396: I’m About to Become an Expert

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Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Or as I prefer to think of it, dear John and God, Hank is loud in my earphones.

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

John, you know, I saw an ad on TV and it said TV for sale, $1.

Volume stuck on full.

And I said, man, I can't turn that down.

Thanks.

I got it.

No, I just bought a TV.

Did you?

I haven't bought a TV in a long time.

Me neither.

I hadn't bought a TV in like 15 years.

Like the thing that contains my TV is, I think, built specifically for my TV.

So I feel like I can't upgrade.

We bought a little TV for the kitchen so that we can enjoy the Olympics, which are over as this is uploaded.

So,

you know, just to give you a glimpse into the actual machinations of podcasting.

We have a little device in the kitchen that Google sent us because once upon a time, Google

thought we were important.

Yeah, Google used to think I was important as well.

Yeah.

And

mostly it just shows pictures of Oren so that Catherine and I can point at it and go, oh my God, he's so big now.

But Oren has figured out how to use this thing as if it is a computer.

And he's on there playing his favorite EDM songs from Geometry Dash.

And one time I came downstairs, he had gone downstairs early on Saturday morning.

And

he's not allowed on the weekends.

He's not allowed to watch YouTube until afternoon.

And he had figured out how to watch YouTube on this little thing.

And he was watching his favorite YouTubers like quietly on a stool, staring at the Google home.

I'm very proud of him.

That's my nephew, always finding ways to engage with the social internet, even when he's not allowed to.

Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners.

Oh, wow, we're getting right into it.

I thought maybe you'd have something to say about

Tim Walz

or, I don't know, what else is it?

Yeah, let's get political.

That's what's missing.

That's what's missing from this podcast.

You know what people don't have enough of in their lives right now is access to news.

That's a good point.

I think that the barrier to news now, I'm just going to say it, it's too low.

I need more barriers to news.

I need a little more to stand in the way of me and the news because right now it feels like a non-stop flood.

And also, Hank, we record this like two weeks in advance.

We have no idea what is happening two weeks from now.

And I don't even want to imagine it.

Here's what I do know.

There was a time for a long time, and this is still the case, when you went to Google, google.com, and it's just the search box.

And they were very committed to that being the thing that they did because they didn't want you to get distracted on your way to the search box.

Now, selling that homepage space to an advertiser would be worth billions of dollars, but Google was like, we're not going to do that.

But if you download the Google app, you get the little search box, but above the fold, there's a news story.

And if you scroll, there's more news stories.

And they are tailored to your specific interests and if anybody knows what you're interested in it's google and so you just get a bunch of stuff and i'm like i didn't come here for the news

i came to google things so you know what i do now john can you believe this the majority of the time i'm trying to search for something i open the wikipedia app oh that's good That's good.

I thought you were going to say you use Bing.com, which

is also a great search engine.

Well, oftentimes I'm just hoping that Google will surface Wikipedia anyway.

Yeah, true enough.

True enough, instead of like a Reddit post from seven years ago,

which tends to be what they surface these days, is often fine as well.

Old men complain about the internet.

A new podcast.

A hip podcast from the Green Brothers.

This first question comes from Colleen, who writes to your John.

And hey, here's a question for the author one.

We're both authors, Colleen.

I think you mean the successful author.

What do you got, Colleen?

I remember John mentioning in some past videos that authors make more off of hardcover books, which is one reason many books start with hardcover exclusive publishing before paperbacks releases.

I've recently gotten really into romance books and I went to the bookstore, shout out to Ripped Bottis LA, to pick up a new release the other day, but it was paperback.

Why do many romance books release in paperback?

Why would they skip the more profitable hardcover stage?

Interesting.

Also, what's your favorite romance fan fiction trope?

I'm a fake dating girly myself.

Pick up the phone.

I'm Colleen.

Ah, fun.

That's pretty good.

Pretty good.

I have no idea.

I assume that it's just a different kind of market.

Well, okay.

Is it a different kind of market or is publishing imposing its own weird ideas about genre

and gender onto a market?

I feel like publishing would impose whatever would make the most money.

Right.

But historically,

people were very price sensitive.

So-called genre readers were very price sensitive.

So many people,

many sci-fi books, they tend to read a lot.

So many romance books would come out paperback first because people were so price sensitive that otherwise they

would lose out on that sale potentially.

That's the ostensible reason is that literary fiction or sort of specialist non-fiction readers are less price sensitive, not least because they read fewer books per year.

And so for this sort of

person who's very concerned about cost, it makes sense to publish paperback originals.

I think that these days that no longer makes sense.

I think a lot of people are really excited to read their favorite romance authors and will pay a little extra to get the book a little early and to get a fancier, kind of nicer package of the book.

Not everyone will.

And this is why I have long advocated for simultaneous hardcover and paperback publishing so that

regular people can make regular decisions about what kind of book they want to read because we we no longer live in a world where like consumers have to be like have their little hands held as they go to the bookstore to just you know what kind of book you like okay and you should be able to read whatever kind of book you like they have to give up on some of the power that they have traditionally had you know yeah and and like there's this relationship between the bookstores and the publishers and the authors and then like the consumer is like i'm here too but that's not the case anymore.

Yeah, exactly.

The consumer should have a lot more control and power than they currently do in publishing.

And I think that's what I think they do more and more.

Like the thing about e-books is like an e-book comes out on the same day as

the hardcover because it has no cover.

And so oftentimes that can be very inexpensive.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: The audiobook also usually comes out the same day as the hardcover.

And it's surreal to me that the paperback doesn't because we've decided that we're going to order around readers in terms of format.

Right.

Well, then you also decide that you can't get a hardcover after a while because the publishing company is like, well, nobody's going to buy the hardcover if the softcover is now available.

And I'm like, well, kind of, you've just created a world where that's the case.

That might not need to be the case.

And in fact, many people frequently buy like special editions of books that have been out for a long time that are like fancy and they pay 30 to 50 bucks for those.

Yeah, because they're beautiful and you want to have them on the shelf, and it's a book you love, and you want to be able to kind of hold on to it in this special way.

I, Hank, you're preaching to the choir.

I've been saying this for 15 years, it drives me absolutely up the wall that you can't have a paperback as the same time as a hardcover.

I will say the hardcover for the Anthropocene Reviewed has stayed in print, which I'm very grateful for and continues to sell pretty well in the scheme of things.

It actually outsells the paperback of some of my novels.

Well, I don't, maybe, maybe what I'm saying is I don't want, I don't want a paper, I don't want a hardcover.

I want like a special edition.

Yeah.

I watch like authors come out with special editions, and that makes me feel like, oh, that must feel very cool.

But I don't know.

My book wasn't that as previously discussed.

My books weren't that popular.

So maybe I'm maybe I'm not

very popular.

Yes, very popular as books go, not as John Green books go.

You know what else isn't as popular as John Green books?

Current John Green books.

Yeah, absolutely.

John Green's forthcoming book about tuberculosis is not as successful as John Green Books.

Yeah, as Carrie Grant once said, everyone wants to be Carrie Grant.

Even I want to be Carrie Grant.

And now no one knows who Carrie Grant is, but I do.

So

I'm not saying this in a way that is trying to discredit my success, which I have plenty of.

I'm saying it in a way that's like, maybe there's not like a market for a special edition of my books, but I want to make a special edition.

I want to see

different covers of my books.

Okay, that reminds me of the joke that Sarah always tells about me whenever I'm being like a little bit entitled or snotty or whatever, because you did just sound extremely

good so you know.

She says to me, I may have told you this before, but when they were this is so this is telling on myself so bad.

I'm blushing like crazy.

But

when Paper Towns is coming out, they did two covers of that book, right?

They did a happy Margot and a sad Margot.

Two hardcover editions, one blue, one yellow.

And the idea was like, this person contains multitudes, but she seems like she only is simple and straightforward.

It was supposed to be sort of an anti-manic pixie dream girl cover for an anti-manic pixie dream girl novel that nonetheless many people have read as a manic pixie dream girl novel but anyway

so they showed me like three models for the cover uh-huh and oh i was i said like actual human beings yeah actual human heads um and i said to sarah

scott westerfeld got to see eight models

And so anytime, I mean, this has now been almost 20 years.

And anytime I say something slightly entitled, Sarah like just spins around at me and she says, Scott Westerfeld got to see eight models.

That's great.

I've had a lot of friends who like got their book cover and then they like really didn't like it.

And they got like a lot of different ones to choose from.

And I got my book cover and I was like, Yeah, that seems great.

And but your book covers are great.

I wish I had like gotten to see more.

And I love it when like a foreign edition comes out with this, a much different cover.

The current German edition looks so good.

And they renamed the book too.

They call it the April Story.

And I'm like, yeah, maybe I should have just done that.

That's good.

I like the April story.

I have had some bad book covers over the years.

Not the ones that ended up in print, I liked most of them.

I wouldn't say I liked all of them.

But the ones that ended up actually getting published, I liked most of.

But boy, along the design process, I've had some moments where I was like, I just, I,

I, my feelings are hurt.

Yeah.

Um, because I, I thought I wrote a different book from the one that you're

drawing.

Yeah.

But, you know, that's all there's always that tension.

They did send me a first cover that I said no to.

And you know what the cover looked like?

What?

It looked like the Fault in our stars.

Yeah.

It was like

graphic with handwritten cursive.

Right.

And I was like, oh boy,

I see what you're doing and I don't want you to do it.

No, I feel like I got to transition away from that being John Green's brother thing just for this part of my job.

This one's from Maddie Sue, who asks, Dear Hank and John, has a giraffe ever had to go deep enough into water to swim?

And could they do it?

Please settle this.

I think about it daily.

Maddie Sue, I feel like I haven't looked this up yet, John, but I feel like there's no freaking way a giraffe can swim.

I want giraffes to be able to swim because I think it would be so funny.

I think just like the image of the long neck sticking out of the water, like they're at no risk of drowning, right?

Because they've got like

five feet of clearance.

I think they would definitely be at risk of drowning if it was deep enough.

So there's two questions here.

Can giraffes swim?

But first, can they float?

Because like they're not going to be good at swimming.

But if a lot of people.

They are going to be good at swimming.

Horses are good at swimming.

This is the thing.

Horses are good at swimming.

So they have investigated this.

And, you know, if like a deep river is an impassable barrier to a giraffe, that would be a big deal for giraffes.

It would mean that they would not be able to interbreed very much and maybe they would speciate more.

But it turns out giraffes can, if they need to,

they are not good at it and they don't like it, but if they need to, they can.

They can swim.

And the way that they swim is not how you might be imagining it, with like their bodies way deep down under the water and their heads sort of sticking up on top, which I like that idea.

But it's not like that.

It's like a horse where their neck and back all they try to keep all of that roughly at the level of the water and so they're just and then they just check little ducks yeah but their legs are so spindly that they are very inefficient swimmers but it turns out that giraffes can swim and it seems like they wouldn't be able to just because there's so much like dense muscle and bone in that thing with that big-ass neck but uh they can just stick that neck out and sort of try and keep it above the water and use it their body sort of as a floaty area because it's got big lungs in it.

It's not dissimilar to how I feel about swimming, to be honest with you.

Like, I don't feel like I'm particularly gifted at it, but if I come across an impassable river, I can do it.

Yeah.

But, but it, but it's, we don't see them doing this very much, as far as I can tell.

And I think that the best information we have is actually from computer models of giraffes swimming rather than actually chucking them in the water.

Well, that's good.

I'm glad that we're not abusing giraffes in the name of trying to understand their swimming habits.

Here's a question for you, Hank, from Molly, who writes, Dear Brothers Green, I'm at a barbecue where various alcohols are being consumed, and we are also being assailed by mosquitoes.

And it got me wondering, how drunk would I need to be for a mosquito to die from alcohol poisoning if it bit me?

Additionally, do mosquitoes get drunk?

Sipping and being sipped, Molly.

That's great.

What a beautiful thing to both be sipping and being sipped.

You're both taking and giving.

Unfortunately, you're giving to the worst multicellular creature in the world.

Yeah, it's pretty bad.

This is a weird thing.

So this is not related to the conversation, but I do want to bring it up because it's very cool.

There's this,

we like to know what kinds of animals are in areas.

That's a thing that we like to know.

So that we know if there's an endangered species in this area.

But it's very hard, especially with little mice and voles and stuff, to see them and to like capture them on trail cams or whatever.

And so what we do,

we might go and collect a bunch of mouse dung and do DNA tests to see if it is related to the mice that we're looking for.

But what you might also do is just collect a bunch of mosquitoes from that area and blend them up and see if the DNA from that

species of concern is in the mush of all the mosquitoes that you collected because they will contain the DNA of a bunch of different animals in that environment.

We also do this with leeches, which is wild because leeches are surprisingly nonspecific.

They eat blood from all kinds of animals, including birds and sometimes even bats, which you would think like, how the heck did a leech get to a bat?

But

we will collect leeches

from all around parks all over the world to see what kind of, and they don't tend to move that far.

Like a leech doesn't tend to go a long way.

So you have some idea if you find the DNA of an organism that it's near where that leech was collected.

It's great to have a new worst thing that could ever happen to me because it used to be the worst thing that could ever happen to me was getting bit by a bat and getting some like novel coronavirus from it and being patient zero of the next pandemic.

But now the worst thing that could happen to me is being bit by a bat that's covered in leeches.

One just jumps off and is like, you too.

Oh,

leeches are a bad vibe.

Well, I had leeches.

I've had leeches.

I cleaned out my pond and

I got leeches.

I got a number of leeches on my body.

And I could not,

I couldn't.

I could not.

I could not accept that reality.

It's like when you get lice, I don't know if you've had the privilege yet of getting lice from one of your children who got lice from some other child.

But when you get lice and then it's gone, you still believe that you have the lice.

You know, like the lice still feel alive on your scalp, even though after they're gone, they might be like that with leeches.

Yeah, cancer's the same way.

But anyway,

there is a popular science article, and we have some quotes from some scientists.

It says, bugs are no lightweights, often withstanding vapor concentrations of 60% alcohol, far more than what's in our blood after a couple of beers.

Someone who's had 10 drinks might have a blood alcohol content of 0.2%.

So that's pretty, that's pretty devastating amount of alcohol.

Not too far from having to go to the hospital.

This is from Colby Shawl of North Carolina State University.

To a mosquito, a blood meal that contains 0.2% alcohol is like drinking a beer that's been diluted 25-fold.

Oh.

So you're not going to get a mosquito drunk.

I mean, the thought of diluting beer 25-fold with water is

being bitten by a bat covered in leeches.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's basically like if you've like when you're washing out the beer after when you're about to throw it into the recycling, just drinking that.

You just got to drink all that.

Yeah.

No, I think technically that's called bush light.

Oh,

doom, explosion noise.

Oh, beer chest.

Wow,

but a bump.

Wow, that's wow, how very 1990s of you to make fun of bushlight.

I know, I know.

I was trying to think of the like worst,

worst beer to make that joke about.

And I think bushlight, I think I nailed it with bushlight.

But one thing you should know, Hank, is that mosquitoes, at least according to my research onto this topic after I saw this question, mosquitoes can get drunk, it seems, based on the fact that we know fruit flies can get drunk.

Yeah, mosquitoes can get drunk.

We just have to give them a lot of alcohol to get it.

They got to get real drunk in order to feel anything,

which is why they mostly do cocaine.

Now, tell me again how having 10 drinks is almost time to go to the hospital, because I don't know if you've ever been to the Indy 500, but

I don't know.

It depends on the drink, you know.

If you're drinking Bush Light, maybe that's okay.

I did.

I had this peculiar experience where I,

in Montana, drink craft beers, and oftentimes they will have alcohol of six, eight, even 10%.

And then I went home and I hung out with one of my friends from high school, and we were drinking just normal off-the-shelf Bud Lights or whatever.

And we drank a 12-pack among the two of us in like two hours.

Wow.

And I felt

less

drunk than if I have like three beers in Montana.

But I think that that's like accurate.

Like that's actually the situation.

Yeah.

Listen, kids out there don't drink.

And I also love that.

But no,

different drinks are different.

And also, I think that's a good idea.

Jensen drinks drinks as much as we drink.

Yeah, I'm interested if this is going to be a trend that continues where eventually we just stop drinking.

I wouldn't be too shocked.

I don't think I'm going to stop.

I have to.

Not completely.

I know you had to.

I feel so bad for you.

Because you drink very responsibly and

like the definition of a moderate drinker who really enjoys the moderate drink.

Yeah.

And

yet it's been stolen away from you by cancer, which is not funny or cool at all.

Unlike your earlier joke about cancer, which was both funny and cool.

No, I mean, one of the way that I have made it cool for me is I'm like, well, one of the one of the sort of lifestyle factors we know for sure increases your risk of cancer is drinking alcohol.

And so in this one way, cancer treatment helped me to decrease my future risk of cancer

in an unpleasant way,

but also at the same time increased my risk of cancer in a bunch of other more significant ways.

Which were also unpleasant.

All of it is unpleasant.

It's not like it was fun to get chemotherapy and have a higher risk of getting cancer in the future or fun to get remediated.

Actually, this is weird, though.

So,

I had heard that, and my doctor is not a fan of this

reality, reality, but I had heard that like sometimes when people get chemotherapy, they,

well, they almost always go into remission with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease.

But sometimes they stay in remission for long periods of time.

So like over five years.

It's basically like, and I was like, oh, sometimes that happens.

And so I was like, I guess I'll just see for one reason is that like my doctor doesn't want me to take an immune suppressive drug if I don't have to because that might increase my risk of getting cancer and uh or relapsing and so um so I just have not been on colitis medicine

and so I decided after a year of this and having not had significant colitis symptoms during that time that I would look and see and also like I do blood tests to see how my my like and and also other tests that we won't get into to see how how inf my inflammation is going in my body and uh uh and stayed really low.

And so I

looked up the paper that studied this and it's like 90% of cases of people with ulcerative colitis remain in remission for more than five years after chemotherapy.

And I was like, wow, oh, I thought it like happened sometimes.

But they don't want people with ulcerative colitis beating down the door begging for chemotherapy.

No, I mean,

it's not worth it.

Like it's not worth it.

Yeah, the increase in the colours.

But I can

the risk of secondary cancer.

I've seen colitis up close and Crohn's disease up close.

Like it can be a hugely debilitating, life-altering illness.

And so I would imagine that any treatment would be

considered in desperation.

So yeah, so I have been

that, if that's the case for me, which it may not be, but if that ends up being the case for me, then I'm like, oh, that actually is a good thing that came out of this,

though not worth it in terms of the increase in risk of secondary cancers.

We haven't talked enough about the good things that came out of your cancer.

I think

for me, the biggest good thing is that you're right where I am in terms of death anxiety.

You know, that for me, I'd call it a negative.

Oh, that's a negative for you.

Yeah.

You see that as more of a downside.

Not like, oh, I can finally relate more deeply with my brother.

I'd like to be the most important person in my life.

Yeah, no, I just, I like that.

I just wouldn't take the trade because I also have to experience it, which I

know.

There's the, yeah, there's the,

first off, I was kidding, just to be clear.

Yeah, I don't see any upsides to you having had cancer.

It was a, it was a huge bummer.

And it remains a source of significant anxiety for everyone, including you.

And so like, yeah, I was kidding.

The whole like,

the joke there was that the whole like industry to bright side cancer sucks.

Yeah.

Um, and if you can find bright sides to whatever experience you're having, I'm all for it.

You know, like, that's, I'm just saying personally, I'm not very, I'm not a bright sider.

Um, I just never have been.

I'm, I'm not good at it.

It's not my gift.

Um, yeah, I don't see, I don't see any real upsides, Hank.

I feel like it's been, um, it's been a bummer.

If there's an upside, it's that you're doing good.

Yeah, no, I mean, I, I, I, am, in general, like, just go through my life trying to, like, trying to and also being fairly happy.

But like, I, I, um, it was very bad.

And I, and things are worse now for me and my body than they were before.

So, yeah.

Um, uh, because my colitis was very well controlled.

Um, so that wasn't actually a huge problem for me.

Right.

Right.

Uh,

so, but I'm trying to think if anything in my life has gotten better as a result of my depression, and I think,

which I'm recovering from right now, which I think,

no,

not really.

I finished my project for awesome perks because

I had to do a bunch of pottery.

So, I guess I did that, but like, I could have done that.

I could have done that without like weeping over the pottery wheel.

Here's a question from Jasmine, John, that maybe we can turn our attention to.

It says, SCOTUS and Chevron defense.

I need to understand this without all the legalese.

Please help.

PNP, Jasmine, not a princess.

Well, you came to the right place.

The Chevron defense is

there's this gas station.

Oh, thank God.

Chevron.

I thought you were going to try to explain a Supreme Court decision and I was going to have a panic attack.

I have no idea.

I do, but I'm not getting into it.

Well, I've also listened to a lot of people who are like, who disagree about it and like what it means.

And it's very.

what i what i think is that you should listen to a news podcast not this one because this podcast is about whether you can get a mosquito's juke off your own blood what did what did we do and i know that we did do this but what did we do where we believed man i should be the one who explains the chevron defense the problem is how i do this

we are genuinely good at explaining things and people want us to explain things like when we make a video explaining things it gets 10 times more views than a regular video.

They do want

to do that.

And we are good at it.

And part of the reason we're good at it is because we're idiots and we're coming at it from the same perspective as you.

Yes, but you can be good at something, as Kurt Vonnegut's sister beautifully said.

Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it.

Oh,

in my heart twisting.

I don't know.

But I believe you, Kurt Vonnegut's sister.

I don't think you do believe that, but I believe it.

And not only that, one of the reasons we were relatively good at doing that is because we were willing to elide a ton of complexity.

So we were willing to radically oversimplify in ways that ultimately obfuscated the truth.

And like, that I'm not okay with.

And that's why we don't do it anymore.

Yeah.

I mean, the extent to which I was out there saying these things and like choosing with my complete inexpert brain which things to tell you and which things to not tell you about

Brazil or the potential

i remember i made a video about the central african republic while uh while the new yorker was visiting me and the new yorker reporter was like how long have you been interested in the central african republic and i was like oh you know like i just knew about this and so i've been uh researching it for a couple weeks i mean a couple weeks is generous No, I was doing a, I did a couple weeks worth of research for you, but like if I'm, if I, like, I might make a video about like the Higgs boson and spend like 12 hours doing research on it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I, you, but I would still know way more about the Higgs boson after watching your video than I would after watching most videos because you're really good at explaining things.

And so that's the tension.

But Hank and I don't want to

speak on top of experts and we don't want to speak in woo of experts.

And that's kind of the decision that we've made, which is not an answer to your question,

except to say that like, I've listened to a couple podcasts about the Chevron case, but I don't feel like I'm an expert.

And by the way, I bet we're going to get a lot of emails from people who are experts, and I'm intimidated already by your email.

And I don't think it had anything to do with the gas station.

Like, I'm pretty sure.

No, I remember that gas station, though.

Is it gone now?

I feel like I don't see Chevrons around much anymore.

Hey, great word.

Hank, it reminds me, though, that this podcast is brought to you by

Chevron.

Was it named after a Ron, or was it named after a Chevron?

I think it was probably named after a Chevron.

Oh, it's a French guy.

It was

named after a man.

Huh?

Was it named after a man?

Give me a second here.

Give him a second.

I'm about to become an expert.

Wow, this is unbelievably complicated.

Like, where the, yeah, I mean, it's the word chevron, from what I can tell, exists because it looks like a goat's house, which is what?

Like the actual chevrons?

Like, do you know what chevrons are?

No, they're like little, I don't know why, but they're like, like a bunch of carrots, not the fruit or vegetable, but the symbol carrot stacked on top of each other, like military-rank chevrons.

Are you lying to me?

No!

And the reason they're called this is from the word goat, because the way that they used to build goat houses was a bunch of like

lean, like wood leaning on each other, and it looked like a bunch of little arrows pointing upward.

I don't know why we needed to have a word for that, but apparently we did.

And so they named it after like Chevra,

the goat cheese.

I mean, I'll just tell you, Hank, this this sounds made up.

And it sounds not particularly well made up.

I agree with you.

I agree that it's, but I also can't imagine why we needed to have a special word for it.

And I also like, like, does it mean, what does it even mean?

Like, why would you name a petroleum refining company after it?

Was it named after a man?

Well, here's the thing.

There was this company called Standard Oil that the federal government broke up in the early 20th century because it was a monopoly.

Yeah.

And it was too powerful.

And they broke it up with an antitrust act.

And one of the seven sisters of Standard Oil became Chevron.

It doesn't say why they named it Chevron, though.

Yeah, it's just an inverted V

that they would use on, it was like a heraldic thing.

It was like part of the people's coats of arms.

All right.

Well, today's podcast is brought to you by the Heraldic V.

The Heraldic V.

It's named after goats.

Yep.

I didn't make that up.

I believe you.

I reluctantly.

This podcast is also brought to you by the special edition of your favorite romance novel.

You should absolutely make that.

Yeah.

You should totally make that.

Gold foil inlay, gilded pages, decled edges, but probably not both of those at the same time.

Yeah.

I don't love a decled edge.

No.

It's one of those situations where sometimes things that are expensive are worse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like Kanye West's sink.

I was more thinking about watches.

You know how like

the more expensive a watch gets, the less likely it is to tell you who just texted you.

Yeah.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by Drunk Mosquitoes.

Drunk Mosquitoes, not on your blood, you rightweight.

We also have a Project for Awesome message to read.

It's from Devin in New York to Jordan.

Jordan, I'm so glad I finally got you into Nerdfighteria so that I could send you a message while also supporting P4A.

As I write this, I'm watching you and our son play Minecraft.

He's terrible at it, and you are very frustrated by zombies and creepers.

You are two ridiculous boys, and I love you both with every beat of my heart.

Thank you for being my family.

That's so lovely.

I love that line.

I love you with every beat of my heart.

That's just gorgeous.

Oh, thank you, Devin, and Jordan as well.

I hope your boy is doing well.

All right.

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Hi, John.

Before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimmelton, this question is from Faith, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I have a travel coffee mug that keeps things hot for hours.

It's great, except when I want to drink my hot coffee before lunchtime, I usually put two ice cubes in along with my hot, freshly brewed coffee, which is from the awesome coffee club.

Ah, hooray!

Because it is so good.

So good.

It is so good.

It seems to me that the coffee reaches a drinkable temperature faster if I put the ice cubes in after pouring all of my coffee instead of before pouring all of my coffee.

Is this in my head, or is there an explanation here?

Got to have faith.

Now, before you answer this question with your science, Hank, let me just tell you:

there's no way the coffee is colder if you put the ice cubes in first and then pour the coffee on top of it, right?

Like it has to be because it's, it's, it has to be.

It has to, it just has to be.

What?

I need some amount of logic here.

Because more of the coffee is being exposed exposed to the surface of the ice immediately he said without any logic and and also it feels that way badge is named after goats

yeah i mean one of the things about sergeants badges being named after goats is that uh that is a thing humans did and it's all going to be messy but

humans aren't like there's an amount of heat inside of your insulated coffee cup and it's going to be the same amount of heat whether you put the ice in before or after.

So

I cannot imagine that there is a reason why it would be different.

So there is an amount of heat in the

ice, and there is an amount of heat in, it's going to not seem like that to you.

It's going to seem like it's all cold.

But in fact, ice is a lot warmer than absolute zero.

So there's a lot of waiting wait.

What about how maybe it feels colder because the ice ice is at the top, which is the part that you're drinking from, and it hasn't totally

dissipated yet.

Well, so, okay, if you put the ice in second, the ice will stay at the top, and then the top will be cool, unless you shake it up, which you're not doing, I imagine.

So the top would be colder, and the bottom would be hotter.

Whereas if you put...

the ice in first and you pour the coffee on it, it might melt the ice more quickly, and then there would be more more mixing you have less ice at the top after the coffee is full because because some more of it has melted yeah i was wrong i was wrong there is maybe there is a path

a little bit cooler yeah and it's because the ice it's because came in later the coffee at the top dissipating all the way down to the bottom of the coffee particularly efficiently yeah and but i i mean it probably like more dense so colder liquid is going to be more dense so it

like like the hot coffee, it probably would just mix itself.

I would imagine it would mix itself.

It would mix itself

immediately, but not in nanoseconds.

Yeah, I don't know how long that convection would take.

I would think hours would be enough, but

maybe.

I'd be really, actually, I'd be curious for you to try it both ways and then just measure the, don't stick the thermometer all the way in, stick the thermometer just at the top.

And the thermometer is going to be like, you are very sick.

You need to go to the hospital.

You don't seem good, man.

It's like my Apple Watch when I was on chemo.

It kept being like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

Beep, beep.

And I'm like, no, no, no.

I'm supposed to be sick.

Why are you so sedentary?

It seems like you're vomiting.

Your heartbeat is weird.

That was not relaxing.

I needed to stop.

I had to stop wearing my Apple Watch.

I can imagine it would not be relaxing to be constantly told, hey, you're not doing so good.

You're not doing great.

And I'm like, I'm aware, my friend.

Why haven't you stood up in the last hour?

I don't know.

F ⁇ you.

I have a little bit of compassion for a cancer patient, huh?

You should sue Apple Watch for being inadequately sympathetic to cancer patients like Elon Musk is suing advertisers for being inadequately compassionate toward X.

Well, Hank, now that we've gotten out our weekly Elon Musk reference, it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Well, AFC Wimbledon's first game back in the League Two season is starting up soon.

You know, Hank, we have a lot of the same players that we had previously, but I wouldn't say we have all of the same players we had previously.

We've lost Jack Curry and lots of other folks, but

we've lost our goalkeeper, Alex Bass.

We've lost this.

We've lost that.

We're going to field 11 players next Saturday.

That's for sure.

I don't know if I know the names of all 11 of those players, but we are going to field 11 players.

There's four people I want you to pay attention to, though, going into the league two

2024-2025 season.

And those four people are our four players up top.

Josh Kelly.

Okay.

Remember that name?

In his second season.

I got to say, not a very interesting name.

Oftentimes, there's good interesting names.

Josh Kelly, I'm going to forget that really fast.

Omar Boogle.

Omar had a great season for us last year.

He is a Lebanese international, and we have great hope for him this season.

Then we've got Maddie Stevens, sort of the Josh Kelly of the Maddies.

Another guy with two first names.

Two first names.

That's true.

We have two forwards with two first names.

And finally, we've got Joe Feed the Pig Piggett.

Joe Piggett, of course, been around for a long time.

Well, he was around for a long time.

Then he left, but now he's back.

He's back.

He's 32.

And we'll see.

We'll see how he is.

Who knows?

Who knows if he's going to be good, but I have a lot of hope.

And the other player I'm really excited about, a new player, is Miles Hippolyte, which is a good name.

And he's also, he represents Grenada at the international level.

And you know how I love a AFC Wimbledon player who represents a small Caribbean nation

because that's who Lyle Taylor was.

And so I'm hoping that Miles will become the new Lyle and that instead of having to yearn for Lyle Taylor, I will be able to just luxuriate in Miles Hippolyte.

Do you know what Hippolyte means?

I don't.

So Hippo is horse.

We know this.

Okay.

Did you not know this?

I didn't.

Yeah, current, current, yes.

And then light is to let loose.

Oh, so he's a loose horse.

No, he lets loose the horses.

Oh, he's a horse loser.

He's from a Greek god,

Hippolyte.

Okay.

Yes.

I don't know if I believe you, but it's nice.

We're going to stick with it all.

It's like a goat house.

I mean, I have no idea when you're telling the truth at this point, but the point is we're having a good time.

And Miles Hippolyte is going to be a star for this season's AFC Wimbledon.

One thing I love going into a new season is that everything is still possible, right?

It's still possible that we're going to win the league.

It's possible we're going to storm through league two in an undefeated season and have more joy than we've had in the last 10 seasons combined.

It's possible that we're going to sneak into the playoffs.

It's possible that we're going to finish 20th.

It's possible that we'll get relegated out of the Football League and have catastrophic consequences.

Everything is possible.

The fear, the joy, the hope, it's all there together.

We contain multitudes in this moment.

I love the moment before the season starts, but it starts on Saturday and I can't wait to see how it goes.

Well, in Mars News, I've been kind of

putting off talking about this as more information has come in, and it's just very, it's very exciting, but like, I don't want to, I don't want to like oversell or undersell.

I want to understand it,

but it looks like Perseverance has found a rock that is very weird and it's got a bunch of weird features inside of it that look like features that are created on Earth by microbes.

And it's kind of the closest we've gotten to something that, like, if we had it here, if we just could get this rock home,

we would be able to tell probably for sure.

But it's like that sort of the right combination of minerals, the way that there's sort of these little spots inside of the rock that are ringed by, so it's like that the spots are one set of chemicals and they're ringed by another set of chemicals.

This is all something that looks like the kinds of things that might be made in

sediment

in a

floodplain by microbes in a sort of pre-complicated life Earth.

But you can't tell for sure.

It's very frustrating to just have pictures and some samples and do some chemistry on it on the surface of Mars.

But it's very exciting.

Do we have any idea if these potential microbes appear to be enough like the microbes on Earth that we could imagine that they came from DNA or RNA, or is that is it way too early?

We can't we cannot tell that.

That's another thing that we would have to have much more sophisticated tools than you could fit on a rover,

at least so far.

I mean, they have this amazing tool that is actually to some extent designed to

look for things that they don't want to name any of this stuff.

Like, they don't want to say that it's there to look for life, but this, the

tool is called Scanning Habitable Environments with Ramen and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals.

That sounds like you're looking for life.

I'm not an expert.

If you add it up, that's Sherlock, if you were paying attention.

Oh, clever.

Yeah.

Clever.

And

so that is, that can see the minerals, but you obviously wouldn't.

I mean, even if there was originally DNA or RNA there, that would over the course of billions of years have degraded to the point.

But like, you might be able to see stuff

from

just the portions, like the proportions of different elements.

But that would have to, that would be, that would be a thing that we are not super close to being able to do.

But if there is evidence of life on Mars, if we ever go there or bring samples back, we will, I think, be able to tell whether it is of the same lineage as Earth life.

And honestly,

I kind of wouldn't be surprised either way.

It like living life.

I wouldn't be surprised either way, because I mean, it seems like life can spread.

Yeah.

We're evidence of that.

Life can evolve capabilities on Earth that allows it to live in outer space.

And there are ways that

stuff from Earth gets into outer space, meteorite impacts being a big one.

And so it wouldn't be that weird because Mars and Earth aren't that far apart.

But imagine that journey if you're a microbe, Hank.

Like, you think you're living a pretty good life on Earth.

Yeah.

And then you get...

hauled off into the vacuum of space for like a year and a half, two years, or you hit another rock.

A hundred or a thousand, yeah.

A thousand.

And then you, then you're like, you've got a whole like set of generations of people that have only known the vacuum of space.

And then you hit another rock and like it barely even still tells stories about the previous rock.

Well, no, they wouldn't be breeding.

They wouldn't be creating new generations.

It would be the actual same organism.

Even more stressful, you know, like you're 150 years old and you're like, man, I had a pretty good life on Earth and now I have this opening.

I went into dormancy and and now I'm in a totally different place.

And then you slam into another planet and you're like, oh, I'm home.

Damn it.

No, I'm not.

I'm not home.

I'm on a different rock.

I think that it would be a bigger deal if it's not related to Earth.

For sure.

Yeah.

Because that would indicate that there's all kinds of ways that life can evolve, which would be so thin.

And also that it opened up all kinds of possibilities.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It would indicate that it basically, like, basically every solar system would have have life if it happened twice in this one.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Not actually, but like, but a lot.

When I say basically every, I mean like a lot, you know, a lot, a lot more than zero percent, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that would be thrilling, Hank.

We're not there yet, but it, this pretty interesting stuff that we're seeing.

It's interesting stuff we're seeing.

There's a lot going on in that space.

I feel like it, I don't know.

It feels like more going on in that space than there was 10, 20 years ago.

For sure.

Yeah.

For sure.

Well, thank you for podding with me.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

Hank and John at gmail.com is where you should send your questions.

Please do that.

That's how we have a podcast to do.

This podcast was edited by Linus Ovenhaus.

It was mixed by Joseph Tunametes.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosie Ann Halls, Rojas, 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 Gunnarola.

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