382: Dental Spider-bots

Hello, and welcome to Dear Hike and John.

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

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to beast advice, and wonder whether the butt crack exists.

And then they give you all the week's news from both bars and AFC Wimbledon.

John, yeah, John, I have a question.

Did you know why when geese make V's in the sky, there's sometimes like one of the sides is longer than the other side?

Uh, for aerodynamic reasons?

No, it's because there's there's more geese on one side

than the other side.

Is this like absurdist humor, or is this like waiting for Godot stuff?

It's longer because there's more geese.

Yeah, so that's just like a pure waiting for Godot joke where there's no punchline?

It's because there's more geese.

Is there something I'm not getting?

There's no, no, there's not something you're no, you've got it.

You're all the way there.

Okay, well, congratulations on reinventing the Ionesco play.

It's fun.

I never really got that stuff in English class, and I continue to not really get it now.

Why is one of the sides of the V longer?

Because there's more geese.

Oh, Johnny Wayne.

Why doesn't Godot ever show up?

Well, because he's God.

I mean, ish.

First off, we don't have to get into a theological argument right at the top of the podcast.

Godot, I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to

make too big of a thing about it.

Yeah, it's our biggest.

Godot may not show up because Godot may not exist at all.

Is it our biggest disagreement, the theistic stuff?

Uh-huh.

And by the way, I'm not totally sure we have a disagreement.

I was just reading a great piece about an atheist chaplain, a humanist chaplain, who served an atheist death row inmate.

And

I was fascinated by it because at the end of it, I was like, am I an atheist chaplain?

Um, but uh, but I do, I do, I do believe in God, however, tentatively, and, and, and with a, with a, with a definition of God that

doesn't totally line up with a lot of people's.

Do you think that's our biggest disagreement, or do we have a bigger disagreement, a more fundamental disagreement somewhere along the line?

Because people ask us about this a lot, like, how come you guys don't fight or whatever?

And

I mean, we do fight, but never about anything important, really.

Yeah, no, we fight about, we fight about like the things that married couples fight about, you know, right?

Where it's like, like, oh, like, are we going to put resources toward this or this?

Like, we fight a lot about the dishes or the laundry.

Yeah.

And like, we fight, we have a lot of fights that are some version of who took out the trash or will you take out the trash?

No, I took out the trash last time.

You took out the trash.

I took out the trash last time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's the main

John and Hank fights.

Yeah.

But, but, uh, but like yeah i mean on philosophical stuff

i don't know we're pretty in the similar place yeah i like and like whether or not souls exist doesn't really come into it most of the time doesn't it does it's like it's like it still seems really important to to prevent people from suffering whether or not a piece of them is immortal

oh yeah i mean almost equally important regardless uh especially according to my faith tradition uh which is which is pretty focused on what's happening here and not too focused on what's happening after.

I think after,

you know, this is something I think about a lot.

I always say to Hank, like, I don't want to do that because then I might go to hell.

And Hank's like, but hell doesn't exist.

And I'm like, I know.

That's not what I'm wearing.

I know.

I mean, like, I would go to hell if hell existed and were exactly like what I think it would be like if, you know, like, yeah.

And I don't think hell would be eternal flames either.

I just think it would be sort of like, I, I, not to sound cheesy about it, but I think it would be like distance from the divine, you know, which is like kind of what you're creating yourself when you act in a way that's commensurate with what would send you to hell.

Interesting.

Interesting.

I, there is something there that, that does align with me, where there's like, there is like a sacred that is, you know, made up by me.

And like the things that you get you closer to the sacred things are, are good things.

And, and I can can see things that are appealing that I like that get me further away from it and and like that's that's something to be aware of Yeah, yeah, in your case It actually just has it's just one thing Twitter

No, it's more than Twitter, but Twitter and all the other things like Twitter have the same root That's true But you're not I want the I want to be abused by strangers and also to abuse them.

Yeah.

And that's part of it.

But you have enough You have to get attention and to feel feelings.

I want a lot of attention.

I want a lot of attention and really intense sensations, regardless of whether they're pleasurable or productive.

I just want them.

I want them now.

And I had that always.

I want to just say that this is a thing that

does not always happen to me, but it sometimes does.

No, for me, it's mostly when I'm down.

Like I've been sick

the last few days and I've spent almost the entire last two days in bed and just like sleeping all the time.

And so then I'm already down and then I searched my name on Tumblr.

And why did I search my name?

Tumblr.

Why did I boy?

What caused me to do that?

Right.

Like now I have made it clear before that I searched my tags.

So like it's not total, but I, you know, like I don't have to.

I didn't have to do that.

And then I did it.

And then I liked some of what I learned and I didn't like other things that I learned, but I felt things.

I felt I had feelings.

I had a bunch of things.

I had big feelings and it kind of was replacing some kind of emptiness inside of me.

So there's that part of it.

There's that that I think separates me from the sacred, and I think is the kind of thing I would do more of if I wanted to go to hell if hell existed.

Then there's this thing that you don't really have, but I have big time,

which is that I am seduced by the things of the world.

What does that mean?

Like objects?

Like fancy wine.

Oh, yeah.

I'm seduced by things of the world.

No, you're not.

There's different ones than you no I can't name a single thing of the world you're seduced by every single time we go somewhere fancy you're like I don't know I mean I guess the bed's a little nicer but it doesn't matter to me I just put me in a motel six it's all the same to old hanky that's not no I like it I there are there are things I like I like what do you like uh I like uh

I like to I like private workout classes oh where I just have like one person and me and Catherine instead of like the thing.

I know.

I said, as I was saying,

John's not going to think this one counts.

Oh, my God.

I think it's

really like this.

Hey, hey, hold on, Hank.

I'm sorry.

The devil is on the other line.

Just got it answered.

Hey, hey, bud.

I know.

You have tempted him with the private workout classes.

Wow, what a Faustian bargain you've laid before his feet.

I like a nice dinner.

I like expensive food prepared by experts.

I like a fancy hotel.

I do.

I do.

I mean, I've been to a lot of fancy hotels with you, and you are not nearly as sick as I am in the fancy hotel business.

I have an illness.

No, you, yes.

Well, here's the situation.

What I really like is to plan a dope trip for the fam.

Like

our trip to Jamaica or whatever?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm planning a trip to Denver and Colorado Springs right now.

And

I'm just like, it's going to be so fun.

And we're going to do all this stuff.

And here all the places we're going to go and all the things we're going to do.

And, but you're right.

When I'm like, now I'm thinking about the things that we're going to do and the places we're going to go, it's like pretty normal stuff.

But still.

Yeah.

But like, we're going to stay in like nice hotels.

Yeah, but you're not going to get like a private tour of the Colorado Rockies baseball stadium.

Can I?

I mean, that's the kind of thing that I would, that's the kind of thing that I would seek out because I'm a bad person.

I'm deeply bad.

I'm seduced by the things of the world in a big way.

You know what I did try to do,

so maybe this counts, is I tried to get a tour of the, of the,

I don't know what the organization that runs it, but it's a government lab that's the Ice Core lab.

So it has like all of the America's ice cores.

Yeah.

And I tried, I tried, and it's like negative 40 inside and you have to wear a special coat and they do like very few tours, but I failed.

I failed to get in, even with all of my credibility and sway.

Well, that just goes to show you, Hank, that seeking the things of the world is always trouble.

It's like I was reminded of this when I stayed at the Plaza Hotel's Gatsby suite.

Not to make it about me, but

I stayed at the Plaza Hotel and I requested the Great Gatsby Suite, which is just like all these props from the movie, the Baz Luhrmann movie, but it's like real overstuffed in there.

It's not actually that big of a,

as I'm saying this, I hate myself.

It's not actually that big of a room.

The Gatsby Suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

And

the TV's a little far away from the bed for my, for my tastes.

I've got.

Anyway, that wasn't the issue.

The issue was that I stayed at the fanciest hotel that I could imagine, in the fanciest room that I could imagine.

And there was this huge chandelier.

I've written about this before in the Anthropocene Review, but there was this huge chandelier.

And because of the air conditioning, the air conditioning blew through the chandelier.

And so it tinkled all night.

It was just like, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

And finally, at like one o'clock in the morning, I called down and I was like, guys, this is the worst.

I'm so sorry.

I

can barely even imagine that these words are coming out of my mouth.

But is there any way that I could be moved from the Gatsby suite to a regular room here at the Plaza?

And they accommodated my request.

And no more tinkle-tinkle.

Oh, man.

I'd be up there with duct tape and cardboard trying to close up the vent somehow.

That's how seduced I am by the things of the world.

I'm so seduced by the things of the world that I get the things that are so fancy that they're unpleasant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sometimes things that are more expensive are worse.

Often.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But sometimes they are.

Have you ever seen Kanye West's sink?

Looks awful.

Looks like a total, a total, total unpleasant, like all the time.

Just water everywhere.

I'm so, here's what I'll say.

I know we should answer questions from our listeners, but on the topic of like over fancy sinks, I think this is such a rich discussion vein because I used to have an over fancy, at my old house, I had an over fancy bathtub, you know?

It was like too much.

It was too much bathtub for me.

for what I need in a bathtub, which is to like recreate the experience of when I was 11 years old and we lived in Orlando, Florida, how that bathtub felt.

So I do need a bathtub that's bigger than that bathtub because I'm bigger than I was when I was 11.

What I don't need is like a bathtub that's a small swimming pool, right?

Right.

And so when we were, when we were having this house redone, I was like, listen, I know exactly what I want in terms of a bathtub.

Like I can tell you the measurements because I've done the measurements of like my relationship between my 11-year-old self and that bathtub and my current self and the bathtub that I'm looking at.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

You've done a lot of baths to do the experiments.

So many.

And they were like, that's too small of a bathtub.

It won't even like, it won't even look right in the room.

And I was like, I'm not trying to make it look right in the room.

I'm trying to be a little boy again.

I just want to have a bath that feels the right size.

And I do.

I get to have that every day.

And I'm so grateful that I do.

So sometimes you're right.

It's not about the fanciest thing.

It's about the thing that makes you feel like you're 11 again.

Yeah.

Which for me, come to think of it, is watching soccer and taking baths, which are the two greatest joys of my life outside of my family.

Okay.

Now that we've entirely alienated ourselves from everyone.

Oh, there's like six people who are listening who are like nodding along like, yeah, I get that.

I get that.

Sometimes you don't need the biggest possible bathtub.

Yeah.

Maybe Kanye's listening and he's having a blinding light spiritual awakening, in which case, Kanye.

We got a lot of work to do you've got you've got some you've got a ton of work to do my friend you've you've got some both internal and external jobs ahead of you and i wish you the best i think you need to do that work my bathtub is too small i will say that it is way too small i cannot get i cannot i can barely straighten my legs in it and i don't mean like lying down i mean sitting up no your bathtub is both not deep enough and too short yeah no it's it's sort of yeah like a deepened shower.

It's like a shower.

You know, it's for a child.

It's so that the child can take baths and it does that job well.

And I'm not really a bath guy anyway.

So

that's your job.

You're the bath one.

All right.

This is one of our deepest disagreements, John.

Come to think of it, we have settled on one because I think, I mean, I'll still take a shower.

I understand they get you cleaner, but in terms of relaxation and rejuvenation and feeling reborn into the world, baths, man, baths literally recreate the experience of baptism.

I mean, do you want to know what gets me rejuvenated and re-experiencing the world is like just

being in the world.

Oh, like going outside.

Well, and or just like working, just like talking to a person, like being alone does not, and like silent does not do it for me.

I need to be active.

I need to be doing something.

That's our biggest disagreement.

I don't mind being active, but I want to be alone.

Yeah, it doesn't matter if I'm alone or not.

Hmm, I love alone.

Yeah.

Like, if I'm really tired, I cannot get less tired.

I could sleep.

That will do it.

But I cannot get less tired by, like, quote unquote, relaxing.

Interesting.

Well, that explains why you've been so relentless since we were born.

Oh, what a thing.

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

This first one comes from Lucas, who asks, dear Hank and John, but mostly Hank, I'm writing this question as I'm trying to listen to one of your podcasts, but my headphones are almost out of battery.

It seems, it feels like battery lives should be longer.

Like, if we could condense a terabyte of storage onto a chip, why can't we have phones with like a month-long battery life?

Insufficiently energized, Lucas.

Lucas, I have terrible news for you.

Lucas, I think the main answer to your question is actually, I want to throw it back at you.

How incredible is it that we have batteries?

Right?

Any battery.

Like,

you can take power with you?

What?

And put it right in your ear, and it'll stick there.

You just carry power and you put it in your ears.

And it's like, okay,

I have enough power to play you, Dear Hank and John for 14 hours.

And you're like, oh, I needed 16 actually.

Mine do not last that long.

I don't know.

I've never

used, I still use plug-in headphones.

I'm scared of batteries, man.

I don't understand that technology.

I'm super nice headphones that were sent to me by Olivia Rodrigo.

You know, Olivia Rodrigo sent us the nicest care package.

It made Alice cry.

It had signed sheet music.

It had Olivia O's, her standard,

her standard personal serial.

It had all kinds of vinyl, all kinds of signed stuff.

It was so generous.

Tote bags.

It was so cool.

And I so deeply appreciated it.

But what it didn't have were the fancy AirPods that you got.

They're really nice.

I like them very much.

I like that

after comparing our seduction to the things of the world, we just compared our Olivia Rodrigo care packages.

We are the worst.

We are the worst.

This is it.

We're ending our careers.

I mean,

look.

I hate us.

I don't want to miss this episode.

Oh, no.

And I'm me.

Look, Hank, I was very, like, Olivia Rodrigo's care package arrived at my home and I was like, what's happening?

Did Did they get the spreadsheets mixed up at the care package factory?

Like,

maybe Oreos could send me something.

Like, send me, like, the

Heinz Beans people, Meta Musil, absolutely.

Hit me up with your care packages.

I'm a 43-year-old science guy.

Why is Olivia Rodrigo sending me a care package?

I mean, maybe she knows that she writes bangers and bangers

cross all demographic boundaries.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

What is the science of Olivia Rodrigo?

Unexplainable.

I mean,

yeah,

it's the rare artist that Alice and I can listen to together without any

difference in how enthusiastic we are.

The other, of course,

T.

Swift.

But outside of that, there's always going to be a little bit dad's more enthusiastic about this than Alice, or Alice is more enthusiastic about this than dad.

So, John, do you know why you can't have a phone that has a month-long battery life?

I have no idea.

None.

So it's going to sound like a conspiracy at first, but I'm going to explain it.

The reason is that they don't want you to have that.

But that's not just that they don't want you to have it.

It's that they want to do certain things.

And

having a month-long battery life isn't on the list, both because you don't want it, you really want 24 hours or a day long, 18 hours of battery life.

That's what you want.

And so they'll give you more than that because if the battery dies, it'll last longer than that.

They also kind of don't want you to have that because eventually they want your battery to die so that you get a new phone.

So if you have like a two-day-long battery life, they're optimizing for something that you don't want to start with, but that will decrease the number of phones that you buy.

But what they're doing is the batteries are getting better.

They're not getting better as fast as chips get better.

Like chips can hold more stuff, like can double the amount of stuff that they do or can hold every like 18 months.

Whereas the battery life of like a volume to amount of, you know, energy is like a four year cycle of doubling, which is still fast.

But

that means that you could have a phone that had at this point, maybe eight like days of battery life.

But in the meantime, we make the battery smaller so that the phone weighs less, so that the phone is smaller.

And then we pack in more stuff so the phone can do more things.

We pack in more lenses.

We pack in more, you know, abilities and chips and whatever else is inside of phones.

So the battery takes up less space so that the phone can be smaller.

Uh, and they are optimizing for a specific amount of battery life, not for the most battery life possible.

All right, but why can't they make headphones that have enough battery life to get you through a whole day of listening?

Because you would be too big and bulky?

Yeah, I mean, these wireless headphones weren't really possible 10 years ago

because the batteries weren't small enough.

So the batteries have only recently gotten small enough.

Okay.

And then also, you know, if you've had your bat, if you've had your headphones and have done like charge-recharge cycles every day for like a year or so, they're going to have less life than they used to.

I have my AirPods.

I finally are at the point where they only have like two hours of battery life, which is, I think, one of the greatest achievements of my life.

That I used a pair of wireless headphones for long enough that I have to replace them because of battery, not because I lost them.

That is good.

Like, how did I, I will, I will say I lost one of them, but

the other one, even, but the other one I still have.

That's great.

And it is, at this point, I cannot use those ones.

So thank you to Olivia Rodrigo for sending me these ones, which are currently there in my ear right now.

And

yeah, but like, I think that they're, they're getting better and they will continue to get better.

But like, we are, we only recently arrived in the world where these kinds of headphones were even possible.

And now, like, they're possible for cheap.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by who's that

AirPod maker who advertises on all the YouTube channels?

That one.

Yeah, I don't know.

That one company that advertises on all the YouTube channels with advertisements so effective that I can't remember their name.

Is it like Boron Blown freaking Ray-Ban, Ray-Ban, Ray, Raycon, Raycons, Raycons, Raycon, Raycons, Raycon?

Wow.

We got there.

It's brought to you by Raycon, an actual brand that makes actual products that are inexpensive wireless headphones.

Should we do a wireless headphone subscription service, Hank?

Is that crazy?

That's crazy.

That's a bad idea.

No, I definitely don't want to get in that business.

I did have a business idea earlier today that I would love to share with you, John.

Pitch it to me right now.

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Right now.

This podcast is brought to you by my new business idea.

If you go to a gallery in your town, The art will be too expensive, probably,

because the business model of galleries requires that they only have very expensive art.

Yeah, they get 50% of the price of the painting usually.

Yeah, and to pay their rent and the staff and such,

they can't be selling stuff for 200 bucks.

That's right.

And, but there are lots of artists who make great art, but don't make the kind of art that you can sell for $2,000.

Right, because it might be very reproducible, for instance.

Like one of my favorite groups of artists is the Gorilla Girls, and they don't usually make like artworks that cost $50,000.

They're mostly a group of people who are critical of museum and gallery collections and the way that artists are compensated and the relationship between capitalism and

the art world.

And so most of their stuff is posters that are downloadable or printable or you can buy them for 50 bucks.

Right.

And I think that Etsy has abandoned this market to some extent.

It has become like an eBay of lots of, you know, drop shipped stuff from China or really easily sort of, you know, sort of customizable products that are, you know, not art.

They're, they're products, which is fine.

And so like, I think that there is a space for a gallery

internet thing.

that can that has things for sale from artists that are where you live.

So you sort of launch it in localities and you get people to like list their stuff.

And it's good art that you can have on your wall in that time when you're moving from your poster phase to your art phase, and you can have art that you can afford.

And those artists who aren't, who are, there's lots of amazing artists who aren't in their like, who just their business model doesn't fit the gallery business model.

And so, like, most of those people sell by being in and among the art scene in their towns, but art scenes are only so big and a lot of people are not aware of them.

So it's a place where you can go and shop for cool art that is local to you.

And then you don't have to get it shipped necessarily.

You can go pick it up from the artist or from a centralized location or something like that.

And there are other ways that this is solved.

Coffee shops oftentimes have art for sale that is not gallery cost.

But I like this because I think that there's a lot of artists who need

ways to sell their work and there are a lot of people who would buy less expensive art.

Yes.

I think there are a lot of people with bare walls right now whose lives would be enriched by having art and who either don't know how to get that art or think that like there is no art available for that like $25 to $100 price range.

And it's true that it's so, okay, I'm going to poke a couple holes in this business idea and then I'm going to pitch you an alternate business idea.

Okay.

Okay.

Big hole that I'm going to poke in this business idea.

One thing that is very expensive that it's hard to get around the expense of is framing.

For sure.

And so

if you're talking about...

I actually have a solution for this problem, but

if you're talking about,

I mean, you can ask artists to create within.

Yes, that's the solution.

Okay, yeah.

You can, that's, and that's something I've seen people do is to ask artists to create within the confines confines of existing frame sizes, right?

So 18 by 24, whatever, whatever.

Yeah.

Okay, so that solves that problem.

I'm going to throw an idea back at you, Hank, because my big issue is that I think this takes a lot of hullabaloo to set up.

And I think is

the bigger problem.

Technologically

complicated.

And I can see how it might be vulnerable to abuse and all other kinds of things.

I'm going to throw it.

Yeah, you'd have to like curate.

You'd have to like create, like, you'd have to

earn trust among artists, all kinds of tough stuff.

And you may have to do some level of curation, which is hard.

And also, like, just the tech of it would be hard, I think.

Yeah.

Okay.

What your idea, what I thought you were going to pitch, and an idea that I find really interesting, is an art of the month club, where a

curator

is hired, maybe for a one-year period, to

12 reproducible artworks, limited edition prints,

that come to you framed and ready to go for, say, $175.

Per

month?

No, for the year.

But you get 12 pieces of art for $175?

Yeah.

I mean, that'd be great if

you could hit that price point.

But that's very hard, especially for framed and shipped.

Maybe my math's wrong.

I don't think it's framed and shipped.

I think it's not framed, but I think it's

ready for framing.

And ready for an existing frame you can get at Michael's.

That's nice.

Ready for an existing frame you can get at Michaels so that it's, yeah, so that it fits.

We say, like, look,

these are the dimensions we're working with.

Can you work with that?

If they say, no, we get it, right?

Yeah.

But like, I have an artwork.

It's one of my favorite artworks.

It's by Robin O'Neill and it's a

gravestone and it says, rest in peace, 2020.

And then underneath that, it says 2020 to 2020.

And like, because you can't really say 2019 to 2021, can you?

It's just

2020 to 2020, but what a year, you know, like 2020 did not make it to 2021.

But it did cram a lot into 2020.

I mean, it really filled that year.

And what I love about that is that like, it's a way to support independent artists while also populating your walls.

While also like, if you don't like the artwork one month, it's not a huge deal.

You can sell it on eBay or you can just, you know, throw it in the trash.

But I like the idea of it being limited edition, like a thousand, you know, a thousand members at any one time.

Maybe it's, maybe it's a little more.

Maybe it's 25 bucks a month.

So it starts to really make sense for the artist.

So the artist can make like $10,000

from doing this.

But like for a lot of artists, a $10,000 check is a huge check.

Like most, most artists, you know, are not showing in galleries and selling their works for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So I just think it could be cool and interesting and you could have a big backstory to it about the selection process and could just enrich your relationship with art as well by like helping you to understand what contemporary art practice might look like in different countries.

Or,

you know, I just, I, I, I've never thought of that before, but I think that idea has potential.

What do you think?

I like that.

I like that idea too.

I think that that's a lot simpler.

And I think, I think that it has, it has, you know, less potential for network effects, less potential for how, like, you know, sort of once the, if you can get it to a big enough size, then it sort of takes care of itself and it becomes, you know, tech company-y in that way, where you don't have to think about it very much.

And and it can grow with little overhead but

that's far more of an achievable idea

yeah i think i like my idea because it's achievable and also because as it happens we have a business that already does this but for coffee

yeah we definitely do one of my favorite things about the awesome socks club is that it is a surprise whereas right not that none of our other things like you don't want to get surprised by soap like you want to know what you're soap yeah you don't want to get surprised by coffee right yeah you don't want to be yeah but this

I think that you could be surprised by coffee.

It's just like you have to be that some people want that coffee of the month thing where they're trying out different things all the time.

That's not what I want or what I want to do.

Right.

But this could be

like have an element of delight and also have an element of the curation where you get the art and then you can read something about it

to help understand the artist and what they're going for.

And, you know, artists.

And that's like, isn't that part of what's fun about having art on your wall anyway is being able to like look at it and like know that backstory or talk to people when they come over and be like, oh, I'm a member of this like, you know, print of the month club.

And like, these are the prints from the last 12 months.

And then as at the end of the year, I actually like switch out my

posters and or, you know, I, and, and put a new ones, whatever, whatever your way of doing it is.

And you can like talk, I like this one because of this backstory.

And this artist is, you know, from Afghanistan.

And like, this is how they made this.

They made it one way or at a time, whatever, whatever the story is.

And I just think like that's, that to me is really,

I'm looking for ways to like lower barriers to art entry in general.

Like it's very frustrating to me to see like

Target succeed in the art market in a way that no, nobody in the art market does, just because like they sell things at a reasonable price point.

And

I just, I don't know.

I think that's a cool idea.

And I like that it's a little less complicated, even if it does less,

it maybe accomplishes less locally in the communities where it's working, but I think

it could still be a big deal for the artists who are selected.

For sure.

Yes.

And gratefully, we are not the people to choose the art, but there are lots of people out there who are good at that.

Yeah.

Like I live with a person who would do that for our first year.

Yeah.

I like this idea a lot, and I want to know if Nerd Viteria likes it.

If you're listening to this podcast and you like this idea, you

let us know on

Twitter if we haven't completely put you off this episode.

This next question and possibly our last question, God, we've just crushed it today, comes from Huxley, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm almost four.

Does Spider-Man have to brush his teeth?

From Huxley.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

Of course he does.

No, I don't.

Huxley,

don't let him lie to you.

That's like, you know what, Huxley?

Hank's saying that because he has a little kid like you who he's trying to scam into brushing his teeth every day.

No.

Why wouldn't Spider, like maybe Wolverine wouldn't need to brush his teeth because he has like super healing.

Yeah.

Does Spider-Man have super healing?

Spider-Man doesn't have super healing, but I do think he has those like spider bots that'll get on his teeth and just clean out the plaque.

Little tiny.

Apparently he does heal faster than normal when injured, but is not completely immune to viruses or other human ailments.

If he's not immune to viruses, then he would still have an issue with plaque.

I want to brush your teeth.

Yeah.

Well, that's bacteria, but still.

Yeah.

But I know.

I just mean like if he can suffer from immune infections, which it seems like he can, he could be ill.

He could get gingivitis.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's got a spread.

Like, and it's not just, like, even if Wolverine's like, I can't get gingivitis, these bacteria can live and thrive in my mouth, but it will never actually hurt me.

Yeah.

Like, his girlfriend still cares.

His family still cares.

That's true.

People around him are still bothered.

Yeah, I mean, that's part of it, Huxley.

But, like, the biggest thing is that you yourself, even though you don't like brushing your teeth, and I get that, man, like, I totally understand.

I also don't love brushing my teeth.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions about Huxley.

Maybe he's just cares about Spider-Man.

No, no, no.

I think I was able to drill down to Huxley's real concern.

I think it lies deeper than Spider-Man.

I might be wrong, Huxley, but I think that you might be asking about Spider-Man as a proxy for asking about yourself.

And while I get it, what you'll come to understand in time, Huxley, is that if you just brush your teeth every day or even twice a day, what you'll notice over time is that you start to like the feeling of having a really kind of clean mouth.

So you'll get there, buddy.

You'll get there.

You'll get there.

You just got to bring it up.

It's a bit of a thing to do, but there we are doing it.

I do have to say that Venom, Spider-Man's enemy,

definitely does not have to brush his teeth and probably doesn't even want to because he does want that smell to follow him around everywhere.

Right.

But also is made of, I don't know, what is Venom made of?

Ferrofluids?

Chemicals?

Maybe not even chemicals.

I think he may be made of some other kind of matter that doesn't exist

in our universe.

That's a good point.

That's a good point.

So unless you want to be Venom when you grow up, Huxley, go ahead and brush those teethers.

That's right.

John, can we ask this question about geese?

Please.

It's from Kaya, who asks, Dear Ank and John, a goose

with a nest near my house recently laid a bunch of eggs, and seven of them hatched.

Seeing seven goslings made me wonder if animals can count to keep track of their young.

Would they notice if one doesn't keep up with them?

If so, does that mean that animals can do math?

Baya, it's Kaya.

This is off topic, but do you think that Ryan Gosling got his surname because back in the day his people raised geese?

You know,

there's got to be a reason.

It's got to be something to do with geese.

I guess it could have something to do with lings.

It's not.

It's just an English variant of Jocelyn.

It's dubious.

It's dubious.

All right.

Anyway, can animals do math?

I mean, I know, yes, we're animals and we can do math, or at least the ones who aren't me can, but like, can other animals do math?

Some animals can do math,

but depends on what you mean by math.

Like, there's a definitely, like, animals can definitely do less and more.

Like, they know when there's like more of something and less of something.

Sure.

Like, insects can do that, which is wild.

And sometimes scientists will say, like, that counts as math.

Like, you can, you basically, like, you know, something about quantities, and that's a, you know, a basic principle of mathematics.

But like, do they,

what does no mean?

Does anyone know anything?

Am I just a story that I tell to myself?

Yeah.

I can answer that one.

Yeah, you're a bacterial colony that's convinced itself it's an organism.

It's incredible.

It's just a bunch of cells that are working together for some reason.

But like, we're not sure.

specifically about geese.

And there's like a weirdness to

geese where they seem to like geese, you know, we can't really say, but they seem to mourn sometimes.

They seem to be sad when like a partner goose dies.

They seem to be sad sometimes when

eggs, when like things go wrong with their eggs or with their babies, they seem to be sad.

But also like that they

it's not entirely clear that they consider their children their own.

It's kind of a creche behavior where sometimes you'll see like ducks with like 72 ducklings behind them.

There's like a documented case of a duck with 72 ducklings.

Obviously that's not their all their ducklings.

And so there's like like they all sort of work together and they take care of their kids together.

And

so like they're

and early on, like you gotta know that, you know,

a minority of those ducklings are going to survive or goslings are going to survive.

And so there's probably less weight.

Now there's a lot, like they care, they definitely care, definitely trying.

But my feeling would be that it's more likely that they've got like a vibe for

that there that there is now less than there once was, or they can look and be like, that's the same amount, rather than being like, they definitely can't say that's seven goslings.

Right.

And they, do you think they can say like, oh, no, we lost little Petey?

You know, that's more interesting.

That's also an interesting question.

Like, like, what is the, like,

is there an identity where it's like, instead of counting, you just like, we've got, you know, they're all here.

Yeah.

And I know they're all here, not because I can count them, but because there's Petey and there's Maya and there's Alfonso and, yeah.

Yeah.

It's great.

Great work, John.

I love that idea.

And I love, I love how much we don't know about animals.

Ed Yong has a great book about this.

And the fact that like we're sharing a planet with an astonishing amount of life

that experiences the world in such vast different ways than us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that we

it's hard enough to try to get inside the head of another human.

Like imagine trying to get inside the head of a goose.

Yeah.

It's hard work.

Yeah.

I would love to know if geese get happy and sad, but I don't know how to tell because I can't ask them how they're feeling.

And it'd be weird to put them in an fMRI machine and then show them pictures of happy and sad sad things.

Because I don't even know what would make a goose happy and sad.

Yeah.

Well, even that is

not that reliable on its own.

So it would be very hard to know about.

It's hard to know about animal emotions.

It's not impossible.

We have some ways in, but it's hard to know.

This Ed Yong book is really good on that front.

Y'all should read it.

Oh, you know what else?

Other book, before we get to the news from Mars at AFC Wimbledon, for the seven people who are still listening.

You know what book just came out that I love so much is my friend Kava Akbar's book, Martyr.

It's so good.

It's his first novel.

It's incredible.

The last book I recommended to you was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

This book is just as good as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, except instead of being about video games, it's about art and addiction and love and aging and mortality.

It's so good.

Oh my God.

I'm excited.

I have been having kind of

a

misstreak on books.

I just assume that it's mostly my brain rather than the books, but I keep DNFing, which I don't like yeah yeah

brains my my brain also hasn't been finishing books lately although this book was not a problem to finish it's very page turny while still being just gorgeously written gorgeous

that's all right hank it's time for the all-important news from mars and afc wimbledon uh there's a lot of news from afc wimbledon this week so do you want to go first

I mean, I can.

I don't know if you know this, but the people listening do.

I do.

Because when we recorded, when we recorded, the helicopter was fine.

Yeah, it's back.

Three days later, the helicopter is dead forever.

Yeah.

I've recorded an update about the helicopter being dead forever.

So I have already delivered the news because I couldn't let that episode go out without

with the incorrect news.

But that's still the news.

Yeah.

And it seems like it like it got back on its feet, but it seems like it tipped and one of the rotors hit the ground and broke itself.

Well, it is when we are sick and elderly that we are at our most vulnerable.

Yeah, our carbon fiber parts are not indestructible.

No,

you're telling me you should see

my L2 vertebra.

I've gotten a lot of scans and

one of the incidental findings is that I also have a couple of spots that may turn into trouble, but aren't yet.

Nope.

Good.

In your spinal column, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great.

Great.

I don't know which one.

We love an incidental thing.

They used words like L2.

Yeah.

They use words like L2.

It's probably the same one.

We're going to be little disc twinsies, but yeah, hold off as long as you can.

It's not comfortable.

Yeah.

Well, I'm sorry about the helicopter, man.

That's a real bummer.

It did a great job.

It outlasted its mission, but nothing lasts forever.

And speaking of nothing lasting forever,

I know this news too.

Our great Iraqi striker, Ali Alhamedi, the light of many Wimbledon fans' life,

has left.

He has left at the end of the January transfer window to join high-flying championship side Ipswich Town, favorites to be back in the Premier League next year.

Really good football club.

And, you know,

it's a deal that obviously makes sense for him because not only is he going to be playing in the second tier of English football because they're doing so well this year.

If he plays well,

he has a real chance of being a Premier League footballer next year.

And he'll still only be 22 years old, which is pretty special, obviously.

So it's the right club for him.

And I guess the deal makes sense from...

AFC Wimbledon's perspective because it is over a million dollars and has the chance, depending on the add-ons and how many appearances he makes and whatnot, to be the biggest deal in the history of League Two.

So it's hard to complain about what is potentially.

I mean, that's like, that makes the news even worse, though, because it means that he was so much of the reason that we've been good.

I know.

I know.

That's what the people with the money are saying.

They're saying, look at what he did for this team that isn't very good.

Right, exactly.

So

it's a real hard pill to swallow,

but this is the reality that we're in as long as we're owned by our fans and we have this $10 million debt.

So we have a $10 million debt that we basically owe mostly to ourselves, mostly to fans who put money into this bond, including me.

And

we have to pay it back over the next 20 years.

And a lot of it is due in the next five years.

And so we've just got to figure out ways to generate enough money that we have enough profit that we can pay down this debt.

And obviously selling players is the best, easiest way to do that.

It's unbelievable that Ali Alhamdi was only a Wimbledon player for 12 months because he just left a huge imprint on this club and we will miss him so, so much.

So that's been a tough pill to swallow.

In better news, we played Mansfield Town, which is third in the table right now, and we were on the back of two losses.

And they got an early red card.

They're definitely outplayed us that whole game.

We got a good goal from Omar Bougal, our Lebanese striker.

It's a really good goal, really happy with it.

But then we gave up a stupid goal, poorly defended.

We're not working with our best defense right now.

Joe Lewis seems a little injured.

Short shorts, he's a little bit injured.

Ryan Johnson has a long-term injury.

It's just kind of a mess in the back.

And you could tell that on this goal that we gave up.

And then it looked like we were actually going to give up a penalty in the last minute of the game and potentially lose.

I was really frustrated, but the referee didn't call the penalty, which

is a great call.

um and uh

and then almost immediately we went down the field and

um scored a goal in the last minute of the game with our brand new striker ronan curtis from ireland and i was like i was like oh my god are we gonna be okay after all like is everything going to be fine is ronan curtis just going to be the new aliel homody probably not but maybe because we won that game and like winning that game that's a game that we 100 would have lost last season.

And winning it this season, I was like, oh my gosh, like this team, we're still good.

Now we have a lot of injuries, a lot more injuries than we had in December.

I have a lot less confidence that we're going to make it to the playoffs.

But I'll say this, Hank.

We are only nine points, three wins from our last 20 games.

away from making sure that we are not relegated.

And that is awesome.

So I try to take the positive.

We're still playing well.

We've still got a good team.

Let's see if we can build on this and get somewhere by the end of the season.

All right.

Well,

I'm so glad to hear that there's also good news because

the Allah

news is brutal.

I mean, it's just,

oh, I love him so much.

But like, you know,

inevitable.

Inevitable.

Inevitable at our level.

And until we get to a place where we don't have to sell players to make up this debt, you know, it's just the way that it is.

Like,

you know, we're in a position where,

you know, we need novelist supporters to kick in a little bit of money here and there to keep other players.

There's

ain't nobody on, ain't nobody in AFC Wimbledon's Rolodex who's like, oh, yeah, I'll pay a million and a half dollars for to keep Holly Alhamedy at AFC Wimbledon.

So we got a ways to go.

Yeah.

Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me.

Thanks to everybody for your questions we didn't answer.

We'll try to do better next week.

We're at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

Yes.

And if you like any of our ideas, let us know what you think about our ideas.

Also, if you hate enough of those, let us know if you hate them.

That's important information as well.

Definitely.

Please poke holes.

This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Medish.

It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rojas.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

Our editorial assistant is Dabuki Chakravarti.

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

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