374: Shorter, And Worse, But More Authentic

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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 the best advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

John, I had

months,

months, to remember that I needed a dad joke for this portion of the show.

And I just remember that.

But you just remembered just now.

You don't need a dad joke, Hank.

That actually segs nicely into the conversation we need to have with our listeners.

What does it do?

It segs.

Like it's a segue?

It segues?

It's segs.

E-G-U-E-S.

Segs nicely into the conversation we need to have.

E-G-G-S, which is a different thing.

Okay.

What we are segueing our way into, Hank, to be grammatically incorrect, to apparently please your needs, is that we need to have a talk with our listeners about the future of this podcast.

So

Hank,

you had cancer.

Yeah, I mean the past tense is kind of messy, but okay.

Well, right, fair enough.

You are in currently diagnosed as in remission from cancer.

Yeah.

And

verb tenses are weird, period, but this has led the whole cancer thing, I think it's safe to say, has led to, I don't want to say a midlife crisis, but a

we're hoping.

That's exactly the kind of thing that is supposed to be something I say, not something you say.

And yet we've ended up in this universe.

Exactly.

This weird role reversal where suddenly you're the one obsessed with mortality is strange and surreal and part of a larger phenomenon where we have both, I think it's safe to say, kind of rethought our relationship with being alive over the last six months, the same six months we haven't been making this podcast.

Yeah.

John, how do you get an elephant on a Segway?

Oh, geez.

Through encouragement.

The person, no, you take the S out of Seg, and then you take the F out of way.

There's no F.

Oh, like you get the F out of the way?

No,

you were so close, you almost did it.

Oh, it's really frustrating for me, John.

I don't.

You take the F out of way.

There is no F in way.

Yeah.

There it is.

Oh, God.

Okay.

When you require audience participation for a dad joke to work, you should never expect it to work.

But my point is that we don't even need dad jokes because we're changing the fundamental nature of this podcast to be more in line with the fundamental nature of who we are now after this experience.

I mean, I just made the noise.

So I don't know how significantly we've changed.

But okay.

Well, I agree.

We should take a step back and we should look at it from 30,000 feet.

We should take the opportunity to imagine

what we're doing.

We've already done that.

And we just need to tell the people about that I may have I may have forgotten about that conversation so we're remaking the podcast Hank we are reinventing dear Hank and John not quite from scratch but almost from scratch to reflect this new reality that we live in what is the first thing that we're doing the first thing that we're doing John is that we're we're committed We're making a commitment to each other that we're going to record for an hour instead of for like two and a half hours.

Yeah, we're not going to record for two and a half hours.

First off, we're just not going to do that because we want this to be more of an authentic experience anyway.

Like that's part of part of what I've come away from it thinking is that like what people really value about Dear Hank and John is not actually our high quality comedy bits.

Right.

And that surprised me because they are such high quality.

What people value is the conversation between two brothers who love each other a lot.

Right.

And that's what we're going to provide.

Yeah.

And like, well, we're going to let what happens happens during that hour.

But if it results in a 30 minute long episode of dear hank and john that's great and we're happy with that we're not thinking boy we're really letting people down or boy i'm not happy with how that turned out because there's not enough usable stuff in that episode we're thinking dope uh we recorded for 45 minutes and the episode's 44 minutes long or we recorded for an hour and the episode's an hour long and it's a no-cut special.

But the main thing is that, and this goes nicely into point two, which is that we are not going to think of dear Hank and John as work.

And indeed, it's not work in the sense that we don't get paid for it.

So,

right.

And like, this is just like a thing that happens, you know, like at first, it's like, oh, let's just do the goofs.

And then it starts to be, oh, well, the goofs are going so well that, like, we should make sure that in addition to the goofs, there's ad placements and then there's people relying on things to happen.

And then it's

stressing yeah yeah but like but like none of that money goes to hank and me it goes to complexly yeah which i guess is a company that indirectly does pay both hank and me something but like it's not you know we're not reliant on it's not reliant on that money to pay us our salaries it's not like a direct through to from one to the other yeah the exactly and the yeah but but also to some extent like you know what once something becomes a thing where people you know internally at complexly like there's infrastructure for like sending us the ad placements and making sure that the the thing.

And so like we have to be respectful of the needs of the people who like can't do their jobs if we don't do the things at the right times.

So that makes it more of a job.

And we're still going to be doing that.

Like if Kelsey needs us to do an ad read and needs it by Wednesday, she's going to have it by.

We're going to do it by Wednesday.

Right.

Absolutely.

But during this part, I'm not going to think about any of that.

That's not.

I just want to have fun with my brother.

Yeah.

That's what I want.

I want to have fun with my brother and I'm not going to think about that stuff which was what we've been doing which is but like there has been some extra pressure yeah and i think sometimes we're like how do we make this thing really good or like how do we market it better and look here's how we're going to market it better if you guys if you listening want to tell people about dear hanging john you can that's a hundred percent of the marketing that we're gonna do yeah uh please uh do things

if you want to clip us and put it on tick tock and do lip syncs yep i might do a lip sync of my own voice Right.

Sure, of course.

And then I'll do John's voice, but I'll be, I'll have a filter on that makes my mouth really small.

Yeah, that sounds great.

Yeah.

And yeah, and by the way, if you don't want to tell people you know about this podcast because you're embarrassed that you listen to it, that's also fine.

That's okay.

And I certainly don't want you to tell people about the podcast who aren't cool because one of the great things about this podcast is that everybody who listens to it, I like.

And I don't want you to tell people who I'm not going to like about the podcast.

Please don't, because that's the new vibe.

The new vibe is we're not trying to get a million downloads a month.

We're trying to make sure that people who suck don't listen to this podcast.

Yeah.

There's so many, there's so many podcasts for them, Hank, because this is the hour a week where we're just brothers hanging out and talking to each other with people we adore.

Yeah.

Woo.

All right.

The third thing that's changing, and this is going to be a bummer for some of you.

yes

um

is that we're no longer doing the news from mars and afc wimbledon just kidding it's actually going to be most mostly news from mars and afc wimbledon this week um there's a lot to catch up on so much has happened on mars in the last six months holy crap oh my god i'm not going to do it i'm not going to do it justice uh and indeed i can't do afc wimbledon's endless drama justice but the we are not gonna do this weekend stuff our hit patreon only podcast any longer yeah basically we're scaling back the Patreon.

The thing about the Patreon that we think brings the most value and that we really love

is doing these monthly live streams with our listeners.

That's the thing that we really love and think is super valuable.

And we're going to continue to do that.

We're not going to do this five-minute silly podcast every week because we're focusing on each other.

and doing stuff together that we hope will be fun for everybody.

Yeah, it was kind of a like, so first of all, I don't, you don't get a lot of feedback with any podcast.

You know, a YouTube video, you get immediate

within the four minutes of it being uploaded, somebody's watched the whole thing and they're leaving a comment.

With so much of what we do, that is the way that it works.

We don't, we get, and we get feedback for Dear Hank and John in the form of questions and interactions.

We know people are out there.

This weekend stuff has always felt a little bit like shrouding into the void.

Yeah.

I know that it's not.

I know that there are people who are who are listening to it and are enjoying it.

And those old episodes will stay up.

If you become a patron, you'll get access to the old episodes.

But also, we hit the, like we finish the podcast.

This is what happens.

We finish the podcast and we do our little outro and then we stop for like five seconds.

And then

we start this weekend stuff.

And it's like, I don't know.

The arcade.

It ruins the arc.

It ruins the vibe.

And this is what it's all about now: is holding on to that arc.

Yeah.

I'm really excited about these changes, even though I know that it's going to be a bummer for some people.

And the other thing is that we're probably not going to be every week anymore because we're going to be when we can do it.

Yeah.

We're having, we've had a little bit of trouble because our schedules changed during the hiatus.

We've just had a hard time finding the right time to.

You know, I would argue that my schedule changed during the hiatus.

Your schedule

evaporated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but we collectively

got to put it on a new person.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah.

Once again, I'm trying to present myself as the protagonist of your cancer journey, Hank.

And I feel like not enough people.

Not enough people have bought into this narrative.

And it's really frustrating for me that the main person who was shaped by Hank's cancer cancer was John.

I mean, it didn't have any effect.

Right.

But I, I, but again, I feel like a lot of people have put you at the center.

Hank's cancer, Hank's survivorship, Hank's cancer journey.

Where's John's Hank's cancer?

Yeah, I think we should, I really should have renamed it to like John Kins lymphoma.

Yeah, I mean, I prefer to think of it as John and Hank trilymphoma.

You know, that was actually on the table,

that the try-guys would come to Missoula and we'd do a try-guys try chemotherapy, but I'd be like an honorary try-guy for a day.

And they come in and we do chemotherapy and see what that would be like.

I love that.

It did not work out because as it turns out, getting chemotherapy

is really exhausting and sucks.

And

as they told me how it would work, I was like, no way are you coming to do this?

Like, I'm going to be in my backyard sleeping during when you would like me to be doing things aside from that.

Yeah.

But it was a great idea.

It would have been really cool.

It's a great idea.

But man, chemo knocks you out.

I was,

it was a real, among the things that have been weird for me was seeing Hank take a nap.

Like Hank didn't even take naps when he was two.

I have took so many naps.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The only times I take naps are when I have am actively undergoing cancer treatment and when I'm on a boat.

Oh, that's true.

That's true.

I have seen you take a lot of boat naps, but they aren't really

because I feel like I'm going to hurl.

Yeah, the boat naps never felt to me like naps, more like, and I guess it's true with the chemo naps too.

It's more like an enforced sleep.

You know?

Seeing Hank on a boat is actually pretty similar to seeing you on chemo.

Like you're not all there emotionally or or like intellectually you know like there's a lot of you that's just kind of like in a little bit of a state of misery yeah the last time i was on a boat was wild because i i went on this whale watching trip with catherine yeah and it was a surprise and she was like you really want to do this and i'm like let's go no uh and and but it was a surprise so neither of us were dressed well for it because catherine would have made sure i was dressed well if she had known about it sure and she herself also would have dressed better for the occasion so we were both very cold.

On the way out, everything's fine.

On the way back, I had to go like sit in the back of the boat.

But then, this one of the crew was like, You're Hank Green, and talking to me for like a long time when I'm clearly, clearly in the back of the boat for a reason.

Yeah, no, when I'm on a boat, the only question is, is it going off the side or off the back?

Yeah, um, I'm not a boat man, no, which is a blessing, you know.

Like, I don't know, it seems like some of the boat people have great lives.

I like they're having a good old time.

I like enough expensive stuff without getting into boats.

You know what I mean?

There's cheap ways.

There's cheap ways.

Well, I mean, I have the boats, but I hear what you're saying.

I have a kayak.

If that's being into boats, like I'm good, I'm covered.

I enjoy kayaking on the White River, and I never feel seasick when I'm kayaking on the White River for whatever reason.

But you put me on a proper boat with an engine, I do not have a good time.

Yeah, there is no way to get from the Freetown International Airport to Freetown in Sierra Leone without going on a boat.

And I know what you're wondering, that doesn't make any sense.

Well, it makes sense if you were a colonial enterprise founding an airport that you want to be separate from the people.

And so

this is where it was set up and now where it still is all these decades later.

And so you have to go on a boat.

And I'll tell you, getting off like a 30-hour airplane trip and getting on a boat is

not my most glorious moment in terms of likelihood that I'm going to vomit.

Well, John, if you do want to get into boats, I have good news for you.

I just saw this article that went viral on Twitter.

The headline is: Turning the Tide: The Sustainable Future of Super Yachts.

Well, I mean, a couple observations.

I actually am, I'm actually not as concerned about the sustainable future of Super Yachts as I am concerned about the fact that you're still on Twitter.

Probably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I will say that whatever they're doing over there at twitter.com, it is making it less compelling to me.

Like, I am not drawn in.

anymore.

I still see you tweet quite a bit, I have to say.

And that implies, of course, that I'm on Twitter.

How do you see him, Joan?

I see him the old-fashioned way, Hank, on Twitter, which is a problem.

But I think the difference between us is that I accept that there's something horrifically wrong with me.

I accept that this is.

You're right.

This is a terrible, terrible personal failure.

You're right.

Because I really, I really do think that like I like look back at the last 10 years of my life and I'm like, you know, the amount of time I spent on Twitter, probably appropriate.

Wow.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

I had that thought this morning.

Holy, I mean, that is astonishing.

Or at least I don't regret it is the feeling I have.

I regret it.

100% regret it.

I regret Twitter.

I regret like every, everything I've invested into Twitter, emotionally, the power that I've given over to the platform.

I regret all of it.

Now, I will say, like, great things have been done through and by Twitter.

I don't want to take anything away from that, including one of the things that happened while we quit the podcast was that our community had several hundred millions of dollars of impact in reducing the price of the cost of tuberculosis diagnostics and treatments.

And

some of that might not have happened without Twitter.

I think that Twitter mattered in that.

It's weird how people feel like what happens on Twitter matters in a big, in a bigger way than things that happen on other social media platforms.

It just

feels close.

Yeah.

It feels.

And I don't like, I don't have my finger on why it feels that way.

It feels that way to me too.

But it also feels that way to other folks.

And so that, yeah, I was frankly, I haven't said this publicly, but kind of astounded at the level of sensitivity

to the signal that

those people and organizations had.

It felt pretty empowering and very, uh, I also maybe haven't, I have said this publicly, but like, I am amazed by the work that we got done during those efforts.

Uh,

and, and I am also like extremely proud of you because I know what went into that, both in terms of like educating yourself and behind the scenes work.

It was, it's like legitimately astounding.

Thanks.

Like, I'm astounded.

Yeah, no, I, it's definitely the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me, and some weird things have happened to me.

Um, thank you, Hank.

Um, as I've said a million times, but it's very true, like none of this happened in a vacuum.

And if it weren't for Partners in Health, Doctors Without Borders, and the Treatment Action Group, and thousands of nerdfighters who've now organized themselves as TB fighters, then none of that would have happened.

So, it's not by any means a story primarily about me, but I am really glad to be part of it.

And looking forward, there are so many other ways that we need to improve access to TV treatment.

So the work is by no means done.

So those are, I think, the main things that are changing about the podcast.

I do not know to what, like, I've done a little bit of talking behind the scenes with people, and I know that folks are not enthusiastic about losing this week and stuff.

But

I don't know how big of a deal that is to folks, but I do agree that for us anyway, like the by far the most valuable and rewarding Patreon thing has been the monthly live streams.

And we'll keep doing that.

And so many people show up for those.

Yeah.

And it's just a good old time.

It's just great.

So to summarize, as of today, Dear Hank and John will be shorter and worse.

It'll be more authentic, at least.

I do

weirdly enough.

and worse.

I have a question that I found that I do want to ask you from our listeners.

Do you want to do one listener question today?

Absolutely.

I'll do 16.

I'm here for an hour.

You have my full attention.

Okay.

This is from Duncan, who the subject caught my eye.

It says, I want to destroy a thatched roof in a wind tunnel.

And I'm like, yeah, you do.

Yeah, of course.

Hi there.

Duncan says, I'm one of the only roof thatchers in the United States.

I've been doing a job in coastal Georgia for the past month, and I've been wondering what the wind speed required to tear apart a thatched roof is.

I've heard that they'll hold up better than other materials, but I only have anecdotal evidence for that.

One of our roofs in Denville, New Jersey, held up pretty well to Hurricane Sandy, better than any of the other shingled roofs around it.

Another roof that we're rethatching right now on Cape Cod was fine during a bomb cyclone that washed boats up on shore and flipped boards over our on our scaffold.

The question has been eating me alive.

I can't stop thinking about it.

willing to answer any questions you might have about roof thatching and i'm also willing to thatch a small roof free of charge if you can help me destroy it oh i thought it was i actually am in need of a roof and so for a second i was really excited I was like, yeah, I don't care what the material is.

If they'll do it for free, I'm in it.

It sounds like Duncan goes all over the place.

Yeah.

Yeah, Indianapolis needs a stronger thatched roof community anyway.

The first thing this makes me think, Hank, is, is it possible that we've had the story of the three little pigs wrong all along?

Right.

That in fact, because what are the three little pigs?

There's the one that's got the thatch.

The straw, straw, wood, and that's basically thatch, straw, wood, and brick.

I think the person with the straw, at least roof,

might have been better off.

We got a Duncan.

I want you to build a whole house of thatch, like just big enough to fit a little piggy in.

Yes.

And then we're going to get a wolf.

No.

Who can blow really hard?

Well, a leaf blower.

Yeah, I actually don't think we need the wolf.

I think we can have a non-mammalian source of wind,

if you will.

I think actually Duncan proposes that with the wind tunnel or a leaf blower might work, a really high-powered leaf blow.

There's a bunch of leaf blowers, yeah.

What is the most legally powerful leaf blower you can acquire or make?

Maybe we could talk to our old friend Mark about it.

Mark, that was my first thought too.

I was like, Mark Rober

knows the limitations of a leaf blower

already.

Just it's already in his head.

This is a great Mark Rober video.

Forget about us.

Oh my God, Mark.

A real test of the three little piggies is the best Mark Rober video we've ever come up with.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, because

first of all, you got to hire Duncan to build a straw house.

You got to hire somebody else to do a wood house.

And then you have to hire a different bricklayer to do a brick house.

But then you have to figure out how to create the wind.

That's the real hard part.

Yeah, I agree.

And do you have it just be wind coming in from one direction, or do you have it sort of a circular wind?

Right.

Like it might have different results.

I

have no idea the answer to this question, but that's not going to stop me from speculating.

Well, I know how to blow the most air.

Easily anyway.

Great.

How do you blow the most air?

You get a jet engine.

Okay.

I went to a monster engineer.

You want to talk about something that actually costs more than boats.

Yeah, you rent it, though.

You don't have to buy it outright.

I went to a monster truck show.

Yeah.

And at the monster truck show, there was an ambulance.

And I was like, that makes sense.

But then the ambulance came out.

onto the monster truck area and instead of inside paramedics, there was an extremely inefficient jet engine that shot not only a lot of wind, but but fire.

And they placed a late model sedan behind the ambulance and they turned it into a problem, just like a hazardous waste problem.

That I personally was like, that seems like it shouldn't be allowed, but I guess it is because I smelled like wafting burning plastic throughout the area.

So did everyone in town.

Like it was not,

it was a problem.

But, but that guy who who owns that ambulance,

I imagine it's not too like the monster truck show could afford him.

Mark Rober could definitely afford him.

Can he make wind without making fire?

Because that will be an issue for the straw house.

I bet they had to modify the engine to make fire.

They just have to undo whatever they did.

Okay.

Or just not put,

I don't know.

I don't know how it works.

I don't either.

But Mark Rober would.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark, even I know a guy with an ambulance full of jet engine.

I don't know.

I wouldn't say you know him.

But you think you could get in touch with him.

I love the idea of cold emailing the guy who has the ambulance jet and saying, listen, I'm a YouTuber, but I'm an educational YouTuber.

I'm not trying to

sell out here.

Okay.

I'm trying to get you to do science with me.

I just want wind.

I don't want to explode something.

I have a strong suspicion that the wood house would actually come in third.

I still think the straw house would come in second because I don't think wood roofs are that good.

Like, that's actually why I need a new roof is because I got this cedar shingle roof.

And

I don't think it's that good.

Now, it is old,

but

I think a stiff wind would definitely blow it off.

Yeah, yeah.

So

the question is, should it be whole house or just roof?

You know something I've been thinking about ever since I first read it.

This is off topic, but I think about this all the time.

In medieval France, okay,

when I don't know if this is true, but I read it in a book about medieval France.

When your neighbors would want to come talk to you, they would just lift up your roof.

Really?

And they'd be like, hey, how's it going?

What's going on in here?

I feel like you don't know what I'm doing in here right now.

What are you up to today?

Well, that was a different time in terms of privacy expectations, Hank.

your roof could be lifted up at any time by any of your neighbors i guess you just could just be like hey what's up man you guys uh coming to the church later the only

entertainment in town we do

yeah the punch and judy show something

unless there's like a traveling theater troop in town or like the apothecary uh with his cart has come for a visit yeah uh other than that yeah you're just going yeah so i don't know.

It was a different time.

But yeah, imagine that.

Just like somebody lifting up your roof and being like, hey, what's up?

You want to go to the fields?

Francois, I have a door is what I would say.

I don't know that the door was that door.

I don't know.

Again, like, I didn't get out of the house by like getting, like going through the roof.

The door did a thing.

That's true.

There had to have been a door, right?

So like, but why is this image so firmly implanted in my head?

I'm sure I read it in this book about medieval France, but maybe who knows?

At any rate, the other advantage of a thatched roof, of course, is that your neighbors can just, I don't know how it works, but I assume they can just pick up the roof and say hello.

Yeah, well, I'm curious how the roof is actually attached to the building, but I'm sure Duncan could figure that out.

And so you sort of like say to each of the artisans, you say, make this thing as good as you can.

Make the best possible strongest straw house you can, but you can't use anything but straw.

Right.

You know, now, are we talking about the house or just the roof?

Because

I think if it's a Mark Rubber video, it should be the whole house.

If we're trying to answer Duncan's question and we're just getting the ambulance with the jet engine pointing at his thatched roof that he's making, then I think it could just be the roof.

Because that's the question he's trying to answer.

Can you use

mud?

You can, right?

Because you have to, because like you're not just using bricks, you're also using mortar.

You're not just using,

you might just be using wood, but I think you can, I think in the straw house, it's going to be a mix of

straw and some kind of material that strengthens it, which could be mud or clay or I don't know.

Look at Duncan's houses here.

If anybody wants to check it out, I'm sure that he wouldn't mind.

It's at thatching.com.

Well, I, so it's not like he's hiding his.

Wow, he really, he really got the, he really got the good website.

Geez.

And, and I'm looking at it.

I don't see any mud, but I do see what appears to be an extraordinarily sturdy-looking roof.

Ooh, wow.

These are pretty, pretty beautiful.

Wow.

Jeez, Louise.

That is not what I was expecting.

Yeah, me either.

Okay.

Well, this roof is not what I was anticipating.

These roofs are going to be fine no matter what.

Are you kidding?

They look like they could stand up to...

I don't know if you can make a house out of that material.

I thought Duncan could figure it out.

I also think that if you pointed a jet engine at it, it would be fine unless that jet engine was shooting fire, in which case it would not be.

So we'd have to be really sure

with the guy with the ambulance that he could turn the fire off.

So your argument is that

the three little piggies wouldn't have died from any of those three

blowings

because...

Unless it was a fire-breathing wolf.

Unless it was a fire-breathing wolf, because in every occasion, no matter how much wind you put, but no, there is a point at which

if the wolf can blow at 200 miles an hour, that could be an issue.

I'm saying, which is it.

I think 200, I bet 200 this house that I'm looking at right now that Duncan thatched would be fine.

I bet at 500, it would not be.

Yeah.

Well, first off, I don't want to be in a situation where there's 500 mile an hour wind, period.

Hard stuff.

No, I don't.

That seems like a great job.

That seems like Jupiter stuff.

Yeah, that's like if the Earth stopped spinning suddenly, that's what you'd be dealing with.

Can that happen?

No, luckily.

Are you sure?

Yep.

Is it spinning right now?

It's gone.

Woo-woo-woo.

I just felt it.

I just felt it.

I feel it now.

I'm conscious of it.

Oh, boy.

We are in space.

Oh, God.

Most planets in our galaxy are rogue planets.

Most planets in our galaxy don't have suns to orbit at all.

They're just rocks hurdling through space.

Boy, gravity.

Good thing.

Good thing.

I can feel it.

I can feel it.

You ever wake up and you're like, did they turn it up a little bit?

Did they turn gravity up?

Because this feels like a lot.

Do you feel it right now, now, though, Hank?

We are

orbiting a star.

Spinning through space.

Oh, yeah.

Total vertigo.

We are hurtling.

Yeah.

We're going to feel that real good when we see that eclipse that's coming up.

Oh, you know, the Indianapolis is in the eclipse zone.

I know.

I'm going to be there.

Oh, great.

You want to go to Rex

for the eclipse?

What are you going to be for the eclipse?

The racks?

I love the idea of

calling up racks and being like, hey, hey,

can we use your roof?

I want to be on the racks roof for the eclipse.

We've thought a lot about it.

Look, here's the situation.

We read Annie Dillard's essay about the total eclipse and watching it go up the hillside.

And we thought to ourselves, what if we could watch it go up the racks?

And they're like, no.

And I'm like, there's a price for everything.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, find that.

Everything has a price.

We'll buy your racks.

That's our racks now.

And it's our racks.

And then I'll sell it back to you the next day because I desperately don't want to own a rack.

One of my biggest life ambitions.

Hey, we're making the podcast a little bit worse and a little bit shorter, but also we are buying a racks.

And we're going to pour all of our energies into running it, just like our secret brother Dave and that Wendy's.

Oh, I wonder if any of the racks are inside of the eclipse zone.

Oh,

that's a great question.

In fact,

such a great question that

I'm going to look at.

You are going to look.

It only has a 115-mile-wide path of totality.

I know, and it happens to go over your house.

It does go over my house.

And it goes over Dayton, Ohio, where the racks is.

Does it?

Yep.

I don't know, man.

I don't know that it goes over my house so much as it goes like 30 miles south of my house.

Yeah, we might have to go somewhere.

Like racks.

The racks clips.

It's even got a name.

We could.

I'm looking.

Yeah.

It goes right over your house.

No, it goes right over your house.

Okay.

I think.

I don't know.

I think Bloomington, Indiana is pretty far south of me, and it's on the north side of the 115 miles.

No, I mean, from the map I'm looking at right now, Indianapolis is literally in the thing.

Okay.

All right.

Well, then maybe you're right.

But I'm looking for Dayton and I can't, I don't know where it is.

Oh, yeah.

It is also, Dayton is also in the path.

Yeah.

I think we can think about it.

Yeah.

I might rather be at my house, if I'm being honest, but we can go to racks the day before and eat leftover racks while watching the eclipse.

Yeah, cold racks.

Oh, nothing better.

Cold racks

and a warm Dr.

Pepper under the path of a total solar eclipse.

Yeah, I mean, I might go for a warm beer, cold racks and warm beer.

Never tried.

God, I hope it's not cloudy.

How often is it cloudy in Indianapolis on April?

In April?

A lot, I would say.

40% of the time.

But then if it is cloudy, we'll just get in the car and go to racks.

Because Dayton, I'm sure, always has better weather.

Well, it's not even that if we can't see the eclipse, at least we can see racks during the eclipse and we can look up at the eclipse.

It'll just get dark at racks in the middle of the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A racks darkness approaches.

Yeah.

All the people at the racks will be like, what did you guys do?

The only thing is that now that we've revealed our, now that we've revealed our secret strategy, it's possible that there's going to be a large nerdfighter gathering at the racks outside of Dayton, Ohio during the eclipse.

Can get to the racks.

Oh, Hank, a lot of people can get to the racks.

Are you kidding?

Well, yeah.

You don't think we have any fans near Dayton?

That's a good point.

There is a whole, whole,

there are people who live in Dayton, Ohio.

Yeah, exactly.

It's not like they put a racks there.

That's actually the main reason.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One thing about Racks is they didn't put them in non-populated areas.

Like, they were at least that smart.

By the way, Racks is a roast beef restaurant that from the 1980s that only has three remaining locations that Hank and I are obsessed with, but somehow have never visited, even though we've had plentiful opportunities to.

Yeah, had we had a whole plan, but it got interrupted.

It got interrupted by cancer, like so much else in the last year.

This episode of Dear Hank Ajohn is brought to you by Factor.

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But that reminds me, Hank, that it's time to transition to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

And I know that we have 15 minutes left, but there's a lot of news from AFC Wimbledon.

It's been a weird year.

I've missed telling you the news news from AFC Wimbledon so, so much.

It feels like all of my AFC Wimbledon passion in some ways just goes into a vacuum because I can't tell you about it.

I've already been to two games this season.

I took my children to Mansfield, which is in the middle of England.

Yep.

And it was like three hours and 12 minutes of train rides, four different trains to get to Mansfield.

And then a long walk, at least according to my daughter,

highway to get to the Mansfield FC Stadium, which is the oldest continually used football stadium in existence.

And

I'd never been to an away game before and it was an awesome, awesome experience because it's so much louder.

Like the away fans sing the entire game.

They never stop.

They're very loud.

As Alice said to me,

they're loud and they seem drunk.

And I was like,

well, first off.

Yep, that's probably right.

First off, Alice.

No vibe checks.

No vibe check on Saturdays.

That was a nil-nil draw.

I took my kids all the way to England and then on,

and then I made them get on trains for six hours and 24 minutes in one day to see a thrilling nil-nil draw against Mansfield.

But

we're pretty good this year.

All right.

We are

good.

We're not great,

but we are much better than I expected us to be.

And pretty, even more surprisingly, pretty fun to watch.

We play with a real identity, like rigid and hardcore at the back, but also at the same time,

pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for a second there, you were in like second place.

We had one game where we were in second.

We're now in eighth, which is just outside the playoff spots.

But you know what?

Everybody's like, oh, where are we going to finish?

are we going to finish in seventh i'm like guys i don't care i all i care about is that we're 11 points clear of relegation after 13 games like that's amazing we had one game last season where we didn't have to stress out about um

uh about being relegated.

I would just love this season to have five such games or 10 such games.

We are, the whole goal is to get to 52 points because you get three points for a win, one point for a draw.

And if we get to 52 points this season, we won't get relegated.

We have 21 points after 13 games.

This is phenomenal.

I'd love to be in a situation.

Let's just keep getting points.

Let's not worry about where we're going to finish this season.

I know what you're wondering, Hank.

Who's good?

Who do we sign?

Who are all the wonderful new players for AFC Wimbledon?

Well, most importantly, we held on to 22-year-old Ali Alhamedi, our Liverpudlian Iraqi superstar,

who could have gone to a higher league, but chose to stay with us for at least half of this season, but hopefully the whole season.

Ali Alhamedi continues to be amazing, but we also signed this new guy named James Tilley, classic big bottom small.

Not the tallest man you'll ever meet, but

big bottom.

Five foot nine.

You know what I mean?

If you catch my drift.

Yeah.

He plays out on the wing.

Five foot nine, and he is

good.

He scored seven goals in his first nine games for us.

We've also got this 18 year old kid, Aaron Sasu, who's played for us since he was 10 and he's starting to get some game time.

He's big and lanky, classic small bottom big.

Really like the combination of James Tilley and Aaron Sassoo, how they balance each other out.

And we've got

We've got Jake Reeves.

Now, you might remember distantly in the past, Hank, Jake Reeves, because he used to play for us like seven or eight years ago.

Then he went up to a higher league.

Now he's back with Wimbledon.

He's right in the middle of our midfield.

He's our central midfielder and our captain.

And I love him.

I love him so much.

He inspires so much confidence.

I love the way he kind of like yells at the younger players to like get them, you know, focused, get them in, get them drawn in.

He's really good.

And then at the back, this is the most important thing, Hank.

This is what I've been waiting for six months to tell you.

We've got this central defender.

Now, you know that they wear DFTBA on the back of their shorts in the liminal space space between left thigh and buttock.

Uh-huh.

We've got this central defender named Joe Lewis who rolls his shorts up like a

diaper or like a speedo.

Okay,

yeah, it gets it high so he can have lots of leg flexibility.

I think his argument is like, my thighs cannot be contained by these shorts.

It's too unfortunate.

I just have too much thigh.

Which he has a lot of thigh.

Let's just, yeah, let's call it, let's just say it.

Okay.

He's he's thytastic.

He's Joe Lewis AFC Luma.

Yeah,

there's a there's a there's a shot of him after he scored a goal for us off a corner kick where you really can see the thighs.

I don't know if you're looking at that at that shot, but that that's the one look.

I'm seeing a lot of thigh, that's for sure.

So much thigh.

More than seems possible.

Yeah, I mean, he's tan all the way up, too, so he obviously does this all the time.

Oh, yeah, no, it's not just when he's it's not just not just during game time.

He trains like that i assume i assume he walks around london like that and

you can't even see our logo he rolls up his shorts so high he is probably our best player

he's

he's incredible um

he's on loan we haven't even signed him but i am willing i'm gonna i'm gonna text you this picture i am willing to crowdfund for this man that's how much I love him.

I'll crowdfund for him.

I'll do what I need to do to make sure that we keep him.

And I know we got to cure tuberculosis and deal with maternal mortality.

And football is not important, but I just, I love this man.

Look at that picture I just texted you, Hank.

Look at those thighs under the lights at Plow Lane.

Wow.

Now you see what I'm talking about.

Yeah, wow.

He's a whole, a whole statue.

We'll put that on the Patreon.

Forget about this weekend stuff.

this weekend thought you're gonna get everything you need

so uh we're good we're in eighth place uh we're winning some games we actually have like one of the best defensive records in league two

and with a very small budget we are overperforming and that's largely thanks to our head of recruitment and our head of like uh football magic this guy named craig cope who's like a classic money ball he looks kind of like us you know

which is which is to say he does not.

He's not better at math.

He looks like he never played professional football, just like us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But man, he's, he's, he's magic.

He's magic.

I, I'm in love with him, too.

I'm in love with the team this season.

And I got to say, I wasn't a huge believer that we should necessarily bring back our manager, Johnny Jackson, but Johnny Jackson's been great this season.

So it's all good.

It's all golden.

I'm so excited for this AFC Wimbledon team.

I have to tell you, if you live in London or Mansfield, you got to go see them.

They're just so fun to watch right now.

This is exciting.

I'm glad that you got to watch it.

Was it like a nil-nil game that you ended up watching?

Yeah.

And then the one before that, I went to see Wrexham earlier this season, and that was a 1-1 draw.

So haven't seen a victory in a number of years, but

neither have a lot of Wimbledon fans.

You'll keep going for it.

That's right.

Eventually, you'll just move to London, John, and then.

It'd be really bad for my marriage,

but it'd be great for my football watching.

Oh, God.

I want to go to London at least for a little bit.

I do, I love it.

Sometimes Zoom.

I want you to go to London.

I love it there.

You've never been to an AFC Wimbledon game with me.

It's true.

Oh, you got to go.

It's so.

It's so fun.

I've never taken anyone who said anything other than that was so fun, except for Alice when I made her go to Mansfield.

But other than that, everyone's had a good time.

Well, in Mars news,

the biggest, probably at least recent Mars news is that they, so there's this plan to return samples to Earth from Mars.

Yeah.

And this is hard.

I've done this with asteroids before successfully.

One of the great things about asteroids is that they don't have very much gravity well.

So you can just get the stuff and leave without burning a lot of fuel.

Much harder with Mars.

Much bigger object, much more gravity.

So you have to go down and that's expensive.

You have to come back up and that's expensive.

Then you have to go back down to Earth and all that's expensive.

Just lots of fuel necessary to make this happen.

But this is what like we've been hoping we'll figure out a way to do it.

And in fact, Curiosity is sort of bagging up or vialing up little samples in vials and leaving them like a trail behind him, like little breadcrumbs.

Oh, and the expectation that maybe someday we'll be able to get those vials.

Yeah, which I'm like, if we could come, we don't need to get the vials.

We could pack up the vials, but maybe, who knows?

Let's, hey, it's still a beautiful idea that Curiosity is just like leaving a little bit of breadcrumbs, being like, hey, anybody want to come?

If you guys want this,

they're here.

I'm a little lonely.

I do have my little helicopter friend.

That's true.

The idea is that you could have a helicopter come and pick them up and then deliver them back to whatever the sample return thing is.

Oh, speaking of which, Ingenuity did.

One of the things that happened is that Ingenuity, I think that it did like its, I don't know, 80th flight or something.

It's still helicoptering.

It's flying around.

It's still helicoptering.

It's at it.

59th.

It just did its 59th flight, and it also set its altitude record.

So it has gone higher than ever.

I like the idea that as it gets older and they've further passed its expected mission life, they just take more risks.

And they're like, all right, you know what we're going to do?

Let's see what this thing can handle.

Do you think it can make it to the sun?

Let's just get it.

Can we fly it all the way at home?

It's like that's not how molecules work, unfortunately, but it would be cool if we could make that happen.

That's a good point.

Good point about air.

Thanks for that.

Thanks for that reminder.

So

the sample return mission is this sort of pie in the sky thing, and NASA did

an independent review.

So the independent review board looked at the sample return plans and they were like, this,

I don't think this is going to work, you guys.

Basically what it said so they've been uh working towards this mission for a long time uh it would it would launch in 2028 it'd have a budget of 4.4 billion dollars with a b uh with a b wow and it involves sending a large sample retriever to mars where it would collect uh the things that the rover left behind it would put the tubes on the rocket on a rocket that rocket would launch into orbit and then get picked up by an orbiter and that orbiter would then return to earth and so all these different things things need different fuels.

Like they all need independently to have a bunch of fuel to get where they need to go, which is why there's all these different pieces of it.

Now, if that all works according to plan, it would be a very big deal.

We'd be launching a rocket on another planet to get back to space, which is wild.

And we'd get these

pieces of Mars, our first ever like recent pieces of Mars.

We have pieces of Mars that got here because like asteroids hit Mars, Mars, knocked them into space, and then eventually they fell to Earth, and we can actually identify when that happens, which is wild.

That is wild.

But these would be like, they would not have to pass through the atmosphere.

These would be fresh.

They'd be fresh.

Pipe and hot

pieces of Mars.

Fresh Mars.

And

they could theoretically have fossils in them, or they could even have life in them.

We don't know.

Yeah, well, we would be able to do a lot more science on them if they were here on Earth rather than just the chemistry that you can do on the little lab that's on the rover.

Right.

So the Independent Review Board found

that those were really great and significant goals that they would love to see accomplished.

And they say that the timeline and the budget are not going to make, that's just not doable.

Oh, it's not realistic.

Yeah, yeah.

They think the realistic budget would be $8 to $11 billion and the realistic launch date would be 2040.

20 what now?

40.

I can't help but notice that all these dates being thrown around are significantly after 2027.

Look, when we made that rule, 2027 did not seem like a time that existed.

Yeah.

That wasn't a thing that was going to happen.

Yeah.

But now it looks like it will actually occur.

So.

Can't wait to be making our hip podcast, Dear John and Hank.

You know, I'm getting used to the idea, John.

By 2027, our podcast is going to be so bad and so short, but it's still going to, I'm still going to love it.

I'm probably going to love it more than ever.

Color me surprised that Elon Musk's

vision of how fast we could get to Mars was not realistic and even

maybe

intentionally

manipulative.

And have I been lied to by Elon Musk?

Is that possible?

Is that a thing that could occur?

I mean, get

off

Twitter.

So they made a number of findings and recommendations, and NASA is now establishing its own team to look through all that report.

2040.

That's going to take forever.

Yeah.

I think we could have humans there and back by 2040.

And I'm the guy who bet that we couldn't do it by 2027.

It would be a lot easier to get stuff back from Mars if a person, like a human person, just put it in their backpack

and

came home, which we would do.

We're not going to leave the people there.

So a human mission would also be a sample return mission.

Yeah.

Is that going to have to wait until 2040?

Because I imagine if we, if it takes that long to get a, uh, yeah, a vial, getting a person would take even longer than 2040.

Am I going to live to see?

And I know we don't know.

All right.

So I'm just going to cut you off there, Mr.

Darkness.

Okay.

Mr.

Newly Dark.

I know.

I know we don't know.

Believe me, I know.

Is there a chance that I will live to see a person on Mars?

Or was this whole thing for nothing?

Did I get

invested in this whole people visiting Mars for nothing

i'd say you know i'd say there's a chance i'd say it's still not a great i'd i'd i'd still say it's not a certainty it's nowhere near a certainty that that you will get to see a person well of course it's not a certainty

i'm saying like if i live to be 90 which right i'm saying if you live to be a 90 if you live to be 90 it's not a certainty okay that's 45 years that gives us till 20

when

there's practical reasons why this is hard i believe it I believe it.

Not only is there's practical reasons why this is hard.

There's a lot of confounding factors as well, Hank.

Like

will humans exist?

Yes.

Will we still have

culture?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, will there be electricity?

Yeah, there's a lot of questions.

But I think we got a chance.

I remain broadly in favor of humans, and I think we've,

I think when I look at our relationship with Mars, I actually am quite inspired by what we can do.

But it's a little bit of a bummer that we can't get a vial off that planet until 2040.

I mean, NASA's current stated timeline is that humans could be on Mars as early as the 2030s.

And I'm like, I don't know about that.

As early as.

That's great phrasing, though.

Like, that's very similar to the phrasing they use around TB, where it's like, we could eliminate TB by 2030.

And I'm like, yeah we could

anybody yeah anybody money money we could go resources

time

be on Mars in the 2030s I agree that that is possible yeah it just like would take take dedication um and I have to say as much as I do it would take a lot more money than it would take to cure tuberculosis probably yeah I think 200 the number that gets thrown around is 250 billion dollars to cure TB to end TB that's a lot it's a lot that's a lot um I bet it would cost more to go to Mars

It would save 1.6 million lives a year forever, right?

Because in some ways, we're still benefiting from not dying from smallpox.

There's still people who would die from smallpox if we hadn't eliminated smallpox.

So that's the great thing about getting rid of a disease is that you save lives forever, or at least you increase the length of lives forever.

Turns out there actually is no saving a life.

You're just delaying.

You're just delaying.

Yeah.

I've heard.

Thanks for coming to our podcast.

We're back, baby.

What do you say at the end of the podcast?

What do we say?

Oh, boy.

Hank, thanks for making a pod with me.

It's been a real pleasure.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

Send us your emails at dearhankandjohn at gmail.com.

Nope.

Just hank and john at gmail.com.

And thank you for all of your emails over the last six months that we didn't didn't respond to.

Many of them meant a great deal to us.

If you know how to get Duncan's thatched roof into a wind tunnel or have access to a jet engine, I told you his website so you can find him.

I

would tell you the credits of the podcast right now, but I can't because I don't know where that document is anymore.

I'm going to give it a go.

I'm going to give it a go right now.

Today's podcast was edited by Joseph Tunamedish.

It's produced by Rosiano Hans Rojas.

Our head of social media media stuff is.

Yep.

Could be Brooke Shotwell.

We'll look into that.

Oh,

is Daboki Jakavartes our editorial assistant?

Yes, although not on this episode.

Eh, she helped.

Oh, great.

Oh, great.

Did she write that terrible dad joke?

No, that was me.

Oh, great.

That's always me.

Okay.

Well,

by the way, as we're rebuilding this thing, Hank, feel free to just let that go.

Just let it sail off into the distance.

If it's stressful for you, if it's fun for you, keep doing it.

Yep.

You decide.

Okay.

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