424: Heaven Grades on a Curve

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

Where do you find a cow with no legs?

Where?

Right where you left it, baby.

How you doing?

That's a good joke.

That's good how come they're not always like that we just gotta this is the thing we can't analyze each joke we just gotta move on okay we gotta move on how are you i'm fine how you doing i've been sick all week so if i sound a little sick yeah because i am sick john is john has postponed uh two podcasts yeah and all he has told me is i just don't feel up to it and uh and i have just assumed that that means that that the world is too much yeah and you'd not like to make a bunch of jokes right now No, there's no.

Some of you actually are ill.

Yeah, mostly I just haven't been able to get out of bed.

I've gotten out of bed three times this week, and each time I was like, that was a mistake.

And now I'm out of bed again, and I'm sure I'm going to think it's a mistake again.

But here we are.

I'm happy to be making a podcast with you despite the circumstances.

And, you know, I don't know.

How am I doing?

Medium,

medium rare.

I would say.

Have you thought about

moving beyond LaCroix?

No.

Like to Spindrift or something?

Yeah.

No, I'm a good Midwesterner, Hank, and I don't believe in abandoning a great brand like LaCroix that does such good work mining aluminum from the ground and then sending it to my house with water in it.

You know, it's probably a lot has come from recycled feedstocks, actually.

Have I told you about when I go to the pearly gates of heaven?

Yeah, no, I know that LaCroix

is the one thing that you think that you're doing that's going to prevent me from getting to heaven.

I'm doing other things that are bad.

It's just that's the straw that's going to break the camel's back is my overuse of LaCroix.

I've always assumed that heaven grades on a curve.

You know, if everybody's doing LaCroix, St.

Peter will look at you and be like, yeah, no, I get it.

Like you can't, you can't completely buck a trend.

Heaven grades on a curve.

This is a big observation for me, Hank, not least because it implies that you believe in heaven.

I would assume that people assume that heaven grades on a curve, right?

They're not walking around being like, all these people are drinking LaCroix and so nobody's getting into heaven.

I know that is the premise of the good place.

I was going to say.

I think that that's one of the greatest observations of recent media, where it's just like we are now like it used to be that it was easy to be good because we didn't know how bad everything was.

We didn't know,

it hadn't occurred to us that eating a pig could be of moral consequence.

Or indeed, like killing your brother-in-law because he coveted his neighbor's wife or whatever.

Yeah.

I got Scientific American recently celebrated its 180th anniversary.

Congratulations.

And they sent me and a bunch of other people a copy of the very first edition, which was published in 1845.

Wow.

And there's a poem in it.

And I know that we've talked about how I'm bad at poems, but I read this poem

because it was written in a way that was easier for me.

Okay, great.

Read it to me, but read it to me like it's not a poem.

I'll try, but it's rhymes, so it's harder.

Okay.

It's easier for me when they rhyme.

So I'm just going to read you the first three standas.

It's called Speak Gently.

Speak gently.

It is better far to rule by love than fear.

Speak gently.

Let not harsh words mar the good we might do here.

Speak gently.

Love doth whisper low, the vows that true hearts bind, and gently friendship's accents flow, affliction's voice is kind.

Speak gently to the little child.

It's love, be sure to gain.

Teach it in accents soft and mild.

It may not long remain.

Wow.

Brutal and true.

And I looked it up.

30% of kids died before five.

Wow.

The year.

In the United States.

In the U.S., the year that

Scientific American published its first edition, during which they were like, we think the telegraph might actually be a pretty big idea.

Yeah, that is amazing.

Also, what's amazing to me is that they used to publish poems in Scientific American.

I know.

There's four and there's only four pages.

Yeah, it reminds me of when I was reading all these old tuberculosis books where everything is tuberculosis and out of nowhere people would break out into poems.

There was like in one tuberculosis textbook from like the mid-19th century, there was a poem about how hot ladies with tuberculosis were like just in the middle of the textbook.

It's like, it's like, man, tuberculosis is really bad.

People die.

They suffocate on their own lungs, but they get into their lungs and suffocate.

The beauty.

The hectic glow of consumption and the pearly tear of the shellfish, just so beautiful.

I looked into the various causes of death in children in like the cities of America in the 1840s.

And there was something called summer complaint.

Have you heard of summer complaint?

I think I have it right now.

You don't have summer complaint.

No, summer complaint, it was food poisoning.

And summer complaint killed a tremendous number of children who were drinking milk because, for one reason or another, there wasn't someone to breastfeed them.

And so they were drinking cow milk that there was no way to refrigerate and there was no pasteurization.

So they just died of summer complaint.

And it happened in the summer because it was warm.

Yikes.

And my God, what a weird name for something that kills

like thousands of babies a day in one city.

It's a complaint.

A complaint.

Anyway, thanks for coming to Dear Hank and John, your daily source of massive bummers.

Or, you know, it's very unusual to die of summer complaint now.

We did a good job of that one.

We have solved that problem, and we don't pay attention to the problems we already solved.

That's right.

Why would we?

We're done.

We did it.

Indeed, let's solve some problems for our listeners, Hank, beginning with this one from Jonathan and Miriam.

Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, if you were standing on Mercury or Venus, would the sun look bigger?

Hope your day is sunny, Jonathan and Miriam.

Now, I have have a theory about this, Hank.

I don't know if you have a theory, but okay.

I think the closer you are to the sun, the bigger the sun appears.

So I think if you're standing on Pluto, the sun is pretty small and tiny.

And if you're standing on Mercury, the sun is pretty large and warm, like so warm that you would probably die instantly.

I actually, I'd be interested to figure out what would kill you first if you were on the surface of Mercury.

It would be a lot of things at once.

That'd be a great YouTube video.

How would you die on the surface of every planet?

Because it's interesting interesting because on the surface of Earth, you die of cancer and heart disease mostly.

Right.

So, but yeah, it's big.

It's going to be big.

This is a physics thing.

Something that's closer takes up more of your field of view because of how light rays work.

How big would it be, though?

Would it be so big that it would like cover the sky?

Or would it be like

a third the size of the sky?

I think it would be less than a, well, Mercury's pretty close.

I don't know.

It would be about three times as large, Hank, according to my guesswork, aka asking NASA.

It's pretty big.

Three times the diameter, which makes it more in terms of area.

Okay, well, Mr.

Geometry, I'm not interested in your magic talk.

Henry's taking geometry right now, and he's like, why do all these angles add up to 180 degrees?

And I'm like, literally magic.

That is why.

That's because it's how we defined the degrees.

The Lord deemed it such.

Actually, that'd be a fun one to prove.

And I'm probably not too hard to prove.

That's what you should have said.

You know, Henry, that'll be a fun one to prove and probably not too hard to prove.

Let's work together on it.

And instead, you were like, magic, magic numbers and Pythagorean cults.

That's right.

That's exactly what I said.

And I stand by my answer.

Lots of people have had that response.

You know,

sometimes you find out that the Pythagorean theorem exists and you're like, well, that seems like a big deal.

That doesn't seem like a little number thing.

That seems like we may be starting a mysterious religion where you have to go into a basement and have ceremonies done to you if you'd like to learn about the number stuff.

Yeah, and

I don't.

So I'm good.

Good for you.

All right, I got another question for you, Hank.

It's from Blue, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my roommate recently asked me to wake them up from a nap.

I asked what time, and they said, when it feels like enough has happened for it to have been a while.

Brothers, how long is a while?

Should I be waking them up before something is about to happen or after something has just happened?

Neither of us have anything planned for the rest of the day, so I've decided to also nap.

And I've asked our third roommate to wake us both up after a while.

And I'd love your advice for future naps.

Thanks so much, Blue.

Can you say what the first person said again?

When it feels like enough stuff has happened for it to have been a while.

That's like the most shut up.

I'm about to take a nap answer.

It's like, don't make me think right now.

my nap motor is on it's revving it's pushing me toward nap and if you make me think about how long i'd like to be napping right now maybe i won't nap at all get off my junk i nap now i like the idea of summarizing what happened during the nap for the person you know like if it's been three hours like they wake up and you're like i had a cup of coffee and america collapsed

It felt like enough had happened.

It felt like enough had happened.

So I woke you up.

I refreshed the New York Times every 30 seconds until it felt like some things had happened.

Yeah.

And also some things happened in my personal life.

I myself took a nap.

A definitionally shorter one.

But

I took a nap.

I had a cup of coffee.

I took a little walk.

Maybe I petted the cat.

I think an hour.

No.

I think an hour.

No.

No, is that too long?

That's too short.

Wow.

The nap is only, as somebody who's barely been out of bed for the last week, I can tell you that a one-hour nap does nothing for you.

You need at least a two-hour nap.

Two-hour nap?

At least minimum.

Two hours.

What are you?

What are you?

So much has happened.

I mean, really, not that much.

That's the thing.

If you're awake for it, it feels like a lot has happened every two hours.

But if you sleep through it and you wake up, you're like, oh, okay.

Well, what are you going to do?

Man, do you nap?

Oh, yeah.

Love it.

Man, I have not ever napped.

That's not a surprise to me.

Yeah, while I'm napping, you're like making hit new iPhone apps.

I heard nap.

I heard iPhone nap.

I don't know.

I like a nap.

I enjoy the fruits of my labor.

I especially like a nap on a Sunday.

A Sunday afternoon nap is a nice thing.

The nap is the fruit.

The nap is the fruit you're working for?

Oh, yeah.

I need to readjust my situation.

Well, what is the fruit you're working for exactly?

i don't know i don't think you know nothing like you've found nothing i'm proud of yeah exactly i think you're chasing i think you're chasing dirty highs like

but maybe they're good they they're good but they're dirty it's like it's like an internal combustion engine it'll get you there but ew i had a dream that somebody gave me a bunch of cocaine which i for clarity have never touched any cocaine.

I've never been within enough distance to even reach out and touch a cocaine.

For our younger listeners, cocaine is an intoxicant.

It is a drug.

And I'm not even entirely sure what it does.

Me neither.

But I had this dream that somebody gave me a bunch of cocaine, and then I had to go on a plane and I was like, oh, no, I have to get rid of this cocaine.

And I was like, I know.

I'll do all of the cocaine.

Oh, what a bad choice.

I know.

I'm worried about my waking self because of the decisions of my sleeping self.

Luckily, I was not able to do the cocaine because I think that my brain doesn't know what that would be like.

So it did not allow it to occur in the dream.

But I did have, I was like, I guess I got to do it.

I had a dream recently while I was sick over the last week.

I've been having a lot of dreams because I've been spending all day in bed.

It's been very frustrating.

And so, I was, uh, I had a dream, Hank, that uh, I couldn't open my eyes.

I was driving the car back from Target and I couldn't open my eyes

no matter what I did.

And I was like, you know, pushing my eyes apart, trying to open them.

And I couldn't open it.

And then I finally opened them and I was in my bed.

And I was like, no, not like that.

90 minutes.

90 minutes.

We'll settle.

That'll get you a full sleep cycle, you know?

All right.

We'll settle for it for a compromise and say 90 minutes.

I still think a three-hour nap is magical.

Like you wake up.

How do you go to bed that night?

No, it's the same way I go to bed every night.

Full of worries.

Consumed by fear and mortification, Hank, just like everybody goes to bed at night.

Some people have it figured out, but I'm not one of them.

Oh, me neither.

I don't have anything figured out.

The older I get, the less I know.

This question comes from Meg, who writes: Dear John and Hank, I was talking to my friend who's considering getting a master's degree.

They were narrowing down fields of study based on what they believe won't be replaced by AI in a few years, which feels wild to me.

As someone in my mid-30s, it's not a consideration I ever had to make my education or career choices.

What are career fields that will be irreplaceable as AI grows?

Aim a little afraid, Meg.

Now, Meg, I'm glad you came to two proper experts in AI.

Yeah.

I mean, we are on the leading edge of the AI revolution, Meg.

Hank and I, I don't know if you know this,

but Hank made an app to try to get you off AI.

Well, just off the phone generally.

Yeah.

Are people using AI like

a social media?

Just like, hey, let's chat.

Show me.

100% they are are using it to chat with their ai buddy they just want

a buddy to chat with yes oh no i know i mean i don't know i don't know i don't know i'm not here to judge but i am here to be concerned worried and mortified i of course have very bad track records of predicting the future me too but i'm i do not feel like this would be a particularly good time to be graduating from college uh in the next year or two i don't know who knows maybe but yeah maybe it'll be great it'll It'll be better than 2020.

I heard Sam Altman say

in an interview

that he thinks this would be the best possible time to graduate from college.

And I was like, wow,

that feels like definitely a lie.

Like, I like, could you actually feel that way?

Actually, I think he probably does.

I think you can convince yourself of all kinds of things, but we're not here to talk about Sam Altman.

We're here to talk about Hank and John's guide to careers that will not be replaced by AI.

Gotcha.

Plumbing.

Yeah.

There's the obvious ones where it's just like the things that like AI is going to be pretty much embodied inside of computers and is not going to be good at being in the physical world for a long time.

I got a buddy who's a plumber who's also a professor of philosophy, and I think he's going to be fine on both counts.

You know, honestly, John, I got like a weird one.

The IT guy at the office, I feel like

the printer will still break.

Yep.

And the AI will have no idea because it'll be a freaking printer and nobody knows how to fix the printer.

That is not a science.

It is an art.

You have to know that printer like a human being.

You have to know it deeply as a friend in order to get it to do the one thing that it's been designed to do for 50 years.

It's true.

I recently printed out a manuscript without spoiling anything.

And

it took like six hours, and it should have taken about six minutes, but it took six hours because I kept having to troubleshoot.

And I'll tell you what, certainly at the current levels of AI, they were of no help.

Another job that's not going to be replaced by AI, in my opinion, lifeguard.

It got to get into lifeguarding.

Yeah.

I can see AI being like, oh, there's a concern, but I think the lifeguard is going to have to swim out and deal with the concern.

I mean, now you say that, I actually think that there could be in certain situations situations a real benefit brought by a sort of vertical camera.

Of course, the actually doing of the rescuing would not be done by the vertical camera, but something to actually monitor a crowded ocean situation where it's very difficult to see what's going on.

Well, I could see AI being indeed whether there's a

shark

approaching.

But I think we're going to need human lifeguards.

Yeah, no, it seems likely.

I also think we're going to need human rock climbers.

I don't think AI is going to be doing the rock climbing for us very soon.

Agreed.

It's why, like, this is a thing that I think is important.

And now I'm being serious.

But the.

Well, so was I.

I think we're going to need human rock climbers for the foreseeable future.

Yeah.

The idea,

so there was like a time when like most of the energy, like the muscle energy that like broke up rocks and stuff was done by humans.

Right.

And now, of course, all rocks are broken up, you know, unless something's gone very wrong by machines.

And, but in the same way, like, nobody thinks that it's bad to physically exist in the world and to go to the gym and to do the lifting of the weights or to the hiking of the mountains or the climbing of the rocks.

Right.

I mean, the exact, the, the obvious example of this is that humans used to be the best at chess and we're no longer the best at chess.

Computers are much better than us, but we still only watch humans play chess because what could be more boring than watching computers play chess?

And in fact, it seems like chess playing is more popular.

Like, I know the guys, I know some of the guys who play chess, and I'm not involved.

I don't care and know nothing, as people will discover when they watch the quadraga con.

They will be like, yes, indeed, indeed, these people do not know anything about chess.

So, Hank and I played chess as part of this quadrennial competition we have called the Quadragacon.

And we played chess, and we're both really bad at chess.

Like we know how the pieces move, but we don't know anything else.

I know nothing except how the pieces move.

And

we played this game of chess that was just, I mean, if you're a professional chess player, you're going to find this game of chess excruciating.

They call it a blunder.

We just did blunders.

Every move was a blunder.

Except for the one that was illegal, that we did not realize was illegal until way after the fact.

That one was not a blunder.

It was probably a great move because I put the bishop somewhere it could not have actually gone.

I believe you took a piece while putting the bishop somewhere it could not actually

go.

And I did not notice because I was so upset about the loss of my horse.

Oh, so I think that I technically should have lost that, but we called it a draw.

But I think, Hank, that to the point, us playing chess together is vastly more interesting and entertaining, even though it's much worse.

And so if you're doing something that is interesting and entertaining to humans, even if you're worse at it than AI, I still think there's a future there.

That's why I sort of think that I'm going to be okay as a novelist, at least for my lifetime.

I also think that AI will be bad at writing novels for a long time.

I don't know about that.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Well, it will definitely,

there will be human-novel collaboration, probably.

Well, there already is lots of that.

But I think that the

novel as a form,

you know, is not that old.

And I don't know how much longer it's going to be relevant.

I don't know if in 100 years people are going to be reading novels.

And that's, yeah, that's a different thing.

And I think.

I have no idea how to predict that.

And one of the ways that maybe they stop reading novels is that they get inundated with AI novels.

But novels are good, to your point.

They are good.

They are good.

I do enjoy them.

Yeah.

I like writing them, too.

I do wonder when we will cross the line to most of them being consumed in some format other than the written word.

Like audiobooks.

Yeah, I think that's

mostly the way.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's going to happen.

It certainly has happened with my kids.

I mean, my kids much prefer audiobooks to eye reading.

Eye reading is a lot of work.

Yeah.

And for some people, it's work that is unnecessarily difficult because they struggle with decoding.

And so there's no reason for them not to read on with their ears instead of their eyes.

Absolutely.

I,

yeah, I don't know.

I mean, obviously healthcare, like nurses, you know, that.

Oh, we're going back to AI.

Yeah.

Nurses are going to be okay.

Some doctors are going to be okay.

Helicopter pilots are going to be okay for a while, I think.

I don't.

I do want there to be a person up there.

I want there to be a human up there.

You know who has the safest job in the world right now?

Tell me.

The guy you strap yourself to when you go skydiving for the first time.

Everybody involved in that.

Everybody involved in that industry is going to be just fine.

There is no way for AI to disrupt the guy you strap yourself to when you go skydiving.

Oh, and good thing.

Man, do I not want that?

Exactly.

Talk about it.

I mean, if that's the last job, I'm unemployed.

There was a moment when I thought I might skydive,

you know, like someday, not like on a particular, I wasn't like planning it.

I was like, you know, maybe.

And then I heard about a friend of mine who went skydiving and they got so nauseous that they puked on their instructor and then

remained nauseous for about three days afterward.

And I was like, oh, well, if that's one of the things that can happen,

then I'm definitely not doing that.

Oh, God.

Yeah, I don't have a good vestibular system anyway.

No,

obviously.

Putting aside everything else, I just don't think I can do it.

All right, we got one more question before we get to the

sponsors, Hank.

This one comes from Carissa, who writes, Dear John and Hank, how do we not run out of crystals and gemstones?

It seems like we wouldn't be able to find that many after thousands of years of mining these colorful treasures.

And when I look around at the ground, I mostly see plain rocks.

Is the Earth's crust like full of gemstones?

Enjoyer of shiny rocks, Carissa, or possibly Charissa.

I apologize if I mispronounce your name.

Um, John,

there are so

much earth.

Is there?

There is so much earth.

It's way more than you think.

Yeah.

It's so like it's very hard to sort of

understand.

Like when you go like on a on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, it's forever.

It feels very big.

And you've just traversed like 3% of the Earth's surface.

It's so big.

Right.

I understand that, but I also would submit that I have traveled far and wide in my life, and I've seen many things.

And one thing I've never seen is a crystal in the wild.

You haven't gone looking for them.

I guess I haven't.

And actually,

I know that's a lie.

I know that because I've done it with you as a child.

We went to those little rock sluices where you get a bag of dirt and then you pull out your little gemstones.

Yes, but that's fake, Hank.

They put the gemstones in

the dirt.

Don't they?

They don't.

They don't.

They do.

They sometimes put some, like, they might spike it with some other ones.

But a lot of the ones you're finding in there are, in fact, naturally in the dirt, which is why they built them at the places where they built them because there's a big hill of dirt that they just dig out of and then you run it through and you pull out your cute little rocks.

All right.

I mean, I do remember remember being a child and going with you to those gemstone things and thinking it was super fun and mom and dad being like, I can't believe we paid $40 for this.

No, I think that they loved.

I thought they thought we were being very cute and having a good time.

And I remember and I got like a big garnet one time.

I remember you got a big garnet.

I was, I was, I was very jealous.

That's good.

I'm glad you were jealous because I thought it was a really big deal.

It was a big deal.

It was cool, man.

It's still cool.

I hope you still have that garnet.

That's a great point.

And I feel I can picture it in my head.

I can see it with my non-aphantasic brain and all of its colors and its weird bumps.

I did care a lot about that rock, but I do not have any idea where it is.

But they said that we could pay to get it cut and then it would be worth more than the price of getting it cut.

That's how they get you.

We didn't do it.

Are we going to run out of gold, though, Hank?

no

um no well so this is the thing about the thing about crystals is that there's plenty of them because there isn't a lot of need for them so if there was an there are some times when there's been like industrial need for certain crystals that are just sort of ground up into a mineral and in those cases you do start to run low of easily accessible ones but the ones that we sort of uh just get for them to be pretty um basically the moment that they become more rare the price goes up and then people will dig to find more of them and And, you know, they show up in sort of predictable geological areas, and people know where to go looking for them.

And so we'll go looking for them.

We answered the question with just a little bit of a break.

That reminds me, though, that today's podcast is brought to you by Hanks Rock.

Hanks Rock, lost to history.

Lost to history, lost to time.

Today's podcast is also brought to you by dying on the surface of Mercury.

We're not sure how it would go, but it wouldn't be slow.

Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by the 90-minute nap.

The 90-minute nap, some stuff happened.

And this podcast is brought to you by vomiting on your parachute instructor.

That's one of the ways it can go.

Oh, God.

I mean, I already really didn't want that job, but now knowing that you can get barfed on makes it that much better.

It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you.

With the Wealthfront Cash Account, your uninvested cash earns a 3.75% APY, which is higher than the average savings rate.

No account fees, no minimums, minimums, and free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts anytime.

Join over a million people who trust Wealthfront to build wealth at wealthfront.com.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA SIPC, and is not a bank.

APY on deposits as of September 26th, 2025, is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable APY.

Hank, we have another question.

It's from Sam.

And this is a question that we got dozens of times, actually,

from listeners around the world.

But Sam's version was the briefest.

Dear John and Hank, I'll cut right to it.

John, finish your joke from episode 418.

Its presence floating unfinished like a ventral sphere in the atmosphere has wilted crops, soured milk in the udder, and caused spontaneous fistfights to break out in monasteries across the world.

I've been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-76 for three days as the asphalt has been boiling in unpredictable patterns, and my stereo has been on its own accord.

Started playing some guy named Hank Redd, who explained the science behind dousing rods while promising cold fusion is just around the corner and cackling in demon overtones.

Kindly set the world to right and tell us what was so remarkable about this three-legged pig before reality tears itself asunder.

Sam, I am, at least for now, Sam.

Wow.

Holy

Jesus.

Soured milk in the udder.

I got stuck on that and then it just kept going.

It just kept happening.

What a beautiful email.

Hey, Sam.

Let me tell you the story of Bessie the pig.

You want a job?

Yes, Sam.

I'm not sure what it is, but you're better than AI at it.

Yeah, Chat GPT didn't write that.

All right, here's the joke.

Three-legged pig walks by, and

lady says to the farmer,

What's the deal with your three-legged pig?

And the farmer says, oh, that's Bessie.

Bessie's an incredible pig.

No pig like Bessie in the world.

One time the barn was on fire, and Bessie informed us by running and oinking like crazy and saved all the animals.

And then the person says, Well, that's great, but I was wondering about the three legs.

Did Bessie like lose a leg in the fire or something?

Oh, no.

Another time, though, Bessie, when little Timmy was down the well, Bessie showed up at the house and walked me right to the well.

And there was little Timmy at the bottom of the well.

We had to drag him out.

Took forever.

I mean, this pig, it's just something else.

And the person says, Yeah,

I get it.

It's a remarkable pig, but like, I guess my question is, why does the pig have three legs?

And then the farmer says, oh, you know, a pig like that, you don't eat all at once.

There it is, everybody.

There it is.

There it is.

For your pleasure, Sam.

Now the milk can desour in the udder, my buddy.

Man, I thought everybody knew the three-legged pig joke.

Apparently not.

We also got a great email from Julia, a professional Catholic chaplain, who enjoyed our discussion of sainthood and relics, which is a generous take, Julia, a chaplain's take, and I appreciate it.

But it turns out my bones could not be sold to raise money for Partners in Health as it is prohibited under church law to sell relics.

Instead, she recommends the classic loophole utilized by many religious organizations send relics for the cost of shipping, but invite folks to make a donation at the same time or on the same webpage.

And then Julia says, best of luck on the sainthood quest, which I don't know.

I think it's a long shot, Julia.

I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you could just create a shipping company and be like, this one just happens to be very expensive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Listen, we're in the business of shipping the bones of dead John Green.

Like, we cannot mess this up.

There are only 218 of them.

Yeah.

We're very serious about this.

And that's why it costs $50,000 to ship the relic.

Yeah.

One at a time.

And Green always coming up with business ideas.

Fraud.

Sometimes a business idea is fraud.

Oh, man.

Keep all your bones, though.

I like to.

I'd like to keep the vast majority of them.

Feel like there's any that you don't need right now?

A John Green like this, we don't sell all at once.

I don't know.

Like, if I had to get rid of some bones, I could.

You know, it wouldn't like be catastrophic or anything, as long as I was under general anesthesia.

But I would like to keep all of my bones in a perfect way.

I wonder what the easiest bone to get rid of would be.

I would assume one of the upper pinky bones.

Hmm.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Just like the tippy top of one of the fingers.

Not the whole finger.

Yeah, just like to the first knuckle or wherever the first bone is.

I think I might let somebody have one of my floating ribs.

Ah, that sounds really painful.

I broke a rib once and the recovery was long and tortuous.

I can't imagine the recovery from losing a rib.

Yeah,

they'll be nicer about it.

Well, you know, actually, arguably, I've already lost a bone.

Like your teeth?

My teeth bones.

The bones that are on the outside of the

baby bones.

The bones that are on the outside of my body.

Outside bones, outside bones.

Never forget your teeth are outside bones.

Warren loves that song.

That's a song from the show.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

All right, Hank, we have one last question before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

It's from Aaron, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my house filled with smoke today.

I shan't elaborate.

How do I clear the smoke out as quickly as possible?

Tools available that may seem of use: a single fan, ventilator fans, and two bathrooms, many windows enabling cross-drafts, and an HVAC system.

What's the best strategy here?

Also, how do I remove the permeating smell of smoke that has seeped into the grain of the house?

Trying to replace the smoking with Aaron.

Well, Aaron,

I'm glad glad you came out of the world.

It seems like you gotta kind of figure it out ultimately.

Like, you are right.

You've got those bathroom fans.

Anything that I would have thought of that would be like, oh, maybe you don't know about the bathroom.

You do.

You know about it.

Turn on all the things that ventilate air to the outside.

Open up all the windows for cross breezes.

You might want to do a thing where you sort of like open and close the door if it's a fairly small space to sort of like get some air moving.

But like, I don't know.

And as far as getting rid of that smoke smell, you're either going to have to just sort of wait it out

or the the mitigation strategies are more complex and you have to call one of these companies that does that work where they do a deep clean or put some kills on some surfaces.

Aaron, I don't think that you should listen to Hank Green and his dubious advice on this one.

I think you should call your local fire department.

What?

Call the local fire department and say, hey, the smoke is gone.

The smoke is gone.

I understand.

You say, hey, I don't have an emergency.

That's the first thing you say because they like it when you lead with that.

You say, but I do have a lot of smoke in the house.

What do you recommend experts in the field?

And they are public servants.

They will answer your question.

Okay.

It's like how you show up to the fire department when your chest hurts and they will give you an EKG.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

No, the fire department is amazing.

You can just go there.

You can just be like, hey, my chest hurts.

Why don't you go to an emergency room?

Well, I'm saying like if you're in, if you can't make it to an emergency room and you happen to be at a fire department for some reason.

This happened to dad once and they took great care of him because they're public servants.

Call the fire department.

Believe in government.

Call the fire department.

I don't know that you should call the fire department.

I think you should.

I think that they're there for like, if there's an emergency, and I think that the way your smell smells is not.

I think that you should call, you could call like a remediation company, but they won't.

No, no, no.

They come and check your fire alarms.

The fire department does all kinds of things that you don't know about.

They are amazing.

Okay.

We're going to hear from a firefighter who's like, John is on point.

Call the fire department.

I'm worried that we're going to hear from a firefighter who's like, please don't have more people call us with like weird stuff that's not our business.

A house full of a formerly on fire house is very much the business of the fire department.

I mean, like, a currently on fire house is mostly.

100%.

That is the fire department's number one job.

And if there is a current fire, the fire department needs to be dealing with that.

And they will let you know by not answering the phone.

Because you didn't call 911.

You called the fire department.

Well, you don't call the last thing it will say is: if this is an emergency, hang up and call 911.

Or call 311 or whatever your local

everyday problems number is.

Use the tools.

Use the services.

Use the services that are available to us.

That is my.

And call before you dig.

Call before you dig.

Call before you dig.

There you go, Hank.

See?

Another example of utilizing public services for the benefit of overall humanity.

Speaking of which.

Yeah, John Green.

AFC Wimbledon simply cannot be stopped, Hank.

Woo!

I thought that you lost a couple of games.

Well, we lost the Care About Cup game that I don't care about at all.

But in general, we've been playing great.

I cannot tell.

I cannot tell when I'm looking at AFC Wimbledon.

It's just like, here's the game that they're playing and here's how they did it.

It doesn't tell me whether it's one that matters or not.

We didn't play any of our starters in that game.

That game is not important to me.

So we are five games into the season now.

We've won three of those five games, which is a phenomenal return on our League One investment.

We are in 10th place.

What?

Everybody, Hank, everybody picked AFC Wimbledon to be relegated out of League Two.

I mean, out of League One, back to League Two.

Everybody, because we have the second lowest budget in the league.

We are, you know, we're Wimbledon.

We're going to struggle in League one.

You're brand new.

You're brand new in the league, and you've also been relegated out of it before.

And of the last five teams that got promoted via the playoffs to League One, all five of them got relegated within two years of their promotion.

So all of these are reasons to think that we were not going to have a strong start to the season, but instead we've had an incredibly strong start.

Solid defense anchored by Nerdfighteria's own Joe Lewis.

Great central attacking midfield, thanks to Nerdfighteria's own Marcus Brown.

And we're just playing great.

I'm so thrilled with it.

I don't even know what else to say, except that

we seem able to score at least one or two goals per game.

And the games that we've lost, were to two of the best teams in the league.

But more importantly, we barely lost them.

Like we lost one on a 93rd minute deflection.

What are you going to do?

The other was like a sort of random, crazy own goal.

Like, in general, I think we've been playing very well.

So I'm super, super happy.

Shout out especially to our new wing back, Nathan Asimwe.

He is really good.

So

there's a lot of reason to feel enthusiastic and optimistic as an AFC Wimbledon fan in League One, which is not something I expected to be telling you.

Heck yeah.

This is very exciting.

10th place.

I know.

Right behind Mansfield Town.

They're one of the best teams in the world.

That's right.

Yeah.

I mean,

isn't that one of the ones, like Liverpool and Mansfield Town?

No, no, not exactly.

No, it's, I think you're thinking of Manchester United.

Oh, yeah, I was.

Although Manchester United are having a pretty bad season, they just lost to Grimsby.

Grimsby?

Well, Grimsby.

So if you can lose, maybe, maybe what, maybe soon enough, Manchester United will be in League One and we'll be battling it out with them.

But for now, they're still in the Premier League barely.

Okay.

What a wild world.

I love the way that

football works in England.

It would be so amazing if

the Arizona Diamondbacks were constantly fighting to be a major league baseball team.

Yeah, and then they would have to play the Missoula Paddleheads.

Yeah, which would be uncomfortable because we farm team like two.

That's your farm team.

Players to the Diamondbacks, which is why I know the name of that MLB team.

Okay, that's impressive.

What's the news from Mars?

Well, they found a new mineral.

Speaking of crystals and big planets.

So they were looking at data from orbiters to study sites near the Valles Marinares Canyon system, the largest canyon system in the solar system.

And they were looking specifically at

an impact crater there.

And they saw some funny little signatures in the spectra.

And that corresponds to a mineral called ferric hydroxy sulfate.

And they worked on recreating the mineral in the lab to figure out what kind of conditions can produce ferric hydrosulfate.

And they were successful.

They figured out how to make it, and they learned that you can make it by heating up hydrated ferrous sulfates with oxygen around, which is cool because it might tell us more about the chemistry of how, like, how chemistry happens on Mars.

Wow.

So, it might tell us a little bit about like what kind of chemicals are available there or whatever.

Yeah, okay.

Cool, cool.

Maybe that just from space, just by looking at it.

I feel like that would be the most valuable crystal of them all.

Like, that one would really cure all your ills.

If only we could have some.

Well, maybe after 2027.

Well, we could do a sample return before that, and you're still safe.

But we're not going to.

Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me.

Thanks to everybody for their questions.

You can send us questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

We love your questions and indeed don't have a podcast without them.

This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout, mixed by Joseph Tunametes.

Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

We're produced by Rose Anne Haas Rojas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Daboki Chakavarti.

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

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

With markets changing and living costs rising, finding a reliable place to grow your money matters now more than ever.

With the Wealthfront Cash Account, your uninvested money earns a 3.75% APY, which is higher than the average savings rate.

There are no account fees or minimums.

And you also get free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts 24-7.

So you always have access to your money when you need it.

And when you're ready to invest, you can transfer your cash to one of Wealthfront's expert-built portfolios in just minutes.

More than 1 million people already use Wealthfront to save and build long-term wealth with confidence.

Get started today at WealthFront.com.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA SIPC.

Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank.

Annual percentage yield on deposits as of September 26, 2025 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

The cash account is not a bank account.

Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable APY.