395: Your One Wild and Precious Corpse

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You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

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

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

John, how are you doing?

How is the Olympics?

How are the good, good people of the Olympics?

The Olympics is so great.

The Olympics is, it's the best thing that we do as a species.

I don't want to overplay it, but I think it is the single greatest accomplishment in human history.

That and eradicating smallpox.

I just want to see a man pommel a horse.

By the way, that guy knows who we are.

He seems like he would, I have to say.

Yeah, Steve and his girlfriend Tess are familiar with our work.

In fact, Tess follows at SportsWithJohn on Twitter, which is pretty deep cut.

Anyway,

big fan of Steve.

Steve, the guy who pommeled that horse.

He pommeled it so good.

There was no question.

At the end of it, the horse, I don't know if you saw it live, but I was watching it live.

I watched the entire Olympics live.

I wake up at six o'clock in the morning.

I don't start my workday until noon, right?

And then I just, I work in the evenings until it's time for Olympics primetime coverage.

And the best part about this, of course, is that by the time this podcast comes out, the Olympics will be over.

So it'll be more of a recap, but it feels present tense.

You'll remember.

You remember the Olympics.

Anyway, I was watching live and I literally had to watch Steve, the pommel horse guy,

like this.

I had to.

I guess this is a podcast, so I actually have to explain what I'm doing.

I had to cover my eyes, except I left one little opening between my fingers through which I could watch Steve.

And I was like, but Steve has to pommel a horse right now.

Like he's probably even more nervous than I am.

And he has to go do the thing.

Incredible.

And he did the thing.

He did the thing.

It's been awesome to watch the Olympics.

There's been so many wonderful stories.

So proud of noted vertical video sensation, Alana Maher, on getting a bronze medal in women's team rugby.

It's just been awesome.

Awesome.

I mean,

what a game.

Oh, my God.

I watched that live too.

And Sarah was like talking to me about logistics, like, you know, on Wednesday night, we got to have these, these people over and Alice is going to this house.

And I was like, respectfully, these games only last 14 minutes.

I just, I need him back here.

That is the thing I did not understand about Rugby Sevens.

Like, you cannot show up late.

No, no, no, no.

You can't show up for the, if you show up for the second half, it's over.

Yeah.

It was so thrilling.

It was, yeah.

I mean, I can't, I was not watching live, so I knew the outcome, but I was like, how is it going to get to the outcome that I am expecting when the situation is what it is right now?

Yeah.

Oh, it was so thrilling.

I just love, what I love about sports is it's theater, but it's theater where neither the competitor nor the audience knows what the play is about.

You know, and then at the end, we're all like, oh my God, it was a tragedy, or oh, my God, it was a farce, or oh, my God, it was a wonderful comedy.

Or sometimes it's a romantic comedy.

Sometimes, I don't know if you saw this today, but one of the Chinese table tennis players

won a gold medal, very impressive, and then was immediately asked for their hand in marriage by their longtime partner.

And so then it was a romantic comedy.

At the Olympics.

I've heard that the Olympics.

I mean, I would watch 100%

like a love island that takes place at the Olympics or a romantic comedy that takes place at the Olympics or like a manga about that.

there's got to be, it's got to be a

love

pentaguagon drama.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

No, I'm sure there's a lot of, I mean, it's look, it's, it's, it's young people, right?

And young people are always getting into kind of crazy romantic situations.

Oh, God, I don't miss it.

I do not miss being young.

Do you know where Pommel Horse came from?

Yeah, of course.

It's a horse, Hank.

That's why at the end of it, the horse very kindly lowered its head and congratulated Steven on his incredible.

Well, you didn't tell me about that part.

What?

It lowered its head lately?

Yeah, dude.

It was a real horse that he was pommeling, okay?

And they put two pommels on top of the horse and he was moving all around it.

And then the horse has to stay very still.

That's one of the rules.

If the horse doesn't stay still, it doesn't the score.

Yeah, yeah.

If the horse stays very still and he was doing like, he did a one-hand 360 around the horse.

And then he was like,

you thought that was good.

I can do it with my other hand too.

And that's when I was like, oh, my God, Steve.

Oh, my God.

Stop showing off.

You know, like at some point, it becomes a little bit over the top.

That's right, Steve.

Anyway, it was beautiful to watch.

And then Steve dismounted off the horse, and the horse lowered its head as a sign of honor that he had been pommeled successfully.

And then the horse gets a carrot to say that.

Yeah, of course.

Steve gave the horse the carrot.

That's the last thing.

You bow to the judges, then you give the horse a carrot, and that's the end of your routine.

It was originally a fake horse that the Romans would use to train people for getting on and off horses, and then they got all fancy.

Oh, that's great.

I love it.

To be fair, that actually gives me a sense of how hard pommel horse is because I have gotten on a horse before and it ain't easy.

Just that part.

Just the getting on.

Just,

I wonder if I could get on a pommel horse, you know?

Like, I wonder if I could successfully.

Just get up there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get up there and maybe do like a couple of those tricep bends, you know?

Yeah, you know what I'd like?

I could do it, but I would need, like they have with the high bar, someone to give me uppies.

Sure, of course.

Can I get a quick uppie?

And then they'd be like, hey, hey, it's time for the gymnast to use the pommel horse, Hank.

And you'd be like, no, I'm good up here.

I'm just riding the horse.

Yeah.

Well, I actually, I can't, I don't know how I get off.

I need reverse uppies.

I'm going to need some downsies.

All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners.

This first one comes from Mustafa, who says, dear John and Hank, how far are we from the possibility of people's dying wishes being that they want to be buried on the moon or Mars instead of at sea?

Bodies are far.

Mustafa.

Are you allowed to get buried at sea still?

Is that a thing?

I don't think they can stop you.

yeah if you have a boat and you can get out far enough yeah if you get to international waters i think it's your business yeah yeah

yep i'd agree and you're not making it back if you're that far out you're not making it back there's lots of stuff that would happily take care of you Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, point being,

that's not, that actually is a problem on the moon and Mars, would be my argument.

Right, right.

You don't have a bunch of sharks on the moon to eat your dead body.

Things, things happen.

Like, I think that American flag is still up there looking approximately like an American flag.

It's probably pretty sun bleached at this point, but point of the thing.

I think it might still be there.

Sure, still there.

Is it still there?

Yeah, it's still there.

It's probably not red, white, and blue anymore is all I'm saying.

Where would it have gone, John?

There's nowhere to go.

It's the moon.

This is a problem.

In space, you just keep

being forever.

The only thing to degrade you is the sun.

All right.

Well, you're right.

Lunar images have proven that the American flag planted during the Apollo missions are still standing on the moon.

Take that,

moon denialists.

And Russia.

Outlasted the Soviet Union, baby.

I think we're a ways away just because it takes a lot of time

to get the ashes.

Yeah, it's a lot of work to get the ashes to the moon.

But I bet by the time I die, assuming the policy genius actuarial tables are correct,

by the time I die, I bet you can get shot to the moon.

Yeah, I mean, a whole body hard, some ashes.

No, no, no, just your ashes, ashes, ashes.

Yeah.

And also, like, ashes are weird because, like, at what point is it enough ashes to count as you anyway?

You're not going to get all of you.

So, if you're just like, like, a thimble full of like a bunch of different people,

easy peasy.

We could, I mean, I moon is hard.

Stark.

Space easy.

We like we could now probably get like start launching like fractions of people into space.

No, I think we have done that.

We have done that.

That's not the hard part.

The hard part is getting it all the way to a surface.

Moon's hard.

Yeah, moon's a long way away.

And then you got to

be like almost impossible with current technology.

Not really on the and unless unless you're real sneaky and you work at NASA.

You can sort of stick a full of ashes in there.

Yeah, but not till 2028.

I don't think that's a good thing.

Not till 2028.

Oh, God.

At this point, I'll let it count.

I will tell you right now, Hank, if we get human ashes to the moon by 2028, we can keep the podcast name

Dear Hank and John.

But if we don't, if we don't get any form of humans to the moon, it's Dear John and Hank forever.

Forever.

And I am never taking a bet with you that would revert the name back to Dear Hank and John.

You already did or somebody did on your behalf no i didn't i didn't i would never uh it's too high stakes for me i'd rather make financial bets with you dear john and hank i'm gonna have to get used to that did you see my video today where i talk about how the world's gonna be like in a hundred years yeah i thought it was great i really enjoyed it except there were a couple things i completely disagreed with so first off okay you said that in in a hundred years people won't get colds which is the most ludicrous oh it's unbelievably hank respectfully yeah i will rename rename the podcast Dear John and Hank

if in a hundred years people don't get colds.

Let me give you a sense of,

like, I just don't think you have a historical sense of

how medical progress works.

Okay.

Okay.

I think what you fail to understand is how much time passes between something happening and something being widely implemented.

And I also think you underestimate

the actual challenge a little bit.

So

tuberculosis, I'll give you an example, my special interest.

Tuberculosis in 100 people, I think in 100 years, people will still get tuberculosis, though I don't think that they will die of it very much.

Uh-oh, so your argument is that people won't get colds, they'll just still get tuberculosis.

Yeah, they won't get viral illnesses, they'll just still get bacterial infections by the billion.

I didn't say billions, but I did, I do, I think that

the kind of thing that causes a rhinovirus is actually a solvable problem with nasal vaccines.

And we will get broad-spectrum nasal vaccines, and people with healthy immune systems will not get Colts.

That's what I think.

But they'll still get the flu.

I think that they probably also won't get the flu.

I think that flu will also be unusual.

They'll still get strep throat.

I think they might still get strep throat.

Yeah,

I think that virus will be easier than bacteria.

HIV will be cured.

HIV will

probably not be cured.

I think that like.

Okay.

All right.

I'm actually coming around to your position now.

If your position is just like people in the rich world won't get as many colds in 100 years, I agree.

And I was very specific.

I was talking about America.

I'm not talking about the world.

Yeah.

In the video, you were like, people aren't going to get sick in 100 years.

And I was like, yes, they are.

They're still going to get sick.

And

that's that.

I also disagree with you.

And we have to get back to

what you want done with your body, because I think that's very important.

And we've never discussed it before.

And I'm fascinated to learn.

But just the other thing that I thought you definitely got wrong was that I think in 100 years, the biggest thing people will think is they will be astonished by the level of global inequity.

That's my hope anyway, that they will be absolutely astonished that there was a 40-year delta in life expectancy depending on where where you were born my argument against that is that we don't think that about 100 years ago like the average person doesn't think oh my god we didn't have it 100 years ago there wasn't a 40-year delta 100 years ago there wasn't there was yes there was a 27-year delta

it has gotten worse the delta has gotten worse but the average age at death has gone up Well, yeah, yeah, Mr.

Pollyanna, everything's beautiful.

Of course, the average age at death has gone up.

Let's get back.

Now that I've made my two points, I'm not going to allow you a rebuttal.

And instead, we're going to get back to what you want done with your one wild and precious corpse.

I think, you know, for a long time, I was a real believer in the fact that my wild and precious corpse should be scattered in some like place in a local

like that was special to me.

But I think at this point, I think my, my, I've come around to the idea that I should have the gravestone.

Just so all your adoring fans have a place to visit?

Well, I mean, especially if I die younger, which

is sort of the thing that I'm worried about right now.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

God.

When I had cancer, I can't.

I mean, try, talk about making cancer your whole identity, Hank.

Now it's like, oh,

I had cancer.

You brought it up.

All right, go ahead.

That

If I have like a lot of

people who I feel like that it'd be nice to give them a place to go to.

But you didn't feel that about your family, apparently.

No, no, no.

That's what I mean, my family and my friends.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, that's how I've always felt is like, I like having a place to go to visit my ancestors.

And I would like to have a place for my descendants to go to visit me as an ancestor.

But I used to be such a Pollyanna that I believed that by the time I died, everyone who I loved would already have died.

That's hilarious.

That's hilarious.

I've, yeah, no, I mean, I, yeah, I, I assume, I think correctly that I'll go before

everyone else in my nuclear fan.

I mean, I freaking hope so.

That's your thing.

Yeah, I mean, I, like, I, for a long time, I didn't have a child.

so there was that.

But I think there is, there actually is an element of as being a sort of

like, I like the idea that Missoula would get me, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's where, that's where Hank Green is buried.

Yeah, and that'll be enough.

It's good press for like 20 years, usually.

Yeah.

You know, that's why it's so important to me to be buried at the very top of Crown Hill Cemetery on top of the grave of James Whitcomb Riley.

James Whitcomb Riley right here at the top of the hill until they fill in that hill a little, make it the even taller hilliest hill in Indianapolis.

Yep.

And boom, right there, right on top of his corpse, my corpse.

What if you were just like

at the very end, but alive enough that you could just sort of like dig your way in, sneak in, die in there,

fill in it after you.

And then it'd be like, like, no one knows where John Green is.

And everybody would, though, because they listened to the podcast.

You know what my will actually says?

Does it say?

Oh, yeah.

Yours doesn't?

I don't think so.

I got a highly specific will.

I get into all kinds of stuff.

I don't leave you anything, by the way, in case you're wondering.

I don't need anything.

I know.

That's what I figured.

I might come over and take some stuff.

There's like probably some, I'd like the beer sword.

Anything of sentimental value, you're welcome to.

Other than the beer sword,

that's Henry's.

No, I'm just kidding.

You can take the beer sword if it's important to you.

But

no,

I say like like, it's so James Whitcomb Riley of James Whitcomb Riley to be buried at the very top of Crown Hill.

Whoa, so fancy.

Oh, he's on the hill with the fancy people and the billionaires.

Don't do that with me.

Bury me with the people

because I'm a man of the people.

Bury me down below

in a valley.

They had the hilltop, right?

They had it.

And they were like, somebody's going to go at the top of the hill.

Yeah.

And then they were like,

I guess,

I guess.

I mean, you don't, I, I think you underestimate.

James Whitcomb Riley was massively famous.

He wrote Little Orphan Annie, the Little Orphan Annie.

I've heard of that.

He was a huge deal.

He was like, he was so beloved.

Some weird things about James Whitcomb Riley.

He never owned a home, even though he was a wealthy man.

He lived with a German couple.

Dot, dot, dot.

He was a beloved Hoosier author.

He was so loved here that like, it totally made sense at the time to bury him at the top of the hill.

But it just goes to show you that, like, nothing lasts forever, including your reputation.

Like,

yeah, we, we think, like, oh, fame, famous people, like, they, they ensure themselves hundreds or thousands of years of memories.

And yeah, I was just thinking about how, like, how when we were kids, Thomas Edison was like a pretty huge deal.

And, like, my son still hasn't learned about Thomas Edison.

Yeah.

And, and then, like, but his son just won't if he has a kid.

It's just like not a relevant mythology anymore.

That's the thing is that as the stories change, the people who exemplify those stories change.

And so this happens all the time in history.

The person that you think is going to be at the at the bottom of the pile, the Nikola Tesla, I certainly never learned about Nikola Tesla in school, but the Nikola Tesla turns out to be like the famous one that the famous cars are named after.

Like you just, you never know.

And also, it's not just that, it's that it doesn't matter.

Like, you can't live your life for a legacy because your legacy, outside of like the lives you impact while you're here, it's just not very important.

Like, Mark Twain, probably the most important American novelist, somebody whose work I, I mean, I wrote my college thesis about, I think about all the time.

Like, and and that's great, but like, Mark Twain's only been dead for a hundred years.

Like, he, he, the, the most famous American novelist, only extended

his life by 100 years out of 300,000 years.

We're not going to remember Mark Twain.

We're not going to remember Hank Green.

We're not going to remember anybody.

So get buried the way that you want to get buried, not for all the people who will come after you, but for your direct descendants who need an ancestor to look to.

But if you get to the moon, your body will last forever.

All right, this next question comes from Jill.

who writes, Dear John and Hank, how do I not feel lonely and like I'm a social failure?

I'm a recent high school graduate who's attending college out of state in the fall and I've always struggled to make friends.

I'm not afraid of social interaction or even how to socially interact like I used to struggle with.

My issue is the feeling afterwards when I realize that everyone is closer to each other than I am.

I feel outcast all the time.

I just don't know how to leave a hangout not feeling sad or how to make and trust friends.

Best wishes, Jill, Jill, Jill, Jill, Jill, Jill, Jill, Jill.

You're not alone.

Me either.

I think almost everyone leaves those parties and thinks like, oh God, I said this, I said that.

I was on the outside of this circle, I tried to

weasel my way into this circle and it didn't work.

Or, I mean, that's all I think about after a party, Jill.

Like that's it overwhelmingly, I think about everything I said.

And why did I say that?

Why did I say it that way?

I think that some people are comfortable and, and, but they aren't, they aren't actually any more in, like, interior to the social fabric.

They just are less in their mind

as, as humans.

Yes.

And because I've, I've felt both of these ways.

And

that is, to me, as a person who has felt both of the ways, it is never about how actually involved I am in the social circle.

It is about

where my mind is at on the way home from the party, either because like I made some social mistakes or some kind of faux pas, or because like that's just where I was at the moment.

Like my brain was just in that, that like spending a lot of time in itself phase.

Yeah.

But which is why I don't, which is why I've used modern technology to prevent me from ever having time to spend in my own mind.

I just pop in, pop in a hard fork, pop in mabim bam, and I'm just gone.

Okay, we have to get back to Joe's problem, but briefly on that topic, I was just on the Wikipedia page for boredom, just to check it out.

And do you know what the first two words of the Wikipedia page for boredom are?

No,

that's interesting.

Is it your support for Wikipedia makes this possible?

It's boredom is.

And I find that very interesting because boredom no longer exists.

It does.

I got bored last night.

And you want to know how I got bored last night?

How?

I went on Twitter and I found it uninteresting and there wasn't much to look at.

When I went on threads and I found it uninteresting and there wasn't much to look at.

It was sort of the same boring, uninteresting controversies.

And then I went on TikTok and I was like, I also, none of this is ringing my bell right now.

And then I looked at the lock screen of my phone and I was like, wow, you have nothing for me right now.

Wow.

It was weird.

What's it like to snort five different powders and it turns out they're all baking soda

is a little bit surprising.

Yeah.

Was I, I was like, what's happening right now?

Is there something wrong with me?

So Jill, the good news is that when you go to college, everyone else is going to be in the same boat.

And you're not going to be alone.

And there are going to be hopefully, and there should be structures built in to help you get to know your neighbors, your roommate, your suite mates, whatever it is, however your school is organized.

And that is going to be very helpful to you.

But the main thing you have to tell yourself after a social interaction, the thing that I try to tell myself is I am not alone in walking away from that social interaction, feeling like I didn't crush it or feeling like

I'm not as connected to people as I'd like to be.

Right.

That's a normal thing.

That's a normal thing.

And it's also something that builds up over a long period of time.

So long a period of time in many cases that you can't possibly imagine it because like you literally aren't old enough to.

The other thing.

This is a separate piece of advice, which is if you can, be less interested in yourself and more interested in the people.

And so as you like leave the event, be thinking about how other people experienced that or like about that thing that that person said to you.

To me, the greatest

asset, like the greatest tool I have for making friends is being interested in them.

So like, like discovering my own interest and the interests that my friends have.

Without that, I kind of can't be their friends.

And with it, I become sort of more curious and fascinated by like the whole world, but including them.

And people love,

love when people are interested in them.

That's like, and that's how you that's how you learn about people is you display interest in them and their thoughts and their ideas, and you ask more about that.

This next question comes from Shashi, who asks, Dear John and Hank, a biologist once told my boss, if we met ants, we wouldn't have anything interesting to say to them.

True, true, true.

Is that true?

Yes.

Really?

If we met ants?

Well, first off, I mean, I feel like I regularly do meet ants and I have nothing interesting to say to them.

Yeah.

That's one way of imagining the question.

How else would you imagine the question?

Sometimes I say to an aunt, why are you here?

That's basically the extent of the conversation.

I thought the agreement that we'd made was that I live inside of this very contained interior space.

This is mine.

And then you have everything

outside.

All of outside.

Sometimes I see ants outside, and I'm like, what are you doing?

We've got weird swarming behaviors in Montana ants where sometimes they just all leave the nest and they run around on the sidewalk.

It's very weird.

Yeah.

It's weird, but it's their business.

It is their business.

It's like the way that I feel when

somebody's reading a book I don't love on the bus.

Yeah.

You know, gosh, I wish that you hadn't brought that onto the bus.

The Art of the Deal was published in 1987.

I don't think it has that much to tell you about the present moment, but whatever.

Like, that's your business.

Then there's another way to imagine this, which is if ants could talk

and they could tell you about their experience of the world and sort of what they're up to.

We wouldn't have anything to say to each other because they would not care about the election.

They would not care about your dislocated shoulder.

They would not care about your son and his experience with Hot Wheels.

But wouldn't they care about the Olympics?

I mean, I feel like they would not care about the Olympics.

They wouldn't look at it.

They would not.

So, and this is, this is, they couldn't even see the Olympics.

This is the thing.

No, but if they could speak, I could explain it to them.

They have a couple of people.

It could be like Philona Marr

and the other six women of the Rugby Sevens U.S.

team were down to their last possession

and then they scored a miracle try.

I learned that.

I learned that for word.

I'm into Olympics.

Yeah, it's not called a touchdown, even though in football, you don't touch it down and in rugby, you do.

You do.

They scored a miracle try and won a bronze medal.

You don't think an ant would be moved by that story?

No, I definitely don't.

And also,

I think the cool thing here, and this is what I think your professor means, is that ants have a totally different sensorium.

Like they communicate and are influenced almost entirely by sense.

So the way that they, the chemical signals that affect an ants' experience of the world are so much more deeply tied into their nervous system than smells are to us.

They are, they live in a world of smell.

and smells control everything that they do.

And they would, they would be talking to us in smell.

Like they wouldn't even, even if we could figure out how to like translate their smells into speech, it would not make sense to us.

They live in such a different universe than we do.

And I think this is a fascinating thing about different species.

Even somewhat closely related species, they just have like the senses that we have are different.

from species to species.

And as you get more distant, they get more different.

And it's like vision, yes, is all sort of detecting electromagnetic waves, but oftentimes it's doing it in very different ways.

You've got different pupil shapes, you've got different cones, you got different rods, you got different like abilities to like some things can see things that are outside of our visual range, some things can't see things inside of our visual range.

Everything looks different.

And like some animals have eyes on the sides of their head.

Can you even imagine what it would be like to be able to see behind you right now?

No, like it's like it's so weird to have a whole other, like every species gets to experience the universe in a different way and in a way that to me makes it almost like they are in a different universe.

It's not just that, though.

It's also that like the literal

interests, desires, fascinations of ants would be utterly unrelatable to us.

Yeah, I also think that that

interests might be a little outside of the capability of an ant, but who knows?

Nerves are weird.

That reminds reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the ants nervous system, the ants nervous system running on smells.

This podcast is also brought to you by pommeling a horse.

Pommeling a horse.

Surprisingly fine.

It's just so impressive.

In fact, I've got to have one more sponsorship related to it.

Today's podcast is brought to you by noted American nerdfighter Steve.

Steve.

Steve.

I'm so proud of you, man.

This podcast is also brought to you by feeling like a social failure.

That's going to happen.

Yeah, it's okay.

It will get better.

It will also get worse, but it will get better.

It's like a sine wave.

We also have Project for Awesome messages to read.

I'll read the first one.

It's from Jennifer Ratcliffe in Santa Rosa, California to Eva or Ava Ratcliffe in San Diego.

Eva, my happy little squidly, you're the best daughter any mom could ever hope for.

You're brilliant, fun, fearless, and empathetic.

Your radiant power knows no bounds.

I'm proud to be your mother every single day.

Love you to the moon and back.

We've also got a message message from Connor to Ann who says, as someone who has listened to the entire backlog of Dear Hank and John, I know you will appreciate this.

That is impressive.

I forget sometimes that people like us, this podcast.

It's nice.

Thanks for liking the podcast, y'all.

So I...

I'm so glad to have you as a partner and fellow nerdfighter.

We moved across the Midwest together from Iowa to Indy to Chicago, listening to the Greens.

And I'm looking forward to a lot more nerdiness together.

Maybe we will even find out why Indy has so few streetlights.

Love you lots.

It is true.

And this is a great American city.

Some would say the greatest.

Some would say the greatest American city that ever was or ever will be.

And yet, we do have very few streetlights.

In fact, there's a streetlight at the intersection near my home.

And the way that I explain to Uber drivers where to turn is I say turn at the streetlight.

And I can say that a mile before we get to the streetlight because there are no other streetlights.

I mean, to me, me, that says that it's not a very dense city.

Well, that is certainly the case.

We're more interested in width, breadth,

length.

Yeah, yeah.

We didn't want to be the biggest city by population.

We wanted to be the biggest city by geography.

Just watching it.

Wash darn it.

We did it.

Woo!

This episode of Dear Hangajohn is brought to you by Factor.

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This next question comes from Leah, who writes, dear John and Hank, at what point is it socially acceptable to refer to how long your business has been open?

A restaurant or fast food place I recently went to was very good, but said it had been family-owned since 1989.

Is that too recent to brag about?

How old are you, Leah?

Like, how long ago do you think 1989 was?

That's definitely long enough to brag about.

I mean, 1989, I almost feel like 40 years ago.

I feel like Vlogbrothers established in 2007 doesn't sound bad.

By the way, it's not 40 years ago.

It's 35 years ago.

It's almost.

Yeah.

It will be 40 years in just four or five short years.

No, I mean, like, if

there was a business that I went to as a child in 1984

and it said open since 1944.

I would have been like, that's a, you've had a great run.

This is the war.

Yeah.

You saw the war.

This business survived a war.

Yeah.

It's impressive.

And you know what?

You know what the business that's been open since 1989 has survived?

Like the personal computer.

Yeah.

The internet.

Uh-huh.

YouTube.

TikTok.

Pandemic.

Vine.

It actually

lived Vine.

It's been open for 31 Vines.

I think if you're on on your sixth president.

Yeah, like DFTBA is started in 2008.

And I'm like,

it says on the website, established 2008.

I think that's impressive.

But for an internet company, that is impressive.

I agree.

I think if you're an internet company or like a YouTube channel, like Vlogbrothers could definitely say established in 2007, right?

And like,

and I think that any internet company that's been around for, let's say, three presidents, U.S.

presidents, is allowed to say established in, right?

Because then you made it through Biden, you made it through Trump, and you at least reach back to the Obama years.

Vlog Brothers reaches back to the George W.

Bush administration.

Yeah.

We were together when Obama won his first election.

Yeah, John saw Obama speak at the like big breakout Obama speech.

No, even before that,

I was recording something for WBEZ back when I wrote commentaries for the Chicago Public Radio.

And we were recording something.

And when you record in the WBEZ studios, when you walk in, like they're playing whatever WBEZ is playing, right?

And then you like turn that off and you record your little piece or whatever.

But what was playing was an interview with state senator Barack Obama.

And my producer and I just sat there transfixed for like 10 minutes.

And then finally, the interview ended, and my producer cut the audio and he looked at me and he said, Why is that guy a state senator?

He should be president.

And it wasn't that long before he was.

Yes, it it wasn't that long before he was.

So shout out Justin Kaufman, longtime Chicago media guy for nailing that one.

All right, Hank, we got another question from Melissa who writes, Dear John and Hank, what's the deal with art galleries?

Can I go in even if I have no intention, like the money, to buy anything?

Melissa, I'm about to blow your mind.

Can I wander around like it's a free museum?

Is there an etiquette for declaring that I can't buy anything so the staff doesn't waste their time thinking I might purchase something?

Or are art galleries for potentially paying customers only?

I constantly see articles about great collections being shown at galleries in my city, and I would love to see them, but I don't know if I'm allowed.

Nothing rhymes with Melissa.

This never even occurred to me.

Many years before Catherine and I could even consider buying a painting in a gallery, we would go in and look.

And they would, on First Friday, they'd give you free wine.

That's what I'm going to blow your mind with, Melissa.

Not only are you allowed to go, they'll give you free cheese and alcohol and some triscuits if you're careful.

Yeah, sometimes little fruits.

I remember when I first was interested in Sarah, I like we went out to lunch or something, and then she was like, You should come by the gallery sometime.

We have an opening on this day.

And I did a ton of research about the artists, which was a huge mistake.

I should have just asked Sarah instead of like pretending to be an expert.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you need to like leave conversation topics open for them to tell you things.

Don't just think I'm going to tell you stuff.

Yes.

Because

I, oh, I know that you have a degree in art history, but have you ever had a man explain to you your own art show?

So, anyway,

I go to this art opening in Chicago, and not only does that gallery have an opening, but a bunch of other galleries in nearby buildings also have openings, and they're all really interesting.

And there's free wine at all of them, and cheese, and in a few cases, triscuits.

And I was like, How have I lived in this city for five years and not known this incredible life hack?

I don't understand how art galleries work, and I don't really need to, but they seem to.

Like the gallery that Catherine and I went into before we could ever even consider affording a single piece of art from that gallery, and we ate their cheese and drank their wine, and so did many other people.

It is still open.

It is still doing great.

So, like, whatever they're doing is working.

I will say at the big New York galleries, they have like literally intimidating looking doors.

And a lot of times there are no windows.

And

it requires a measure of moral courage to open that door.

But then you open that door and there's like $300 million of paintings that have been incredibly well organized by a professional gallerist.

And like it's an amazing museum style show, except that it's free and you do not have to do or say anything.

And 99.9% of the time, not only do you have to say like, I'm sorry, I can't afford the artwork, no one will even look up at you.

Like, I walk into a fancy gallery in New York City, and if I do want to buy art, that's what's hard.

It's much harder.

Then, then you've got to go up, you go to the desk, and you're like, hey, do you have a list of the prices?

Which is an uncomfortable thing to ask.

And they give you the list of the prices without looking at you.

At no point in this process do they look at you.

This is not the true experience in Missoula.

In Missoula, like the moment a 44-year-old man walks in, they're like, hey,

you look like you might be be able to afford an art.

Well, but Sarah always tells the story of like, you never like, cause she worked at a gallery for years.

And of course, like, it was very welcoming.

And anybody, anybody can go to these things and you should.

It's an amazing way to experience art.

But she would be like, you never make judgments because the minute you make a judgment is the minute you make a mistake.

Like, she said the most expensive painting I ever sold was this contemporary Chinese artist who, by the way, his work has increased in value by like a factor of a thousand.

So this guy made a brilliant decision.

But this guy shows up in bike shorts and like an actual like bike uniform.

I don't know what you call those, the

shirts,

shows up wearing that, buys a $35,000 painting and then like walks out the door.

So you never know.

Did they have to like ship it to him?

Did he have it with him?

No, Hank, they ship it to you.

If you buy a painting for $35,000, you can afford to ship it.

I don't know.

It seems like it'd be expensive to ship a painting.

It is expensive.

They have to insure it and everything.

But it's in that margin.

There's probably a fairly wide margin on a $35,000 painting sold at a gallery.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

They make you pay for the shipping.

Oh, okay.

But the point is that you can afford the shipping.

There's not like a sign that's like free shipping.

No, not usually.

Like on the bottom of the $35,000 painting?

God.

Actually, maybe Hank shouldn't go to art galleries.

If you spend $35,000, shipping is free.

No, it's not.

It's not.

You can sometimes ask for a 10% discount.

This is something that I do, and it makes me so physically uncomfortable, but you can say like, hey, is there any room for a 10% discount?

And a lot of times they'll give it to you.

And that usually covers the cost of shipping.

But the point is, if you can't afford to buy art, go to art galleries because it's basically

somebody has bought art for you.

And it's amazing.

And the artist likes that you're visiting.

Everybody's happy that you're there.

John, this next question is from Moira, who asks, Dear Hang and John: Where do whales and other ocean creatures go when there's a big storm or a hurricane?

Do they dive below where the water does storm stuff, or would they just ride out the waves like a whale theme park?

Weather in whales, Moira.

I actually have no idea, but I do know that it probably doesn't bother them.

It might affect like where the food is, and so that might affect where they end up going.

But like, the thing about like

10 feet under the waves is there's nothing going on.

It's like, it's just normal down there.

Really?

Really?

Yeah.

But you still got, if you're a whale, you still got to come up for air now and again.

And you're like, oh, it's pretty choppy up here.

It's true.

I wouldn't be going to get there.

I wouldn't want to get a splash in my bowhole.

I think it's a little bit like, and of course, we have nothing to say to ants.

I think we would have something to say to whales, but like, I get that there's going to be a communication challenge there.

But my guess is that it's like when it's a hot day instead of a warm day or a cold day instead of a cool day.

I bet it's a bit of a bummer.

I bet they're like, I like it a little bit better when it's not like this.

Yeah, but maybe

I bet they know how to avoid it.

They don't know how to get to like wherever they want to go.

Whales are pretty fast.

The thing about these giant animals is you see them and they always look like they're moving very slowly, but they're giant.

And so they are actually moving quite quick.

It's one of my big complaints about the Olympics.

And I think the Olympics is almost perfect.

There's no whales?

It's very anthropocentric.

I I mean, it's extremely,

you know what I mean?

Like,

literally everything

competing at the Olympics, including the horses and dressage,

are mammals.

It's all mammals.

So you're not just saying that it's anthropocentric, it's mammal-centric.

So we need to get some fish involved.

We need tuna.

Falconry.

Falcons.

Yeah, frogs, frog jump.

Tunas.

Tuna is a great idea, actually, because

I would be genuinely fascinated to see if you gave a tuna lane eight in the finals of the 800 meters.

I think this is a 50-50.

And you said to the tuna and Katie Ludecki, listen, you're both going to swim 800 meters.

You got to go down and back and touch the wall 16 total times.

I think it's 50-50.

Who wins?

I think if you could explain to the tuna what it needed to do,

yeah, then it's 100% that the tuna wins.

But the point is, you can't explain it.

It's a tuna.

And so you get the tuna there, you put it in the water, and like maybe just in the course of its panicking, it touches the wall 60%.

I would be very afraid for Katie the Decky, I think, is important.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

The lane goes all the way down.

Okay.

It's a plexiglass thing.

At no point can Katie the Decky be attacked by a tuna.

That would be crazy.

She's a national treasure, Hank.

I'm saying that you put a big fish tank that's that's the length of the pool, basically, and

you say to the tuna, go as fast as you can for as long as you can.

The tuna's not going to hear you.

It doesn't understand.

But it might just coincidentally do 800 meters faster than Katie Ludecki, but it might not.

Yeah.

I'd love to see it.

I'd love to see it.

I would pay good money for that, and I would bet on it too.

If you could, would you put a human brain into a tuna?

Not like just put it in there, but like it could make it a tuna brain in what?

That was as smart as a person.

It was just like a person, but in a tuna body.

Oh.

Of course not, Hank.

I'm not looking to create competition

for where we're at.

No.

Okay.

I think we got it hard enough.

It's not like an ethical question.

It's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We don't need to share right now.

Yeah.

I mean,

what, we think like they're going to have better ideas about global warming?

No.

Good point.

Good point.

I don't trust this tuna, not for one second.

You know what?

The first thing they'd say is,

what the hell's up with pescatarianism?

Yeah.

You think that that's okay?

Yeah, they'd be like, pesca,

huh?

How about landitarianism?

I mean, for clarity, tuna are also pescatarian.

It's a really good point.

It's a really good point.

They eat exactly one thing, and it's fish.

Oh, boy.

Before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask one more question, Hank.

It's from Callum, and Callum is four.

Callum writes, Hi, I'm Callum, and I'm four.

I like tuna sandwiches.

Callum, I have amazing news.

You're a four-year-old human, and you can eat a whole tuna.

Not a whole tuna, but you

give it enough time.

Yeah.

Very impressive.

We're proud of you, Callum.

Callum also says

Spongebob, popsicles, and grapes.

Oh, okay.

Several of my favorite things.

The trees eat energy from the sun to grow and make airdrops.

That is a really good summary of how it works.

That's cool.

Where does the sun get its energy?

My mom doesn't know.

Sincerely, Callum.

Oh, wait.

Sun, sincerely, Callum.

Good job, Callum.

That's a great pun.

I don't know if your mom wrote that, but if she didn't, you're very impressive.

Yeah.

Okay.

Hank, yeah.

Where does the sun get its energy?

It's not super simple, but it gets its energy from its mass.

So

as Einstein told us all, Energy and mass are equivalent, and there are ways to turn one into the other.

And one of the ways that you get energy from mass is through fusion.

And the sun is so big, and there is so much stuff there that the gravity of all of the stuff is squishing everything down together to the point where two hydrogens can get pushed together so tightly that the electrons will move out of the way and the protons will stick together and then the electrons will make a new cloud and instead of having two hydrogens, you will have one helium and as part of that process two hydrogen atoms weigh more than one helium atom

and the place where that mass went because you can't destroy mass the place where that mass went is it got converted into energy and that is the energy it is not all of where the sort of heat of the energy come of the sun comes from but that's where the vast majority of the heat of the sun comes from

and so

to try to summarize that for a four-year-old, Callum.

Right.

And that energy comes off as two things.

Well, really, one thing.

It comes off mostly as light.

So either infrared light, which we feel as heat, or the kind of light that plants absorb after it passes through our atmosphere and hits them.

And so that those photons, those high-energy photons from the sun, are actually captured by the plant to do the chemistry that makes the plant and the airdrops and everything else.

Callum, I'm going to try to explain that for you as if you were an actual four-year-old, not as if you were in 11th grade.

Okay, go.

And I don't think I would have understood that in 11th grade, by the way.

Okay.

Callum, when you drop an apple, the apple falls down out of your hand onto the ground.

And the reason that happens is because of a force that goes all throughout the universe called gravity.

And that same force that makes the apple fall to the ground makes all the stuff that's inside of the sun be held together very, very tightly.

And in fact, it's held together so tightly that some of the stuff merges.

And when it merges, stuff comes out of the merger.

And what explodes out of the merger is light, which is why we can see the world and why we can see the apple that just fell from your hand.

And also other kinds of energy.

And that is the kind of energy

that heats the world and that lights the world.

And that then trees use to create those airdrops that make us possible.

All right.

Callum, let us know how we did.

Yeah, Callum, I need to know.

I need both of our scores ranked on a scale of one to five.

Who did a better job?

And how well do you understand it now?

This is what happens to John, by the way, when he does Crash Course the Universe.

Now he's the science guy.

Oh, yeah, big time.

So science-y.

Hank, before we get to the news from Mars and ASU Wimbledon, real quick, about 17,000 German listeners, we love you all.

Thank you so much for listening and also for writing in, wrote in to say that I understand absolutely nothing about the word Schadenfreude and its German roots.

And I apologize for even trying.

But

yeah, my bad, my bad, my bad.

Schadenfreude.

Hank, what's the news from Mars?

There's, I mean, I feel like we haven't done this in a while.

There's a lot of news from Mars.

I don't even know exactly where to start.

I think I will just do, and I'll save this for like maybe we'll have more information on the other interesting thing that happened, which is a potentially bigger deal, but it's always going to be a maybe.

But

Curiosity, the good old Curiosity, the one that's been on there forever, over 10 years now.

Yeah.

It drove over a rock,

which it does.

But this rock broke.

And then we were able to see the inside of the rock.

So usually we get into the rocks on Mars by drilling into the rocks.

See, the rovers have drills.

but crushing a whole rock that's fun that's nice uh because you could see all the all the way through it and they found on the inside just a tremendous amount of like elemental sulfur so uh not like bound up but like sulfur crystals very pretty very weird to see on the surface of mars and very uh you know like lots of sort of thoughts about how it could have been created um whether that is sort of a volcanic thing or a hydrothermal vent thing or just a riverbed thing.

And

so

this is very exciting.

They were, they like looked back behind the rover and were like, what the heck happened there?

And this crushed rock had all of this exposed bright yellow

sulfur.

And so they are studying it and they're trying to figure out exactly how it might have been created.

But what we are finding is that Mars is very geologically complicated.

It has had a very active past

volcanically and

also had,

you know, a lot of water on it for a long time.

I don't know.

I'm starting, like, I am of increasingly of the opinion that I will probably live to find, to hear that life has existed on other planets, at least at some point in the past.

And Mars might be part of that story, might not.

Venus might be part of that story.

Jupiter moons might be part of that story.

You know, exoplanets might be part of that story.

But it is

seeming, I don't know, it's exciting exciting for me because I think that

if life is sort of just a thing that happens when you have, and this is a big

active area of both research and sort of like science philosophy, if life is just sort of a thing that happens in a world in a universe of chemistry, then

that's pretty dang cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, we just made an episode of Crash Course the Universe that's about the astrophysics of life and how,

and the question of whether life is routine, whether life sort of naturally emerges from places where there's an energy source and, you know,

opportunities to do chemistry.

It's pretty mind-blowing.

And the thought that...

The thought that we could live to see other ways that life has formed, potentially non, even non-DNA ways that life has formed, or non-RNA ways that life has formed, is absolutely thrilling to me.

It's like it would be the biggest discovery, not just of my lifetime, but like the biggest discovery in human history, I think.

Yeah.

We would know that we're not alone and then we could extrapolate out from there with much more clarity about how not alone we probably are.

It would be a very clarifying thing.

Though at the same time, I am increasingly of the belief that the thing that

makes us so unusual is that you need a planet to remain stable for many billions of years to get to where we are now.

I mean, think about it this way.

Eukaryotic life only evolved once, so far as we know.

And certainly a species as smart as us only evolved once.

Yep.

You know, like Dr.

Mack made the point in the podcast that we made that birds in New Zealand had hundreds of millions of years to make it happen, and they didn't.

Yep.

Well, Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon is slightly less mind-blowing.

Our new season's about to start.

We're in league two.

We'll be taking on in our first two games Colchester on August 10th and Bromley on August 17th.

I'll be going to the Bromley game, Bromley away.

You're welcome to come if you'd like, if you're looking for a weekend away from the fam.

Bromley away.

It's everybody's dream to go to Bromley.

I mean, the great thing about following AFC Wimbledon, Hank, is that it takes me to wonderful places like Mansfield and Bromley.

Other people want to go to Stratford-upon-Avon and see Shakespeare's second best bed, but not me, buddy.

I want to go to Bromley in the south suburbs of London.

You go to the TripAdvisor for Bromley.

I'm not making this up.

And the two things they recommend above all else are two different cemeteries.

And then the third thing they recommend is Charles Darwin's home, which is 40 minutes away.

Not in Bromley.

I just, I just went to Google Maps to find Bromley, and it brought me to a place that is not, it brought me to Bromley, but I don't think it brought, but it's not telling me exactly where it, what it is.

There's no word on the map that says Bromley.

No, I wouldn't describe it as a place with a word so much as a place that's a series of ideas.

Yeah, it does seem like they just sort of drew a line around a suburb.

But not, but it continues to be suburbs in all directions.

Right.

Yeah.

It's like a mid-level, it's a suburb.

It's not in London, but it's also in Greater London.

You know, it's Bromley.

And I, for one, can't wait to find all of its many charms.

They have a travel lodge.

That's a Yankee candle.

They have a Yankee candle.

I mean, I'm going to go, I'm going to make a whole Thoughts from Places video from Bromley.

Oh, I miss a thoughts from Places.

I'm going to explore it in all of its metaphorical depths.

If you're from Bromley, just take John in and and do one of those things where he's like, How much do you pay for rent?

And then you say, and then you get to look at through a little house tour.

Yeah.

If you are from Bromley, by the way, go to the Bromley game, sit in the Bromley stands.

I don't mind.

I'll be excited to meet you.

You can park here for 95p an hour.

That seems like a pretty good deal to me.

I'm not an expert.

Yeah.

Okay.

Bromley.

Looking forward to visiting Bromley in a couple weeks and seeing the new look AFC Wimbledon.

Woo!

Yeah, they got new pants.

New pants, new DFTBA logo.

Sorry, John, I'm just looking at Bromley.

New pants, new DFTBA logo.

It's a whole new season full of love and joy and opportunity.

Hank, thank you for podding with me.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

You can email us your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus.

It was mixed by Joseph Tunamedish.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

It was produced by Rosiana Halls-Rojas and Ahana West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Tuboki Chopravarti, the music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast by the Great Gonarola.

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