409: The No Bummer Sleep Spectacular

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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 the beast advice and bring you all the week's news from both mars and afc wimbledon john yeah i've been i've been thinking my friend goes to this book club that i think you should get in on and here's the deal they've been doing the same book for years and i think that if they did your book for the same amount of time that would be really good they call it church and i uh so i was i thought maybe you could get in

it's a weekly book club where they're they stay on the same book every week every single week and they've been doing the same book for as far as i've known that it existed yeah no they've been doing the same book for like 2000 years

2000 oh that's a good one

to be fair

good book A little bit, probably a little bit better than Everything is Tuberculosis, the hit book available now, wherever books are sold.

But thank you for that.

Thank you for that intro to promo, Hank, because it's true.

My book, Everything is Tuberculosis, is out in the world as of today.

I'm so grateful and excited, but we're recording this in the past.

So right now, I'm actually just mostly nervous and a little bit sick.

Yeah, I'm also a little bit sick.

You probably have the same thing I had.

I gave it to you.

You probably did.

We're hanging out.

You probably gave it to me when we were on vacation.

There's a couple of things we need to acknowledge right up here at the top, Hank.

Number one is some people watch this visually and they're going to know that our shirts are weirdly matching.

Yeah, well, that is the way of being us and our age.

You got a rack right behind you.

You could have put on a blazer.

Behind me, there's a whole rack of clothing.

Those are the clothes that I'm wearing on tour.

I'm not allowed to wear them until I'm on tour.

But

that's all my tour stuff.

Well, I have injured my neck, so I'm being very stable.

You look like somebody who has a hurt neck.

Yeah.

Yep.

It's not good.

It's so frustrating because I'm also traveling.

I'm going to be on a plane tomorrow for like 12 hours, and I'm not looking forward to it with a hurt neck.

Yeah.

It's not ideal, but you are going to get to go on a wonderful vacation.

That also means that you have no obligations related to my hit new book, Everything is Tuberculosis.

You don't have to spend the next three weeks on the road.

No complaining.

But actually, I'm not complaining because it's an incredible privilege and one that I'm very excited about.

The tour is sold out unless you live in Philadelphia, in which case, come see me.

All right.

What's up, Philadelphia?

Is that a big room or just people?

It's like a 3,000-person room.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's a big room.

Hank, the other thing we need to talk about is the number,

the literal hundreds of people who wrote us questions in the last week about how they listened to this podcast as their sleep podcast.

And we just need to, I don't know if we need to take it down a notch or take it down two notches, but I'm concerned that

we're not a good sleep podcast.

Well, if it's working, it's working.

That's what I say about that.

But secondarily, I can take it down some notches.

Yeah.

Look,

it's a new era for dear Hank

and John.

Oh, that was good.

That was great.

I almost fell asleep between Hank and John.

We got a bunch of questions, though, that we could get into, and we can just take them real easy.

I'm into having like themed episodes.

Yeah.

And the theme of this episode is no bummers.

We specifically requested Rosiana deliver us a set of questions that had no bummers in it, which Rosiana said was hard and required going back several months.

Oh no.

I was walking down the street and I saw

a colleague, somebody who I know professionally, and I was like, how's it going?

She was like, oh, not good.

Been a bad month.

And I was like, yeah, you know, all the situation.

and she i know she works for some like like she does like science for a living so like probably job's not in a great position and and also you yeah has has that situation she's like jobs that you were just not great also just got diagnosed with cancer and i was like oh well that's yeah bad man yeah hank well i i don't i don't want to criticize

you or your friend, but if this is the no bummers episode, we started out on the perhaps the wrong note.

i did hit i did hit with some immediate bummers but yeah but that's okay she i you know i was like i i can't really empathize with the job situation but i got i can tell you we can chat about cancer all day long and yeah so we did a bit a lot of people on tour as i'm doing like a press junket you know so i've been talking to reporters all day today and also all day like for the last couple weeks and a lot of them ask me about how you're doing and i don't know how to tell them because the answer is like he's doing great in terms of the cancer but I don't know that he's doing great overall.

I'm very, uh, I don't know, I am frenetic for sure.

I mean, I'm going, we're going on vacation, so I'm like trying to do a bunch of stuff really fast right now, yeah, which maybe has something to do with the neck.

Also, I promise you, I promise you a hundred percent, I would not have this neck situation if not for daylight savings time.

Oh, interesting.

I was having a hard time falling asleep, and then Oren was having a hard time falling asleep.

Everybody was

all wrong, and then Oren like came into our bed and he kicked me out, and I went to sleep on his bed, and I woke up with this freaking neck problem.

It is Benjamin Franklin's fault.

Well,

I would argue that Benjamin Franklin isn't responsible for the current scourge of daylight savings.

That's probably a good point.

I would argue that

it's a shared failure and not the only one.

But again, no bummers.

No bummers.

No bummers.

People have enough bummers.

No bummers.

We all are.

And you know what?

Next week, we will be back with bummers.

We'll be back to bummers.

Don't you worry about us.

But for today,

will we be doing it next week?

I feel like we probably got to take a little break since you're on tour.

No, no, no, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to force you to cut your vacation short for the joy of being with me on here at Dear Hank and John.

Bring my mic over to the London.

I like, we are kind of low energy, which I think is suitable.

Yeah,

I feel like I was invited into this space.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, we're very grateful to everybody who uses this as a sleep podcast.

And we want this to be the special sleep episode where you can always go back to this one, number 409, and tell yourself, well, if I'm not tired yet, I will be when I'm done listening to these nerds.

Hank.

Yeah.

This is a question from Kayla, and I swear Kayla wrote in to ask this question.

Hey, John and Hank, whatever happened to Eco Geek?

So just a little bit of context.

Hank started a blog in 2005 called Eco Geek.

It was like his project when he was graduating from graduate school, and it charted the intersection between technology and the environment.

And it was a great blog.

It almost got bought by a big media company, but then the

global economy collapsed in mid-2008, which turned out to be sort of a blessing because Hank doubled down on Vlogbrothers.

And thank God he did.

It's true.

It's true.

I don't know what would have happened if that, like, I would have had to, I would have had a day job.

like a job i had to really do yeah and that what that where i worked for other people so

that might have might have ruined everything um so thanks mortgage-backed securities

thanks credit default swaps yeah hank one of the big winners of of the 2008 financial crisis alongside those guys in the big short yep yep them and me just uh the guy from the office and me yep steve carell i think is his name sure that sounds right He's also probably a penguin sometimes, or something like that.

I think of him mostly as the guy from that wrestling movie who doesn't do the wrestling.

Because I think about that movie sometimes in the context of my own love and support of AFC Wimbledon.

Like, am I the star of that wrestling movie?

Which I will remind you ends, I believe, in a triple homicide.

Am I the best?

I do not know what you're talking about.

It won like six Academy Awards.

It's called The Wrestling Movie with Steve Carell.

You can Google it.

He's Grew.

That's what I'm thinking of.

Yeah, he's also Grew.

But mostly he's the wrestler.

He's the guy who doesn't wrestle in that wrestling movie.

So I had this blog.

It was called Eco Geek.

And I started it specifically because I was in an environmental studies master's program and everything was bummers all the time.

And I was like, well, certainly somebody has to be working on solving these problems.

And certainly there are people doing that in policy ways and people doing that in

rhetorical and

conversational ways, science ways, but also there's people doing it in technology ways.

People are trying to figure out how to make solar panels cheaper.

People are trying to figure out how to do electric cars.

And back then, all that stuff was

very far away from being real, big mass market stuff.

And now it's like mass market stuff.

That did happen.

It is certainly not going to be the only part of our fixing of this problem, which is very big,

and

still a very tough nut.

But I did do it for a long time.

I got close.

I did the do it for a long time.

And then

it just sort of tapered off.

As Vlogbrothers got bigger, as all of our other work got bigger, I just started doing it.

And less and less, the other income started to replace that income.

And

then

Then

I've always wanted to do eco-friendly cleaning supplies.

Yeah.

Because I don't like the idea that we ship all this water around all the time when we could just ship the ingredients out.

I didn't know about this until you told me about it, but basically, we ship a lot of water needlessly in the form of tide.

And then, not only do we ship a lot of water needlessly in the form of tide and other cleaning supplies, but we also have to ship them in very thick plastic so that they don't break and the water doesn't spill everywhere.

And so, this turns out to be inefficient on two levels: there's just the weight of the water, which has a large carbon footprint associated with it, but the manufacturing of these thick plastic bottles.

Yeah.

Yeah, I haven't like weighed a tide jug, but I bet it's a lot more than

a bottle of water.

And

also, like I was looking at one the other day and the big tide jugs are like a complicated affair.

I bet they got like four or five different types of plastic in them.

Yeah.

So we realized that we wouldn't have to actually develop all these products ourselves.

There was a bunch of small businesses making really great products.

We could just partner with them and bring them to a new audience and also donate all of the profit to the Coral Reef Alliance to help protect the, you know, one of the most important ecosystems here on planet Earth that is, you know, under a lot of stressors right now.

And that is what that, and it is wild that you asked that question because

a week ago, I wouldn't have been able to tell you about it.

Yeah.

No, it's good timing.

Also, credit Rosiana for identifying it.

But yeah,

I'm really excited about EcoGeek.

The response to it has been overwhelming.

It's weird to have two things coming out at the same time, one Hank thing, one John thing, but I'm very excited about the Hank thing.

It's very cool.

Hank, I got another question.

It's from Gracie who says, hey, I was wondering, if humans colonize Mars, would there be a Pope of Mars?

Or would the Pope in Rome remain the spiritual father of Catholics across the solar system?

Asking the importance questions, Gracie.

Well, I think that the Catholic Church is going to say the Rome Pope stays Pope, but the Catholic Church on Mars is going going to say, no, we need a Mars Pope.

Oh, you think eventually there's going to be a schism?

A schism?

That's got to happen.

Well, we've had two popes before.

We had competing popes back in the day.

We have two popes now.

Well, no, we don't, but I know what you mean.

We had two Roman Catholic popes back in the day, is what I mean.

I don't actually know what I mean.

I was just needling.

I think probably

somebody who says they're pope.

Well, I'm sure there's Alexander Pope.

Yeah.

he claims the title but there's got to be somebody who says they're pope who's not pope yeah but the point is that they aren't pope that's a key that's a key facet of this whole conversation anti-pope

it's like it's like if the pope and the anti-pope ever meet then they will annihilate each other and produce enough energy to power the whole roman catholic church you know that the anti-pope is a thing right no yeah i googled it oh okay Okay,

I just,

usually we get questions about science that I don't know anything about, So it's fascinating to hear you speculate on the Roman Catholic Church and who would be the Pope of Mars.

I think you're not wrong.

There could be a schism as a result of it, but the Pope is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, which extends to all parts of the Roman Catholic Church on Earth and beyond.

So he would remain the Pope.

John, how long until the Pope is immortal?

And by that, I mean an artificial intelligence that is imbued with all the pope-like properties that the best pope could possibly be imbued with, or that the current pope somehow downloads his brain into a computer and then says, that's that's the pope now.

And then that's when the schism happens because they're like, that's not the real pope.

The real pope has to be a living guy.

And then the pope is like, no, no, no, I'm inside of this computer and I'm going to be pope forever.

Given the Roman Catholic Church's somewhat leisurely pace of change, I think it might be a while.

Though they do now pay the pope through papal.

Yes, that's right.

They've really gotten with the times when it comes to digital PayPal alternatives that only pay popes.

Papal.

Thanks, John.

I appreciate that.

I've heard that the Pope is sick.

I think that he may have gotten bird flu because he spends all of his time hanging out with cardinals.

Oh, my God.

Do these just come to you?

No, no.

No, I looked that one up.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, the Pope does spend a lot of his time with cardinals, but he also spends his time with many other people.

This is why I could never be Pope, aside from the other reasons, is that it's an extrovert's job.

I mean, you just have to do so much all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And cardinals are dangerous these days.

Are they?

Because of the birds.

I think that they used to be more dangerous than they are now, actually.

When were cardinals dangerous?

The birds or the people?

Because the people, I feel like there's been a lot of infighting over the years.

Oh, yeah.

No, that's fair enough.

I meant the birds.

The birds are fairly safe.

I don't encounter Roman Catholic cardinals that often, whereas the northern cardinal I see on a regular basis.

So if I have a reason reason to be concerned about cardinals, let me know.

Okay.

That's great, though.

No, I think that you should be enthusiastic about seeing cardinals.

Don't cuddle with any.

Just generally.

Birds at all.

Don't worry about that, buddy.

I am duly afraid of birds.

Okay, great.

This next question comes from Aiden, who asks, Hi, Hank and John.

I just recently watched Veritasium's video about protein and how we are identifying the shape of more than ever before.

I had a general understanding of how different protein types work, but then I realized I don't really know what protein in food is.

Like when I eat my yogurt, it has 10 grams of protein in it.

What type of protein is that?

Is that the same as like 10 grams of chicken or steak?

Are certain types of protein more effective for humans?

Not Braden or Caden or Hayden or Jaden or Raden or Zayden.

Not Graydon, but Aiden.

It's Aiden, everybody.

A long time fan of the pod.

Yeah.

So you are eating different kinds of protein when you're eating different proteins.

So the protein in like a like a dairy is going to be a lot of the whey protein,

which is what comes out when you make cheese.

It's one of the things that you separate out.

But generally that protein is specifically made to be like food for baby cows or other mammals.

And then when you're eating meat, you're mostly eating

the muscle proteins.

And when you're eating plant proteins, those are

different kind of sets of proteins.

But in general, all of these proteins break down into the amino acids.

There are 29 of them, no, 20 of them, something like that.

There's a bunch of them.

And the individual amino acids are what actually make a protein into the protein and in the order that they are.

And some

proteins are actually different because there are certain amino acids that our bodies can't make.

And so we have to eat them.

We have to consume them.

And

like milk or meat is going to be a complete protein source.

So it'll have all nine of the nine essential amino acids.

And then some proteins are not going to have all of the essential amino acids.

So you want to make sure that if you are not eating meat, you have sources of all of the essential amino acids.

You know what's interesting, Hank, is that you said there were 29 or maybe 20 common amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins.

Yeah.

Interestingly, there are 20, but nine of them are considered essential to the body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what I, that's, yes, that is where my head was.

So that's where you got the number from.

You were thinking you knew something.

You just didn't,

you weren't able to.

I knew that there were nine essential amino acids, and I couldn't remember if there were 20 non-essential amino acids and nine essential amino acids or if there were 20 total with nine essentials.

It's just fascinating to me how the brain works.

That's something artificial intelligence can never be the Pope, and artificial intelligence will never be able to think like that.

And I find that kind of thinking so interesting.

I do.

I just, I like that we're humans.

I'm going to, I'm just going to come out and say it.

I know that this is controversial, especially in 2025, but I'm so strongly in favor of humans.

I know.

And not just humans in the person sense, but humans in the biological sense.

I think we are cool biology, and I think we should allow ourselves to continue being biological.

Well, my neck hurts, though.

I know.

Listen, man, I don't feel great.

Okay.

My biology has had a runny nose for like three days in a row and slept for 12 hours last night because it wasn't feeling well.

But I still think it's preferable to not having a biology.

Yeah.

It's it's an interesting moment to uh that we're having that conversation at all in that yeah they're they're you can go ahead and have a conversation with non-biological people.

Oh, yeah.

They're not people obviously.

But the vibes.

They have vibes.

I feel like people.

I asked ChatGPT to do calculus the other day and it got so mad at itself.

It kept doing it and being like, this is wrong.

Oh, wow.

I'm going to try it a different way.

This is also wrong.

I'm going to try it a different third way.

This is also wrong.

I keep doing it wrong.

And I'm just going to not do it with calculus.

I'm going to pretend.

I'm going to make some fudging and I'm going to just do it with normal math.

And I was like, wow, ChatGPT, be easy on yourself.

Yeah, exactly.

Make sure you're taking care of yourself.

Take those baths or whatever artificial intelligence is due.

Yeah.

All right, Hank, we have another question from Abigail who writes, Dear John and Hank, among the other more important questions in life, I have a smaller one.

Did AFC Wimbledon get good?

I thought they were terrible.

Did we get better?

If so, yay.

I don't have abs, Abigail.

Yes, you do, Abigail.

They may not be visible, but they're abs.

Yeah, you can stand up and stuff.

You're holding yourself up.

You're doing great.

Yeah.

We got better.

Well, John,

you got better, but

you're getting, I feel like, are you getting worse?

I guess we'll talk about that later.

Yeah, we'll talk about the recent results at the end of the podcast during the section.

but we have gotten better as a club and largely because of one person, I think.

I mean, we have a good manager, Johnny Jackson.

Johnny Jackson.

We have,

by the way, I met and hung out for a while with Johnny Jackson, and the whole time I was thinking, God, I hope he doesn't know that I do this bit about him

because he definitely knew that I thought he made substitutions too late.

Wow.

So part of it is part of it is that we have a great coach, and part of it is that

we've had really good player recruitment thanks to this guy, Craig Cope, who is like our head of football operations and the guy who picks all the players.

And he's incredible.

He's like a moneyball guy who can identify players in lower tiers and players who aren't playing and give them an opportunity.

And he's a big part of the reason for the success as well.

So I think a lot goes into it, but we have been getting better year over year.

Like it used to be we would really, really worry about dropping out of the Football League and not being a professional team anymore and all the crises that would come with that.

And now we're looking up the table instead of looking down, which is a good feeling.

It just is a reminder, too, that as

you know, a club that runs financially stable or any organization that runs financially stable probably can't grow as fast as the organizations that have tons of capital pumped into them.

But there's an upside to growing in a stable way, which is that you can slowly improve.

And admittedly, we got relegated a couple seasons ago, but we have nonetheless slowly been improving, I think.

Yes.

So you were in League One and aren't anymore.

Yeah, we're now in League Two, which isn't as good, but I'll remind you, when we were in League One, we were very,

very bad.

Yeah.

Which would happen again if you went to League One again.

Probably, but I think actually we'd be a little bit better suited for it now.

I think we have a slightly, because we have the new stadium, the stadium is full almost every week, so we just

have a slightly better situation financially.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, that's the situation with sports teams.

Sometimes they're bad and then sometimes they're good.

Yeah.

No, that's very true.

Oftentimes you'll start a season and be like, we really got it this year.

We got everything we need and then you'll just eat dirt, you know?

Yeah.

No, there's a lot of eaten dirt in sports for sure.

A lot of heartbreak.

But, oh, those moments of wonder, those moments that you cling to are, they're just so special.

Well, John, I have another question.

It's a related question, and it is from Emma, who asks, dear Hank and John, recently I learned that elephants have squishy foot soles.

And this is related because, of course, football players also usually have feet.

Yeah.

I guess we all have kind of squishy soles of our feet, but theirs look like water pets.

If you pop them, would they explode?

Oh, Emma.

How do they walk around on them without exploding their feet?

What happens if they step on a rock, pumpkins and penguins, Emma?

We actually looked into this, Topoke and I.

We looked into elephant feet a little bit.

If you pop them, they would not explode.

If an elephant stepped on a nail, it wouldn't be like a water balloon.

Okay.

It would be bad, just like if you did.

Sure.

But they have like a whole

complex collagen lipid hydrogel thing going on in there.

And of course, it has to be very...

uh both squishy and very uh interconnected and strong because there's an elephant standing on it all of them yeah they got to have like reebok pumped sneakers, but they already have to be attached to their feet.

Yeah, it's very cool.

And apparently they're also very sensitive.

Like they can feel down there and like know what they're standing on and stuff.

So they're careful about how they walk.

So they do, in fact, know when they step on a mouse?

Yeah, they do.

They would definitely know if they stepped on a mouse.

And elephants' feet.

Just the way that like human backs are like a point of problem for us, you know?

Yeah.

Like we just, this is so recent that we went upright and maybe we haven't evolved all the structures we need to not have back problems.

Right.

Elephants are like their Achilles heel

that are much closer to their actual heel.

And elephants

very often have foot problems and it can be a big deal for them.

So they have strong evolutionary pressure to have good foot situation because they're so big.

Did I ever tell you about the time I stepped on a nail?

Did you step on a nail?

Jeez.

Yeah, I was in Marfa, Texas, and I just finished a draft of Turtles All the Way Down and I went outside.

It was dark.

Sarah was out somewhere doing art stuff, and I went outside, and I was walking in the grass, just looking up at the stars.

So many stars in Marfa, Texas.

I realized that it's actually the same number of stars.

It's just that more of them are visible.

You don't have to correct me, Mr.

Science Man.

But like, just looking up at the stars and feeling the smallness of me and everything.

And then I had one of those experiences where the nail, I don't know if it was upright or if I somehow turned it upright, but man, that thing went right into my foot.

Were you wearing shoes?

I did have shoes on, but it went right into my foot, foot foot.

It was a big nail, and it didn't even hurt that much.

It just felt really weird.

And I wonder if it's like that for elephants.

I wonder if it's like not a source of constant pain, just a weirdness.

I bet

that it hurt later, though.

Oh, it did hurt later.

Yeah, the next day it was a stinger.

That's my guess is that this more chronic foot problem is probably pretty uncomfortable for one poor, poor biggies.

It's kind of sad to think that other animals also have chronic pain.

Yeah, oh, it's a bummer.

Because I find chronic pain to be one of, and this is a no-bummer episode, so we're not going to talk about it anymore, but I find it to be one of the bigger bummers.

Yeah, for sure.

I hope that my Nick feels better soon.

I hope so too, Hank.

But in the meantime, it's just a gentle reminder that today's podcast is brought to you by the Mars Pope.

The Mars Pope.

He will only be a cardinal, actually, but he will be a he.

There's one thing that's going to change slower than interplanetary travel.

Oh, boy.

This podcast is also brought to you by the 20 or possibly 29 amino acids.

That

does almost all of the work in there.

Is that all there is to life?

Yeah, kind of.

It's a lot of what there is to elephant feet.

And of course, today's podcast is also brought to you by elephant feet.

Elephant feet, they squish and they squash, but they don't pop open.

And this podcast is also, of course, brought to you by EcoGeek, EcoFriendly Cleaning Supplies, available at Good.store.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who are we promoing your thing and not the new hitbook, Everything is Tuberculosis, the world's best-selling book about tuberculosis?

And that book, John, is available wherever books are sold, which is not at good.store, not currently selling books, but at some point.

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On your book, is your name a bigger font than the title?

Hold on, I'm actually using the book as a little stand for my microphone.

It's the exact same size, like literally to the nano-inch, I think.

Maybe the author name is slightly bigger than the title, but it's very close.

Interesting.

And I think the reason the title might be a slightly smaller font is because it's very hard to get the word tuberculosis on one line.

It's quite a word.

It's quite a word.

It looks the same to me now that I'm looking at it.

Yeah.

I think Grace Hawn did an amazing job with

the cover design.

Can I tell you my favorite part about the book, which has nothing to do with the book itself?

So, you know, the end papers,

when you open up a book, you see the end papers.

At the beginning of the book, the end papers are bacteria, some of which are surrounded by the tubercles that are the clumps of white blood cells that surround tuberculosis bacteria.

And then at the end of the book, the end papers are medication, the medication used to treat tuberculosis.

But

I love the fact that the medication is separated from the disease by the book itself, just like in real life, we have done a poor job of getting the drugs to the places where the disease is.

And so the disease is where the drugs are not, and the drugs are where the disease is not, as the great Dr.

Peter Mugeni put it.

And

I just think it's lovely that the book itself is also a metaphor.

That's great.

So shout out to Anna Booth for being an amazing book designer and agreeing to lay out my book in Bembo, my favorite font.

It's got a good name.

Big Bembo nerd.

Big Bembo energy.

I actually put a little note about the font on the copyright page, Hank.

You want me to read it to you?

Oh, oh my god, yes.

This book is laid out in Bembo, a typeface name for Cardinal Pietro Bembo.

This is our Catholic episode.

We didn't see it coming.

In 1496, Bembo, the person, wrote the first book to be laid out in Bembo, the font.

It's a short book, a dialogue with his father about climbing Mount Etna.

At one point in the story, Bembo asks his father, one one of my favorite lines in literature, where do these fires come from, and once they've come into being, how do they keep going?

These questions are about the volcanic fires of Mount Etna, but it seems to me they are also about the overall human situation.

I've tried to write here about where the fire of tuberculosis came from, and once it came into being, how it kept going.

And so Bembo felt like the right font.

That's a little bit of a spoiler for my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, available in bookstores now.

Well, I don't know that anybody was going to read the font page, so that's great.

People

get to find out about the Easter eggs.

Love an Easter egg.

Yeah.

We have another question from Kevin, and it's on topic because we're talking a lot about the Lord.

Kevin writes, Dear John and Hank, people always say things like, I got up at the ungodly hour of six, and my question is, what are the godly hours?

Thinking about time in heaven, Kevin.

Who am I, the Pope?

Sorry, a bunch of people just woke up.

Yeah, Hank, you got to keep it nice and chill, man.

Or else somebody had the Pope inserted into their dream.

You know, here comes the Pope suddenly out of nowhere into the dream.

It was Jerry Seinfeld saying, who am I, the Pope?

Who am I, the Pope?

Yeah, so I think the godly hours, my guess would be the godly hours are the daylight hours, right?

That like originally the ungodly hours were the hours of the night when things are ungovernable.

And the godly hours are the ones where we can see.

I think this is very recent.

I think this is a recent phenomenon and that we just say ungodly when we mean something that is bad and shouldn't be experienced.

And then we applied it to not wanting to be awake too early in the morning.

Well, it comes from Middle English.

Ungodly?

Yeah.

Well, sure.

Let's see when it was first used.

Yeah, it's either a very early or late time of day, according to Wikipedia, which sounds to me like night.

Yeah, Yeah, for sure.

Okay, it comes from the 14th century.

Ungodly.

The slang or colloquial sense of extremely annoying is recorded by 1840 in Ungodly Hour.

Oh, wow.

Before that, it was called unearthly, an unearthly hour, which is even more beautiful, I think.

That's strange because it's definitely of the earth.

An unearthly hour implies that, like, this is outside of the planet entirely, these hours.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, 18040.

1804.

18040.

1840.

Sorry, I don't know

how lucky will we be to be alive in the year 18040?

And I don't mean you and me.

I mean anybody.

Yeah, someone recently asked me how long will it be until the day is exactly 365 days and we won't need leap years.

Yeah.

It's about two and a half million years, which is, you know, not that long for me.

It's not impossible, but I'm still going to take the under.

Yeah, that's a long time.

Well, it's 10 times as long as we've been here, and the idea that we're in the first 10% of human, well, sorry, caught myself mid-bummer.

We've got a really good chance of making it two and a half million years.

That's right.

Will we be on Earth?

Probably not.

Yeah, we will.

Oh, 100%.

You think we're going to find a better planet?

No

way.

No,

I think that we're going to build giant structures in space to live in.

Why would we do that when we have a good planet?

That's okay.

Oh my God.

Y'all science fiction nerds totally underestimate how great.

Bro, it's very good.

It's way better than any of the other planets.

Don't get me wrong.

Then why would we leave it?

It's the best.

It's almost like we were designed for it.

Yes.

Well, it's almost like we evolved for it.

Well, that's what I obviously mean, Hank.

Okay.

We're not about to have a fight.

This is no bummers episode.

If you told me that you had to wake up at the ungodly hour of six i would say like six feels pretty reasonable no six is at this point uh godly because of how i i think that that's honestly that's when god wants you to get be getting up you know it's like get get get on with it do all the do all the stuff you need to do uh have

engage with your community yeah

be i don't know i feel like does god want me to be productive i feel like american god does

I like that you're asking the question, man.

It's great to hear you questioning what God wants from you.

You really are on a journey of meaning.

It's been incredible to witness.

I ask myself all the time what God wants of me, and people are like, but what if God doesn't exist?

And I'm like, that doesn't matter at all to me.

And I know that that drives people crazy.

It just, it is a completely irrelevant question to me.

The question is not, what does the God who exists want from me?

The question is, what does God want from me?

But is God is your God

is your God American?

Because

I feel like most of the God I hear about is American God.

My God is definitely not American.

My God has a different perspective than, I would say, the dominant ideas of God in the United States.

You know what I mean, though?

You feel like that's a good idea.

Oh, I know.

American God is a phrase I'm familiar with, and it's like antipope.

Like, you think you invented it, but no, it's been around.

Okay.

i got i'm gonna invent theology from scratch let's go yeah

hank's gonna be like one of those artists an outsider artist who never trained in an art academy but for theology yeah yeah yeah so i've been thinking about like angels and

what a what if you could imagine like the head of a pin and

How many of them fit on that?

How many would fit on there?

None.

Six?

A hundred?

An infinite number?

That's my favorite thing that medieval theologians did was debate how many angels could fit on the head of a pin while like, meanwhile, suffering was universal.

And I don't want to be like an armchair theologian here, but like obviously none.

I mean, come on.

Like, I couldn't fit on the head of a pin.

I mean, maybe one.

Okay, I'll give you one.

I don't know about one.

I'm going to say, I'm going to say zero.

I'm going to say zero angels can fit on the head of a pin.

I couldn't fit on the head of a pin, and I don't think angels are that much bigger or smaller than me because they were imagined in my image.

I feel like I could fit on the head of a pin.

If I could just balance on there, does that count as fitting on it?

Hank, if you could balance on the head of a pin, I will personally give you a million dollars.

If you try to bounce on the head of a pin, you know what's going to happen?

Your squishy foot is going to be enveloped by a pin.

You're going to have to get a tetanus shot.

And that's the best case scenario.

That would mean that your balancing is so perfect.

Yeah,

that it actually even happened.

Yeah, but what's actually going to happen is that the pin's just going to fall over because I've seen you try to stand on one leg.

I'm not the best balancer.

It's true.

I'd be like angels will be good balancers and probably don't weigh anything.

Oh, that's a great point.

They might be my size, but not my density.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that they don't weigh very much.

They probably don't have to worry as much about blood pumping as I do.

I would imagine that they're somewhat...

And then there's the biblically accurate angel, which is just a collection of eyes.

Yeah,

angels have hemolymph.

They don't have blood.

Oh.

Yeah.

That's a fact I didn't know that I think you made up.

Well, I am inventing theology from scratch.

Oh, yeah, right.

Okay.

So you've got to invent angels from scratch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

they have a single

lymphatic blood that is both lymph and blood.

What caused an angel to get its wings that happened all the time?

Was it the tinkling of a bell?

Yeah, every time a bell rings.

Okay, yeah.

Well, look at that.

Do you believe in that?

Well, I think that they start out with wings, but then when a bell rings, they get more.

Actually, they don't like it when bells ring too much because they don't need like six set of wings.

It's actually.

Oh my god, oh my God, I got to cut another pair of wings off

it's like they're just pruning constantly stop ringing the bells

oh my neck it hurts all right this is great this is when i get to heaven

and saint peter's at the gate he's gonna say what about episode 409

i'll say i know man i know send me down look here's what's going on and then i'm gonna get up there and they're gonna be like look

poof and they'll make me stop existing because that's whatever happens, whatever you believe is what happens.

That's the next theology point.

Okay, that's a good theology point.

Then I believe that I'm going to get to heaven and St.

Peter's going to be like, poof, you almost had it, but there was episode 409 and then there was also all the LaCroix that you drank.

And we both know that was inefficient.

Yeah, but you believe I'm going to go to heaven.

I do.

And so I'm going to go to heaven, even though I don't believe it.

It's a kind of, there is, I maybe have created a bit of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I won't, unfortunately, I won't be there, so we won't get to hang out, but you're gonna

believe you're gonna go to heaven.

Oh, no, yeah, no, I'm not gonna hear heaven, but I bet a bunch of people do.

You'll make it,

you've got a great chance.

By the way, I don't really uh believe in heaven, I just find it a useful rubric for examining how I'm doing.

Interesting, yeah,

your theology is a mystery to me, even after

years.

To be fair, it's uh a bit heterodox, as they say.

Well, I never, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to feel as if I'm debating you.

So I don't like ask the, I don't like ask the questions.

Yeah, no, you're not debating me by asking questions.

That's just being curious.

I like to go to church.

I believe in God.

But you do think that you have a soul and the soul is separate from the body and the soul will continue existing outside, like after the body?

Well, the soul is, I mean,

I don't think that it's like inside your pancreas, if that's what you're asking.

Yeah, yeah.

Do I think the soul will exist after the body?

Yeah.

Yeah, he said questioningly, without any confidence.

Gotcha.

But

you're going to hear a lot of that.

I'm going to have to narrate my answers, you know, because there's so much.

nuance to me.

But I do think that

there's an essentiality of humanness that is different from the essentiality of a rock.

Not that different, because I think a rock also has an essentiality.

But like, I think there's something to humanness that is important and distinct.

Yeah, and you, and it's kept in the canine teeth, and when you lose it, the teeth grow strong and long because now you're a vampire.

Uh, something like that.

It's cl you're not that far off, it's just that the thing isn't um

the thing is a product of consciousness rather than being a product of the body.

Gotcha,

whereas I am fairly confident that consciousness is just a product of the body.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, so am I.

It's just

one of the things the body produces is a soul that isn't physical.

But yeah.

Okay, all right.

All right.

And it just, it can, it like oozes out afterward and just sort of it survives death, yes.

Okay.

In the sense that like Papa is dead, but he's still my grandfather.

Gotcha.

Oh, well.

What happens after you die?

The ones who love us will miss us?

I mean, that's one of the things that happens after we die, yeah.

That's the main thing.

Yeah.

Thank you, Keanu.

The greatest theologian of our time, Keanu Reeves, said that.

Yeah.

It hit me pretty hard.

I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, in that sense, love is stronger than death, as it says in the scripture.

Like, love does survive death.

We all know that because we all love people who've died.

Ecclesiastes 12, 22.

Nope, but good, good effort.

Is that one of the books?

That is a book.

Here, you want to know what Ecclesiastes 12, 22 says?

Oh, no.

Is it going to be a real thing?

Oh, yeah.

No, that's a real thing.

Let me see.

Oh, no, it only goes to 14.

Okay, well, what's 14?

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Oh, no.

Yep.

The LaCroix is real, John.

I know.

That's the LaCroix verse.

verse.

I've read my Bible.

The banger of Ecclesiastes 12 is Ecclesiastes 12, 8.

Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher.

Everything is meaningless.

I get that one tattooed on me.

Yeah.

What is that Bible verse?

Oh, it just means that

like nothing matters.

I don't know if you knew the Bible said that.

Just a little bit of nihilism for you.

That's what keeps keeping me afloat these days.

Yeah, it's a good book club.

It's a great book club.

It meets every week.

I love that idea that it's a book club that meets weekly and never finishes.

Hank, we got to get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Okay, you want to go first?

Mine has bummers.

Okay, mine also has bummers.

Sorry.

As everybody might currently know, you can't fix the news.

So one thing you might know is that uh various government agencies are losing a lot of employees right now nasa has in part been spared uh like the weird thing where they just let everyone who is in their like probationary period

like just fire everybody in their probationary period because they can more easily right so what for whatever reason that hasn't happened at nasa but uh on march 10th nasa did or you know the government closed three nasa offices so about 23 people lost their jobs.

We lost the Office of the Chief Scientist, the Office of Technology, Politics, and Strategy, and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Branch of the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity at NASA.

So things are up in the air everywhere.

So if you have been wondering, that is how NASA has been hit thus far.

Who knows what will

keep happening.

The chief scientist was Catherine Calvin, who was an expert on climate science.

And it's been involved a lot in the Open Science Initiative.

It also puts together analysis and reports on projects like Mars Sample Return Project.

And NASA does a lot of Earth science.

People mostly think about the planetary science stuff.

There's a huge amount of Earth science that NASA does.

And

that

feels like it might be the area that is more under threat here, which feels a little silly because that is

our only home

in terms of the actual impacts on the people,

the earth science is pretty important.

Yeah.

Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them.

That's Ecclesiastes 12.

That's how it starts.

It's a bit of a bummer.

Wow.

Ecclesiastes.

Are they all this good, John?

Can I pick another random one?

Before the sun and the light, and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain, when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim, when the doors to the street are closed, and the sound of grinding fades, when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint, when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets, when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire no longer is stirred.

The people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets.

Jesus, literally.

Okay.

What is Ecclesiastes?

Is that like a bunch of letters to some people who are Ecclesiastes?

No.

Are you sure?

Like one of Paul's letters to the Romans or whatever?

Yeah, that was one of them.

No, it's from the Hebrew Bible.

It's a book of the Old Testament.

Okay.

Yeah,

that's funny, though.

All right, Hank.

I can't get distracted.

We've got to get to the news from AFC Wimbledon.

AFC Wimbledon have won some football games.

They've lost some football games, but they lost their most recent football game very infuriatingly to Chiltenham

2-1.

Arguably James Tilley, maybe Nerdfighteria's own Marcus Brown scored the one AFC Wimbledon goal.

It was tied 1-1 going into halftime and then lost in the second half very frustratingly.

I thought played well enough to win, but as the Academy graduate Isaac Okendera put it, we now have a 10-game mini-season to try to get promoted.

Wimbledon currently in fifth place, four through seven go to the playoffs, one through three get automatically promoted.

So

10-game season, I think if we win five of those games, we probably go up, but

we got to win five of them.

Well, sports.

That

I looked at the table just now in a weird situation, almost all of the teams on the top half had lost their most recent game.

Yeah.

And almost all the teams in the bottom half had won their most recent game, which is not how it's supposed to be.

No, but it tends to happen at the end of the season.

The bad teams get good because they get really desperate because the thought of going down is such a threat to your whole club solvency that sometimes

they spend more, sometimes

they just play hard.

So, yeah, there's no easy games in League Two.

Wimbledon have to find a way to win five of their last 10 games, and that's not going to be easy, but I do think it's possible.

Yeah, well,

I think that they're going to score in every way that they possibly can and ways that people haven't ever imagined before.

That's my hope, because we have not been scoring enough goals, so it'd be fun to see us score in ways that people have never imagined before.

Yeah,

I'm, I, I'm, I, football is very, very cool, uh, especially in highlights.

Yes, It's good in highlights, but it's also good.

I think it's a great live watch, personally.

I'm sure it's a great live watch.

I wish that AFC Wimbledon were playing while you're going to be on vacation, but alas, they will not be.

So you don't get to go to a game.

Oh, well.

But thank you to everybody for listening.

Thank you for being here.

I hope we kept it pretty chill here in episode 409, the No Bummers Sleep Spectacular.

And thank you for all your notes, especially all your notes about how compression works.

File compression.

Oh, yeah,

people were up in my mentions about that.

Oh, yeah.

No,

we didn't do a great job of explaining it.

But I actually want to read one email that I thought was the best explanation for it and is only about one line long.

Okay.

It's from Mike.

Dear John and Hank, you know how on printed song lyrics the chorus might only be there once and later it'll just say repeat chorus to save space on the page?

That's file compression.

Oh,

okay.

I like that.

This episode of Dear Hank and Jonathan was edited by Linus Obenhaus.

It was mixed by Joseph Tunamedic.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

It was produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Dabuki Chakravarti.

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

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