425: The Deal With Airports

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You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

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

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

Hank.

Yeah, what?

Wait, what?

What?

I have a dad joke for you.

My pilot, my pilot, our pilot, said it today over the intercom, and I thought it was medium funny.

Okay.

How do you know a dad joke is in fact a dad joke?

Yeah, tell me, John.

It should just be a parent.

Yay!

That's

your pilot said that?

The tables have turned.

Nice.

Yeah, and then the flight attendants were like, he does that every time.

Wow.

Yeah.

I wonder what the FAA regulations are for how long the pilot can go on.

Is there a point at which they're like, actually, sir, you need to get to work?

Exactly.

We didn't hire you primarily as a stand-up comedian, but indeed to fly the plane.

Because they got to be talking to the tower as well.

I've sure.

I've seen those TikToks where they're talking to the tower.

So I can't always be talking to you.

But I'm sure there's some times when they're just sort of not doing anything.

So like, can you just like pop on in the middle and be like, hey, everybody?

Because they do that.

They're like, they do that.

People this on the left side if you look out you can see mount rainier or something like that right so they can they can and i think the question is how often can they do it without getting fired and the answer i suspect is pretty often which makes me feel like maybe they don't like us well

do they like talking the plane more than they like talking to the people right right

The people, you have them at your disposal.

You could do whatever you want.

You could be like, hey, if you look out your left window, you'll see America.

That's the home of the free, the land of the brave.

And there's a reason the founders wrote the Constitution the way they did.

And then pushed the button.

I like that.

I also like the idea of an hour-long stand-up comedy special that you're just subjected to, that you have no choice but to listen to in the pilots, you know, in that sort of radio,

somewhat tinny voice.

It's just like, hey, I'm like for Biglia.

Here's my new hour.

I bet you didn't know but I learned how

to pilot just so that I could just so that I could give you an hour of my new special

10 years of my life.

I worked up from the from the bottom up, you know, started out

went to the air force for a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been doing these regional legs.

Hey, you really can't get anything done on the regional legs.

Exactly.

I can't do my full hour when it's just Indianapolis to Pittsburgh.

Yeah, barely, barely time for the tight five.

All right, Hank.

Speaking of your tight five, I want to answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Amy, who writes, Dear John and Hank, when did Hank start going by Hank?

Did he choose it?

Was it during childhood or college?

Did Henry and John just not have the same ring to it?

Don't blame me.

Amy.

This is such a good observation because Dear John and Henry,

Dear Henry and John, is not a good podcast title.

I don't think it would work.

You know, I refer to Hank as my tight four.

Because it has four letters.

And Henry was just too many.

It's also five.

But it has decreased the syllables by half.

Oh, yeah.

That is the big, the biggest.

And there's something about John and Hank, they're the same number of letters.

They just kind of flow off the tongue.

John and Henry, even though Henry is my son's name,

just doesn't flow off the tongue quite as well.

And so what a good decision, but was it a decision made by you or a decision made by someone else?

Certainly not a decision made by me.

I was always Hank.

I've only ever known myself to be Hank.

When people call me William because I'm getting my license plate at the DMV, I find this very

sort of disconnected from reality.

Yeah, so this is an important thing to understand.

Hank's name is William Henry Green.

And he goes by Hank, which is short for Henry, which is not his first name.

So it actually, it's more likely that our podcast would be called Dear Bill and John or Dear Will and John because they they would have picked something short for william or it could be like dear john and billy which is just dear willie and john willie and john i mean i could pull off willie internet entrepreneurs willie and john willie green and his brother perpetually perpetually anxious and unwell john no god i am anxious and unwell so true i wish that i could be either not anxious or well you know what i mean like i wish that i like you could just take one You know how I'm not asking for much.

In the early 20th century, like certain children, like Maurice Sendak or Andy Warhol or Eudora Welty would just be told that they were sickly and they would be told they sort of had to stay in bed because of an elevated heart rate or something, or because they gave people the willies.

Who knows why?

Well, people were so they people died so much when they were kids, and so you just kind of assume you're like, oh, this one's not looking good.

Yeah, so these were sickly people who then grew into adults, but I don't think of them as having been particularly sickly adults.

Like I think you, Dora Welty, lived to be 93 years old.

I was a sickly child who have become a sickly adult,

which I do resent a little bit, I have to confess.

I give him a break.

I wouldn't mind being sickly if I weren't so anxious about being sickly.

Maybe it would be like a super healthy 65-year-old.

I mean, the odds aren't good, given that I've had every itis you can imagine.

No, it's not great.

It's not, it's, but you never know, you know?

I probably shouldn't complain to the brother who had cancer about being sickly.

You know, it is true that I'm sicklier than you, though, in general.

Yeah.

It is inconvenient.

I would not suggest this to anyone having a child to name them one thing and call them something else.

Yeah.

I would certainly not do that to my child after having experienced the confusions that it can create.

There was a period of time where I desperately needed some money and could not get my bank to accept a check that had been made out to me.

And it was very frustrating.

And I needed to pay rent and they would not give me my money.

And it was a lot of money.

And eventually I fixed that problem.

But

it was at the moment very stressful.

You know what that story reminds me of, Hank?

Yeah.

The heroic story of Horatio Alger just picking himself up by his bootstraps, like just making his way in the world alone without any help.

You really are an inspiration to us all, my friend.

Oh, thanks.

I solved the problem in both of the ways where I, one, signed up to have the bank have an alternate name for me, while also, while that was being processed, getting the check made out to my other name.

Well, I mean, truly a hero for our time who overcame unfathomable odds.

Not since Bob Dole survived three years with antibiotic-resistant infection has somebody really

come through.

Well, I just was thinking about Bob Dole because I was just at the University of Kansas where the Bob Dole Institute for Politics is.

And you know what I learned about Bob Dole, former U.S.

Senator from Kansas?

I learned that Bob Dole had a favorite song, and that favorite song was You'll Never Walk Alone, which is also one of my favorite songs.

More and more like Bob Dole every year, John.

I mean, would that I have his life expectancy.

The guy lived to be like 95 years old.

This is the frame that it is now forever in.

In fact, we have a question about death if you'd like to do that one.

Sure, let's do it.

Jess asks, dear Hank, and hi, John.

Wow, hard not to take that personally, Jess.

I have a seven-year-old son, Caleb, who has repeatedly requested that we ask a scientist to explain.

Oh, now I get it.

I'm not a scientist.

That's the argument.

But if I'm not a scientist, Jess, how come I'm the author of the hit new science book, Everything is Tuberculosis?

It's true.

I think John will have plenty to say about this question, but has repeatedly asked that we ask a scientist why we have to die.

Can science soothe Jess?

I think science can soothe, but

not intentionally.

No, no, it's not soothing on purpose.

It's just doing what it does.

Here's the thing, Caleb.

We have to die because everything has to die.

Everything in the universe has to die

because everything is temporary.

And there is no forever, at least not on this side of the veil.

That image probably doesn't resonate with a seven-year-old.

Yeah, the veil is complex.

The one thing I know about the veil.

Right.

I mean, isn't that why, Hank?

Like, everything has to die, like, including the universe itself.

Certainly everything has to die.

Yes.

The reality is that there,

from what, from our current understanding, there isn't a thing that can last forever.

But we can certainly do our best to help things live longer.

And we don't want...

death to be a thing.

Like us, you and I, like everyone I've ever known who has died, I wished that hadn't happened.

And like we do work work hard to keep people alive.

And I think that we're working hard to try and make it so that death is a thing that happens less.

I don't think we're going to succeed at that, Hank, because I think death,

as the famous Onion headline put it, I think the world death rate will remain steady at 100%.

Yeah, that's true.

In terms of the number of, like per capita, death will remain.

the same.

But per year, it actually can go up.

So like the number of people who die per year

can go up or down because life expectancy gets longer.

But I think Caleb's worry is not that he's not going to live to 100 or not that his cat won't have a long or good life or whatever.

Caleb's worry is about death itself.

Why does this thing exist?

And it's just really

weird to worry.

Like if you if you pitch the idea of a universe to a seven-year-old,

there's no reason why death should have to be in it.

The thing that I tell myself, Caleb, is that it is the nature of things things to decay.

We are so complex, we are so interesting, we are so multitudinous that we can't stay that way forever.

It's just the way that things are, unfortunately.

Or maybe it isn't unfortunate, Caleb.

Like maybe it's appropriate that we can't be here forever.

And there is something to that, where what we are is not necessarily just ourselves.

We're part of a billions of years long story of life that continues to perpetuate and exist.

And no individual piece of that life can perpetuate.

And if you tried to invest all your energy into making one piece of the life live as long as possible, it would not be as interesting or as long-lived or as inspiring and amazing and beautiful as what happens when things trade life into the next thing.

When like your mom gave birth to you, that's part of the very, very long story of life continuing to exist for a sizable percentage of the life of the universe.

Like life on Earth is a very long story.

And it isn't that way because like evolution tries to keep one thing alive for a very long time.

It's that way because we are evolving by creating new things and having other things not last.

Caleb, if I could put it another way.

You're getting the Hank and the John here, Caleb.

Nothing lasts forever, man.

Not even cold November rain.

That was the Guns N' Roses version.

John, one might even say nothing lasts forever, and we both know hearts can change, and it's hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain.

Yeah.

It's almost impossible to hold a candle in the cold November rain, depending on how cold it is and how long you have to hold the candle.

I would actually say it's extraordinarily easily done to hold a candle in the rain, as long as you don't want that candle to be lit.

No, even if you don't want it to be lit, if the rain is cold enough, eventually you're going to develop hypothermia.

That's true, and we have to maintain our homeostasis for as long as possible.

Thanks for coming to our TED Talk, Caleb.

This next question comes from Anonymous, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my birthday passed last week, and there were a few people, one good friend in particular, I did not hear from.

Well, Anonymous, let me tell you what's even worse than that.

Getting a text from your brother at 10, 12 p.m.

that says, happy birthday to you, exclamation points, nothing else.

Anyway, I'm not hurt or offended at all.

I'm terrible with dates myself, and birthdays are not very important to me.

But I talk to this friend often, and it feels weird not to mention anything when he asks what I've been up to lately.

I don't want to make him feel bad, but dancing around it feels strange, and I think he might figure it out himself and he'll feel worse.

What should I do?

I wasn't born yesterday.

Anonymous.

Now,

I don't think your friend is going to notice.

I'll be honest.

When you anonymous, when you said my birthday passed last week, I thought you meant that it died because we've been talking about death so much.

I was like, that's wild.

Yeah, it's just dead.

It's just done.

It's just over.

No,

I no longer collect time in 365-day increments because my birthday died.

My birthday died.

Now I just collect time one day at a time every day is a new day i have no idea how old i am because the last time the last time i had a birthday i was 28 but that was so

i don't need any of this

uh i don't think this friend is gonna ever know that it was your birthday if you don't mention it um yeah it's almost impossible to remember that other people have birthdays anonymous it's so easy to remember our own birthday but even remembering the birthdays of those closest to us is hard work yeah i uh i mean if there was a party that they weren't invited to.

Yeah, then maybe you have to mention it.

But like, why didn't you invite them to the party if they're an especially close friend?

You know what this actually smells like to me, Hank?

And I'm not an expert, but it smells like a budding romance.

It smells like these people are interested in each other, maybe more than just as friends.

And so it's a little different than your average birthday.

Because like, if I miss my best friend's birthday, he's not going to get mad at me.

He's not even going to mention it to me.

Yeah.

We've been best friends for 20 years, but he's not going to be like, oh, you know, it was June 6th.

Right.

Dot, dot, dot.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're also in that situation, you're always thinking real hard about everything.

Yeah, exactly.

But you're, when you're in a budding romance, you're hyper-analyzing every interaction and everything.

And so when the person says, like, what have you been up to?

You feel like you have to say, like, well, I went to my birthday.

I had my birthday and I had a few friends over.

And then they're going to feel bad for not wishing you a happy birthday.

That's what it feels like to me.

I might be wrong, Anonymous, but go ahead and write me back and make sure that I'm right because I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one.

I can smell a budding romance coming a mile away, Hank.

It's one of the gifts of having been a Hawaii novelist for so many years.

Man, and I am blind to it.

A budding romance.

One time, a couple of people, like a couple of my friends, I saw him kissing and they had not previously been kissing.

And I was like,

I was flabbergasted.

I was just like jaw on the floor.

Like, I had never thought that that could be a thing

those people would do.

Two young people

who I know are both heterosexual and of the opposite gender.

Yeah.

Kissing?

I know.

It's crazy.

I, meanwhile, not only do I see it coming a mile away when it is there, I see it coming a mile away when it isn't there.

You know, I'm like ChatGPT.

I can, I can, I, I know a lot, but I also hallucinate a lot.

Oh, man.

I never see it.

I never see it to the point where like it can be a problem.

People like ask me for advice on things and I'm like, oh, you didn't, you didn't, you didn't tell me the actual situation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I'm, I'm very good.

I'm very good at it.

And I think there's something there, Anonymous, whether you know it or not, I think you might be about to get married.

Oh, wow.

See, I'm jumping to conclusions.

Anonymous.

Imagine giving the little kiss and see how that feels in your brain.

When I got married, there was a rehearsal dinner where all of my friends gave toasts and you gave a great toast, Hank, at the wedding itself.

But the night before, all my groomsmen and everything gave toasts.

And my friend gave this great toast where he said, you know, when John came home from his first date with Sarah, he said, I think I'm going to marry that girl.

And it was only the 11th time he'd said that.

I fell hard, man.

I fell hard and I fell all the time.

You fell hard every time.

And I would have.

The truth is, I would have married any of those girls.

Thank God that they had the foresight not to marry me because I was down.

I was ready.

That's amazing.

I feel like we're kind of both set up that way.

Yeah, we are.

We both, we're both similarly inclined for sure.

But that's anyway, I don't think you should feel bad and I don't think you need to mention it's your birthday.

But if it's a crush, I think you should confess the crush.

Be like, look, my birthday recently passed.

So maybe you just want to come over, just the two of us.

There you go.

What do people do these days?

We'll watch Instagram reels while laying next to each other.

Yeah, I'll show you my Instagram likes, the ultimate display of love and vulnerability.

Wow, John, do you want to show?

Let's do it.

No.

Just the first one as a show of brotherly love and vulnerability.

All right.

I'm going to show you my most recent Instagram like.

My most recent Instagram like.

It's actually not that easy to get to your Instagram likes.

You have to go to your activity.

Yeah, which is a little confusing.

My most recent Instagram like is from the Awesome Socks Club.

Oh,

nice.

There it it is.

The Awesome Socks Club.

It's got a new sock coming out, and I liked it on Instagram.

So that's a pretty unvulnerable one.

My second most recent like is from my friend Daisy and Kylan's wedding that I officiated.

Don't they look great?

Just a beautiful young couple full of promise and hope.

Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely.

All right, what's your most recent Instagram like?

My most recent Instagram like is a science communicator named Dr.

Nock who is talking about.

Dr.

Nock, he's talking about cancer.

Oh, he's not a fan of it, from what I understand.

No, no, he doesn't like it.

And he's got ways you actually can do things to adjust your risk of cancer.

And he's talking about them.

Yeah, you could take a vaccine, the HPV vaccine.

You can change your diet, change your

have a good activity level, that kind of thing.

Yeah, those are all big ones.

Don't smoke because also

you can resist the siren urge to smoke cigarettes.

Yeah, or you could just never have done it.

Yeah, that's true.

That's better.

I haven't smoked in 20 years.

I still think about it, though.

Really?

Yeah.

I loved it.

It was a disgusting habit that enriched the worst people in the world, and I loved it.

What is it that got you off the most

off of cigarettes, I mean?

Well, I mean, I had chronic bronchitis, and I was like 23, and I was like, that seems maybe it's time.

So it was a health.

It was a a health thing.

It was a health concern.

And in general, I don't know.

It wasn't the enriching of the worst people in the world.

No, it was more a feeling of like, I need to do this for my health.

And also, like, I'm already sickly, right?

Why am I trying to worsen the situation?

Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by John quitting smoking.

John quitting smoking, the hardest thing he ever did.

This podcast is also brought to you by the 11th time.

The 11th time.

Sometime.

That's the charm.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by that cold November rain.

Nothing lasts forever, Caleb.

Not even cold November rain.

And finally, this podcast is brought to you by Hank.

The weirdest possible way to give a child a nickname when his name is William.

I mean, it's almost like they could have picked anything, right?

Like, I don't know why we're limiting ourselves in our imaginations to Henry's and Wills and Bills.

They could have picked anything.

Well, that's what I do.

That's what people do with cats, you know?

Name them one thing, and then

I got a cat named Chester, and we call him cheese.

And I have a cat named Gummy Bear, and he's called Gummelbums.

Yeah, there you go.

It reminds me, your being named Hank reminds me of one of my favorite stories from my late mentor, Bill Ott, the publisher of Bookless magazine, who, when he was a child, collected baseball cards.

And Hank Aaron was a famous baseball player, but on his baseball card, it said Henry, and then in quotation marks, Hank Aaron.

And so Bill grew up believing that Hank Aaron's name was Henry Hank Aaron.

Yeah.

And so he would always call you when he would ask, he would ask after you, he would always call you, how's Henry Hank?

Nice.

But that's not even, that's not even me.

That's not even you.

All right.

This next question comes from Elizabeth, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I have not flown since I was a kid.

Next year, I'm flying internationally for a study abroad program.

I'm not afraid of the flying part, but I am afraid of the airport.

Oh, Elizabeth, you've come to the right place.

People ask us dating advice?

No, no, no.

Get out of our inbox, but do you want airport advice?

Airport navigation advice?

You want to know how to while away three hours inside of an airport?

Boy,

have you landed upon the brothers who are experts?

Tell me the three letters and I'll tell you everything.

Oh, that's so true.

It's so true.

I was just thinking about that in beautiful Kansas City.

Anyway, I've been told that all airports are different, but no one has really explained how.

How do airports work?

What's the first thing I should do once I get there?

Are there different steps for different airports?

Flying solo, Elizabeth.

So, Elizabeth, first off, the good news.

The good news is that there is almost no place on earth that has more signage than an airport.

There are so many.

The wayfinding is advanced.

Oh, my.

So, first, you have to decide if you're going to arrivals or departures.

Presumably, you're going to departures since you're leaving for your study abroad program.

And then you go to the airport counter,

which is exciting.

Are you going to go through the whole thing?

I'm going to go through the whole thing, Hank.

I assume you've got a bag.

If you've got luggage, the procedures are slightly slightly different.

Yep.

Yep.

You're probably not carrying on if you're doing study abroad, so you're going to have to go to.

And also, John just told you that you're going to go to a counter, but that's not what you're going to do because it's 2025.

You're going to go to a little machine.

That's true.

And you're going to put in your confirmation number.

So have that ready.

You're going to type that in.

It's going to tell you all the information.

You can check in with the app beforehand, but then it's going to make sure that you get your bag tags in a number of different ways.

Sometimes it prints it out right there.

Sometimes you have to go see a person about it.

They'll ask for your ID.

You want to have your ID, your real ID or your passport ready to go for a number of different interactions.

You're not going to have to know when you need it.

They're going to tell you when you need to show it to them.

They're also going to want your boarding pass sometimes, and that can be on your phone or it can be a piece of paper.

If you've got it on your phone, you don't need the piece of paper.

Although I like to have both, Elizabeth, just in case.

So I like to print out a boarding pass and also have one on my phone just in case I listen to one or the other.

Then the next thing you're going to want to do, Elizabeth, and this is a curveball.

You're not expecting this one.

You're going to want to go to the chapel.

The chapel is almost all

not going to be there in all of the airports, but the chapel is in literally all of the airports.

Well, there's not one in the Missoula airport.

We only have five rooms.

I think there might be a little chapel in the Missoula airport.

I have not investigated it, but

if you're flying internationally, Elizabeth, you're not flying out of Missoula anyway.

You're flying, maybe you're flying out of Missoula, then you go to Detroit.

Once you get to Detroit,

you want to go to the chapel.

It's a banger experience.

It's always interesting.

It's quiet.

It's meditative.

It's the opposite of the rest of the airport.

You don't hear all the constant banging and humming and noises and whatnot.

It's just a quiet place for contemplation.

Go there for like five minutes just to recover from the fact that you just did all this work to get your boarding pass and get your luggage and everything.

And then what John is, by the way, what John is suggesting, and this is absolutely the right thing to do, is get their way early.

Oh, yeah.

Don't be stressed out because that's number one.

You're new at this.

Just be at peace.

Two, there's a whole airport to explore.

It's a whole airport.

So you can't really get there too early.

It's like going to the mall too early.

They've got art exhibitions.

You know, they've got, there's like a

chapel there.

There's a handbag store.

Yeah.

There's going to be several restaurants of a wide variety of experiences and qualities.

When I typed in chapel, Missoula International Airport, you know, want to know what came up?

What?

Free Wi-Fi at the Missoula International Airport.

So that's a little bit like church.

Plus, you get free Wi-Fi.

So why not enjoy that?

Like, why not get to the airport a little early and get some, get some of that sweet, sweet, free juice?

Great people watching.

Great people.

John and I apparently love the airport.

And they do all different from each other.

But the main thing that you need to know is like the biggest difference is some of them don't require you to get there as early.

And some of them, you have to get there way earlier.

So if you're new, get there super early.

And then if you're like too early, no harm, no foul, you're just like watching Instagram reels, but actually looking at the weird people.

I think you should do.

So I wasn't finished with my recommendations, Hank.

You're jumping ahead.

So after you visited the chapel and you've recovered, you're cool and you're just feeling centered and intentional, that's when you go to the part that's not security yet.

the part that's right before security, which is where all the passengers come out and get greeted by their family members.

Now, of course, very few people actually get greeted at the airport anymore.

It used to be a thing, but now mostly people just go out to the cars.

But still, you can sometimes see a family waiting for another family member who's been gone for a while.

And you get, I would, I recommend spending at least five minutes in the hopes of getting to see one of those reunions because they are magical.

And then once you see the reunion and you've been to the chapel, then you can go through security.

Then the vibe.

Oh, the chapel's before security?

Heck yeah, it is.

Oh.

Man,

then you go through security.

Maybe there's two.

You go through security, you find a quiet, first off, you walk to your gate after you get through.

You always got to do this.

It's not technically necessary, but there's no way that my brain will chill out until I visually inspect the gate and make sure the place I'm going is on the name of the gate.

Eye contact with the gate, Elizabeth.

Eye contact with the gate.

You exist.

I exist.

We know each other exists.

But then, once you've made eye contact with the gate, you've confirmed the time of departure, there's no delays or anything, then you can go to whatever gate you want.

Go to a quiet gate.

Go to a gate that doesn't have a flight leaving anytime soon.

Sit there, enjoy the free Wi-Fi, and then about 45 minutes to an hour before your plane leaves, then you can go to the gate.

Or if you're feeling dangerous, you can wait until it's boarding.

Yeah, which might be slightly different for an international flight.

Just listen to the people.

Yeah.

It's going to go great, Elizabeth.

You're going to have so much fun.

What an adventure you're going on.

And I don't mean your study abroad program.

I mean to get to go to an airport.

Some people are like, what's the deal with airports?

And then they like have a long list of complaints about airports.

I'm like,

the deal with airports is that like, one, I don't know who owns this thing or runs it.

It's not like, it's, as far as I can tell, like a weird example of business socialism.

Yeah.

And then, and, and then also, uh, it works amazingly well.

Like everything is constantly moving in order to arrive just in time so that everybody gets into the place and there's never any time wasted and things are, I don't know, it's just like, if you actually just like look out of the window at an airport and like watch all the little trucks, like the little baggage carts and the

service and

the planes going from one place to another, like do a little time-lapse out of a window of an airport and you're like, what?

No one could make this.

No.

No one can do this.

It's like, it's like looking at the inside of a smartphone blown up to a billion times scale.

So you're actually seeing all the like little electrons moving around and they're all like made of people doing their thing, their own little part in order for all of it to work.

Like airport is the craziest thing.

It is a reminder that humans in collaboration can accomplish orders of magnitude more than they can accomplish in isolation, and that almost everything that you do in your life that is important will be done in partnership, Elizabeth.

That is what you are going to feel on this visit to the airport.

It's a good place.

Might be a little stressful, but it's a good place.

It's the wildest.

Yeah.

This is the wildest set of responses to this particular question you could imagine.

One time I was flying to England and I flew through Atlanta, which is always a mistake.

And I got into the Atlanta airport and my flight to England was delayed like five hours and my kids were

in absolute flames because they were going to have to be up until two o'clock in the morning or whatever.

But I was like, guys, this is a chance to explore the Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport.

Like this place has five different terminals, for God's sakes.

We can,

the possibilities are endless.

I bet there's four chapels.

There's probably a chapel for every single one of these religions that we got.

All right.

Last question that we've got to get to before we go to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon is from Rob, who says, my three-year-old son, Jim Jam, has a great many questions.

And one of those questions is...

That's probably not on the birth certificate.

Maybe.

Who is driving Saturn?

And if the planets don't have drivers, how do they go anywhere?

You won't believe this, John.

Yeah.

Saturn.

Saturn is driving Saturn.

The God.

Oh,

I thought you meant the mass.

Nope, it's the God.

He's riding on.

He's up in that hexagonal storm at the top

with a whip and a steering wheel.

And I don't know what the whip's for because there's not actually any

courage.

He just likes to crack it.

It just makes a cool noise.

It makes him feel powerful.

Yeah.

Because that's all he has left.

Like, nobody here is thinking much about Saturn, but he's still got Saturn.

Yeah, he's still got Saturn going.

Everybody's always talking about him when they talk about Saturn.

And he's like, I guess that's where I go now.

Yeah.

So he just went over there.

No, the truth is that there are these invisible forces that shape so much of our life, Jim Jam, that are the reason why we stick to the earth instead of floating away, that are the reason why the sun moves across the sky throughout the the day, that are the reason why half the day is night, all that stuff is controlled by these strange forces that we can't see or hear or smell, but are nonetheless real.

I think the rings are a steering wheel.

Oh,

yes, I like it.

It's sort of Saturn's gigantic steering wheel with which he steers the planet.

Don't matter who's driving Saturn, they definitely bought it in the 90s.

Yeah, Jim Jam's going to love that joke, Hank.

He loves a 90s joke.

Three-year-olds love a 90s reference.

Because of the car company?

Yeah, no, I got it.

I got it.

I got it.

He amuses himself, everybody.

Nobody loves a Hank Green joke quite like Hank Green does.

John, what's up with AFC Limbold?

Oh, life is long and full of suffering, Hank.

Oh, no.

And League One was never going to be easy.

I guess the good news is that we've all the games that we've played with our first team, like with our best players, we've either won or lost by one goal.

And so we lost to Bradford City.

It was very frustrating.

We lost by one goal and we gave up some bad, like we lost three to two and two of the goals were really bad, were kind of embarrassing.

But then our

B team played in one of these meaningless cup competitions that won't go anywhere.

And that was like literally the second best 11.

You know, like like you have your first best 11 who play every week.

And then, you know, you have this kind of second tier of people who play in the cup games.

And then if there's injuries kind of thing or come on as subs or whatever.

And they got beat five to one by Stevenage.

So I'm concerned.

And I watched the game and honestly, five to one was a generous scoreline.

It could have been much worse.

And so I'm concerned about the quality of the ability of our kind of second tier to compete in League One.

But I I think it's still a real problem if we have injuries.

Yeah.

So I'm rooting against any injuries always.

I mean, who wants to see injuries in football, but especially right now, because, yeah, it wasn't, we didn't cover ourselves in glory in that game, and it made me a little nervous for the first time this season.

But AFC Wimbledon overall remain utterly clear of the relegation zone, Hank.

We have nine points in our first six games, and we're sitting in 12th place in League Two.

Comfortably mid-table, is what I believe the kids call it.

A long season left to go, but let's just keep that going.

And, you know, one year at a time.

One year at a time, just like life.

Eventually.

Unless your birthday died, in which case it's only one day at a time.

I mean, the biggest problem for AF Su Wimbledon, I'm sorry I have to say this, is that when you meet billionaires, you don't ask them for money for AFU Wimbledon.

You try and get money for Partners in Health.

And that is just.

I think that other people would do it differently.

Well, I mean, interestingly, and I don't, don't, I haven't really examined the psychology of this exactly, even though Partners in Health and AFC Wimbledon are equally terrible investments from a return perspective.

But yeah, for your own pocket, yes.

Yes, for your own pocket.

People are more inclined to invest in football clubs because it seems like an investment, even though it is mostly a way to lose all of your money.

People get that investing in partners in health is also an investment, right?

I don't know that they do.

I think they think of it as an act of charity when it is, in fact, an investment in our shared future.

Yeah, like all of that money provides more benefit than the money costs.

Indeed.

Yes, I agree.

And that compounds over time.

I don't know if there's any billionaires listening right now, but you got to understand that you give, if you like give $10 to partners in health, that that does more than $10 of good, especially 100 years from now, it's going to be like continued to compound where like a person who otherwise would be suffering or wouldn't have a parent or wouldn't, you know, would have lost a child

gets to

like the whole, the whole society there is doing better because of that.

And yes, people get to do stuff.

And so it all adds up until like that $10 becomes worth $1,000, just like if you'd like bought Microsoft or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, it's not in your pocket, but it still compounds in terms of social good and the overall economic impact of your investment and everything.

So if you are a billionaire and you're listening to this, there's never been a better time to invest in global healthcare systems because they are more impoverished than they've ever been, thanks to the hard work of some of our governments.

Or even, I'll say it: if you're a tens of millionaire.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That also counts.

That's what you should do.

I know you're thinking, I'm not one of them, but yeah, you are.

You should email us at hankandjohn at gmail.com and we'll find a good place for those tens of millions of dollars.

Well, John, in news from Mars, we continue to learn more about this boy in space being driven around by Mars, the god.

I was going to say, is he driven by Mars?

Yeah,

yep.

Cool.

Luckily, Mars doesn't have enough power to get it closer to us, which would be a problem because he was not very nice.

Yeah, no, he was, as I recall, something of a warlord.

Yeah.

The original.

So scientists...

Get into the genre.

Well, a lord of war and a warlord.

So we're looking at data to learn more about Mars.

There's a paper published at the end of August, scientists looking at data from the seismometer, from InSight.

And that measured 1,300 Marsquakes.

And they found that there were eight Marsquakes with seismic waves that were strong enough to go deep into Mars's mantle.

But at some point, those waves started to slow down because it was hitting something inside of there.

Because there's something embedded in the mantle.

And they think that these are fragments of something that slammed into Mars like 4.5 billion years ago and that melted big chunks of the crust and the mantle into like a big magma ocean and then that got sent down into the uh that the chunks got sent down into the interior planet.

So it's not running into water.

It's running into something very hard.

Yes.

And

this tells us basically two things.

One, that there was, and this is unsurprisingly, a very large impact at some point in the early history of Mars.

But two, maybe more interesting, is that Mars's mantle and tectonics has been locked for basically the whole time.

Yeah.

So

we, and we like a pretty good idea of that, but the,

it's just a very much less

sort of exciting place, the interior of Mars, than the interior of Earth, which is doing all kinds of crazy stuff

and has been for a long time resulting in

plate tectonics.

The plate tectonics was a pretty big deal.

Yeah.

It's why we don't have a Pangea.

Yeah.

I mean, it's also kind of why we have continents, which is pretty important.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think we could have made a go of it without continents.

I think it would have been a fine planet if it was just a water world, but I don't think that it would have

art yet.

Yeah, I think that's probably correct.

That's why we climbed out of the oceans, Hank, was so that...

So that Andy Warhol could make those Jackie Onassis paintings.

I think mostly it was so that something could eat the lichens.

It's like, hey, guys, there's plants out here.

Nobody's eating them.

Yeah, yeah, but it made space, is what I'm saying, for the future of Andy Warhol.

It did do that.

Well, I'm glad to know that we're continuing to learn about Mars, and I'm glad that the news from Mars this week wasn't a bummer.

What a gift to you.

Yeah, we're doing our best.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

Well, thanks everybody for listening to our podcast.

Hank, thank you for making a podcast with me.

Please email us your questions or your comments, but mostly your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

This podcast is edited by Ben Swordout.

It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedish.

Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosiana Halse-Rohas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Taboki Truckervarti.

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

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