429: The Mouse Layer

Speaker 1 You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Speaker 2 Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

Speaker 1 It's a podcast where dude brothers answer your questions, give you Dubie's advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Speaker 1 John, what do you call five ants that move into an apartment with another five ants?

Speaker 2 Ten ants, tenants, tenants, ten ants, Tenants. They are

Speaker 2 tenants in the apartment. I love it.
It's, it's a great joke. How are you doing?

Speaker 1 I slept for so long. I've been having a hard time sleeping for over a month.
I finally, this weekend, I went to bed and I slept and I went to bed at like 10 and I woke up at like 9.30.

Speaker 1 Wow. Good for you.
I don't know. It sounds a little bit like maybe problematic.
Like,

Speaker 1 maybe I've set myself up for another problem. No, I was very tired.
Wow.

Speaker 2 I had a lot of fun at a conference over the weekend with Sarah, and now I am also tired. But in general, I find myself to be tired.
I'm 48 years old, an impossible age.

Speaker 2 I mean, I never imagined being alive at 48, let alone like that I would continue to grow and change.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 It's very strange to me.

Speaker 1 I thought of adulthood as like a zombie apocalypse virus that you ran away from for as long as you could, and then eventually it got you and you became a zombie, you know it's like the way like if you could sit on the subway and like look at all the other people and be like look at these sheep it's like that but with ages you know it is like that but with ages like you know that all the people your age are really like sort of rich and

Speaker 1 you know interpersonal dealings and lots of change happening among those people but those folks up there yeah they're they're dead they're done they're just right going through the motions but boy are we not yeah i just thought it was kind of like how you start out little and then you get big and then once you're big, you're done, right?

Speaker 2 Right? Like, because you're the same size for the, like, you don't need new shoes all the time the way I did when I was a kid. And I figured that was also going to be the case with my brain.

Speaker 2 But actually, my brain has continued to grow and change.

Speaker 2 And even at the age of 48, which is the oldest I've ever been and feels like the oldest that a human being can be, even though I understand intellectually that people get older, I find that I'm still growing.

Speaker 1 We went to see Jonathan Richmond this weekend, who is a singer-songwriter. Yeah.
And he's like 74.

Speaker 1 And I can tell he's still doing music different. His like newest album is still very Jonathan Richmond, but different from his previous work.
Yeah. And

Speaker 1 also, like, he's just, he's on tour. He's doing this stuff.
He's 74. He's doing little kicks and dances on the stage.

Speaker 2 That's great. That's great.
I love a little kick on stage.

Speaker 1 I had this moment where I thought, like, this man appears to have grown into becoming 74.

Speaker 1 Like, like he was meant to be 74. I always like, I feel that way about old people all the time where I'm like, no, you're, you were supposed to be like this, like this version of your, your wise self.

Speaker 1 And of course, like they pro they don't feel that way. You know, they're like, I'm the same person that I was in some ways when I was 30.
And also this stupid body is breaking and I hate it.

Speaker 1 But I just try and imagine more. I don't know if this is valuable, but like I try to imagine more how people see me than how I see myself.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't think that is valuable. I think you got to go the other way.
I mean, people see me, they look at me, and they're like, oh my God, that's so distracting, his age.

Speaker 1 I think that's not what they're seeing. That is what they're seeing.
There's always been, there's always old people, and they're always, they got their, they're sort of like the vibe.

Speaker 1 No, you're right.

Speaker 2 What they're thinking is good for him. He's still getting around.
No.

Speaker 1 No, he's wise. He's bringing it.
He's bringing all the knowledge of his years. The other thing is that

Speaker 1 I thought I would get less ambitious as I got older.

Speaker 2 I thought you would too, to be fair.

Speaker 1 I have. No, no.
And I think I have, but also that's still a change.

Speaker 1 And that also still changes stuff.

Speaker 2 I'm not convinced you've become less ambitious.

Speaker 1 I am differently ambitious.

Speaker 2 Okay. Let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Aaron, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I saw a post that asked, why don't ants drown when it rains?

Speaker 2 And it made me smile because I used to wonder that as a kid, but now I'm an adult. This is on the topic of growing, Hank.
Yes. I'm an adult.

Speaker 2 And I never win the answer. What happens to ant colonies during a storm? It's also on the topic of 10 ants.
Do you see what I did? You see how I've done this?

Speaker 2 You see how I've curated this experience for you?

Speaker 1 John, I did that.

Speaker 2 What happens to ant colonies during a storm?

Speaker 1 I looked at the questions and I got a run. I thought I was talking about a relevant dad joke.
Aaron.

Speaker 1 A number of different things can occur to the ants. Yeah.
Would you like to know about some of them?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'd like to know about like six of them. I mean, I would assume they can just kind of drink their way out of it, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 It would be similar to a person drinking their way out of drowning, which is not a thing that you could see happening.

Speaker 1 But interestingly, and I was surprised by this, most ant nests go down below the level that the soil gets saturated. Oh, so they just go down into their little nests and they hang out down there.

Speaker 1 Now, in situations where the soil gets saturated all the way down, you start to see a number of different behaviors occurring, including them fleeing into higher ground, including into your home.

Speaker 1 So this is a thing that happens during floods, is ants will come and invade the houses, which they can do because they're pretty small and houses have little holes.

Speaker 2 I hate that houses have little holes. Every time I see something from outside inside, I'm like, I gave you all of outside.
I gave you everything except for 3,000 square feet belongs to you.

Speaker 2 And yet still you insist upon inside.

Speaker 1 Well, the thing is that like, it's really nice inside.

Speaker 2 It's not, though. It's much more dangerous because there's a 100% chance I'm going to kill you, whereas outside, there's a zero chance.

Speaker 1 They don't know know that

Speaker 1 they're not warm.

Speaker 2 Well, they're not thinking is what I'm saying. They're not thinking it through these ants.
They've got a better chance trying to ride out the water than coming into my house.

Speaker 1 The thing about ants is I'm like, I get that, but sometimes there's a mouse. And I'm like, that's a pretty big hole.

Speaker 2 Whenever there's a mouse in my house, which is not infrequently, I remember the first time we had a mouse, it was when we were living in New York City and we had an exterminator come out.

Speaker 2 And the exterminator was like, I don't want to do an offensive New York accent.

Speaker 2 I apologize if this is offensive this is just me trying to say what he literally said he said what are you gonna do you live in Manhattan

Speaker 1 and I was like in your

Speaker 1 you were it was that specific man so you're telling me that you make a living by coming out to apartments in Manhattan and telling people what are you gonna do you live in Manhattan that's your job well what did he do you're like what am I gonna do I'm gonna call you exactly that's what I'm gonna do I thought

Speaker 1 I thought I took the action I did what I was going to do. And now, what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 He was like, you're never going to get rid of the mice in this apartment because there's construction next door and that shakes up all the mice.

Speaker 1 And I was like, okay, well, put out some traps for me or something. That's a great, that's a great visualization of the layers of New York City.

Speaker 1 You know, there's like the subway and there's the electricity. And just below the street, there's the layer of mice.
There's the mice layer.

Speaker 2 And when the mice get shaken up, they come into the homes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's great. It

Speaker 2 protects you from earthquakes i do greatly dislike a mouse in the house uh i completely overreact sarah the other day there was a mouse in the garage and i screamed like a little girl and ran away from it crying yeah and you know sarah was like you're 48 and i was like but i don't feel 48 in my heart sarah in my heart i'm a four-year-old

Speaker 1 One time I found in our bed a little cache, and I thought that it was giant poops. I thought it was like a big rat poops, but it turns out

Speaker 1 it was little seeds that the mice had been storing in the guest bed. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 But I sleep in your guest bed.

Speaker 1 We've cleaned it since.

Speaker 2 Why did you mention that to me? You could have just not mentioned that. New bed.

Speaker 1 We replaced the whole bed.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm going to believe you, even though it sounds like a lie.

Speaker 1 Okay, this next question. Oh, did we answer it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we answered that.

Speaker 1 Okay, this next question comes from Em, who asks, dear Hank, and John, why is my car covered in bees?

Speaker 1 That sounds awesome. I just returned to my car to leave the nature park that I'm visiting today, and there were at least 15 bees on.

Speaker 1 M, I was told that your car was covered in bees.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's 15 bees. That's not a coverage.

Speaker 1 There's 15 bees on it?

Speaker 2 I was imagining a sort of bee layer to the car, that there was the car, and then there was bees on top of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that you're going to have to be like that lady on Instagram who scoops them.

Speaker 2 This is disappointing, I have to say.

Speaker 1 So let me me reread it. Dear Anka John, why does my car have 15 bees on it? Yeah.
Is this related to my car being covered in large ants when I first got up this morning?

Speaker 1 By which I assume you mean it had five ants on it. Ten ants.

Speaker 2 Ten ants. Tenants.

Speaker 1 Confused and concerned. Em.

Speaker 2 Em, you got to stop coating your car in honey, you fool.

Speaker 1 Your car's got some tenants.

Speaker 2 He's got some tenants.

Speaker 1 I think the warmth might be something. Certainly at the nature park, you drove there, your car got warm, maybe the bees need to warm up.

Speaker 2 Also, there's the possibility that your car is like a color that bees like, that they think that they're getting pollen out of it. Like if it's a beautiful turquoise.

Speaker 1 So bees and ants both like

Speaker 1 candy. So maybe there's candy in there? Did you put a bunch of candy in your engine?

Speaker 2 You got any Werthers originals in there? I like those.

Speaker 1 Yeah, some of them are. I'm like a grandma.

Speaker 2 That's another way I know I'm old, Hank, is I'm starting to enjoy a hard candy.

Speaker 1 I like hard candies now, too.

Speaker 2 Why don't we get sponsored by the hard candy people? Why is Werther's original not reached out to us? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's how we're going to sustain the podcast over the next, because we have to do it for at least, what is it, 12 more years?

Speaker 2 Because we have to 14 more years because we have to do it for two years until it's called Dear John and Hank.

Speaker 2 And then we have to do it for as many years as we've done it as Dear John and Hank in order to even things out.

Speaker 1 Gotcha.

Speaker 2 So we got 14 years in front of us. By the time that's over, I'll be 62 in 14 years.

Speaker 1 and you'll be sucking those worthers down

Speaker 1 you won't even be sucking you'll be swallowing them whole like there's no tomorrow which indeed there might not be certainly uh what what what may you may or may not know is that the little goblins that make the cargo love

Speaker 1 worthers originals really and saltwater taffy they're always in there crankle crankle crinkle that's what that noise is okay all right unwrapping the candies oh i didn't know that that's interesting so that might be it that could be it as well i think that this is maybe how we keep it going, Hank.

Speaker 2 We just need to sort of shift sponsors as we age, get more of that hard candy sponsorship, more of that, like get the AARP behind us.

Speaker 1 Well, from what I can tell of the behavior of the AARP, I count already.

Speaker 1 I think I may have done a brand deal with the AARP already. I don't remember what it was, but I feel like I have been paid by them for something.

Speaker 2 Get some of that pharmaceutical company ad money.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, we can start reading to you about Skyrizzy.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. That comes with the risk of tuberculosis, like most of those

Speaker 1 ones, I took I took one of those that gives you the TB risk. They got to make sure that you don't have the TB before you start on it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all right, I think we answered the question about uh M's situation. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I can't wait to sell some people some mabs.

Speaker 2 So, what do you do? I host a podcast that's sponsored by Sky Rizzy.

Speaker 1 What is the Sky Rizzi is my favorite one because it's got the most ludicrous

Speaker 1 actual name? So, Skyrizzi is the brand name. Yeah, the actual name is Riscan.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I got my glushes down my nose a little bit. Riscan Kizumab-Riza.
Riza.

Speaker 1 It ends in Rizza.

Speaker 2 Like the Rizza, the great rapper from the Wu-Tang clan?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He is actually their main sponsor.

Speaker 2 I mean, that would be a great job for Rizza.

Speaker 1 Riscan Kizumab Rizza. Skyrizzi.

Speaker 2 All right, this question comes from Hannah, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been a fan of the pods since I was a freshman in college, and i'm now entering my fifth year of teaching hannah we already feel old you're making it worse I'm a high school band director and I love teaching so much.

Speaker 2 The kids are awesome. There's something so special about getting to teach young people how to create music.

Speaker 2 The only downside is that I work crazy hours with rehearsals after school, football games, competitions.

Speaker 2 How do I stay in a profession I love when I don't feel like I have any time for friends, family, or myself? Much love to everything y'all do. Hannah, this is such a problem for me, Hank.

Speaker 2 Like, how do you balance having work you love? I mean, it's obviously a privileged problem, right? And I'm grateful that I have the problem.

Speaker 2 But how do you balance having work you love with wanting to have a life outside of work? And the answer to that that Hank and I have found, Hannah, is that you don't.

Speaker 1 I mean, like twice a month, maybe.

Speaker 2 You just do everything too much all of the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But my friends who are classroom teachers, like I have a good friend who's a classroom teacher who was telling me that.

Speaker 2 Because he also coaches his son's middle school soccer team and he does clubs after school. So he gets to school at 6.30.
He leaves school at 4.30 to coach his kids' soccer team and he gets home at 7.

Speaker 2 And then he and then he wants to work out because he's a big worker outer guy. And so he's not done working out until 8.15.
And that's when he eats dinner and like sees the kids and everything.

Speaker 2 And that's really, really hard. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I, of course, was in band. Of course, I was.
And until this moment, had not thought about how like my band director was at it all of the time. Yeah.
Always there. Like all summer long, too.

Speaker 1 Like there was summer, there was summer band camp happening. Yeah.
They were doing that. So like the first thing is,

Speaker 1 you're not doing this wrong.

Speaker 1 Like, is this, this is, does not,

Speaker 1 I think it can kind of feel like it's like, I must be doing something wrong because I'm supposed to be doing this. That's my job.

Speaker 1 And then you're also supposed to do this other thing, which is like have a life. Right.
But like, the problem is that we decided long ago as a society that the teacher's job is to do five jobs. Right.

Speaker 1 And like the band teacher's job is to do eight extra jobs. Right.

Speaker 2 There's definitely something wrong with the system, but at least it's really well-compensated work.

Speaker 1 You got to do all 12 of the jobs for a half a job's money. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a good deal. But I don't think you're doing anything wrong.

Speaker 2 I do think that it's a huge sacrifice, though, especially for a young person to try to make that sacrifice when you're forming your core relationships and figuring out how all that stuff's going to work and who's going to be your partners in all of life and so on.

Speaker 2 Like it's really asking a lot. And the value of that sacrifice is, you know, real.

Speaker 1 You are providing a lot of value for these kids. And, you know, that will be important for a lot of people for a long time.
So that's why that's so hard to balance.

Speaker 2 But we think you have come to the wrong place in your search for balance.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 This next question comes from Story, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my name is Story and I'm five. We spent a lot of time in the pool this summer.

Speaker 2 Why is it easy for me to put my feet in the water, but it is uncomfortable to get my belly button and shoulders in the water? Story. Hank, I have no idea why this is.

Speaker 2 It is true, though, that you can put your feet in the water and you're like, oh, it's fine.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So

Speaker 1 I think that it's probably, and I didn't look this up, but I think it's probably just literally the temperature differential between those body parts. So like you're talking about your shoulders.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But really what's uncomfortable is the armpits, which is a warm spot. So you don't feel temperature.
You feel temperature difference. So my hands are kind of cold right now because it's cold outside.

Speaker 1 It's cold in my office. And if I put them in, you know, somewhat cold water, it would feel less cold than if my hands were warm right now.

Speaker 1 So you have the feet, the extremities, they're used to being kind of cold. They're just hanging out in space.
And so they're probably going to have a lower temperature generally.

Speaker 1 But then like the armpits, the belly button, like that's just as used to be in a warm. Also areas that have lots of nerves.
So there's different parts of your body that can feel more.

Speaker 1 There's just more nerves. But I guess when I'm thinking about that, like the hands and feet have plenty of nerves.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it must be the temperature differential primarily. That's really, I'd never thought of that before, that my feet are so far away from my, my heart and so on that they're just not as warm.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's why they're called the Extremities story, which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by Extremity.
Extremity.

Speaker 2 It's the future of the internet.

Speaker 1 This podcast is also brought to you by the Mouse Layer. The Mouse Layer is just under the streets of New York City.

Speaker 2 And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Werthers Originals. Werthers Originals.
We are available. Reach out.

Speaker 1 And this podcast is brought to you by Skyrizzy Risk and Kuzkumab Riza.

Speaker 1 Skyrizzy Risk and Kizumab Riza. With a name like that, how could it be wrong?

Speaker 1 If you're not from America, you don't know about Skyrizi Risk and Kizumab Riza because you don't get advertisements for pharmaceuticals. You don't.

Speaker 1 Here in America, that's allowed for some reason. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How are you healthy? How are you healthier than us when you're consuming so many fewer pharmaceutical ads?

Speaker 1 It's mysterious.

Speaker 2 I have a friend who works at a pharmaceutical company who is a big defender of pharmaceutical ads.

Speaker 1 You should have him on the podcast, John. No,

Speaker 2 it's a place where we just don't align. That's all I can say about it.
We don't. But you got to have those with your friends.

Speaker 2 All right. This question comes from Anonymous.
I thought it was a good question, and it's about our mutual journeys of meaning. And

Speaker 2 you know how I like to get into that stuff, Hank. I do.
Dear John and Hank, my husband and I were both very devoted Christians for many years before we met and in the early years of our marriage.

Speaker 2 But over time, we went through several perspective shifts and decided not to raise our children with any particular religion.

Speaker 2 Now, our older child is seven and asking a lot of questions about Jesus and God. Recently, a friend told him that if he doesn't believe in Jesus, he'll go to hell.

Speaker 2 And that has left him worried not only for himself, but also for us, because we don't believe.

Speaker 2 At the same time, he's expressed genuine interest in wanting to learn more about Jesus, and we started telling him some of the stories.

Speaker 2 We've tried to explain that there are many religions in the world, and everyone has their own journey of meaning, but he's still anxious.

Speaker 2 How do we help him navigate these questions and fears with kindness and clarity? Thanks, confused but caring parent.

Speaker 1 John, you're, I feel like you gotta take you, you're the, you're the one. I got nothing.
I got no idea what to do with this as is.

Speaker 1 And luckily, luckily, I've not had to deal with it yet. Oren seems pretty

Speaker 1 satisfied with the naturalistic explanations for things.

Speaker 2 The Hank Green, you die and you go back to where you were before you were born theory. That is.

Speaker 1 That is often how we, and we talk about stories. We talk about how important stories are, but that doesn't mean that they're real.

Speaker 2 Right. That's a good way to think about it.

Speaker 2 The first thing that I would say in this situation is I would say very clearly and unambiguously to your child that you do not believe, and that indeed most people in the world do not believe that you go to an eternal hell if you don't believe in Jesus.

Speaker 1 Right. That's good.
That's not one that I would have thought of. Thank you.

Speaker 2 I would say that just to reassure them because the reason they feel fearful is the idea of spending eternity with your skin burning is a scary thought.

Speaker 2 And I would argue, one that shouldn't be used to bludgeon children into belief systems.

Speaker 1 I actually feel like children shouldn't know about that at all. Sure.

Speaker 2 In a perfect world, I agree with you.

Speaker 1 Different strokes, I guess.

Speaker 2 Different strokes.

Speaker 2 Look, if I believed, and this is sincere, if I believed that if you didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you were going to go to hell and you were going to spend eternity there.

Speaker 2 If I believed that, that would be the most important thing for me to convince people of in the world, right? Because like this life means nothing in the face of eternity.

Speaker 2 This is barely a blip in time in the face of eternity, right? Like, we're talking about a hundred years out of hundreds of trillions, or you know, so of course I would want to convince people of that.

Speaker 2 The problem is, I go back to what Rabaya al-Adawaiy said, the great Sufi saint from Basra in what is now Iraq, where she was seen holding a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other.

Speaker 2 And she was asked what she was doing. And she said, I'm going to put this torch to the gates of heaven and burn them down.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to pour this water on the gates of hell and quench the fire fire so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because God is God.

Speaker 2 And if you can't love God because God is God, if you can't find that within you, then your theology is just so misaligned with mine that it's hard to even talk about it.

Speaker 2 But I would, that's the first thing I would say. And then I would tell them the stories.

Speaker 2 I would tell them from the perspective of, listen, like your parents don't believe this stuff, but lots of people do.

Speaker 2 And your parents have been wrong before, and there's no pressure on you either way.

Speaker 2 But I think if you come at it from a non-judgmental, inclusive perspective rather than from like a judgmental, exclusive one, group one does this, group two does that kind of exclusivity, you stand a much better chance to raising your kids without that sort of religious trauma that it sounds like maybe Anand grew up with.

Speaker 2 And I think that is a lot of what makes people shy away from their journeys of meaning, is that feeling that there was something fundamentally corrupt about the way that they were told to explore meaning in the world.

Speaker 1 From the non-believer side of things, I don't know. It'd be interesting to hear how you think about this, John.

Speaker 1 But the way I think about God is as a technology, like as a unifier, like a religion is a way that people have found to extend our circles of empathy outward into other,

Speaker 1 into a larger group than just our close family, and sort of understanding the bits of it as

Speaker 1 like, does this exist because because it helps the religion

Speaker 1 dominate? Or does this exist because it helps the people who are a part of it? And I know that this is probably not great for a seven-year-old, but

Speaker 1 I do not shy away from like the importance of stories. Stories are real, even if they are not facts.

Speaker 1 So we talk about like the stories that Christians believe in our household as like an important part of, you know, being a part of this culture.

Speaker 1 Like you are, you're going to be aware of the story of baby Jesus. You're going to know what like the resurrection is.
You're going to know what the crucifix is.

Speaker 2 And we also talk with our kids about other faith traditions and the stories in those faith traditions and how we can find meaning in those stories and direction in them and orientation in them, regardless of whether we take them as scripture.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 I agree with you basically.

Speaker 2 It's a hard thing, though, when your kid is that scared. Like, I get why that would be hard.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, it makes it's frustrating.

Speaker 2 It's not okay. It's not okay to tell a seven-year-old that they're going to go to hell, period.
That's the end of my sentence.

Speaker 1 All right, John, this next question is for me. It says, Dear Jenkin Han, I'm currently reading a beautifully foolish endeavor in which Andy is asked to pay a membership rate based on his net worth.

Speaker 1 If he has a net worth under the national average, he's paid $50,000 a year, but if there's a net worth over the national average, he must pay $1 for every $100 above the national average.

Speaker 1 Where did this idea originate? Is it based off of any valid economic theories, or is it just a plot device? What are valid economic theories? Exactly.

Speaker 2 It's Hank Green's theory of change.

Speaker 2 I did have something similar happen to me once. Have you ever had something similar happen?

Speaker 1 I don't think so.

Speaker 2 All right. So I was given this award.
This is a great story.

Speaker 2 I have to tell it delicately because I don't want to reveal the institution involved. I was given an award.
I was at a conference and I was taken into a special room.

Speaker 2 And they said, listen, we've given you a very special award. And I said, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. And they said,

Speaker 2 yeah, the benefits of the award last for five years. And I said, that's really wonderful.
I mean, what a dream come true. And then they said,

Speaker 2 it's $5,000 a year to pay for the award. And I was like, to me or from me?

Speaker 2 And they were like, from you. And I was like, well, this is the worst award I've ever received.
I've received awards that came with a financial, with financial compensation.

Speaker 2 I've received awards that didn't come with financial compensation. And was I a little hurt about the awards that didn't come with financial compensation? Sure.

Speaker 2 But never have I received an award that came with me having to pay you for the privilege of the award. And they were like, well, it's only $500 a year if you're an artist.

Speaker 2 Do you consider yourself an artist?

Speaker 1 And I was like, yes.

Speaker 1 Secondly. Second, that's still a lot.
Just because you've reduced the price. Why are you charging the artist $500?

Speaker 2 Just because you've reduced the price by 90% in a 30-second negotiation doesn't mean that I'm willing to pay.

Speaker 1 It sounds like some Scientology situation, John.

Speaker 2 It was awkward, man. It was really weird.
And I did eventually, as politely as I could manage,

Speaker 1 turn down the award.

Speaker 1 The award. Interesting.
What were the, were the benefits of the award like a special credit card? What's happening?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was called Entrance into the Delta One Lounge.

Speaker 1 The people at the ticket counter come over to you as you're sitting at the gate and they're like, Mr. Green, we have amazing news for you.

Speaker 2 I actually do feel that way. Every time I go to the Delta One Lounge, I'm like, I am your most loyal customer.
And you're telling me that I have to pay for the privilege of going here.

Speaker 2 This is bananas.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, otherwise it fills up, John. There's a lot of most loyal customers, it turns out.

Speaker 2 I guess there are. I guess there are.

Speaker 1 There are also many things in economics where people who have less pay less. And I like this.
I think that it is so that there's everything from progressive taxation to like coupon cutting.

Speaker 1 Like coupons exist so that the people who need to pay less will take the time to cut the coupons. The people who, for whom it doesn't matter that much, will pay the full price.

Speaker 1 That isn't so much a thing anymore as it once was. But there's lots of things like this.

Speaker 1 And there's also like this idea of pricing people differently based on who they are, which people hate, understandably. But sometimes I feel like when I get like a sandwich at McDonald's,

Speaker 1 I'm like, I should have paid more than this because what I'm paying for right now is my time. And like people like me are always bragging about how much their time's worth.
So why didn't I pay more?

Speaker 1 Because I got more value out of this because my time's worth more. You should be charging me 50 bucks for a sandwich.

Speaker 2 I certainly think you should pay more for public goods like roads, right?

Speaker 2 Because you benefit more from them, because you sell goods that are transported over those roads, and you should pay more for schools because you benefit more when a population is well educated and so on.

Speaker 2 I definitely think that. I'm not as convinced by

Speaker 2 that pricing model. And then I'm convinced by it for things like speeding tickets, which some people do.

Speaker 2 So that it is meaningfully painful to you to

Speaker 2 speed in the way that it ought to be. And if you're very wealthy, a $50 ticket might not matter that much to you.
But what if it wasn't a $50 ticket? What if it was a $500 ticket?

Speaker 2 Maybe then it would matter. I'm less convinced of it when it comes to like refrigerators.

Speaker 2 But maybe that's a personal bias because, of course, I would be the one who would pay for the more expensive refrigerators.

Speaker 1 But also,

Speaker 1 it wouldn't just be that.

Speaker 1 There's all kinds of ways. It's not just how much money you have.
It's how price sensitive you are, which can happen for all kinds of different reasons. That's true.
That's true.

Speaker 1 That's more about like, how can we make the most profit rather than how can we make this like a fair transaction, which is what it's always going to be tilted toward.

Speaker 2 That's when I'm not interested in it. All right.
We got this question from Annabelle that I think we need to answer before we get to the all-important news from Mars and ASU Wimbledon.

Speaker 2 Annabelle writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm writing to you in the heat of the most greatest embarrassment. My fingers shake as I type.
I live in a dorm room. I went to the bathroom down the hall.

Speaker 2 On the way back, I got distracted and walked straight into my neighbor's dorm. I do not know my neighbor.
He is a big, scary athlete of some ball sport. I closed the door immediately and ran away.

Speaker 2 I did not see him and I don't know if he saw me. Do I have to go back and apologize? I will probably cry of embarrassment if I do to knock or not to knock Annabelle.

Speaker 1 I mean, Annabelle, I've got, I've got several worse stories that are in this exact genre from my personal life.

Speaker 2 I've got one that's worse than all of yours that I can't tell. You know what it is.

Speaker 1 I have a friend who my roommate, freshman year of college, slept naked and he got into another man's bed naked because he was that drunk.

Speaker 1 And then that man came home and got into his bed, and there was a naked man in there.

Speaker 2 Well, that is bad. It's not quite as bad as bleeping in bleep's dorm room because I was bleep to the bleep.

Speaker 1 My other roommate,

Speaker 1 second semester of freshman year,

Speaker 1 he,

Speaker 1 I once got into my bed and it was covered in dirt because he had fallen asleep in the quad, in the dirt.

Speaker 1 Then he had gone to the bathroom, puked, flushed his glasses down the toilet, and then fallen asleep in my bed.

Speaker 2 Anyway, Annabelle, it sounds like what you've done is actually quite minor.

Speaker 2 And I don't think you do need to apologize for it because I think the big scary athlete knew exactly what happened and was like, oh, that's all right. That's not a big deal.
At least nobody

Speaker 2 bleeped in the bleep.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Boy, I made some bad choices in college

Speaker 1 what what i will what i will say is that all of these all three of these situations do seem to have a common element except for annabelle's annabelle seems like it's no no yours carelessness my first roommates and my second roommates my mine definitely involved a measure of binge shrinking um

Speaker 2 as it did when i uh one time a friend of mine came up to me and said um are you uh peeing on the church and i looked down and i was i was peeing on the church.

Speaker 1 I'm worried that people are going to think you bleeping in the bleep is worse than it is. So just for clarity.
Yeah. It's not worse than

Speaker 1 it is.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's pretty bad. How could it have been worse?

Speaker 1 Well, you didn't injure anybody. Oh, there wasn't a person involved.

Speaker 2 Nobody was hurt. Nobody was hurt.

Speaker 1 No person got bleeped on.

Speaker 2 There was no pooping and no person got hurt.

Speaker 1 How's that?

Speaker 1 Okay, good.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Everything turned out okay in the end after some embarrassing conversations.

Speaker 1 It's pretty, pretty bad, John.

Speaker 2 I know. It's not my best friend.

Speaker 1 I didn't do that. I didn't really, I never,

Speaker 1 I mean, I've still never puked from alcohol and probably won't in my life now because I don't drink alcohol anymore.

Speaker 2 I wish I could say that, Hank.

Speaker 2 I wish I could say that. I wish I could say that I, I've never puked from drinking alcohol.

Speaker 1 I got real close once on our anniversary party night because I drank all the, I drank all the pitchers.

Speaker 1 There was like a little bit left in all of the pitchers at the bowling alley and I just did them all at once.

Speaker 2 All right, let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon because I have to go to a volleyball game.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 Here's the news from AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon cannot stop winning football games, Hank.
It is a miracle. It is the miracle on the Thames.

Speaker 2 AFC Wimbledons somehow have now won four consecutive games in League One. AFC Wimbledon, Hank, with the lowest budget in League One, are in fifth, fifth place.
We're in the playoffs right now.

Speaker 2 Now, admittedly, there's a lot of season to go, and we will not be in the playoffs when all is said and done, barring some kind of absurd miracle.

Speaker 2 But I just, at this point, I don't know what to believe. We've played 11 games.
We have 21 points. We're three points off of second.

Speaker 1 Wow, three points off of second is wild. Can I rein a little on your parade? Please.

Speaker 1 Number one, this most recent win against Blackpool, which seems to be the worst team, and they are having some real problems.

Speaker 2 They did fire their manager immediately after we beat them.

Speaker 1 Second, is it okay to talk about, do one of your guys just go down for gambling? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we can talk about that.

Speaker 1 How's, how's that? How's is that okay? Is he a good one?

Speaker 2 No, he's, well, I mean, he seems like a nice kid, but he's very young and he doesn't play much. So we're good.

Speaker 1 Okay. I just saw that.

Speaker 1 Google knows me now, and it's like, you need all the AFC Wimbledon news.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't even seen that, but no, he'll be all right in the the end.
Okay. He'll learn his lesson.

Speaker 1 Well, this week in Mars News, Perseverance Rover has taken a picture of what may be the most important comet of our lifetimes. Whoa.

Speaker 2 The alias comet, the overwhelmingly the most important comet of our lifetimes?

Speaker 1 No, it turns out 3-Eye Atlas is an interstellar comet, not from round here.

Speaker 1 It seems to be quite weird. There's a bunch of sort of unanswered questions about it right now, but that's mostly due to lack of data rather than it being extremely mysterious.

Speaker 1 Though certain people who think everything can be explained by aliens think that that's not the case. And in fact, we have plenty of data to say that's an alien, which it's not.

Speaker 1 But three eye Alice is weird.

Speaker 1 And we are trying to suss out why. So basically, comets, really interesting, if you're me, comets

Speaker 1 change direction based on how they throw their stuff off.

Speaker 1 So they have these tails, and that tail is pointed toward the sun because the sun is boiling stuff off of its surface that condensed when it was far away in the cold, cold interstellar space or just distant solar system.

Speaker 1 And as that stuff like ablates off the side of the comet, it pushes the comet in the other direction.

Speaker 1 And 3i Atlas has a big cloud around it, like the sun is ablating the stuff, but it's not changing speed or direction very much. There's a few different things that could explain this.

Speaker 1 I don't really understand them,

Speaker 1 but that's strange, and it's not behaving the way a comet that's from from our solar system would act, which is making people very curious about it.

Speaker 1 But that comet is going between us and the sun, so we will not be able to see it for a long time until uh like a few months from now, when we will be more aligned to be able to see it again.

Speaker 1 But during that time, it turns out perseverance can see it, so we can continue to track it and look at it, which is cool.

Speaker 2 Isn't that nice? Good job, Perseverance. What a weird little comet.
Probably not a little comet, bigger than you.

Speaker 1 The uh, interestingly,

Speaker 1 and slightly less good news, the press releases that came out, would normally come out about this didn't seem to really come out because the government shut down. So

Speaker 1 I'm saying all this with a little bit of a grain of salt. I think all of this is true, but the information from NASA is not coming out the way that it normally would.
Good times. Good times.

Speaker 2 Hank, I got to go to this volleyball game, so thank you for podding with me. Send us your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 This podcast is edited by Ben Swardout. It's mixed by Joseph Tunametish.
Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rojas and Hannah West.

Speaker 1 Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Daboki Trokrivarti.
The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarola.

Speaker 1 And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.