.

They're pointed at Mars.

They're doing stuff.

And it's just learned a new trick.

Can you believe that?

You know what that trick is?

What's the new trick?

It can roll over.

Oh, it can go upside down.

It can roll over.

Well, that's exciting.

So,

the team orbiting the orbiter could roll it up to 30 degrees

in any direction to help point at the various instruments at different targets on the planet.

And that's hard enough because you have to keep track of where all the other instruments are going to be pointed to make sure that all the people doing science with that data are getting what they want.

One of the instruments on the orbiter is called the shallow radar, and it helps scientists see things like ice, rock, and sand.

And it might be particularly good at figuring out where there might be ice close to the surface which could be helpful for future astronauts and also just science in general so they wanted to see if they could execute what they called a very large roll

which would be around 120 degrees and would allow the shallow radar a better view of Mars.

These are super hard to do because they require a lot of planning to make sure the spacecraft will be like okay after it does it.

And in a recent paper, scientists reported that they were able to do three very large roles between 2023 and 2024, which is exciting.

But also,

because of the time that it takes to do these roles, the mission is currently limited to doing only one or two very large roles per year.

Oh, wow.

So it turns out you can teach an old craft new tricks.

That's right.

Yeah, that's great, man.

Congratulations on your three very large roles that led to, I believe, a 360-degree turn.

And I,

after this, I may have another very very large role.

All right.

Well, before that, we've got to go do our Patreon-only live stream that we do every month to say hi to our many patrons.

We're very grateful to all of you.

You can join them at patreon.com/slash dearhank and john.

But regardless of whether you're a patron, thank you so much for listening.

This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout.

It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedes.

Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosianna Halls-Rojas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti.

The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola.

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