388: Turtle the Moon

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Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

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

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

John.

Yeah.

What do you get when you cross a turtle and a porcupine?

What do you get?

A slow poke.

Oh, slow poke.

Yeah.

Maybe that's the one.

Maybe that's what you need.

You just need them to be like cute and not trying that hard.

Maybe I need to be...

First off, I think that also is what you get when you just have a porcupine.

I don't think porcupines are particularly fast, are they?

Yeah, but they can poke fast.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Well,

a couple things are happening, Hank, that I need to talk about.

Oh, my gosh.

We're going to, we're going to get what is okay.

One is that the Turtles All the Way Down movie, the movie adaptation of my book, Turtles All the Way Down comes.

Is that why I did a turtle joke?

Yes.

I assumed.

Was it a complete coincidence?

No, I was looking at turtle jokes specifically, so there must have been a reason.

Yeah, I think that must have been the reason.

In your heart of hearts, you knew that I'm feverishly promoting the Turtles all the way down movie non-stop, both like when I'm awake and when I sleep.

By the way, I have to tell you about the, I've been having horrible nightmares.

I have to tell you about one.

But the other thing is that,

so the Turtles all the way down movie comes out May 2nd on Max.

I really hope you like it.

We got to show it to 1,600 people at the LA Times Festival of Books, and it was magical, Hank.

It was such, that room was amazing.

It really made me, it really confirmed my, my opinion that the movie is really good.

I hope that you're able to watch it.

And I i also hope that you're able to watch it with family and friends um like it's just i think it's best experienced with people you love and i know that hbo max doesn't want me to say that because it lowers the number of logins but like that's how i feel

that i mean we should do that more um i love to have friends over for a movie and then when you're while you're there you can you can celebrate the turtles all the way down movie There you go.

Did you just say celebrate?

I did because turtles have shells.

I noticed that.

I just want you to know I noticed that.

The other thing is that I have a new podcast that just came out with Dr.

Katie Mack.

She's an astrophysicist and I'm an idiot.

And the two of us have made a podcast called Crash Course Pods, the Universe, which is a crash course on the entire history and future of this, the one universe we all belong to, to borrow a line from Mary Oliver.

So you should check that out.

You might even call it a turtorial.

Oh, God.

It's a turtorial.

Yes, Hank.

Thank you.

How do you do this over and over again?

What is it like to live in your brain where the highest form of thought is pun?

Anyway, it's a really good podcast.

I love it.

It is.

I'm very excited.

And you should check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

Stop listening to this piece of crap and go listen to Crash Course the Universe.

Oh, John, do you know what your favorite pasta is?

What is my favorite pasta, Hank?

Turtellini.

Oh, of course it's turtellini.

What else could it be?

Oh, I am, I feel like I've run a marathon and I've just been told.

So I've been traveling non-stop.

I just got home and I leave again tomorrow morning at 4.30 a.m.

And I just, I feel like I've run a marathon.

And at the end of the marathon, instead of seeing the finish line, somebody whispered in my ear, just 20 miles to go, buddy.

Well, you know what?

John, slow and steady wins the race.

It's true.

The tortoise does emerge ahead of the hare in the long run.

All right.

Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

All right.

This first question comes from Peter, and I don't know how I'm going to answer it, but I'm going to try.

How big of a container would I have to have for the ping pong balls inside to be considered a liquid?

If a giant alien went swimming in a galaxy-sized pool of ping-pong balls, is that a liquid?

Thank you, Peter.

What do you got, John?

I assume not.

I mean, it's a different state of matter.

Yeah, so I think like, like the high school definition of a liquid is any, anything that, any like substance that can take the shape of its container.

Oh, okay.

And so you look at you're like, ping pong balls are kind of a liquid, but they're also definitely not a liquid.

If there were enough ping pong balls, they would basically take the shape of their container.

They can act as a liquid.

Like if you have a lot of ping pong balls, like you can like observe that they like do fluid dynamics stuff you know they they like like pass over each other they roll around and they they create drag and like like you can model

them as if they are molecules which is like the weird part that like little water molecules are like little balls they don't look like little balls to us they look like water but they're little balls and uh and so a ping pong ball uh with a giant in it ping pong ball galaxy sized swimming pool with a giant in it is acting like just a regular lake with a boat in it.

But still, the ping pong balls will molecularly be a solid.

Okay.

Solids can act as liquids.

There's two definitions of liquid, and that's how you're getting your way out of this question.

Yeah, I guess what I should say is like a, like, a, like a solid can act as a fluid, but is never a liquid.

You know, what is weird to me about this whole thing is that this all presupposes that galaxies are real and that the universe is

full of these things.

And the truth is that the Earth is the only

actual heavenly body and it's a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle.

Oh,

yeah.

What is the turtle on?

Oh, thanks for asking, Hank.

The turtle is resting on yet another turtle.

But what's under that turtle?

No, you don't understand, Hank.

It's turtles all the way down.

This next question comes from Rebecca, who asks, hey, guys, just a quick clarification about episode 386.

Play me some more fiddle.

What do you guys mean?

There's no free will?

Do you guys know something I don't?

My choice is not mine?

Thanks by Rebecca.

Actually, Rebecca, if you're interested in this question, and I hate to keep going back to this, but you should really...

You should really read the hit YA book, Turtles All the Way Down, which is concerned so much with free will that the epigraph of the novel is from Schopenhauer.

Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.

And to me, that is that is the ultimate solution to free will.

Like, yeah, you can make whatever choices you can make, but you can't will what you will.

Um, you can't

choose what you're choosing.

I mean, my own experience of this, Rebecca, is that there are many times when I do not get to choose my thoughts and many times when I do not get to choose my behaviors.

And Ergo,

not only that, a lot of the thinking that I'm doing is actually being done by the bacteria that colonize me that don't just tell me when to be hungry, but also, it seems, tell me when I feel sad.

Yeah, they don't think for you, but

they might make you feel sad sometimes.

They affect my thoughts, and that is thinking on my behalf.

If you are affecting my thoughts,

it's complicated, but they aren't.

I don't think that you can say that you're doing entirely your own thinking when you're thinking if half half of the cells that constitute you are not yours, I think, I think it is, it is, you, yeah, like my thinking is affected by

many things, including random chance.

Uh, but I think that we like, look, I think that I can make choices.

I think I do make choices, but I think that you're right.

Like, I cannot really,

I don't know how to change how I

don't really know how to change what I, what I want.

Um, and like, that's

tricky.

But also, sometimes I feel like I have changed how I want, but not like the way that, not like through making a decision, usually by taking an action and by putting myself in a different situation.

But anyway, even with all of that, the question of free will

remains like, is the universe just sort of like the pieces were set in motion and now they are falling down the hill and we are just part of them falling down the hill and all of our decisions are just sort of inevitably decided by the preconditions of the beginning of the universe.

Right.

And, like, maybe

the reigning philosophical perspective at the moment seems to be that we don't really have free will, but the sensation that I feel is that I do.

Yeah, this is actually something that we get into, that Dr.

Mack and I get into in Crash Course the Universe, because you're exactly right.

I'm sorry, but it's like half the podcast is about this because we're trying to understand.

I hate to do all this promo it causes me physical pain just kidding i love it um

but but you know

if the first thing was decided and everything else has happened as a direct result of that first thing and all of that all of that is predetermined then it is hard to argue that like oh but we're not predetermined um

and so this is something that i keep running up against in recording with dr mac is that i i want to hear that i have some semblance of free will and i want some kind of cosmological proof of this, and it just doesn't seem like it's going to emerge.

I think instead, what we have is that it doesn't really matter whether we have like free will in that like grand universal sense of everything

was determined at the very beginning and has been rolling downhill since then.

What we do have is the experience of choice.

It's important to remember, though,

that like in celebrating the experience of choice that we have, that our choices are endlessly limited and that our choices are limited by everything from outside forces to interior experiences, and that judging people for

what you perceive as their choices might be a little bit unfair, given how much their choices are in truth restricted.

This next question comes from Joshua, who asks, Dear Hank and John, What is toothpaste?

Tasty soap, turtles, and toothbrushes, Joshua.

Oh

This is, I feel like this is secret knowledge that

the toothpaste industry doesn't want people to know.

What is toothpaste?

Now, let me answer before

you tell me what toothpaste is.

Let me make a guess.

Toothpaste is fluoride.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

And

soap.

Uh-huh.

And

flavoring.

Yeah, there's other components, but that's

the most important one that you missed is polish.

Polish.

So

there is very fine grit in toothpaste that actually

is designed to not be harder than your teeth, but to be harder than the stuff on your teeth so that it can polish that tartar and stuff away.

So yeah, toothpaste is primarily tasty soap.

It is a surfactant, which is what soaps are.

That's why it gets foamy in your mouth.

And I kind of wish I I didn't know this.

So I feel bad telling you.

Yeah.

But it's tasty.

So like we figured out how to make tasty soap.

It cleans the inside of your mouth.

It's weird, but that is the case.

And then also sometimes

in addition to there being polish and soap and flavorings, you know, there's fluoride, which we have added because it strengthens the enamel.

And then there's also other stuff, like there might be some whitening compounds in there, or there might be like the stuff for sensitive teeth, et cetera.

Right.

Yeah.

Toothpaste is primarily tasty soap slash tasty polish.

So when we were kids and mom was like, if you say that word again, I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap.

Like she, what we didn't know was that actually we were washing our mouth out with soap every night.

Well, first of all, I don't remember that ever having happened.

So I want to say that on behalf of our mother.

I honestly feel like we were raised in different households.

You didn't ever taste soap.

Did you ever get soap in your mouth?

No, no, no.

Just the threat, though.

Just the threat of it was plenty intimidating.

The threat

certainly may have happened.

Yeah, I mean, I think I might say the kind of thing I would forget about and you wouldn't.

That's so true.

That's so true.

The absolutely.

But that's not down to our choices, John.

That's just how we are as people.

That's right.

That's right.

And

I was, like Lady Gaga, born this way.

Yeah, that's what I always tell my Pilates instructor when she's like, why can't you stretch more than that?

Yeah, I know.

My hamstrings were just,

God made them like this.

He was like,

he was like, you don't get those.

God set the motion, set the universe in motion.

And as a direct result of that initial nudge, I have tight hamstrings.

Yeah.

The particular protons inside of me that are left over from the Big Bang organize themselves into extremely tight hamstrings.

And that's just the way that it was always going to go.

Why did God do it that way?

If I knew, I would be

terrified.

I would be a monster.

I would be a prophet.

I would be Paul Atreides.

Oh, God, don't bring up Paul Atreides.

I love the fact that the first prophet that comes to your mind is Paul Atreides.

Not Jesus or Muhammad or Moses.

All the real ones, you can't say that they're bad.

Oh, oh, oh.

Oh, I see.

I see.

I see.

You're not allowed to acknowledge the sort of like horror that accompanies such

knowledge.

Yeah, yeah, no, fair enough.

All right, good,

fair enough.

Let's answer another question.

Is that one still about toothpaste?

Yeah, yeah, we were still on toothpaste, believe it or not.

I don't know how we got there.

We're real focused on

the universe being set in motion and then ever, forever after, things just were as they are.

Annie writes, Dear John and Hank, I recently visited an independent bookstore that had a rare bookroom and in that rare bookroom I found a signed first edition of Turtles All the Way Down on sale for $35.

The signature was not unique.

It was a black Sharpie, no drawing, no DFTBA.

I love the idea that like

if there's a little hankerfish on it, then it's worth $35,

but otherwise like nothing special.

I asked if John had visited to personally sign the book and he had not.

This led me to wonder, are there universal standards for what booksellers can include in their rare bookroom?

Does rare mean the same thing to every bookseller?

Because I happen to know there are 250,000 such signed copies of turtles all the way down.

By my own count, I own at least five things that have been signed by a Green Brother, including a plastic turtle that I raised some teenagers through a Bilo parking lot for in 2018.

What?

Am I a rare book collector?

Thanks so much, Annie.

Oh, I mean, well, remember when we signed those plastic turtles and then we would like hide them and take pictures of them almost like a geocache and people would have to try to find them yes i had forgotten about it until now yeah that was fun man we have lived so many lives we should go on tour again i know whoever set the universe in motion really did us some favors yeah we've lived a lot of lives we've gotten to do some fun stuff over the years for sure for sure and uh and shout out to every everybody who has one of those turtles yeah

i know that all of you still are hardcore nerdfighters 10 years later

I'm so glad you have five things signed by a Green Brother, Annie.

I think that you do have a rare book and Plastic Turtle collection.

The truth is, no, there are no rules.

There are no reasons.

There is nothing to stop them from selling that book for $70 if they can get a buyer for it.

That said, like $35 isn't that unreasonable a price, given that the book itself was like $23.

And if it's in good condition and it hasn't been read and it's, you know, I could see a justification for that price tag, even if there's 250,000 signed first editions out there.

Well, the thing to know is that this is all about the market and the

information that the people who make up the market have access to.

And you have access to the information that John did this 250,000 times, but the bookseller might not.

And so it's just like put it in there and is like, oh, this is a signed one.

The signed one goes in this room and it gets this, you know, this much markup or whatever.

Or I'll look on eBay and see what they're selling for.

But like you know what they're selling for on eBay?

What?

five bucks

well they didn't look on eve then or they did and they were like or they did and they were like i think i could get more

i could probably get 35 i've got to pay rent maybe i should maybe i should buy some of these signed first editions of turtles all the way down i don't have any and they're only five bucks it's the shipping man if you could get them all at once how much is the shipping like four bucks always

no i don't know you think that's how they get you

i think well i think that that i think that that dramatically influences the, uh,

your ability to get them all.

But Annie, what you, the situation you find yourself in is that you have access to all of this information.

So now you are like the antiques roadshow appraiser, but for John and Hank Green signed things.

And you can sit down at the antiques roadshow and somebody brings up a turtles all the way down signed by John Green.

And you can be like, this,

the reason why this is worth nothing is, and then you can tell the whole story of how John Green got obsessed with signing his name more times than any.

There will be, I will hear people talk about like signing a book hundreds of times, and they'll be like, I just couldn't do it anymore.

And I'm like, What, where am I?

What world are you in?

Well, maybe they have more complicated signatures than I do.

That's the hermeneutic of generosity I try to share with myself.

Sure, sure.

Um,

this uh, there's one, okay, so there's one that's $83.60.

That's the $199,973rd signature

on my way.

Because it had to do with $200,000.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wrote that beneath the thing.

Well, that seems like it's good.

And there's more value.

There's one that's like $85

that has a Hankorfish.

So you're right.

The Hankorfish is significantly more valuable.

But these are not things that people have bought.

They're just things that people are charging a lot for.

So anyway, it's somewhere, my signature is worth somewhere between negative $10 and $20.

Oh, look at there's the

signed first edition of The Fault in Our Stars, $30,

$19,

$9.

$9.

$9.

That seems reasonable.

Yeah, okay.

Nine bucks for a signed first edition of The Fault in our Stars.

I mean, there's 150,000 of them.

Like, what are they worth?

Yeah.

It's been 14 years.

They're worth nine bucks.

That's, yeah.

And that's what we want.

Long story short, hold on to your signed first edition of The Fault in Our Stars, not because it's valuable, but because you can't get anything for it on eBay anyway.

Oh, this signed by Shaylene Woodley Fault in Our Stars script is worth $300.

I have one of those.

Or best offer.

Or best offer.

That's how they get you.

This next question is from Nola, who asks, dear Hank and John, but mostly John.

I was rereading Turtles All the Way Down and I live in Canada.

So what the heck is Applebee's?

Thanks, Nola.

What is an Applebee's?

An Applebee's is a sit-down restaurant where you have a server and you can buy alcoholic drinks.

So that distinguishes it from, say, a McDonald's, but it's also not a super high-end, fine-dining restaurant where all the entrees are like $30 a piece or whatever.

And so it inhabits that middle space.

So it's not, I'm going to try to go Canadian on you.

It's not a Tim Hortons.

but it's also not a fancy Canadian restaurant.

It's in the middle.

Did you you know that there's an applebee's in china i'm not surprised i'm not surprised i once went to one in london did you know that applebee's was originally a pharmacy

no way seriously is that real are you tricking me

tj applebee's prescriptions edibles and elixirs in decatur georgia what are you serious

edibles and elixirs that sounds like they

They sold the real stuff.

Yeah, this was also 1980s, so I don't know wait like in between when edibles and elixirs were like a thing that people actually did and when they were just weed wait 1980 like what 1980 zero no

there was a pharmacy in 1980 and then within like a decade it became the world's leading fast casual dining restaurant yeah yeah in 1986 by 1986 it was appleby's neighborhood grill and bar wow what a journey tj appleby Appleby went on.

Well, he sold it in between those times.

I think, I don't know, where does the word Applebee come from?

I've never heard of it.

No, T.J.

Appleby is a person, right?

No.

His name was T.J.

Palmer.

Oh, he just, he named it Applebee's, the way that some, maybe that was his nickname in high school.

People were like, Applebee.

Yeah.

Maybe he got bit by a bee while eating an apple, and he was forever after known as TJ Appleby.

That would be great, but it seems like it's one of these Matchbox 20 situations where it's just terribly boring and

they just sort of like looked in the phone book for a while and came up with a name.

Oh, that's disappointing.

Is that Matchbox 20 got their name because they just thought it sounded good?

I can't tell you.

It's

too boring.

It would make people's lives worse.

Okay, fair enough.

Fair enough.

I believe that anything is interesting if you pay the right kind of attention to it, but maybe the name of Matchbox 20 is an exception.

I don't know if I could write a whole episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed on it, but I'd be willing to.

Maybe Matchbox 20 got named in an Applebee's, and that makes it interesting.

All right, let's, so that's, that's Applebee's.

It's really good.

It's prominently featured in the Turtles All the Way Down movie.

It really is.

There's quite a lot of Applebee's in it.

And you know,

the waitress in the Applebee's is played by our director, Hannah Marks.

Oh, she's like Quentin Tarantino.

She gave herself a little role.

Quentin Tarantino is a weird pull for that one.

Isn't that like famously the Hitchcock thing?

Yeah, but I just feel like

Hitchcock often just gives himself a little cameo.

She got a real role.

Oh, okay.

Which reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by Applebee's, as if you didn't already do enough work for them already.

We've just given them a free sponsorship in the fake sponsors part of our podcast.

I do really appreciate how cool they were about us making a couple of Applebee's jokes.

They were reasonably self-aware about Applebee's.

Situation re-Applebee's.

It's a good restaurant.

I go there.

Applebee's.

Is it a great?

No.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by the rare books room where my signed books are $35.

That rare books room.

I mean, a little bit of a markup, but not the, you know.

Everybody's trying to make it work.

This podcast is also brought to you by a galaxy-sized swimming pool full of ping-pong balls.

Sure.

Not a liquid.

No.

Well, except maybe.

A fluid.

And, of course, this podcast is brought to you by the universe.

The universe.

Determined?

Ah!

All right, we also have some Project for Awesome messages to read, including this one from Mirinda to Ellie and Ed.

Dear Honk and John, this message comes to you in three parts.

One, today I learned that bees have five eyes.

Wild.

Two, the passage of time.

A friend said, why not?

Time continues.

How wonderful and how terrifying.

Three, hope perseveres, and I am in love with living.

I'm lucky enough now that I can afford the luxury of spending all my birthdays in dandelions, wishing the same for others.

That's so lovely, Miranda.

Thank you.

And also, we have a message from Krista who wants to write to Nerdfighteria.

Every year when we come together to the P4A, I am reminded that I am a small part of a greater whole.

This community is the place I go to when hope is difficult to come by.

My song without the words, if you will.

Thank you all for being a part of Nerdfighteria with me, DFTBA.

That's so lovely, Krista.

Hell yeah.

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.

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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.com/slash dear hank to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash dear hank.

I've been reading through the Nerdfighteria census, which went out.

If you have not filled it out, you can go fill it out.

There's a link in the description of my most recent vlog with this video,

or not my most recent one, but there's, yo, look,

I'll put it in the most recent one as well.

Take that

because I haven't done it yet.

But

it's just, it's always so lovely to read through the census and to hear people's thoughts on all the things that we've done and

to see how the community continues to change and how like we respond to the world being this world.

And

yeah, and I'm so grateful to everybody who spends a little bit of time

filling it out and also writing little messages so that we know what you're thinking.

It's a great thing to be a part of.

And a lot of the things that I've heard is like...

that people really like it when we act as a community together and we do that in a lot of different ways.

And so I want to have ideas.

We have ideas for how to keep doing it in the future.

Yeah, it always makes me think of the fact that a lot of attention goes to the leaders of a community, especially like in online communities that resemble fandoms.

A lot of the attention goes to Taylor Swift or whoever

or Hank and John.

But the truth is that the community accomplishes things that have very little to do with that creator.

And most of what they accomplish together isn't about

the creator.

And it certainly is, it doesn't come from the creator.

The community accomplishes stuff together.

And what we really are, if we're lucky, Hank and me, is parts of Nerdfighteria, not leaders of Nerdfighteria.

All right, Hank, let's answer some more questions before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, beginning with this one from Anonymous, who writes, Dear John and Hank, John, I've read all your books.

When I first read Turtles All the Way Down quite a few years ago, I found it a fascinating read.

However, after watching the trailer for the film adaptation, the story has taken on a much deeper meaning because my partner of three and a half years has OCD and has been going through a particularly tough period over the last year, particularly with relationship-oriented OCD.

And so I found myself sobbing after watching the trailer.

I think I'm so moved because it gives voice to the pain we both experience from the strain OCD puts on our life together, though naturally more her than me, and it gives me hope that the story will highlight to society just how truly debilitating living with OCD can be while also offering hope to people like my amazing girlfriend.

And that, I just wanted to read that, Hank, because it means a lot to me.

And as we go into this experience, I just needed to be reminded that, like, as

overwhelming as this is and everything, I'm ultimately doing it because of that, because I think this story matters and can matter to people.

And I wouldn't be pushing so hard myself and

also nice people who work with me if I didn't really think that it could be a useful thing in the world.

Like there's a lot of debate over whether art needs to be useful to be good.

And I don't know exactly where I sit on that debate, but I do know that I like it more personally to make art that can be useful to people.

And I really hope that this is a movie that can help people in the way that

so many people have told me the book did.

So I just wanted to read that and just kind of be reminded of why I'm doing what I'm I'm going to have to do over the next couple of weeks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This next question comes from Marie, who says, hello, Hank and John.

That's not a Danish accent.

Hank, what is your Danish accent?

Tell me in a Danish accent how excited you are to see the Turtles All the Way Down movie on May 2nd.

No, I will not do this.

I cannot.

I cannot do Dutch.

I do German instead.

That's all I can do.

You can do Dutch.

It's not even good to German.

It's bad German.

It's not particularly good German, but it's definitely not Danish, which is definitely different from Dutch.

Did I say Dutch?

You did.

You did.

So here's the question.

I'll give you all.

It's not my fault.

Where is Danish from?

Denmark.

Which does not start with the syllable Dane.

Where is Dutch from?

Dutchland?

The Netherlands, which does not start with Dutch.

It's not my fault.

All right.

I'm going to do all three.

All right.

I'm going to do all three, Hank.

Are you ready?

So this is this is just a kind of a tutorial for you for people who maybe aren't experts in Northern European accents.

I'm going to just help you through them.

This is German.

Yeah.

Yeah, we eat

pretzels.

Yeah.

And we eat

sausages.

Look, no one will judge you for skipping through this part of the podcast.

All right.

But continue, John.

That was German.

This is Dutch.

Hello, it's very nice here.

Yeah, it's very nice.

I like it.

Yeah, thank you.

Very good.

Very nice.

That seems right to me.

Seems right to me, man.

And this is Danish.

Ready?

Hold on.

It's going to take me a second.

I got to get in character.

I got to get, I got to, I got to grow by six inches.

I'm six foot six.

I'm blonde.

I'm

maybe like,

I think I work in private finance.

Hello.

Hello.

Yeah.

Over the next next six weeks, we will look at

these problems and we will try to get some problems solved for you.

That does sound like the last one, but okay.

Those are my three accents.

I got three looks and that's it.

Shorten that as much as you can, Tuna.

Can we look at the way that English has named languages?

Sure.

If you are from Italy, what do you speak?

Italiano.

Oh my God.

No, in English.

Italian?

Oh my God.

Look,

I'm trying to do something here.

Keep going.

Keep going.

If you're from Sweden, do you speak Swedenian?

No, you speak a Swedish.

Oh, my God.

I don't know if I can do this.

Swedish?

No, that's if you're from France.

Wait, let me do it again.

Just one more time.

Wait, if you're from Sweden, give me Sweden.

And if you're from Sweden, do you speak Swedenian?

No, you speak Swedish.

This is great.

I don't know.

It's good.

No, we're offending everyone.

No, we're offending everyone.

This is great.

We're working our way through the only accents we're allowed to butcher.

Now, give me one more.

Do France.

I just don't know why we couldn't.

Do France.

Do France.

What about, and if you're from France, do you speak France-ish?

I don't know.

I don't know what you speak.

If you're from France, I just know that.

I just know that

I just, we, yeah, we speak French.

I mean, the part where no matter what accent you're doing,

the character you're playing is just like, no, yes, no.

That's all I can say in these foreign languages.

We, no, we, um,

see, wah.

Si, oh, yeah.

Oh, oh, oh, I can laugh.

I can laugh in all those languages.

All right, now do an American laugh.

Great.

That's perfect.

That seems right.

Can you do a Dutch laugh?

They don't laugh.

That's a great joke.

Dutch people everywhere just burst out laughing.

All right.

John.

Yeah.

Abby asks, dear Hank and John, before we

lose everyone, dear Hank and John, I had a dream last night that a massive turtle came from space, another space turtle, John, and attached itself to the moon, and then it took the moon out of our orbit.

My question is, what would happen if a turtle or any object the size of the moon became attached to the moon?

Turtle curious.

Turtly curious.

Turtle curious.

It wouldn't be great, Abby.

No, it depends on what actually happened.

Like, did it smack into the moon?

Then definitely bad.

If a moon-sized object smashed into the moon, that would be objectively bad.

And there is no other way.

So your other argument is that this moon-sized object somehow like gently attaches itself to the moon yeah i'm just imagining like a moon-sized piece of slime you know from your kids slime okay and it is like bloop after hurtling through space it somehow doesn't smash into the moon it just sort of sidles up yeah okay yeah it's like so imagine the the turtle from the godzilla movies gamera And Gamera is, he's up there and he's the size of the moon and he's like, I love that thing.

I'm going to live there.

And he gives the moon a big hug and he just sort of hangs out in that case uh

things would change so tides obviously would get stronger which would be very bad for anyone living on the coast um

uh it would probably also be very bad for coastal ecosystems that are not designed for tides to be twice as strong as they currently are

There would probably be some amount of like long-term changes to

but I like I think that like long-term my guess is long-term enough that it would not affect us to the length of the day and

also the

distance of the moon

from the Earth.

But I think that that would probably happen slow enough that that wouldn't be a big deal in the next few thousand years, which is mostly the scale that we think on.

I think that the big concern would probably just be the tides, but I might be wrong.

I'm curious to hear if anybody else, if you submit your thoughts on this, what am I missing that might really mess things up if the moon became suddenly much more massive?

Now, I know that if the moon ceased to exist, we would have a massive problem.

Like,

pun intended.

Because

the Earth's tilt would increase really dramatically.

So we would have these like ice ages in some places.

We would be way wobblier, yeah.

Well, if the moon were bigger, we would be less wobbly.

So we might actually get fewer climate variations from wobbles, though we have another sort of climate variation we have to deal with right now

that would not be be helped by that.

Right.

It wouldn't solve.

So we couldn't solve client.

That's what I was going to ask you: is can we solve climate change with a bigger moon?

No, I mean, if like, honestly, if there's like a giant space turtle, I feel like he's going to have just advice.

Oh, God.

That would be more help.

Yeah.

Then just the mass.

Yeah.

Can you imagine him like shouting?

It would be really loud, but shouting from the moon, just like, hey, guys, I don't want to come down there because I know that I would mess things up if I got any closer.

But like, you need to work some stuff out.

Y'all need to collaborate more effectively and build systems that include more people.

Yeah.

Why are you creating outside?

Why are you so obsessed with creating outsiders?

Yeah.

Like, obviously, there's a great deal of untapped potential down there.

Usually to provide resources for more folks.

Like, those are the folks that could be solving the problems.

You're...

stifling the number of potential future innovators you have by not giving people educational opportunities and treating some people like they're more special than other people.

That's very weird from the perspective of this one turtle.

That's not how we do things at all, where I come from, though I will say that my planet has to be so big for there to be an organism the size of me that likely there aren't that many of us.

And we move very slowly and make decisions on a very long time scale, which I understand probably is difficult for you little wet, soft ant things.

You know what that giant space turtle would also say?

Yeah.

He'd be like, you, you're being really cool to your turtles, right?

Like,

how cool are you being to the turtles?

You better be cool to those turtles if you catch my drift.

John, can we, I know that you're busy.

Yeah.

And maybe we should, because you're so busy, we should turn this to the, to the community.

Yeah.

Can we write some kind of space turtle zine?

I love it.

Just real fast.

I love it.

Real fast.

This week.

People,

send me your drawings of your space turtles.

If you made it through the accent portion of the program to get to this portion of the program, your reward is that you can contribute to our hit new

charity zine

space turtle.

Right.

So you can either submit, and you can do this twice, but not together.

So it's going to be like a game where we're going to pair captions with space turtles.

So we need people to draw space turtles and we need people to send in captions and then we're going to match the caption to the space turtle.

And the caption is like whatever the space turtle is thinking or saying.

Right.

What is the space turtle saying to the people of Earth?

And then what does the space turtle look like sidled up to the moon?

Yeah, yeah.

These are the questions we have for you.

And we need you to email us at hankandjohn at gmail.com with the subject line space turtle.

Yes.

Yes.

yes hank you've made a major discovery you were just talking about how as a community we need more projects and then you found our most important project of all space turtle z

forget about bullying large corporations into reducing the price of their tuberculosis tests now we're on to something

there's uh the first of all we're not bullying we're asking respectfully and nicely uh second i can't wait to show off all the space turtles in our.

We're here.

The newsletter of Nerdvitaria, which you could sign up for by searching for that, I guess.

But also, maybe I'll make a video with it.

We could review them on the next episode of the pod.

I really hope we get some space turtles.

We might not get any.

Love it.

In which case, we might not.

We'll be sad, but I'll be feverishly drawing my own to make up for it.

All right.

So, listen, we got to get to the all-important news from Bars and AFC Wimbledon because I have a meeting.

Yes.

And the news from AFC Wimbledon is both brilliant and terrible.

I'll start with the terrible news.

AFC Wimbledon's men's team are,

their season is over.

They still have two games left to play technically, but they don't matter because we can't make the playoffs and we can't get relegated.

Now, in a way, if you told me at the beginning of the season we were going to have two stress-free games,

I would have been like, that's wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, because there were some times when we didn't have any of those.

Exactly.

Many years where we have no stress-free games because we're facing relegation until the last day, and and then sometimes we do get relegated.

So, yeah,

it's great.

We had a successful season, but it's a little bit of a bummer.

However, however, the women's team who wear partners in health on the back of their jerseys, sponsored by Rosiana and myself, just won their division, which means they also, in addition to winning the trophy, get promoted, which means also that they will next year be a third-tier English football team.

Incredibly exciting.

For so many years, the women have finished second in their league.

They're up against big teams like QPR and Norwich.

Like Norwich might be in the Premier League next year, the men's team, but the women's team got beat by AFC Wimbledon.

And so AFC Wimbledon's women's team, an incredible group of...

women who

many of them have been playing together for many years.

It's just really remarkable what they've managed to achieve.

They finally have the financial support to be successful, and so they have been successful.

And it's awesome, awesome to see.

And so I'm so excited for the promoted women's team.

And by the way, if you live in London on May 5th, so just a few days after this podcast comes out, you can see the final women's game of the season at Plow Lane, celebrate the champions.

It's going to be like a packed house.

It's going to be awesome.

So, and it's only like five pounds to get in.

So the transit.

transit might cost you more than the game.

If you're under 18, it's actually free.

So check that out at just Google AFC Wimbledon women's team.

All right.

That's so cool.

What's the news from Mars?

Well, sample return is the thing that we want to do.

Right.

The rover

Perseverance has been dropping these vials for maybe some future mission to come pick them up and take them back so that we can study these rocks here on Earth where we have whole labs and not just one robot car.

This is tricky and difficult.

And NASA was going to send that and they were designing the mission

and the European Space Agency was going to build

some of the stuff and there was a whole thing.

In 2020, there was a report that estimated the cost of this to be between like three and four billion dollars-ish.

It's now estimated that mission would cost 8.4 to 10.9 billion dollars,

which everybody's like, actually,

we love rocks so much, but not maybe that much.

Last fall, an independent review board said the mission would need to be overhauled.

And in the past few weeks, NASA has announced that they're looking at proposals to help make that mission faster and cheaper.

So the good news is that for now, NASA is looking to continue with the mission.

It's just not clear what that mission is going to look like or how they're going to do it because...

Yeah, there's some price sensitivity.

Inflation obviously happened, but not that much.

And these things don't tend to come in on budget either.

So,

well,

I mean, that's a bummer.

It feels like we just should send people at this point.

And maybe sometime

in the next couple of years, if at all possible.

Just send people to retrieve those rocks by 2027.

I tell you what, that seemed like such a long way away when we made that bet.

I know.

I know.

And now, what do you think?

Do you think 2040 is realistic?

For humans on Mars?

Yeah.

No?

No.

Oh, it's really, it's really a story of Hank and John going from being like excessively optimistic to

relentlessly determined to remain optimistic.

Yeah, no, I mean,

look, you like things could certainly happen.

It's just very hard.

We've learned more about Mars

in the last 10 years that have, that has made the prospect of people going to Mars harder.

And

so it hasn't gotten easier in the last 10 years.

It's gotten, it's gotten harder because we understand more about Mars and how, like, what it's made of and how hazardous that stuff is to people.

So it's tricky.

Well, Hank, I still believe that we're going to live to see it.

And I can't wait to live to see it.

So

I haven't given up that hope, even if I have, and I hope you have as well, given up all hope that this podcast will always be called Dear Hank and John.

I have.

I have.

All right, Hank.

Well, thank you for potting with me.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

We look forward to your space turtles.

Oh, gosh.

I'm going to draw a mine right now.

It doesn't have to be good.

No.

It should be bad.

Or it can be good.

It's up to you.

Okay.

Read the credits.

Oh, of course.

That's my job.

This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuanamedic.

It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rojas.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

Our editorial assistant is Dabuki Trochrivarti.

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

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