391: High Priest of Beef Days

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Laura's I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank.

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

John, what is it called when a bunch of sheep fall down the hill?

What is it called?

A lamb slide.

Lamb slide.

Oh.

Like that

Fleetwood Max song.

Like that Fleetwood Max song.

Maybe a short time.

I heard that song in the grocery store the other day, and I started to cry.

You're just a different person, post-cancer.

Your emotions are much closer to the edge of things.

They really are.

Yeah, it's weird.

It's weird for me.

Yeah.

I was like, eggs.

I called Hank a couple weeks ago catastrophizing, as I usually do.

Happens.

And Hank was like, you're right.

You're right.

You should should panic.

And I was like, that's not

the role that you play in my life.

I am much more anxious now.

I think.

It's interesting, and this will not be news to you, but when I am nervous about one thing, I become suddenly much more able to be nervous about other things.

And so I find that if I am having health anxiety, that then I have business anxiety, and then I have relationship anxiety, or I have like child anxiety and then the and and they're all sort of feet they all like my brain doesn't know what like just it's like i'm anxious and so it doesn't know which thing to apply it to so it just applies it to all of them yeah like i know there's a threat yeah but i don't exactly know what the threat is but i know it's a very serious threat yeah and my and my uh my my instinct is to get out my mental baseball bat and hit it with it yeah just like

like i get the meat tenderizing hammer that has the spikes on it that makes the chicken very flat.

And I hit the anxiety with that, but that it just makes it more mad.

If I, when I feel a lot of anxiety, the thing that I like to do is ruminate on it and try to solve it via thinking.

When of course it was caused by

thinking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like the old, uh, it's like the old strategy for curing illness where whatever's causing the illness must also be the solution to the illness.

Should we listen, Hank.

Should we talk about the fact that we're recording this on a video?

We're doing video.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's all new now.

I mean, we're fancy.

I don't know if you're like the Kelsey brothers now.

I mean, you're the corner is very nice.

I love your little corner.

Thank you.

This is a painting of the American rapper M.F.

Doom.

Or at least two of us.

That's here in the background.

I've also got the classic Pizza John hot sauce back here somewhere.

A typewriter.

Uh-huh.

A podos.

That's actually just for effects.

That's Pizza John.

I write on something called Google Docs.

And then I've got a,

what is this called?

A needle point that somebody made me that says sneezing isn't normal.

I never sneeze.

And a 3D printed DFTBA logo.

Yeah, I've got it all back here.

So I'm just in a corner of my basement.

It's actually kitty corner to where I make the Vlogbrothers videos.

And then you're in your usual Vlogbrothers video spot, but at a slightly different angle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is where I sit when I make content and also all the other times.

Yeah.

I don't ever come down here except when I'm making stuff.

Really?

Because, well, I've developed an intense fear of radon.

Oh, have you not just had that checked?

Oh, I've had a check tank.

That's not how, that's not how it works.

Can you just get like a permanent detector?

No, it's expensive to have somebody come in and check for radon.

You can't do it every week.

It would be weird.

Oh, it would be weird, but that wouldn't be the first weird thing you've ever done.

Hey, speaking of weird stuff, I think it's confession time, which is to say that one thing we don't talk about much here is that we often talk when it's not on the podcast.

Like we talk to each other, not for the podcast because we're brothers.

It's a real life thing.

It's not just a bit.

And we were just talking.

And actually, we were talking to an audience, but it was a smaller audience.

It was the audience of our Patreon supporters at patreon.com slash dearhank and john.

We were just talking.

You told me something that blew my mind.

And it's got me really, it's got my mind really roiling, which is that just beef, just eating beef, nothing else, bakes in just beef, just eating the meat of cows,

bakes in 1.5 degrees of Celsius of warming.

Yeah.

1.5 Celsius degrees of global warming over the next century.

Just beef.

Yeah.

So if we just stopped eating beef, we would be like part of the way there.

But then you were like, no, we don't have to stop eating beef, Hank.

You were quite.

Well, I mean,

it's what we need.

We definitely need way fewer cows, which is very hard.

It's a very hard thing to do.

We need technological solutions to the beef problem, which a lot of technologists hear this and they're like, okay, we'll make beef out of cells in machines or we'll make impossible burgers.

But I don't think that's the kind of technology we need.

I think we need social and cultural technologies.

This is such an underrated part of the conversation about everything, not just about climate change, that like social norms are incredibly powerful.

Like, I'll give you an example.

30 years ago, when I was just a young un, I remember this guy was like, I don't have a front lawn.

I just have a garden in my front lawn where my front lawn would be, and I grow food and flowers, and that's what I do.

And I was like, that's crazy.

People have front lawns.

Well, now I don't have a front lawn because that guy didn't have a front lawn.

And he was part of a slow mission to get rid of turf greed that has taken like 30 years to unfold.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And will take another 30 years to like get to the mainstream.

But the power of changing norms is so big.

The potential of it is so huge.

Yeah.

It's bigger than many, many technological changes.

There are many things that we are working very hard to fix that if we just all collectively made different decisions, would have a bigger impact much faster.

And one of these, apparently, is eating beef, which is great for me to know know because that's not that hard for me to just go from not that much to none.

But you said, it was very interesting

that actually we don't need to like completely eliminate the eating of beef from a climate change perspective.

I mean, from the cows' perspectives, they probably would be in favor of that.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that different people are going to have different beef intakes.

But yeah, I think that it, that, that, like, a lot of people like it a lot and don't want to live like if you say you can never have beef anymore like you can't legislate you can't say like no beef is illegal now because there were

social norms where like you can still order beef in a restaurant it's just the waiter's going to look at you weird right it's like or or maybe it's not like i mean that would certainly like it'd be like smoking indoors well that is now illegal that's that's now legislated yeah it'd be like smoking on a plane in 1992 like i did it but i people looked at me yeah they were like wow god you jerk how weird is that by the way that i lived in a time where not only could one smoke on a plane, but I personally smoked on an airplane

30,000 feet above

the surface of the earth.

I had a fire in my hands.

Are you joking?

You actually smoked on planes?

I smoked on the plane.

Was it like a plane?

A French plane?

It was a plane to Italy.

And from Italy, for that matter.

Okay, I was right, though.

That wasn't a divided plane.

You could only smoke in the back two rows, but like, it's not like there was

a tangible divider between the the back two rows and the rest of the plane.

So we would just walk back to the back of the plane, have a cigarette, and then walk back to our seats.

Like, what a crazy system.

Yes.

Right.

Like now we look back on that and we're like, that's obviously absurd.

People should be able to do it.

I remember like as chowders on planes.

I remember being in like like in like skeezy diners with dad and like coming home and like my nose would be burning from the cigarette smoke.

My nose would be twitching with joy even when I was like eight years old.

I knew what I wanted out of life.

Sorry that you're that is actually a better example, right?

Because like part of it was legislation, but a lot of it is norms, right?

Like even if it weren't illegal to smoke on a plane, if somebody was smoking on the back of a plane, like people would be like, hey, you've got a fire on an airplane.

That's not cool.

It's, don't do it.

It's, it's so cool.

What I think we need to do is just kind of start to create norms around this stuff.

I think in general, we just need a lot.

We just need a lot more.

But I don't want it to just be like a negative thing.

You know,

we need more like ceremony.

We need more like events in our, because we have like

these, these things that have all been kind of, I don't know, ultimately pretty co-opted by like the candy industry.

You know, a lot of our holidays are about candy now.

Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day and Easter and Halloween are all candy-focused holidays.

It's a lot of church.

It's weird to have three that are candy days.

And then we've got got Christmas and birthdays, which are gift-giving days.

We've got Thanksgiving, which is very nice.

This is at least one holiday where the main thing, we put it in the name, so you can't have it not be about that.

It's for being grateful about stuff.

So we've got that.

That's nice.

That's a good holiday.

Yeah.

Are you arguing that we should get rid of the other holidays?

It's fascinating, aren't you?

No, no, no.

I think that we should add.

I think it should be additive.

I just think that we should have, because I mean,

maybe.

I think what i do like halloween for the reason everybody hates halloween which is that it gives you up out of your outside and and you have to go talk to your neighbors yeah like you don't knock on the doors of strangers it's a huge inversion yeah of like a lot of these um sort of devilish holidays or whatever it's a huge inversion of social norms and expectations and so we've become so much more insular, so much more focused on like the sanctity of the home.

Nobody visits the home without permission, which is of course a stark contrast to like 14th century france where like somebody would literally like lift up the roof of your house anytime they wanted and be like hey it's me from the village yeah how's it going i heard you i heard your wife wasn't well exactly and so halloween did you just give me a thumbs up no i think you did it dude do the thumbs up again can you do a thumbs up

gave me a thumbs up because i did the thumbs up

oh no john doesn't like

because

it makes it rain when the...

I don't think anyone can see this except for us because it's not on the camera.

I don't know.

I think that Zencasta recorded that.

So the people who are watching the video version of this are going to get to enjoy that.

I have no idea.

I don't think that mine does that.

Hank, what we need are beef days.

You remember in the old days how they had saint days, and unlike saint days, there would be these big feasts and the rest of the time you'd sort of be fasting or whatever?

Yeah, I don't remember that because I wasn't alive and also I don't know anything about history the way that you do.

So I just don't know that.

in Europe, there were these saint days, but it wasn't exclusive to Europe.

Like other faiths also have their versions of saint days.

I'm just saying we should have days where we feast, where we eat beef, and we should call them beef days.

And each of these three or four beef days a year, once a season, should celebrate something.

You know, they should like, instead of like celebrating individual saints who like achieved miracles or whatever, I feel like they should celebrate like collective achievements, not to sound like overly communistic, but like I feel like they should celebrate like teachers.

We should have a teacher's beef day.

We should have a, we should, you know, and like maybe, maybe we can even vote every year on, man, that's probably too complicated, but like maybe we can, maybe we can

elect a high priest of beef days, the priestess.

Yeah.

Of beef days.

And every year it's a different person and that person chooses what the, what the four beef days are about.

And like we all wait in hot anticipation to learn what we're going to be celebrating on our beef days every year.

I don't think that, John,

I'm going to have way more faith in humanity.

And I think that we should just pick a random person to be the high priest of beef days.

It should not be elected.

You should just select a person.

You should say, we have faith that you're going to take this responsibility seriously.

And you're not going to be like, oh, it's going to be like this year's beef days are going to be for like

uncomfortable IKEA couches, AR-15s, and hot wheels that have broken axles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And people will take the responsibility seriously instead.

I think they would.

And I think actually we would find that we have more in common when it comes to beef days than we would think.

Yeah.

That there is more that we can share in a celebration of on our beef days.

And so we don't eliminate beef.

Obviously, lots of people on beef days won't eat beef.

That's great.

We encourage that.

But you should eat whatever you love, you know, that feels rare and special to you.

Right.

And also maybe beef days a year.

And then the other 362 days a year, people should be like, it's as weird to eat beef on a non-beef day as it is to like smoke cigarettes on an airplane.

That's just weird.

Why would you do that?

Well, we're not going to, but I mean, that's like 20 years from now.

Like, you've got, you've got to start out with just like, these are the people who do beef days.

And like, these are beef day people.

And, and you're like, oh, you do beef days?

I do beef days too.

And it's like kind of weird.

It's like being a member of the Awesome Socks Club where you like spot socks that you recognize.

But like, we're not going to start out with it being weird.

This could work.

That like, you've got to start with a small group of people.

And like, only people who do beef days are eligible to become the high high priestess of beef days.

And

is there a small chance that we're starting a cult?

John, I think there's a small chance that we started a cult a long time ago.

So

now that we're introducing holidays, though, I do worry a little bit.

Look, the McElroys have candle nights.

We've got Esther Day.

We've already done it.

We've been in there.

We've been in it.

Maybe Esther Day is one of the beef days.

But the idea is that everyone agrees not to eat beef

either ever or else to only eat beef on beef days.

Yeah.

Now, we have a version of this in my family, actually, but it's a little bit different.

It's called Shrimp Day.

It's June 26th.

It's the one day a year we force Alice to eat a shrimp.

You got to just make sure to like make it.

She can pick.

She can absolutely pick what kind of shrimp she wants to eat.

She can pick if she wants to go to a restaurant.

She wants home shrimp.

She can have any kind of, she can have it fried.

She can have it grilled, whatever she needs, peeled, whatever.

Yeah.

But she's got to eat a shrimp.

And we all just sit around the table and we all have a nice shrimp meal and we watch her eat the shrimp.

Eat one shrimp.

And she hates it.

And it's great.

We love it.

It gets funnier every year.

We've been doing it since she was six and she's 11 now.

Did you know that I came out of chemo allergic to shrimp?

No.

Yeah.

So I went in allergic to scallops and oysters and clams.

Man, first off, don't tell Alice about this because she might be willing to undergo that

to avoid shrimp.

And I came out and I love all of you.

You came out of chemo allergic to shrimp?

I love shrimp.

One of the first meals I had when Catherine and I went on our first trip after chemo, I had like a breakfast of shrimp and grits.

And I felt immediately super nauseous.

And I was like, this is like my chemo coming, like just like you sort of still like off from chemo or we just like were on a plane yesterday.

I don't know.

And then I had like one shrimp from somebody's plate because like I wanted to test it.

And I immediately got nauseous again.

And I was like, oh my God, I'm allergic to shrimp.

That sucks, man.

Which is a thing that happens.

Mostly because it means you can't participate in shrimp day, the greatest holiday that ever.

I do.

And I like, yeah, I like shrimp.

Beef days.

I also have had a little bit of a reaction to crab and lobster, too, which is

nauseous.

What if our greatest legacy doesn't turn out to be Crash Course or Dear Hank and John or Vlog Brothers or The Fault in Our Stars, but Beef Day?

What if Beef Day is our gift to the world?

look john it doesn't have to be one thing we can have many gifts that we give to the world and one of them can be beef days and i really like the idea of electing a high priestess of beef days every year but for just like as a random selection and it's like it's on you you have this weight on your shoulders now i mean i think you got a video topic for friday i've already got a video topic for friday john All right.

In that case, we'll just let this whole idea go.

It's not worth it.

Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

John, this first question comes from Lucas, who who asks, I have a silly question about the Declaration of Independence.

I know we have it on display in DC, but like, how do we get that?

Is it a copy?

Did we send the original to the king?

What happened when they actually wrote those documents?

Did they write several copies and send it around?

I hope I'm not independently declaring that I don't know how it worked, Lucas.

I think that most people can independently declare that they do not know how it works.

Do you know how it works, John?

Well, only from watching the film National Treasure, which is a great documentary made about 20 years ago with Nicholas Cage in it, where he sort of talks about the history of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, yeah.

The original,

it says at the top, this is the original Declaration of Independence July 4th,

1776.

And that's how we know that it's the original because somebody wrote that at the top.

And then they all signed it, and that was the one.

But they also printed a bunch of other ones.

Yeah.

And they did send a copy to King George.

And it like showed up later, like he'd already heard about it by the time he got it.

It takes a while.

Yeah.

But the copy they sent to him was only signed by two people because they didn't want him to know all the people who signed it.

Because that would be just a list of the people that you want to get.

So it just had John Hancock and like one other person.

I don't know who else it was.

But of course, John Hancock always looking to put his signature on anything.

He was like, me.

He signed every one of those declarations.

He signed declarations of whatever.

He signed declarations of fifteen.

He signed declarations of dependence.

He was like, just kidding, we are dependent upon it.

We are so dependent.

How are we going to get our tea, you guys?

And,

but, but we, that, that one that was sent to King George has been lost.

It is, it no longer exists.

Either he destroyed it because he was like, screw you guys, or it was like a drop.

Do you think he destroyed it the way like sometimes like I'll get something about taxes in the mail and I'll just like maybe like throw it in the trash just because like I was like, like, I can't deal with this right now.

Yeah.

It's just like, you just put it on the pile of stuff that's going in the trash and you're like, I won't throw it away.

And then it gets thrown away and you're like, oh, well,

that's how he did it.

Yeah.

He just put it on the pile of stuff that goes in the fire.

But it also may have been destroyed

during the

during World War II.

Like a third of King George's papers were destroyed in a bombing.

So it was either destroyed then or just was like mysteriously not kept, which would be strange because apparently King George was super into keeping things.

He kept everything.

Well, it makes sense that it could have been destroyed in that bombing, though.

We lost a lot of stuff.

We lose a lot of stuff from wars.

We lose a lot of stuff from wars.

Wars are not great.

Oh, God, they're the worst.

I mean, it's one of the worst things people do.

This next question comes from Carrie, who writes, Dear Green Brothers.

My niece was playing with a Noah's Ark toy at my in-laws' house, and it has an ark and two people and two giraffes and two elephants and two sheep.

And it got all the animals.

What animals would have been on the ship?

Like in artwork for Noah's Ark, there's always like safari animals, but do we know what animals would have been around at that time?

Were there giraffes and zebras, sheep, woolly mammoths?

Evolutionarily curious, Carrie.

John, I don't think we're going to be able to get into all of this question, but I am very curious.

Was, I just want to know if Noah had aquariums on the ark.

Because if the flood was global, then that would make all of the freshwater into saltwater temporarily.

And that would, of course,

bad for all the goldfish and whatnot.

Yeah.

So I wonder if that's a good thing.

The rainbow trout would have a terrible time of it.

So, do you think Noah had aquariums?

Had to.

Had to.

Had to.

I love that.

I love it.

This is like a dentist.

Had to have insectariums, had to have like

stuff like soil just for soil bacteria and earthworms and whatnot.

Like, had to have what are those called terrariums?

Nematodes.

Yeah, terrarium.

A lot of areas

on the ark.

People say that.

Yeah, it was.

It was itself an area.

It was a, it was.

Yeah.

It was the ultimate area.

It was like a zoo, but with everything in it.

That floated.

It was sort of like the carnival.

You know, that really big carnival cruise ship?

Uh-huh.

Whichever one?

The Emperor of the Seas or whatever?

The Emperor of the Seas.

But instead of having 13,000 humans, it had like all the

nematodes.

Right.

Well, I mean, it is nice that Carnival has built these ships for us just in case we ever need a place to put all of the animals again.

Right.

Great point.

And maybe those crypto guys who wanted to create a nation on the ocean that didn't have laws, but that was just a cruise ship that was its own country, maybe they're like just the modern Noah.

I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to push back against that a little bit.

I want a yes and you.

Okay.

I want to.

Okay.

I'm quite fond of Noah.

You think he had some things figured out?

I think he had

some abilities.

I think he had some.

No question.

Yeah, maybe gifts.

He had some, let's put it this way.

He had some outside support that I think those crypto bros might not have.

I think he'd be the first to admit that he was not a self-sufficient art creator.

Not doing it all on his own.

He had some support.

It's nice to have that level of support.

That's the dream.

I oftentimes feel as if I have a lot of support in my professional life.

I got a lot of people I work with who are great.

I got a lot of members of a community who are great.

But you don't have that omnipotent support.

But I don't have that omnipotent support.

That omnipotent

support, that support that's in all places and all times at once.

Man, you could just float on that.

Jeez.

Literally.

Yeah.

All right, Hank, let's answer another question from our listeners.

This one comes from Dashel, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just accidentally walked into a fancy restaurant.

I I thought it was a grocery store, and I know I should leave, but they already seated me and gave me a menu.

What do I do?

Do I stay or am I allowed to leave?

Please help.

Nothing rhymes with Dashel.

Lol.

Oh, man.

Like, I'm sorry.

You can absolutely leave, but you can't leave.

No, you're having, what you're having, Dashel, is a very expensive memory that will last a lifetime.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, there's probably a way to get out of that place for less than 50 bucks.

Have I ever told you about about the time I ended up in the Versace Mansion?

Oh, what?

So one time we were in Miami for an art show, and

this was when Sarah was working at a museum.

Okay.

And she was like, I have to meet this famous collector.

They have this artwork that we want to get on loan for our show.

And I said, great.

I love going to fancy places.

And she was like, they're at a dinner at the Versace mansion, and they'll come out when they can.

And I was like, so what do we do?

Just like stand outside,

wait for the people to come outside.

She was like, no, no, no, there's a champagne bar.

And so we'll just go to the bar and we'll have a...

The Versace Mansion?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll go to the, there's also a restaurant there, I guess.

Oh, okay.

Go to the bar.

So there's like public spaces.

I don't know.

I don't.

Yeah.

Listen,

I don't understand how any of this stuff works, Hank.

Like, I live a very comfortable life.

This is on a whole different scale.

Right.

This is, this is, these are places.

I've brushed up against some of this too, where I'm like, oh,

I am a fish out of water.

I'm like,

no, this area right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So we go to this

Versace mansion, which is very nice and well-appointed and everything.

And we go in there, and I look, you know, I look like a Schlepp.

I know there's a comment that always sticks into my mind where it's somebody said, it's so funny to think of Schleppe John Green walking around that nice house with all that art, referring to my house.

Now, imagine the same Schleppe John Green walking around a famous mansion.

Yeah, right.

Not in Indianapolis.

In Miami, during like the biggest art show of the year.

So very uncomfortable, very fish out of water.

And they're like, Can I help you?

And we were like, Yeah, we're supposed to like meet some people here who can maybe loan an artwork to this museum show.

And then you should have been like, Look, this is a polo.

It's named after an expensive sport.

I don't know if you've heard of Ralph Lauren.

Some people say he's among the greatest Ralphs.

So I will thank you to give me a seat at your champagne bar.

Somebody sit us down.

And they give us the champagne bar menu.

And, you know, I understand that there's a markup when you go to a restaurant or a bar.

Like it costs three to four times more to have a glass of wine at a restaurant.

There's all kinds of good reasons for that, right?

Like you got to pay the staff.

It's a lot of work.

They've done a lot of curation for you, et cetera.

I'm grateful for their expertise, grateful to pay more i sit down at this champagne bar the very least expensive bottle of champagne you have to get a bottle no no no glass of champagne oh okay glass of champagne the least expensive one is 92

i'm sitting there with sarah this is like 2008 okay i'm not i'm not swimming in cash paper towns hasn't come out yet yeah and Even after Paper Towns came out, I wasn't swimming in cash.

She's a curator.

Paper Towns is the one that was famously

delivered to you.

Yeah.

It did change my life.

I mean, I remember like getting the first royalty check and being like, now that's a living.

But anyway, we're sitting there.

We got this.

And the waiter comes back and he's like, what can I get you guys?

And I was like, one

singular glass of your juice.

The glasses come in halves.

Can I get a half a glass of this one?

I've done the math and $47 sounds reasonable.

So we're sitting there sharing our $92, three and a half ounces of champagne.

Yeah.

And this guy doesn't come out for like 45 minutes.

He can see us.

There's like a glass thing.

So he can see us.

We can see him.

Yeah.

And I'm just, I'm not afraid.

I'm just staring him down.

I'm like, please make this misery end.

Like the worst case scenario is that even taking the smallest possible sips, we work our way through this 47 bucks a piece, three ounces of champagne.

Yeah.

And finally, comes out and they have a conversation, whatever, whenever.

The artwork does end up in the

in the show.

So it worked.

Man, that was expensive.

So that's what you got to do, Dashel.

You're just, you're going to have that meal and you're going to freaking enjoy it.

I, John, I've actually, I've just looked at where the Versace Mansion is in Miami Beach.

And one thing I can say is if we don't institute beef days, it will not exist for long.

Like, I think the Versace Mansion should be a big sponsor of Beef Days.

It's not in a great locale with respect to continuing to exist.

That's a worrying spot.

I'd say that that's at like three feet above sea level.

Not a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Welcome to, welcome to a new holiday tradition, Beef Days, brought to you by Miami Beach.

Yeah.

And Versace.

Well, so you got to upscale it.

You got to make it so it's a status thing.

People only do beef days if they're high status.

And that's how you can project that you're a good potential mate.

Beef days

are aspirational.

You want to be part of beef days.

Have you?

You got to wait to be invited to beef days.

Oh,

you've been invited to beef days.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We identified you as a high net values individual and that you

bring enough to the table that you can participate in beef day and have a one in 1,000 chance of being the person who decides what we're celebrating on the three beef days of 2025.

Wow.

I don't know, John.

Sounds like it's going to,

I don't hate it.

I don't hate it.

I don't hate it either.

I mean, I usually hate your ideas.

Doesn't matter.

That's why I like it.

That's why I like it.

I usually hate your ideas, but this one was mine.

Yeah, it's good.

It's good.

It reminds me that other time I had a good idea for Crash Course.

It was not a bad idea, John.

Which reminds me that this video is brought to you by Crash Course.

You can't get a Crash Course coin anymore.

It's too late.

But to all of the people who got Crash Course coins this year, thank you so much.

You are the reason that that wonderful thing can exist in the world, and it is deeply, deeply appreciated.

You're the kind of value individual who will be

you can sign up for beef day anytime

you can be you can be a day one member of the beef day club

uh today's podcast is also of course brought to you by beef day

beef day is

the hidden new holiday that everyone wants to be part of but only a few people for now get to be because we're gatekeeping this thing yeah

And also this podcast is brought to you by, you guessed it, Noah's Arium.

Noah's Arium, it's not just an ark.

It's not just an ark.

It's got freshwater aquarium in it.

Where are the crawdads going to go?

And today's podcast is, of course, brought to you by King George's burnt version of the Declaration of Independence.

If it isn't sitting on the countertop anymore, I don't have to worry about it.

We also have a Project for Awesome message from Maury.

Hey, Saturday, Sparklet Peeps.

Thanks for being an amazing sacred space during hard times and good.

It's been fun to introduce some of you to Nerdfighteria and to share it with those already here.

I love you all.

Well, thank you so much, Maury.

Thanks for being part of the Project for Awesome and part of Nerdfighteria.

Okay.

So you know when a new shirt just becomes your go-to?

That is what happened to me when I picked up a few new pieces from Quince.

They are my everyday shirts.

If you see me in a button-down, it's almost certainly a Quince button-down because they're the first things I reach for in my closet.

Lightweight, comfortable, and always on point.

Quince has all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners.

And by working directly with top artisans to cut out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without crazy markup.

So elevate your closet with Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash dear hank for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-in-n-ce-e dot com slash dear hank to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash dear Hank.

Hey, we've got another question.

This one comes from Karina, who asks, Dear John and Hank, I was packing up stuff left in my parents' house and I came across my prom dress from a few years ago.

I bought it, but didn't end up going to my senior prom.

My question is: what do I do with the dress?

My mom said I should have one of those photo shoots where you walk into the sea with the dress on, but that might ruin it.

And I think I still want to donate it for someone else when I'm done.

If you have any dubious advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thankfully, not crying in my prom dress, Karina.

I think the best thing to do, Hank, and I don't want to belabor this joke, but I think the best thing to do is to wear your prom dress every beef day for the next 10 years.

You know, like make it special.

I do.

I like the idea of dressing up for beef days.

If you're a vegetarian, by all means, you can still be part of beef days.

Of course.

The commitment that we're making is 362 days a year of no beef.

Yeah.

And if you want to take that to 365, amazing.

No, no harm, no foul.

Yeah.

But you could still wear your prom dress.

You could and should.

I like the idea of dressing up for beef days.

And I do not, I'm not saying dress up like, and you can do whatever you want.

It's going to be silly.

I mean, you, you make your best effort to look nice on beef days.

Yeah.

Is this, is this wild?

Am I turning into a

conservative?

It's silly.

It's, it's beautiful.

I think that we, I think you should look up.

I think we could look nice three days a year for beef days.

Yeah.

So you're proposing this is a dress-up day.

It's a dress-up day, just for dinner.

It's like Thanksgiving, but it's even, is it dressier than thanksgiving i think at this point thanksgiving isn't dressy at all for most of us i put on a collar but i put on a collar most days you are you are only ever in polos is that what you mean by a collar no i wear uh i wear a button-down shirt some days yeah okay but i always got a collar of some kind it's my way of saying i'm not like you youths

We do have to signal that nowadays, don't we?

Yeah, otherwise people would mistake me for a young person.

No, that's not the problem.

They would mistake you for a person who's trying to be like a young person.

Just because I'm doing stuff in young people's face.

Yeah, I don't not the Steve Bushimi with the skateboard.

You got to avoid this fate.

I'm having a bit of a how-do-you-do fellow kids issue right now, Hank.

Oh, yeah.

Which is that I, as you know, I've been wearing Adidas sneakers every day for the last 22

years because

my friend Amy Krauss Rosenthal, the first time I ever gave a reading in public, she hosted it and she hired a professional complimenter.

And the professional complimenter said, I like your shoes, which were these brand new Adidas Sambas.

And I was like, oh my God, I've got to keep wearing these.

The professional complimenter thinks they're cool.

And I've just been wearing them ever since.

Well, as you may be aware, everyone else on Earth, all the cool young people have discovered that Adidas Sambas and Gazelles are the coolest shoes on Earth.

And suddenly people think that I'm hip, but I'm not hip.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This happens where you like have like a static style and then other, like occasionally construction will intersect with your style for a brief moment and you're like, ah, this is uncomfortable.

But in two years, everybody's going to be like, oh, he still wears sambas.

That's so.

No, I've been wearing them the whole time.

I don't know, John.

Maybe I should have it.

Maybe I should make a polo shirt that's like a regular polo shirt, except it says, I've been wearing Adidas sneakers every day for the last 22 years.

This is not a fashion statement.

This is who I am.

Or.

You could take what the world has given to you and accept that you need to get

grown-up shoes.

You need to get

no for you.

You need to get black new balances like a normal dad.

You need to wear Meryls.

You need to wear hiking shoes to walk around your house in.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

I don't want to bring up.

The name and good reputation of my late friend Amy Cross Rosenthal, but she would not want me to do that.

I told me to play a Trump card, but she's not here anymore.

It wasn't even Amy's who said this.

It was just some stranger whose job was to say nice things.

Who was hired by Amy?

Are your shoes a trip?

Are your conversation

has come to an end?

Okay.

I didn't realize that my shoes were more than dressed.

Shoot my shoes.

Karina, you should keep your prom dress.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I've completely forgot about Karina's prom dress situation.

I think Karina should next beef day throw a prom rave.

And it'll be like prom,

but you should hire like a legit DJ who raves the kind of raves that you're not allowed to go to, but this one or you shouldn't go to, and this one you can because it's going to be more chill.

Well, or it's just it's beef day.

Like nothing, nothing counts on beef day.

Beef day rave.

Nothing counts.

It's like the purge, but for beef.

Well,

it's not quite like the purge.

I don't think that we should introduce a holiday where killing is legal, just where eating beef is allowed for one day.

Yeah, it's allowed, but not required.

John, this next question before we get to the news from Mars and ABC Wimbledon is from Cindy, who asks, howdy, Hank.

John, how do I know if I'm a boring person?

My fiancé and I have been living together for two years now, and I feel like we often don't have things to talk about, even when we're planning a wedding, which is a wild experience to have so much much you need to get done with someone and nothing fun to talk about.

Even when it comes to hanging out with my friends, I often get nervous about what we will talk about and I'll plan hangouts no longer than two hours or that involve lots of activities.

I'm getting worried that I'm a boring person.

What if my friends also notice that I don't have anything really to talk about?

How would I even know?

Pride and prejudice, Cindy.

I think that most people who are really, first off, I don't think they're boring people.

I think that all people are inherently fascinating yeah and i don't agree with the idea that you're boring just because you need structure to come up with conversation topics lots of people need that that's why like people buy those like big boxes full of conversation starters and feel free to do that right like yeah don't like necessarily bust them out but be going to have some of them in your head ready to go yeah you can always ask hank's classic question what's your favorite bridge

that starts a conversation the main conversation being well huh?

It really, I think it really gets you thinking.

What's it?

What's the last time you just got stuck in a restaurant?

Everybody's like, there's all kinds of things that occur, you know, in a life.

Yeah.

And, and those, those conversations can often be freeform.

But I, I was sitting recently with a friend of mine and she said, if you could just get on a plane and go anywhere right now, where would it be?

And I was like, you had that one ready to go.

But regardless, great question.

And I'd love to know your answer to it.

And I'd love to know my answer to it i hadn't thought about it before so what's your answer to it i don't know i had a hard time answering i've got a lot of places i like to go i gave catherine i was like catherine really wants to go to prince edward island and i got to want to do whatever catherine wants to do uh

yeah um but the um i'd like to go to morocco i'd like to go to the southern hemisphere again somewhere there's a lot of it that I haven't been to.

I'd like to go to.

I don't really want to get on a plane right now.

Right.

That is a thing.

I'm I'm like,

like maybe Seattle.

I'm still going to get on one tomorrow and a couple times next week.

I don't really want to.

Yeah.

Well, maybe if it were a better place than wherever you're going.

There's lots of people.

I'm going to Portland.

Portland's nice.

Portland's so nice.

We had such a good time.

We went up to the Oregon coast is what we did, which is absolutely

much to raise.

Anyway,

the point is, you're not a boring person,

but I understand worrying about it.

When it comes to like having conversations conversations in your core relationships, I actually think like that's more of a concern than like struggling with conversation topics with friends.

Yeah.

But like, I don't know about you, Hank, but like 90% of the conversations I have with my core relationships are about like

when we're going to pick someone up from

softball.

Logistical questions.

Yeah.

Logistics.

There's a lot of logistics.

And so it's, it, it's to be expected that you're having a lot of like logistical conversations around the wedding.

In terms of like the deeper conversations, I think you have to make space for it.

Like we do a thing called having a dialogue where like one person like holds the holds a rock or something and the rock means that you're listening instead of talking.

Do you really do a rock?

You do like a talking stick thing?

No,

and you listen and listen and listen and then you hand the rock over and you say like, well, that makes me feel or that makes me think about or, you know, this is what that's like from my perspective.

And like, I do find that when you do that in a very intentional way, like you get pretty deep pretty fast.

Um, you kind of uncover layers really quickly, yeah.

But that's that's that's a very intentional way of having a conversation, that's not like a casual like conversation that you're gonna have over breakfast or whatever.

And so, I think if you wanna dig deeper, like there's always opportunities to do that, but like the conversations over breakfast a lot of times are pretty boring, and that's fine.

Yeah, the other thing I'll say is that

there is

like being like being interesting has two halves.

There's being interesting and there's being interested.

And

so, like, being, you know, Catherine is, whether it's actually there or not, she does a good job of pretending that she is interested in all of my weird stuff that I

suddenly want to tell her about.

And I am interested in all of her weird stuff that she wants to tell me about.

And that,

I think, makes us both feel like we are not boring people because we are are interested in each other.

And sometimes when there's just like a lot going on, there's not space for being interested or for being interesting.

But I do think that that is an important part of a relationship, that you have a person who is not just interesting to you, but also seems interested in you.

And also if there's like a gap between the amount of interested that you want and the amount of interested that there is, then that's also a

thing thing to address, a conversation to have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree with all that.

A lot of conversations come from listening, not from talking.

Oh, man.

Yes.

A lot of my thoughts, too.

Yeah.

I learn more from listening than I do from talking, but I still talk a lot.

Too much, some would argue.

Hey, so listen.

Yeah.

You may remember that there was a glorious past

where AFC Wimbledon were blessed with the company for three long, beautiful years

of the Messi from Montserrat.

Montserratian international Lyle Taylor, arguably the greatest striker in the history of the AFC Wimbledon era.

With his mop of blonde hair.

He was a hero to many of us.

I saw him score score a goal at Wembley to send Wimbledon up to League One.

He's now 34 years old, Hank.

He's not a young man.

Well.

And the reports are he wants to come home.

Oh.

He wants to come home.

According to the South London press,

he wants to come home to AFC Wimbledon.

How does wanting turn into occurring?

Big question.

Big question.

So Lyle Taylor went from Wimbledon to Nottingham Forest, where he made it all the way up to the Premier League.

He never actually played in a Premier League game, but he had a contract with the Premier League club, which is more lucrative than playing for AFC Wimbledon, just to state the obvious.

And now he's 34 and he wants to come home, at least according to the South London press.

The fans want him, of course.

We want him back.

He's an amazing player.

The question is.

Could we ever afford to even have 34-year-old Lyle Taylor, right?

Like,

I think he's got to want to come back.

He's a man who cares about charity, you know, he's done a lot of charity work for, for, in our community and for the club.

And

this would be another charity engagement.

But he's at the end of his career.

Wouldn't you want to spend the last two years of your career?

in a place where you are absolutely beloved, where you will be remembered for a generation to come, where you can probably work for the club after you retire.

I think it makes sense.

But of course, I'm hugely biased.

So this is all the drama right now in the AFC Wimbledon fan community.

Is Lyle Taylor coming home?

And if so, will he still be, I mean, obviously he's not going to be 27-year-old Lyle Taylor.

Yeah.

But like, will he still be the person we all remember him as, which is a guy who knows exactly where the goal is?

And I,

the dream is alive.

That was a good thing about Lyle Taylor, John.

He knew where the goal was.

I mean, one thing about Lyle Taylor, like, you get a lot of complaints about Lyle Taylor, but he always knew where the goal was.

And one thing we struggled with since losing Ali Al Hamedy is having a lot of players who know exactly where the goal is.

I mean, y'all did pretty well this season, ultimately, but you're not in the league you'd like to be in.

We're not where we'd like to be.

We're not where we ought to be.

In fact, statistics just released today again showed that in terms of the size of our club, we have enough support to be in League One or even the championship.

Out of all the teams in League Two, I think we have the second most Instagram followers.

Out of all the teams in League Two, we have like the third or fourth highest attendance, second or third like percentage of the stadium sold out every weekend.

So like we are, we're getting there

in terms of the support base.

It's just, can we get there on the field with our current budget not spending into like

astonishing amounts of debt like so many other League Two clubs.

Right.

Right.

So, hopefully, Lyle Taylor will come home.

It'd be great.

I would, I love that guy.

I love that guy.

It's big news, John.

It's big news.

That would be fun.

Big news.

I don't see what's going on in Mars.

It's just money.

Like, I mean, it's hard.

Like, I would never say to somebody, like, hey, you should take a 50% pay cut because of loyalty.

But

at the same time, yeah, I wish you would take a a 50% pay cut because of loyalty.

Well, in Mars News, they did a fancy simulation to figure out how often Mars gets hit by asteroids.

Now, you might think you could just tell this by all the asteroid impacts that are on Mars, but it could be hard to date those.

There's a lot of them.

And it actually turns out that Mars gets hit by more rocks than Earth for a few different reasons,

even though it's smaller.

So Earth, you'd think maybe it would get hit by more rocks because it's bigger, because it would suck more rocks in.

But it's actually sort of closer to the asteroid belt than we are.

Also,

that makes sense.

Yeah.

Also,

it actually more reached the surface because the atmosphere is thinner.

But

they did this simulation where they sort of ran like a hundred million years of the planets orbiting and then just like 10,000 randomly selected asteroids.

And they looked at asteroids that were potentially hazardous asteroids by tracking where there were were

close gaps

that

by tracking where there were like times when the asteroids could potentially leave the belt and come and get Mars.

And they found that each Earth year, around 2.6 times more big asteroids got close to Mars compared to Earth.

And the researchers also noted that while these asteroids could become a more important consideration, if humans were actually on Mars, in the meantime, they might provide us with more of a chance to learn more about Mars.

Because

when Mars gets hit by asteroids, we learn things about it.

For example, when we've got a seismometer on Mars and an asteroid hits Mars, then we can find out about the interior of Mars by how the sort of waves from that impact reverberate around Mars.

Like ringing a bell or something.

Like ringing a bell.

It's like ringing a big old bell.

So you're saying that in addition to being inferior to Earth in terms of atmosphere and

biological diversity, it's also inferior to Earth in terms of asteroid risk.

I mean, that's like on the outside of the things that are problems, even.

Like, that's bad, but like, it's not as bad as the surface being poisonous.

Right.

Yeah.

Like, the dust being bad for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And yet, Dr.

Katie Matt wants to spend the years.

She doesn't know about the dust.

She knows.

She 100%, there's a 0% chance she doesn't know.

I've just, I've done this podcast with her first for a few weeks now, and like, she knows.

She knows everything that we know.

She knows everything that we know, know and then like a whole nother category of things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

some people are just built differently, you know?

And I think it's beautiful.

I think that the diversity of human experience is wonderful, even when that human experience is such that you're willing to fly airplanes.

Somebody's going to do it.

Thank goodness somebody's

set up for that.

All right.

Well,

thank you for potting with me.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

I hope you've enjoyed our fancy new video.

Yeah, I don't know what we're going to do with this video, John, but maybe something.

It's going on the Patreon, and then there's some clips of it, although we didn't really have any good clips today.

We'll be on like TikTok and whatnots.

Thank you for sending us your questions.

You can send them to hankandjohn at gmail.com.

That's where, without that, we don't have a podcast.

This podcast is edited by Linus Ovenhaus.

It was mixed by Joseph Tunamedish.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

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

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Tuboki Choc Rivarti, the music you're hearing now, and the biggest podcast by the Great Gonarola.

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

Did you say don't forget to be false?