397: A Top Podcast for Teens

You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Hello and welcome to Dear Hi Guy John.

Of course, I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you Dubie's advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars, the planet, and AFC Wimbledon, a third or fourth tier English soccer club.

Which is it, John?

Fourth.

Fourth at the moment.

So I've been.

And the arc of history bends toward Wimbledon.

That's right.

That's right.

It's not a fast thing that happens, but it is a thing that happens.

That's right.

Like justice.

I

maybe.

I have been thinking, John, and I've been brought around to, I don't think the Earth is flat, but I think it is mostly flat.

And I would like to present to you a little bit of evidence.

Okay.

That some natural spring formations do produce carbonated water, but almost almost all the rest of it is not.

Ah, so most of the water on Earth is flat water.

It's flat.

And that's a joke.

That was, just so everybody knows, that was a joke.

Look, it did feel necessary to point out, John, I have something I need to talk to you about immediately after that.

If you go to Google and you type in top 10 best podcasts for teens,

and I know this because a friend of mine has a teen and typed this into Google to try and find a good podcast for teens and found that, first of all, Google suggests us

after stuff you should know, Radiolab, stuff you missed in history class, TED Talks, and then it's us.

Wow.

That's amazing.

And then if you go to the top Google result, we're third down after my favorite murder, which I don't think that I would personally suggest to my teen.

And the mortified podcast, which is all about the cringeworthy moments that teen life is made of, which also we do do.

We don't do true crime, but we do mortifications.

Heavy mortification podcast over here.

I was just thinking about some of your mortifications recently.

Some of mine?

Yeah.

Oh, no.

I got that.

No, those are just supposed to be me thinking about them.

No, I cycle through all of mine so often that I ran out briefly, but then I had a new one come up.

So it was all good.

I think we are a top podcast for teens.

I think we should amend the intro to say, hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John, a teen podcast.

A top podcast for teens.

A top podcast for teens.

I'm so proud to be a top podcast for teens.

I had no idea.

And I can say.

We do sometimes hear from teenage listeners, to be fair.

Oh, for sure.

I also say, like, we don't, we, we work, we try to not say dirty words.

Though I think teens do do that.

Oh, I mean, based on the teen in my house, that is not the issue um

my best friend chris told me a story that he was walking past the area where the playstation is and he heard henry say a bad word and chris said um and i'll tell you john it sounded like he'd said it before it didn't sound it didn't sound like it was new in his lexicon yeah no i mean and when i was in high school we used a particular bad word as what they call a filler word, the way that you might say like or um.

We would use a particular word.

And

it's sort of like it was, it was, it started with F.

It was probably the, and it was conjugated.

It was the infinitive form.

It was gerund.

It didn't.

Jeruing.

Yes, that's what it is.

Yeah.

I'm not good with that.

John recently.

That's why you have a grammar brother.

There's a science brother and a grammar brother.

I actually am making a video soon about the difference between M dashes and N dashes, which is going to be a massive hit on YouTube.

There's an N dash, E N.

Yeah.

Why are they named after the letters M and N?

They're not named after.

I don't know that they are named after the letters.

It's E M and E N is how they're spelled.

Well, that's how the letters are spelled.

I don't know if you know this.

Oh, I didn't know that.

So I guess now we have also have a spelling brother.

And it's definitely not me.

John, can I hit you with zucchini?

Go.

Z-U-C-C-H-I-N-I.

Damn, boy, you're the spelling, brother.

But I'll tell you what I don't have.

That was a hard spelling.

I don't have anything up there visually.

I mean, I'm made out of words, Hank.

I am entirely lexicographical.

There are no

visions in my mind.

I have aphantasia, you know, so like I can't.

I thought you meant presenting to the world.

all you are is words.

Oh, wouldn't that be the best?

What I wouldn't give to be words.

Ooh, nice.

That's it.

It's so much trouble.

It's so much trouble to be this biological phenomenon.

Someday you will just be words.

I know.

That's a great point, Hank.

My afterlife is going to rule.

I'm going to live my dream of just being made out of words.

Oh, man.

I was so taken aback at being a top podcast for teens.

I will say that among the other top podcasts for teens are lots of podcasts that I listen to.

So it's not like they're just for teens.

No, no, no.

Radio Lab is not a teenage podcast.

It's just a top podcast for teens.

And Science Friday is on there.

I was just listening to Science Friday yesterday.

Another top podcast for teens.

I just, I also love the phrase top podcast for teens.

There's something glorious about it.

I'm going to have to tell my teen that I make a top podcast for teens.

I think he's going to be pretty surprised.

He's a big fan of podcasts, but he's not, I would say, a devoted listener to Dear Hank and John.

Do you think we should redesign our podcast logo to have to make it like cool hipster teen teenage?

Yeah.

We could put some weed on there, some mushrooms.

Is that what I kids?

That's what teenagers like.

What are you talking about?

I don't know.

That's like, that's what we are all drawing in our notebooks.

No.

No.

I was drawing spirals.

I bet you.

Spirals.

Spirals.

Spirals.

Spiral after spiral.

Yeah.

I was drawing weed way before I ever even saw weed.

I don't know.

I don't even think we can't take the weed out of the podcast.

Yeah, Hank, we can't talk about this stuff in our top podcast for teens.

Jeez.

Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

All right, Hank, we've got a question from Emily.

We've got to answer it because Emily's a hospital chaplain, and I'm extremely biased toward hospital chaplains.

Yes, you are.

Dear John and Hank, I am a hospital chaplain and very science-dumb.

You're not science dumb, Emily.

You're just science.

Nobody's explained it to you in a way that clicked yet.

I am engaged to a wonderful man who is an amateur astronomer and very science smart, which is to say that science has been explained to him in a way that clicked with him.

And we always come back to this conversation that he tries to explain space stuff to me.

And lately, we are discussing gravity.

My question is: why don't we know why gravity works or how gravity is?

I am currently dissatisfied with the answer of it simply is and we don't know.

Still not understanding the gravity of the situation, Emily.

I mean, honestly, I feel like we understand gravity better than the other ones.

No, we do not.

I disagree.

Well, there's a certain way in which we understand gravity in a way that makes a lot of sense, in which it like, like mass warps space.

So like, so, so in that way, it's just like you're sort of always

falling unless you're being stopped by something because space is going down under you.

Yes, but it, but in terms of like how it like functions with the rest of physics, no, that's off the table.

But the rest of physics to me is the confusing part.

The gravity thing is just like, oh, like, like we can see with lots of evidence that large, massive objects or any object of any mass,

like it warps space, that you can use it as a lens.

You can see it in the sky.

And that's very strange.

But that's why we're falling down.

It's because space is warped downward toward the.

gravity is.

We don't know why massive gravity is.

Emily is asking why, why, why?

And having hosted this podcast with Dr.

Katie Mack, Crash Course the Universe, which I suggest you listen to, Emily.

We talk a lot about gravity, and I get very confused by it.

But having hosted this podcast with Dr.

Katie Mack, one of my big conclusions is that why is what the Buddhists would call a question wrongly put.

Like cosmology

is only in the why business up to a point.

Yeah.

At a certain point, the whys.

It's just is.

Like, why did the Big Bang happen?

Was my first question for Dr.

Mac.

And she was like,

you know, that's not really a question for us.

Because

we can't get to before

by definition.

I know that we can't, but I do, I kind of disagree with, I've talked, every cosmologist I've ever talked to has, has sort of been of that opinion.

And I know that they're right because, like, what the hell do I know?

Yeah.

But, like, I kind of feel like we don't know what we'll know someday.

And there's always going to be a why beyond that.

There will always be another why.

You know?

Yeah.

That's, I know that from playing the why game with my children when they were younger.

There's always a why behind the why.

There's always a why behind the why.

And, and in a way, like, if there is a, if there is an answer to the last why,

um,

then it it means some pretty weird stuff.

Well,

it just means because God.

Yeah, or because like some creator.

I think that it could be it could just be like a like a kid playing a video game for all we know.

Yeah, or as we call it, God.

Which I don't think it well, obviously.

I'm saying I don't think it's a kid playing a video game.

I'm not a simulation theory bro, is all I'm saying.

Oh, yeah, me neither.

I can't, I might,

I just can't get into that business.

I think the point here is that there's a lot we still don't know about gravity, and we could figure it out.

Like, there is the possibility of tying gravity to the rest of physics, which so far we haven't been able to do, but there isn't the possibility of answering the

why.

Like,

it's an infinite regress problem, the why problem to me.

It's turtles all the way down, and there is no way to get to the bottom turtle.

It is an infinite collection of turtles.

Yeah.

And so there's like, there is a certain amount of just like, instead of asking why is, you just say this is,

which

is.

You say, what is.

What is, which is pretty great that we even have that.

And we can get to a lot of whys.

We know, broadly speaking, like why humans have eyes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In terms of biology, we have

pretty much all the whys except for the first one, which we in the last 20 years have gotten a lot closer to.

The first one being why did life evolve in the first place?

Yeah, it is like, where did life come from?

Like,

how did like the first living thing happen?

And we're like,

I'm kind of expecting this book to come out sometime soon where like some really good science journalist is going to like hit this one well.

where they're going to talk about like the transition from like early pre-cellular metabolism type stuff to like,

you know, RNA from there to cells and membranes from there.

And like, like we've got like a lot of little pieces of the puzzle at this point.

And, but nobody's like tried to build up the puzzle yet in a sort of coherent form.

Oh, I thought you were going to say like build the puzzle by like recreating life from constituent elements, Frankenstein style, which I'm not interested in.

No, well, I mean, we could already do that.

Okay, well, I'm not interested in it at all because I read Frankenstein.

We can like take a cell membrane and like put like pieces from places and kind of build a cell that way.

But we can't like

go from

some chemistry happening in a vial to like a cell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm in no hurry for that one.

I don't.

I trust us as a species about as far as I can throw us.

It's just chemistry.

Yeah, I don't want to be reminded that everything is just chemistry, Hank.

Like, I don't, I know that you enjoy being like, everything is chemistry.

And I know that everything is chemistry, but like, I don't like being reminded of the fact that I'm like a 30 trillion cell colony that's just a series of chemical reactions.

That's making a top podcast for teens.

That doesn't, that's not, that's not the kind of stuff that's in a top podcast for teens.

That's exactly right.

I think that, no, that stuff is totally in a top podcast for teens, but it is weird that 30 trillion cells could make a top podcast for teens.

Top podcast for teens, first off, it's 60 trillion cells because it took both of us.

Secondly, top podcasts for teens are about things like Chapel Roan and

Battleground Six.

You know what I was thinking about this morning?

I don't know what that is.

It's a video game I made up.

You know, we have a friend named

named Craig who has a band called Driftless Pony Club.

Love Craig.

Isn't it weird that like before everybody else was a fan of a pink pony club, we were a fan of like a completely separate pony club?

That's true.

I am in my second pony club, fandom.

Yeah.

That's a high number of pony clubs.

No, I didn't, you know, I didn't even know until I had that thought, I didn't even think, what's a pony club?

Now I really want to know.

Well, if you listen to the song Pink Pony Club, you can get a pretty good idea for what that club is.

Yeah, you're right.

I do have an idea of what that pony club is like.

What's a pony club?

I asked to Google.

um we'll keep on dancing at the pink pony club i just i just love chapel roan so much and that's not just because i'm trying to pander to our beloved teenagers it is true i love i love chapel roan

i i saw chapel rone open for olivia rodrigo when i took alice to an olivia rodrico concert and it's the only time in my life when i've seen an opening act and i was like that person should be a star when was that

maybe a year ago.

I will.

I do this thing.

Sometimes I ask on Twitter for people to send me like songs that are just absolute bangers.

Yeah.

And in 2020, somebody sent me Pink Pony Club, and I had no idea who the artist was.

And it was like on a playlist that I listened to a bunch while I was working out.

And then, like, I heard that song on the radio four years later, and I was like, what the heck is going on?

That song is

apparently it got like it like got re-released.

So, yeah.

i just want to point out that you just did something really rare which is you you bragged twice with one fact first that you were working out and secondly that you basically discovered chapelrone on your own according to you i no i mean like i tweeted about that and somebody was like oh ho ho and they showed me that they had been subscribed to chapelrone on youtube since like 2014 since chapelrone was not chapelrone all right so you've you didn't discover anybody that's i don't think so and you probably weren't working out.

I was.

I was using my rowing machine.

That was my rowing machine playlist.

Hank, Hank, come on, man.

We can't reveal that we use a rowing machine if we're going to be a top podcast for teens.

This question comes from Katie, who asks, hi, guys.

What if eventually at some point you both go on Dancing with the Stars?

Just an idea I had, please.

DFTBA, Katie.

Well, first off, I'm thrilled that our guy Steve...

Steve Nedrozik is on Dancing with the Stars.

Our fellow Steve, the Palma Horse Specialist, noted American nerdfighter Steve, is going on Dancing with the Stars.

I wouldn't want to take his spot, but also I'd like to state for the record that I couldn't take his spot for two reasons.

And I'm just going to, Katie, I'm going to dig deep into the title of the show with you, if you don't mind.

So the title with the stars.

Yes.

The show is called Dancing with the Stars.

Now, we'll put aside the with and the the because I think you could you could have a show that's gerunding with the

and then a noun that that could fit my definition.

You know, like you could have a show that was, for instance, contemplating mortality with the original YouTubers,

and I would be on that show.

Yeah, but the problem with dancing with the stars is really the gerund and the noun there: dancing, which I can't do, and star, which I'm not.

I want to, can I be on like rowing with the dads

Just like, just like.

What about skibbitying with the teens?

No.

I don't think the teens skibbity, as far as I can tell, that's like a

skibbity anymore.

No, I think that was always a younger than teen activity.

Okay.

And is it indeed a verb?

Oh, gosh.

Talking to the wrong guy, both because I'm not the grammar brother and because I don't know enough about skibbity-ing.

All right.

Well, anyway, moving on.

I can dance.

And I

think, I don't know,

I feel like I might be on the edge of being enough of a star to be on dancing with no.

I know that I don't have enough time.

It seems like a huge time commitment, especially if you do well, which I would.

I love you, but you'd get voted off in week one.

I mean,

maybe

you'd starve in week one because of the power of Nerdfighteria.

Like, nerdfighteria could probably get you, power you through the first week just because they're that supportive.

But the idea that you're going to be.

Oh, no.

Have you ever watched this show?

Most of the stars aren't very good at dancing.

I wouldn't.

Neither.

Dude, you're not that good at dancing.

I'm better than Rudy Giuliani or whatever the hell.

Was Rudy Giuliani on Dancing with the Stars?

Terrible like that.

No.

No.

No, he was on the masked singer.

That's very Sean Spicer.

Sean Spicer was on Dancing Dancing with the Stars, and I think there's no doubt that I am both a better dancer and a better man.

Well,

you might well be a better man, but you're not a bigger star.

Sean Spicer is a celebrity, and you, respectfully, are not.

Do you even know who Sean Spicer is?

Yeah, he used to be the press secretary during the Trump administration.

Exactly.

Nobody remembers that guy.

What do you mean nobody remembers that?

Like, that's a job where you're on TV every day.

You haven't been on TV ever.

I'm on YouTube a million times a day.

It's not like we're in the top 100 most subscribed YouTubers, respectfully.

We might be a top podcast for teens, but you're really letting that distinction go to your head, man.

I want dancing with all of the members of the top podcasts for teens.

Oh, my God.

Dancing with Radiolab?

How cool would that be?

Oh, my Lulu Miller.

Dancing with Lulu Miller.

Hell yeah.

Oh, that'd be incredible.

Science Friday?

I'd watch the crap out of that show.

I mean, dancing with Ira Flato.

Dancing with Ira Flato.

Yeah.

I think maybe we should just be on podcasting with the podcast hosts.

No, I like our job.

I don't want to make it more complicated.

This is the other thing is that if I were on Dancing with the Stars, and I don't know how to say this without sounding ungrateful, but if I were on Dancing with the Stars, I would become famous again, which is extremely undesirable to me.

Yeah, I would be way more famous if I went on Dancing with the Stars, which is a very bad idea.

Like people who aren't deeply invested in your work walk up to you and say hello.

Yeah.

That's weird.

I don't want that.

Yeah.

I like it when people who are deeply invested in my work come up to me and say hello.

That's lovely.

Yeah.

John, I have a very important question I want to ask next.

It's from Rachel, who asks, dear Hank and John, my question, when jaundiced, do you think smurfs turn green?

Deepest regards, Rachel.

I think most likely they turn less blue because they're so blue.

I think you have to bring a lot of yellow in to turn green, but

I think that we should do it.

I think it's jaundice a smurf on green.

I think we should jaundice a smurf.

Yeah.

I showed the smurf wiki, John.

Yeah.

Just because I'm curious if they have livers, which seems like unnecessary.

yeah, you'd think that they'd have a liver, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, they have it.

It says a smurf's physiology consists of, and then it names all of the same systems that humans have, and then it's got a little map of a smurf with all of the parts in it.

And I can see indeed see the liver, and indeed also

what appear to be

ovaries?

No, that's the bladder.

It doesn't show me what's going on down.

No, it does.

Oh.

Cool.

That's great.

Sounds like a really detailed Smurf wiki.

And also like, you maybe need to clear your browser history.

I mean,

it's just the Smurf fandom wiki, but it really, it really.

Well, the important thing is that they do have a liver, which means they can get jaundice, but I don't think they turn green.

I think they turn less blue.

Why?

Why wouldn't they?

They'd have they, you'd have an excess of bile, so you'd have a yellow tinge to your skin.

In addition to their blue tinge, I think that they would turn green.

Maybe.

All right, I'll buy it.

And from what I can tell, they have internal testicles,

which is like elephants.

Well, maybe it's just cold.

It's totally that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Smurf Testies.

Smurf Testies.

We went there.

This podcast is also brought to you by Why?

Why?

A question wrongly asked.

And this podcast is brought to you by Steve the Pommel Horse guy.

Steve the Pommel Horse guy.

We really hope he is a guest host someday on Dear Hank and John.

It can be after all the famous stuff passes.

You know, like he's got to do all the really critical stuff now.

He's got to be on on letterman and all that letterman top podcast for teens um

but but eventually when when when when the wave passes we'll still be here steve waiting for you and this podcast is brought to you by rowing with the dads my new important television show that will be on television

i've never really i've never really wanted to be on television We also have a Project for Awesome message from Gail Lotenberg to Twyla.

We want to send a shout out to our daughter, Twyla, on her 19th birthday.

Can there be a bigger fan of your show?

Oh my God, she's a teen, Hank.

It's true.

I promise we didn't set this up.

Oh, no.

If you ever need an intern, she's there.

We love that for Twila's 19th, she asked for nothing more than a donation to PIH.

So we went big and grabbed this opportunity to acknowledge her through Project for Awesome with a birthday message on your show.

Twila, love you to the biggest star and back.

That is really lovely.

Thank you for sharing her birthday with us.

That's very cool of you.

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This next question is from Clara, who says, Dear Honkin Jane, I have a job where I have to walk a lot.

I drink a lot of tap water during my shifts.

It feels like my thirst is never quenched.

Why is that?

Isn't water the thing that I need when I feel thirsty?

It's like I never have that fresh feeling you get when you're hydrated.

I leave work every day craving a bunch of tomatoes or cucumbers or something else of that fresh variety.

I could drink a whole bottle of water.

British pronunciation, Clara.

Ooh.

That was bad.

Clara made me do that.

Okay.

That was my fault.

All right.

So do you know the answer to this?

I assume, Clara, that you're living in a dry.

So there's two Americas.

There's wet America and there's dry America.

I live in dry America.

And I am also always thirsty, especially if I'm moving around, because just breathing,

just

like a huge amount of water just evaporates from your, you know your trachea and your esophagus and the back of your throat.

And you're, and you're just like, that's the feeling you're getting.

So maybe like your body might be plenty hydrated, but the inside of your mouth might not be.

And so you always, it's almost like you don't need water as much as you just need to be holding water in your mouth.

This is the feeling that I often have where I just need a little, like a lot of little swallows rather than, but like, I don't know your situation.

Maybe you live in Orlando, Florida, and you're like, like one of the, in one of the chief wets.

I was going to say that maybe you just need to drink a little more water like you think you're drinking enough but maybe you're not if you're still thirsty usually thirst is a pretty good yeah indicator it is it is though you i will say do not live in dry in dry america i don't i live in wet wet america for sure 100 wet it was so hot yesterday it was 100 degrees but it was so much hotter because of the the wetness in the air just this oh are you having the

soup are you in corn sweatland right now you know corn sweatland no so there's this thing where uh when it gets particularly hot during the particular season of the corn harvest um corn uh because they're plants they take a lot of water and to make themselves and they have to pump it through their leaves and it evaporates out of their leaves of hypotranspiration that's how plants work and

And so they create a huge, they are a weather phenomenon of their own and they produce a lot of humidity from their leaves that would normally not be there.

And so you end up with, and I saw that there was a particular bad time in the Midwest recently with

heat and corn sweat combining to create

a very uncomfortable time.

Now, is this one of the things where you're tricking me?

Sounds like it, but it's not.

It's a real phenomenon.

Very impressive.

Corner channel says, ever heard of corn sweat?

It's a thing.

And that's the thing.

Okay, well,

I'm going to tell everybody around here about corn sweat because, my God, we do not have a shortage of corn.

No shortage of corn or corn sweat.

Indiana is trying to rebrand itself right now.

You know, like, you know how Michigan is like pure Michigan.

Yeah.

Well, we're not going to have that.

So we've been thinking about what we are going to have.

And we've been talking about maybe something about, you know, because we've got fast cars here because of the Indy 500.

Maybe you lean into that.

Maybe you lean into the fact that we're the NCAA capital of the world, you know.

Couldn't have told you that.

Yeah.

I don't know what you lean into, but like it's trying to rebrand itself.

But maybe it should just be Indiana corn sweat.

It's

where it's all sweaty.

Yeah.

Indiana.

Moistland.

Or just, let me throw it back at you.

Indiana moist.

All right.

We got another question from Jared and Mia, who write, Dear Mostly John, how's potato doing?

Any good stories?

Jared and Mia.

Potato is my dog.

He is an Italian water dog, and he is

one year old now.

And there's only one thing you need to know about potato, really, and that's that potato will be putting that in his mouth.

Whatever it is, it's going in his mouth.

If it's a sock, it's going in his mouth.

We found two $20 bills in his stool.

Oh my God.

So he ate two $20.

Kids are stealing money, but it was

one full $20 bill and then one like ripped in half $20 bill.

So he did have the decency to only eat $30

or so, but it still cost me $40.

That's not how dollars, that's not how $20 bills work.

Where's the other half?

Well, I was trying to explain that to Potato, that you can't eat half a $20 bill and then say that you only ate $10 worth of money.

Like, that's just not, that's not realistic.

And he was like, Why don't you just clean up the money?

Are you that entitled?

And I was like, Yes, I am that entitled.

I will not be cleaning this poop-stained money that came out of your anus.

What's the amount of

denomination where

you clean the bill?

I think for me,

it might be

That's a great question.

It might be 20 for you.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I didn't see it.

I didn't have the experience.

I've never seen one $20 bill and half a $20 bill just fully enmeshed in poop.

Yeah, it's true.

It's not like I was like one like wipe of toilet paper away from this is now this top podcast for teens stuff right here.

It's not like I was like that close to having a 20.

I mean, this was going to be a problem.

There's some labor involved.

This is going to be about an hour and a half of work, which would net me about 15 bucks an hour.

100?

100?

100, I think, that you'd have to strongly, you'd have to try to figure out a solution for.

You'd be like, okay, what's the way that I do this?

Do I like put it in some like low concentration bleach?

But like, I remember that.

Run it through the laundry.

I remember when I worked at Steak and Shake, someone once left me a $1 tip inside the nacho cheese that was left over from their nachos.

And

I did save that dollar.

I squeegeed it off,

you know, and then I wet it, got it real wet, kind of cleaned it up.

And just like that.

So you know what this would be like.

It'd be like when it dropped poop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's harder to do it with your dog's poop than it is even with nacho cheese from Steak and Shake.

But I think with 100, 100, I would figure it out.

Yeah.

That's why I don't keep hundreds in the house, though, because potato will eat them.

He will eat anything.

He ate a hat.

I was looking at him the other day and I was looking down at him and I was like, are you eating my hat?

And he was like, I'm not eating it.

I ate it already.

It's gone.

Wow.

Oh, he's the best.

I'm a cat person.

I'll tell you.

It turns out that our

entire family is cat people.

We love our cats and they

are such good housemates.

That's great.

Occasionally, they become thunder in the middle of the night,

but mostly, mostly, it's very chill.

Hey, Hank.

Yeah.

I got a question from Lewis.

Okay.

Lewis says, I'm a nursing student, and in one of my classes, we're talking about Hodgson lymphoma today.

And it made me think about you because I don't know if you know this, Hank, but weirdly, this is crazy, but you had cancer last year.

I know.

Yeah, I know.

I'm, I'm, I'm like seeing my, seeing my like this time last year notifications on all my things and I'm just

not looking great.

How was that a year ago?

It was both yesterday and 17 years ago.

I don't know, man.

Did you enjoy learning about how your cancer works?

Maybe this is also a question for John, but do you ever fall down internet rabbit holes learning about the things that plague you?

Side note.

Tips for studying diseases are welcome.

On a quest to explore, Sans Clark Lewis.

Nice, nice.

I

uh obviously fall down lots of rabbit hole.

I mean, I've spent the last year writing a book about cancer because of that very phenomenon.

Um, yeah, and

uh, and what I've found is, is, I mean, it's fascinating.

It's just like, yeah,

I mean, disease and the human body are

like the disease is just like the human body not working perfectly for various reasons.

And the

and it's like, how does it work well all the time any of the time it's so

it's so and like sometimes people are like there must be something like some reason for things to go wrong and it's like what's the reason that it always goes right how is it always how is it how do people like live for 80 years and not get cancer that's wild right

i think that you I find it interesting that you are very interested in mechanical failures of the human body.

Like you're interested in when the body breaks down or develops cancers, and I'm interested in an infectious disease when the body is attacked from outside.

And I think that actually says, I mean, some of that is, of course, because you had cancer and I had meningitis.

I mean, that's just the way that it went.

But

some of it, I think, is about our personalities.

Yeah.

Tell me more.

Are you worried about being attacked from outside?

Whereas I am just sort of always convinced of my own

moral failings.

No, no, no.

I think you're worried about the clockworks and I'm worried about invasion, right?

Yeah.

You're worried about the...

And by the way, you are correct.

Overwhelmingly, the greater threat is the clockworks.

Yeah,

not historically.

Not historically and not everywhere.

But currently in rich countries, the clockworks is the greater threat.

But

infection, invasion from outside,

being attacked by not by yourself, but by things that are separate from you is terrifying to me.

I am, I am, you are right.

I am more worried and more upset by the idea of my body attacking itself because I mean, I also have had ulcerative colitis for over 20 years.

Right.

Right.

And and and all, but like, also,

I'm fascinated by it because

when the, when the body's problems are failures of the body, it also highlights how the body works.

It highlights the mechanisms of the body.

And you see,

you know, this is less the case with ulcerative colitis, though certainly when you get into the weeds of the immune system, it gets very wild and weird.

But with cancer, it's the whole thing.

It's the immune system, it's metabolism, it's

you know, it's like cell signaling.

It's everything.

It's like there's nothing that it doesn't touch.

Well, your book is really a window into how the human body works because it's a window into cancer.

Yeah.

If you understand cancer, you understand the whole body.

Right.

Right.

So it's been very, very cool.

And, you know, as far as like how to learn it and understand it, I can't imagine it's anything but time.

And also like having the foundations that you're building from because

it's all.

It's all it's a house of cards, all leaning on itself.

And if you don't have some piece somewhere, things aren't going to click.

I should say that I feel the same way

in some ways about

infectious disease, but on a broader scale.

Like not that the individual human body fails or that you can learn everything about the biology of a body through learning about cancer, although I completely agree with you that you can or learn a lot about it.

But I think you can learn a lot about social orders and societies and the choices that people make in collaboration with each other by studying infectious infectious disease,

especially an infectious disease that wasn't always considered infectious.

That's why I'm obsessed with tuberculosis, is because for a long time it was considered inherited and associated with families.

And then eventually they realized that it was infectious, and that completely changed the way that the disease was understood and imagined and talked about and stigmatized.

Yeah.

Yeah, because, and we mostly think about disease in terms simply of their

impacts on the individual, but

it is a human story.

And

often the impacts of disease can be far beyond the impacts of the disease because that person is existing in the society and has to deal with all of the social impacts as well.

I thought they fell out of a coconut tree.

I think they might exist inside of the context.

Of all that they are and all that came before them.

Yeah, I think it might be that.

Wow.

That's kind of beautiful, actually.

People try to make fun of that, but it's actually a lovely sentiment.

Speaking of lovely sentiments, it's time for the news from AFC Wimbledon and Mars.

Yes.

Well, Hank, I flew to England to see AFC Wimbledon play Bromley.

That's right, Hank.

Bromley.

At Bromley.

Bromley, the white hot center of American culture, Bromley, where it all happens.

They had

a subway, not like the

underground train, but like an actual subway restaurant.

Like a sandwich shop, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But okay.

It was great.

I really enjoyed my time in Bromley.

There was just one problem, which is that AFC Wimbledon got their butts kicked.

We lost 2-0 and we played about like a team that would lose 2-0.

We did not impress in any way.

But we then went on to defeat Cheltenham 1-0.

And I know what you're saying, Cheltenham, Bromley, surely these places are made up, but no, they're real.

So we beat Cheltenham 1-0.

It was a great goal from Joe Piggott.

And

he's back.

We sing Feed the Pig, Feed the Pig, Feed the Pig, and he will score.

And we fed the pig, and he scored.

He scored a great goal, actually, like on a half volley.

It was really impressive.

So thanks to Joe Piggett, we are now in eighth place in league two.

Now, admittedly, that's only three games into the season.

So it's a little soon to start celebrating, but still six points on the board is six points on the board.

50 points, we avoid relegation.

70 points, we're probably in the playoffs.

All right.

Get them.

One at a time.

We will, today, as we're recording this, we're about to play Ipswich Town,

a team in the Premier League in the Carabao Cup.

And if we win that game, that would be huge.

But of course, we won't win it because they're in the Premier League.

But Ipswich Town is best known to AFC Wimbledon fans for having bought our best ever player in the AFC Wimbledon era from us, Ali Alhamedy.

So Ali Alhamedy will be starting against AFC Wimbledon.

And based on what he was like when he played for AFC Wimbledon, that's going to be a catastrophe.

Not really looking forward to it.

No.

No, but I root for that guy everywhere he goes, and I will for the rest of his career.

I'm so proud that AFC Wimbledon,

I believe Ali Alhamedy is AFC Wimbledon's first player who was a permanent signing, like really

played for us and was one of our

squad who made it to the Premier League.

So I'm very proud of him.

That is very cool.

So you just have to score goals.

Yeah, I mean, that is the basic.

You've really cracked the code of football commentary, Hank.

Maybe you should be like the color commentator and also be the play-by-play.

Keep the other team from scoring goals.

That's even better.

You know, the ideal is that you score more goals than the other team, but if the other team scores no goals, then you only have to score one to score more.

Yeah, you can't lose.

If you score more than they do, you can't lose.

That's right.

I mean, if you keep them from scoring any goals, you can't also

lose.

That's true.

That's true.

The worst that can happen is a tie.

Speaking of not losing, how about that Oasis reunion?

I don't know what you're talking about.

Oasis or something.

I didn't know that happened.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I think because my Twitter, Twitter thinks that I'm British because all I ever tweet about is English football.

And so Twitter was just overwhelming me.

The news about Oasis'

reunification.

And I was like, I'm not invested in Oasis at all, but then I realized it's because they think that I'm English.

Okay.

And I do like Wonder Wall.

Why wouldn't you?

They have a lot of great great songs.

It was a great time.

I remember those times.

I was aware, I was in high school when Oasis got big, and it was

good stuff.

That explains why Liam Gallagher looks so old.

Yeah.

It also explains why we have a top podcast for teens.

For teens.

In Mars News, the Perseverance Rover, which, if you can believe it, has been on Mars for three and a half years already.

Wow.

That is astonishing to me.

Really almost up to the city.

Time is a flat circle.

It's been doing a lot.

It's been going all over.

It's been in the, in, mostly in the, the

area at the bottom or sort of moving up inside of this crater, in Jezero crater.

And the idea is that this was probably an ancient lake bed and it had like hydrological features.

And it looks like it definitely was.

And there's lots of signs of

long-term water there.

But now it's going to start heading up to the crater rim.

And the great thing about being in a crater is that it's a geological

time machine.

You can see all different layers of stuff going as you move up through

the crater and you can see a lot about not just what Mars was like once it was sort of like static and maybe there was water there and

you know Mars is locked tectonically.

So on Earth stuff gets shuffled around and recycled and

very little of our land was here at the beginning.

Right.

But on Mars, it's it's tectonically locked and has been pretty much since the beginning, it seems like.

And so the uh the

and there's also much less erosion because there's not water falling out of the sky all the time.

So you can see a lot more of like what Mars, like how Mars formed by going up the rim of this crater and taking samples and learning about it.

So so Perseverance is moving out of the lake bed, starting its trek up to the rim of this crater, which is wild that it is going to be able to do this.

I hope that everything goes well.

It's a big old little SUV on Mars.

So they know what they're doing.

And they're going to do a big drive now.

But the bottom of the crater is the oldest part, right?

Or like,

you have to go to the wall.

I guess you have to go to the wall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The bottom of the crater isn't old because it's like sediment that's been like swept by the wind or by water.

Right.

Okay.

And,

but then as you, as you move up it.

But like, it's not like Earth where there's like a lot of sedimentary layers.

So I don't know exactly how it works because it's not, it's not, it's not defined by water the way that we are.

I love, there was a lot of water.

I love the phrase geological time machine.

That's quite lovely.

Very much have that on Earth.

We have, yeah, we also have historical time machines where we can see

just like the layers of a city over many

hundreds of years as the city builds itself on top of itself over and over again.

We We also have a historical time machine in the sense that now

we can look at photographs and even video from 100 years ago, which of course wasn't possible 100 years ago, just to state the obvious.

And I was just watching a movie from 1925 and I was like, oh man, this was 100 years ago.

All these people are dead.

Yeah.

Like, there's a whole new batch of folks.

this is them now that's all there is of this is what they are

yeah they're made out of words yeah

some thank god i hope that youtube's still around in a hundred years no i'd rather be made out of words if that's okay do you want should we put all our stuff on dvd

yeah that's that technology is going to survive

people do know that they're like physical media is and i'm like plastic degrades i'm sorry depends on the physical media yeah i mean nothing lasts forever not even cold november rain so i don't there's no way to like totally insure against a catastrophe yeah but we should just call all the vlog brothers videos onto a cave wall

yeah that's not a bad idea just one scene at a time every single shot and then little subtitles below

we're gonna need a bigger cave we're gonna need a bigger cave

Hank, thank you for podding with me.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

And thanks for your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

We love your questions.

We love your emails.

We love your corrections, which are legion.

And thank you for reaching out.

This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus.

It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedish.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

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

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Taboki Trapervarti.

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

And as they say in our hometown,

don't forget to be awesome.