432: Turtetiquette

Speaker 1 You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

Speaker 1 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, but maybe not that last one, because I don't think that I don't have any right now.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Catherine recently said to me, John, yeah, she was like, I think I want to have another kid. Oh my god, and I was real surprised.
Yeah, I thought that ship had sailed for sure.

Speaker 1 I said, I thought you liked this one.

Speaker 1 That's a pretty good joke. Okay.
That's all right. It's not true, though, right? I mean, you're not having another kid.
No, no, yes, yes, yes. That ship has indeed sailed.

Speaker 1 That would be a weird way to break the news to me.

Speaker 1 How is the siblings?

Speaker 1 How do you find having siblings versus my situation where there's just one of them? It's great. It's lovely.

Speaker 1 They're lovely kids.

Speaker 1 So, Hank, I just did one of those long-form interviews that sometimes you do where the interviewer talked to me for 90 minutes and asked me a bunch of questions, and then it's all going to come out as a podcast, and like none of it will be cut, and everything that I said will be hyper-scrutinized.

Speaker 1 Is it like a big, is it a big one? Is it like one that's pretty big? That Nicholas Cage would go on? Nicholas Cage, I think, would do it, but hasn't been offered the opportunity. That's how big it is.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I think it's big enough that Nicholas Cage is like desperate to do it. He's like, Oh, wow.
I hope someday I get to do this podcast. No, no, no, no.
You're not bigger than Nicholas Cage.

Speaker 1 Okay, we'll go offline real quick. I'll tell you what it is and then we'll come back.

Speaker 1 And we're back. Okay, I get it.
I get it. So it's not so much that you're bigger than Nicolas Cage.
It is more sort of suited to your personal brand.

Speaker 1 A little more suited to my brand, but it's a big, it's a big-ish deal, is my point.

Speaker 1 And the time during the interview is fine. I mean, I'm highly anxious and like very much on guard and like desperately trying.
And the only thought, the only clear thought that I'm having is like, we

Speaker 1 like that's my only real thought throughout the entire thing.

Speaker 1 You're familiar with this experience. But then

Speaker 1 afterwards, after the end of the interview, that's when the crushing anxiety hits. Because you would think about all of the things you just said.
Or didn't say. Yes.

Speaker 1 I think about all the things I just said. And then it's just like,

Speaker 1 boom. Yeah.
Just smashing me in the chest. So that's where I'm at right now.
Can we just make things not matter? You know, could we just like, could we just, could things matter?

Speaker 1 Maybe, look, I obviously things need to matter. But in terms the stakes.
In terms of me, in terms of like just things people are saying. I wish I didn't care so much if people liked me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, that's really it. I'm 48.

Speaker 1 Why am I still in middle school? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And are the platforms optimized for it? Do the platforms want us to feel this way so that we're always checking?

Speaker 1 One thing I think people don't understand about unless you're a real poster is the extent to which the labor comes after the creation.

Speaker 1 So like you make a thing or you do an interview or you post a post and then it's like, then you're, you're like, gotta babysit that. I did.
You're managing it. I gotta manage it.

Speaker 1 I gotta like see how like the feedback and I gotta learn from it and I gotta

Speaker 1 hank. I'm about to change your life with some great advice.

Speaker 1 This isn't even dubious. That's why seven minutes after posting something, when it starts to feel like labor, I just delete it.

Speaker 1 I just delete it. And I got the kind of high of posting.
I got the high of the initial response. And then the moment a person took it in the wrong context, I'm like, oh, I'll just delete that.

Speaker 1 I'll delete that. I always, I have this problem of thinking that if somebody interprets something differently than I meant it to be interpreted, that it's that that's my fault.

Speaker 1 And I think that it is sometimes. Sometimes it is.
I kind of like truly, deeply, actually believe it always is. Like, I feel like if I was misinterpreted, that I could have done better.
And this is a.

Speaker 1 But sometimes people just like willingly, bad faith interpret you because like that's part of how you get internet points is by

Speaker 1 and I do this too. Like I'm not accusing people of participating in some evil social internet that I'm immune to.

Speaker 1 Like I sometimes like present an argument in bad faith as a way of saying like, look at these idiots. Yes.

Speaker 1 It is where the incentives drive. That's one of the reasons I've stopped posting online is because I can't resist the urge to do that.
And so the only way to resist the urge is to kind of not start.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 someday I'll stop posting online. I don't know, Hank.
I think that might be the last thing you do.

Speaker 1 But first, before you stop posting online, which you'll never do, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Kaylee, who writes, Dear John and Hank, Red Green the Dog, Blue Green the Snake, who was responsible for these ridiculous pet names from your childhood?

Speaker 1 Are there any other color names you would like to reveal, Kaylee? I cannot believe that we ever have talked about blue-green. I can't believe we talked about blue-green either.

Speaker 1 No, this moment I forgot blue-green. I feel bad because I don't think blue-green was adequately loved in the world.
No, I think that blue-green was re-released eventually.

Speaker 1 So I am almost positive that that is a story that we told you. Oh, no, don't ruin it for me.
Yeah, I might have to ruin it for you. Blue Green did come from the wild.
Blue Green was not a pet story.

Speaker 1 Blue Green came from the wild, but Blue Green did not return to the wild. Blue Green died inside of that terrarium.
That's a shame. Yeah, well, I mean,

Speaker 1 I've got even worse news for you, which is that we all go.

Speaker 1 That is what one might call a shame. So, Blue Green was a garter snake who had a little stripe of blue, a beautiful stripe of blue.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so he had a stripe of blue, and his last name was green, because that's our last name. It's not our fault that our last name is a color.
Yeah. And so we named him Blue Green.

Speaker 1 And then Red Green was a red dog, and we named him Red Green because we got him at Christmas. It's the perfect name.
I don't apologize for either of these pet names. I still think they're hilarious.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I have no idea who's responsible. I don't know who named Red.
I think you did. God,

Speaker 1 what a bad dog. I mean, we don't talk enough about what a bad dog Red Green was.

Speaker 1 He was bad to the bone, man. He was bad for 50.
I know there's no bad dogs, only bad owners, but we must have been bad owners.

Speaker 1 I don't doubt that we were. Also, look, I think that Red Green was not a bad dog.
He was a bad pet.

Speaker 1 He was a great dog. He was a bad family dog.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. He was

Speaker 1 like, I only got bit by that dog like four or five times. Yeah, he was violent.
He wasn't as violent as some dogs, but he was violent. He was a miniature dog.

Speaker 1 He couldn't be that violent. He weighed eight pounds.
If he was a big dog, the number of times and the intensity with which he bit me would have been a huge problem. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he also, he was never house trained in a meaningful way.

Speaker 1 I remember when I got, I got a blacklight because I was like a cool high schooler trying to be, you know, trying to be like a getting a black light poster up there and, and, uh, rebel in my own special way.

Speaker 1 That was a huge mistake. Huge mistake.
Huge mistake. Big error.
Big error. Like,

Speaker 1 I knew that I'd cleaned up some pee, but I didn't know that I had cleaned up pee from every spot in the room. Yeah.
Yeah. No, he was a very petulant peer.

Speaker 1 Like he would wake you up and then jump down off the bed and stare at you. And P,

Speaker 1 he was like a dominance peer.

Speaker 1 he was like hey you know that thing that you hate watch it happen

Speaker 1 whereas bluegreen was a great garter snake no complaints about him I think that was the only two also probably not a great pet but those were the only two pets we named after colors I don't remember what we called our tortoise chip and dale were chip and dale the hamsters no these were finches the finches I don't remember the finches yeah well there it is what was the name of that um that other bird you had Rico rico the conier and we had willie the hamster we had a willie who is willie willie was a hamster one-eyed willie you don't remember why did willie only have one eye because willie disappeared willie had two eyes willie disappeared we didn't know where he was every night mom and dad would like put gerbil food under the headboard so that they would hear him come by and maybe they would wait he they would wake up and the gerbil food would disappear but then they wouldn't wake up so they knew willie was around willie was gone for weeks Wow.

Speaker 1 And then when Willie, when they finally woke up as Willie was eating the gerbil food, he had one eye. He went from two eyes to one eye in a mysterious accident.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then it must be said he got killed by Red Green. By red.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No.

Speaker 1 We're dropping some new lore today.

Speaker 1 That's new lore. Yeah.
No, I don't know that we ever let it slip that red green was the reason that Willie died. Yeah.
Do you want to know my other traumatic pet death story? Yeah, please.

Speaker 1 So we got two goldfish at the fair. Never do this.
No, it never was the 80s. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And we got two goldfish at the fair.

Speaker 1 One of them was won by Phil, who I will not use his full name. Yeah, I know Phil.
Close family friend Phil.

Speaker 1 And I think my parents did not want to get the goldfish, but Phil won the goldfish and I wanted them. I think this is what happened.
And so they took the goldfish home.

Speaker 1 We did not have the best way of taking care of the goldfish. One of the goldfish started to get sick.
So my parents were like, we need to change the water.

Speaker 1 And they're changing the water over the sink. One of the goldfish slips out of the bowl and into the sink and goes down the drain.

Speaker 1 Mom looks at me and she says, I'm so sorry, Hank. That was the good one.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's like a really metaphorically resonant story. I mean, who among us has not lost the good one here and there?

Speaker 1 And like, boy, do I remember that? Like, I'm, I'm having like an emotional response to it right now as a 45-year-old man. I'm like,

Speaker 1 prickling and like very like, just, I mean, I guess I'm kind of thinking about Aurin too, like, just the moments where

Speaker 1 crushing stuff happens to you as a kid. Well, here's the thing, Hank.
That fish went where we are all going. Yeah.
Well.

Speaker 1 What did we say? The dust? Complicated dust, baby.

Speaker 1 This next question comes from Lisa, Lisa, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm getting married in five days, and I feel as though I am on another plane of existence with the amount of stress I am feeling.

Speaker 1 I am thrilled to marry the love of my life. Everything is packed and as ready as it can be for the weekend's festivities, but I am buzzing with energy.

Speaker 1 Any tips on how to coke pumpkins and penguins, Lisa? Now, Hank. Yes.
Let's drop some more lore. Yeah, you want to tell everybody what you did for me? I don't remember.
I didn't do anything for you.

Speaker 1 I just like hung out with you. Correct.

Speaker 1 So first off, when I got married, like,

Speaker 1 I was at a very high level of stress, but I'm frequently at a very high level. You know about that stress, right? So like it wasn't, it wasn't new for me to be like at the at the limit, you know, like

Speaker 1 if the stress starts in your toes, I was, it was at my eyebrows, but like that's nothing new for me. I've, I've, I've been there before.

Speaker 1 I found the day of getting married so stressful that it was kind of difficult to enjoy it for me. Fortunately, it turns out that that's like the first day of like a 6,000-day marriage.

Speaker 1 And like the other 6,000 days have been great. Not, I mean, not universally, but pretty, pretty good as

Speaker 1 things go.

Speaker 1 And so you got to remember that. You got to remember this is not like the marriage.
This is the wedding.

Speaker 1 And then the marriage is going to be a whole different thing that's actually much more important than the wedding and much more interesting and much more fulfilling and all that.

Speaker 1 But on your wedding day, as I recall, we were at a brunch on your wedding day.

Speaker 1 And mom was like, can you go find Hank? And I was like, sure. And so I looked around for you.
And then eventually I made my way to the bathroom because that's where you tend to hang out. And

Speaker 1 if one's not in the brunch, one's probably hiding in the bathroom. You're in the bathroom.
Yeah. You were in the bathroom and you were like, not doing too good.
No.

Speaker 1 I had overestimated my need for quiche. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was part of it. I mean, I wouldn't say that was the primary issue.

Speaker 1 Here's what I'll say. Given my mental state, I had overestimated my need for quiche.

Speaker 1 My current need for quiche was below zero and I had had maybe a spoonful and that had really pushed me over the edge. I was feeling real, like the anxiety had turned into.

Speaker 1 I was, my blood pressure was not where it should be, and I was feeling like puka. You were having a physical reaction to anxiety, which is not uncommon, right? Like, but it was uncommon for you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it's

Speaker 1 not. Look, it's only happened to me like six times in my life.
When you're experiencing something you've never experienced before, haven't experienced in a long time, it's stressful on its own.

Speaker 1 And then there's the fact that like the stress, you know, it becomes a vicious cycle because the stressful thing is getting worse and worse.

Speaker 1 So anyway, we went, I was like, screw everything. We're getting out of this joint.

Speaker 1 We're not going to hang out at this breakfast place. We're going to get Hank home and we're going to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.
It's exactly what I remember. And you know,

Speaker 1 there's an extension of this story that I have also talked about, which is that I biked to that brunch venue. You drove me home.
And then

Speaker 1 I got married and a bunch of other things happened.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 I woke up one day

Speaker 1 to go bike somewhere. And I was like, my bike got stolen.
And then four months later, I found my bike parked outside of the brunch menu. I just walked by it.
And I was like, that's my bike.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There's nothing like falsely accusing the world of stealing your bike only to find out that it was not in fact stolen.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's a good one. Yeah, I'll tell you what.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 was the exact right thing.

Speaker 1 And that's probably not going to be the exact right thing for you, but it was for me because I know how to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. I know that I enjoy it.

Speaker 1 And so maybe that's like Star Trek the Next Generation for you, which it also is for me.

Speaker 1 Or maybe it's like an album that you have a deep relationship with that you can like hear a lot of and experience a lot of inside of. Or maybe it's a friend or it could be a lot of different things.

Speaker 1 But like if everything's done, and the only thing left to do is worry, and the worry is not producing anything except for unpleasantness,

Speaker 1 That's the best and purest use of the tremendous opportunities for distraction that our society has developed for us. Right.
That's true.

Speaker 1 There was no Instagram or TikTok back in 2006 when you got married. Yeah, I don't know.
There's something much like, I actually don't think that TikTok or Instagram would be a good

Speaker 1 idea. Because it gives you so much, you know? Yeah,

Speaker 1 so much sensory input. And like, you don't never know if the next one's going to make you worried or not, you know? Yeah.
That's why I had to get off of TikTok when I was sick was because

Speaker 1 it would give me like triggers, and I would never know when one was coming for like you know, sickness.

Speaker 1 Well, we wish you lots of luck, but remember that the wedding is one thing, and the marriage is another, and the marriage is going to be the most interesting and important thing.

Speaker 1 Um, the last thing I'll say about this, Hank, is that on my wedding day, the most enjoyable part was walking out of the church.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Mary. I don't know.
Once it all started, I was like, really. Yeah, you did great once it started.
And you seemed like you had fun that day. I did.
I liked a lot of the parts of it.

Speaker 1 I mean, I liked basically all of the parts of it. My least favorite part was how hungry I was during the part where you have to like go around to all the tables and say hi to everybody.

Speaker 1 And I was like, man, I should have had a hot dog. I was hungry.
I was also thirsty for beer and no one would get me a beer. And I was like, I thought this was my special day.

Speaker 1 I should have as many beers as I would like. Oh, man.
And like at my wedding, I won't name any names, but certain family members had never had a real Montana beer before.

Speaker 1 So they thought they were having one beer at a time and really they were having like two and a half. Yeah, we, I mean, listen, Hank, we've, we've got a family that knows how to party.
So

Speaker 1 I don't think it was just that they were drinking more than they thought they were drinking. I think that they were drinking exactly as much as they thought they were drinking.

Speaker 1 Like a scotch ale could be a real surprise when you hit like a seven, eight percent. All right.
I'm going to to ask you a question about snot, Hank. All right, I love that.
It's from McKenzie.

Speaker 1 Dear John and Hank, as someone who grew up with severe allergies and lots of colds, I've always wondered about snot. What is it? Why are there so many different textures? Is it the same as phlegm?

Speaker 1 Do you spit it out? Why can it be different colors? Most importantly, how is there so much of it? Thanks for considering my booger question, Not Hazel Grace, McKenzie Grace.

Speaker 1 Snot may be one of the coolest proteins.

Speaker 1 And also, I had a video script I was working on about this years ago and I abandoned it, but I should revive it.

Speaker 1 About how, about the largest molecule in your body is probably a single molecule of mucus that runs from your sinuses to

Speaker 1 your

Speaker 1 rectum. Oh my.
Because

Speaker 1 when a single protein of

Speaker 1 a mucin, which is a mucus protein, is produced, it cross-links with other molecules, other mucins that have been produced. So one mucin will join up with another one and they'll cross-link together.

Speaker 1 And they have these like really weak cross-links. They don't have very many from one to the other, but they are cross-linked.

Speaker 1 And that makes them into these big, wiggly molecules that have very sort of like weak bonds between each other, but they are bonds. And they're not just hydrogen bonds.

Speaker 1 I think that they are in fact covalent bonds. This is the track that I was going down and I abandoned the video.
So like I'm saying things that I'm like 90% sure of right now.

Speaker 1 And they're also like really, they like water. So they like water glums onto them.
So the vast majority of the mass of snot is water, but it is bound together by these long filamentous mucin

Speaker 1 cross-linked structures that hold all that water in like a gel.

Speaker 1 And like the reason you can produce so much snot is because your body produces a little bit of these proteins and the proteins suck water into them.

Speaker 1 And then, and so it's mostly the water from your body that is, that is creating that.

Speaker 1 So you can create a lot of snot because there's just like you can create a lot of spit, like it's just a lot of water from your body. And they're produced by, you know, all the

Speaker 1 molecules on the surface of your mucous membranes that like shoot those mucins out. Now, do you know why some people's noses just sort of drip all winter, but not all summer? I don't actually.

Speaker 1 No, I don't. That's a good idea.
Great.

Speaker 1 I'll save that for my Ask Hank Anything episode. Great.

Speaker 1 John's going to be on Ask Hank Anything, everybody. I am going to be on Ask Inc Anything.

Speaker 1 I've been thinking about what questions I want to ask you, and I don't think I really want to ask you many scientific questions.

Speaker 1 I want to ask you a lot of questions about your relationship with your brother. Oh, hell yeah.
Yeah, I think that'll be fun. Much kicks ass, by the way.
It's so great. Yeah, we love it.

Speaker 1 It does a lot of good stuff. Anything that gets into your body that's like not supposed to be there, it just like sticks into this gel and it doesn't get into your body.

Speaker 1 And then you, when you like, you know, spit it out or it comes out in various ways, all that stuff comes out too and isn't messing with you anymore.

Speaker 1 Which reminds me that today's podcast is actually brought to you by Mucus. Mucus, it's underrated.
It's underrated. This podcast is also brought to you by

Speaker 1 one-eyed Willie. One-eyed Willie, rest in peace.
Godspeed, sir. Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by Red Green.
Red Green, the murderer of One-Eyed Willie.

Speaker 1 We shouldn't have let them both sponsor the same episode, John. That was Willie.

Speaker 1 I know. I guess,

Speaker 1 but it's real. Yeah.
And when you buy an ad with us, we read the ad regardless. This podcast is also brought to you by Cold Smoke Scotch Ale.

Speaker 1 Cold Smoke Scotch Ale from Kettle House Brewing, the downfall of many a cousin. Yeah, you're getting close to identifying them by identifying them as cousins.
There's a lot of cousins, John.

Speaker 1 There's only like 19 of them.

Speaker 1 All right, Hank, let's answer this question from Samantha, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my boyfriend and I live in a pond that is home to many different kinds of wildlife, including...

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You live in a pond? In front of a pond.
That makes more sense. I was like, is a frog asking the question

Speaker 1 i didn't know they were monogamous

Speaker 1 i knew they could write into our email but i didn't know they

Speaker 1 had boyfriends i thought

Speaker 1 poly i thought they were all polywogs i knew you were gonna do that dang it i hate that my boyfriend and i live in front of a pond that is home to many different kinds of wildlife including turtles in the middle of the pond there is a log sticking out of the water at about a 20 degree angle which is just perfect for turtles, by the way.

Speaker 1 You couldn't

Speaker 1 land it any better, Samantha. Perfect turtle log.
That the turtles will often climb onto. No joke, they will.
It's the happiest turtles in the world.

Speaker 1 Turtles can only climb on one at a time due to the angle and have to move up the log in order to make room for more turtles. So here is my question.

Speaker 1 What is the turtle etiquette when it comes to climbing onto the log? Does the first turtle climb straight to the top because they know there are more coming?

Speaker 1 Do they wait for another turtle to arrive and then move? Do turtles just push each other up the big log to make room for themselves? Thank you, John and Hank, for your knowledge. Samantha.

Speaker 1 I've always thought, John,

Speaker 1 you and I have missed our calling. We could have been the,

Speaker 1 that's the etiquette lady. We could have been the etiquette lady, but for turtles.
Yes, the turtle, the tertette, the turtle.

Speaker 1 Sorry, it's going to take me a second, but I'm going to get there. The tertetic lady.

Speaker 1 I really like.

Speaker 1 Patience, Grasshopper. I'm going to get there.

Speaker 1 You will be the Tertetic lady. The Tertetic lady.
Yeah. I mean, Terteticate is an amazing title for our new novelty book.

Speaker 1 Because one thing that we don't, one thing that we're like, look, you got to follow up everything is tuberculosis with Tertetic.

Speaker 1 With a novelty Tertetic book that's just like absolutely committed to the bit where it's just like, here's what you do when you are a turtle. Like John Hodgman did this.

Speaker 1 He wrote several like absolutely dense,

Speaker 1 complex novelty books. John Hodgman is a bit commitment expert.
I mean, wow.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I don't know. Like, how fast can we get Tertetic out?

Speaker 1 I don't think it's going to happen. Not fast enough.
And also, I've got to go to the Philippines tomorrow. So

Speaker 1 I got a flight. It's perfect.
Yeah, that's what I should do on my flight.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 write the great American Tertetic novel. John's going to get four scotch and sodas and write tertetic.

Speaker 1 For the

Speaker 1 fear of flying. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Then write tertetic.

Speaker 1 16 hour and 10 minute flight, Hank, in the air. Oh my God.
You're going to write Tertetic and Tertetic too.

Speaker 1 It can't take more than eight hours to write a Tertetic.

Speaker 1 Joking. One Tertetic, John.
You do it. You do it this weekend.
You'll have have plenty of time.

Speaker 1 I think that the turtles have a sense of etiquette that we do not fully understand, Samantha.

Speaker 1 And I think that it is your job to become the Jane Goodall of turtle etiquette and observe these turtles closely to see how they move on the log.

Speaker 1 And that will be not the end of your turtle expertise, but the beginning of it. Because from there, I'm sure there's so many other turtle etiquette issues for you to consider.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 They're always doing stuff. Yeah.
How do they, when they bury themselves in the sand, in the sand, in the muck, in the mud, come winter? Yeah. Do they make space for each other?

Speaker 1 Or do the biggest turtles get the best holes? Do they believe, as I do, that we have to protect the young? Or are they, in fact, like

Speaker 1 monsters of narcissism? And there's only one way to find out, and that is to pay attention. And that's really what we should all be doing, because that's what our lives are made of.

Speaker 1 And we should be paying attention to the blue striped garter snakes and the and the turtles and the weird games at the fair i feel like that's my job sometimes and i'm like i feel so low-key yeah you get to pay attention for a living i feel like that's my job too good job good work if you can get it how about this john yeah

Speaker 1 a proper turtle never rushes to conclusions or anywhere else

Speaker 1 that's good that's a really good that's a really good first sentence of your tertetic novel thanks i'm looking at a picture of a garter snake and it's making me sad Poor Blue Green.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, you thought, I love that you thought Blue Green got re-released into the wild. I am 100% sure.

Speaker 1 Well, because he was dead. That's why.
Because if we re-released him into the wild, we would have been re-releasing a corpse.

Speaker 1 But I think we told you that because you were still so young and fragile. You were like eight years old, and I was 11.
So

Speaker 1 I knew about the world. Yeah, I knew what the world was.
I had to turn nine before mom poured a goldfish down the drain.

Speaker 1 Jesus, it is dark.

Speaker 1 Let's answer another question from our listeners, Hank. How about you ask me one? I don't have the doc.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. I'll ask you one.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 This question comes from Becky, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know people who've had their bladders removed, and I know that people can live without a spleen or a gallbladder, and you can lose a kidney and part of your colon and half of your liver.

Speaker 1 I think you can even live with one lung or with only one hemisphere of your brain, etc. So, what organs do we actually need? Morbidly curious, Becky.
I think there's only four.

Speaker 1 Like, there is something, there is like a. Well, you need at least one lung and you need at least one kidney.
No. And you need a pancreas really badly.
Nope. You don't need a pancreas.

Speaker 1 People live without pancreases all the time. What? I mean, their lifespans are significantly shorter, but on average.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
So you can live without a pancreas for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I think, I think brain, heart, lungs. Brain, heart, lungs? I think, like, I think you need a kidney.

Speaker 1 I think you need a kidney long term but everything i i mean long term i think you need everything except for your gallbladder no i don't have a gallbladder and i feel fine you definitely don't need uh one of your kidneys for example you don't need yeah you don't need one of your kidneys you don't need a gallbladder what's that other thing you don't need that people a spleen spleens you you know a wild thing about spleens john yeah sometimes people uh have uh traumatic uh injury to their spleen oftentimes uh car accidents or motorcycle accidents and then uh and they'll they'll take the spleen out.

Speaker 1 And then years later, they will discover that they have more than one new spleen located at non-spleen parts of the body.

Speaker 1 And what happens is that the spleen, when it ruptures, releases spleen cells into the body. Those cells go and recolonize another area of the body and they can still do spleen stuff.

Speaker 1 Can I tell you a really sad story about spleens?

Speaker 1 As long as it's not about a pet. No, it's about a human.
It's worse worse than that. A human child, no less.
So when I was a chaplain at the children's hospital, on my first night on call,

Speaker 1 this kid came in with a ruptured spleen from a car accident. And

Speaker 1 I threw up and fainted.

Speaker 1 And when I came to,

Speaker 1 the nurses were kind of laughing. And I was like, what's so funny? And they were like, well, first off, you threw up and fainted and that girl was fine.
You know, like

Speaker 1 she's going to have a normal life. And secondly, um, the parents who had just been reassured were like newly traumatized because they thought you were a doctor.
Oh,

Speaker 1 oh,

Speaker 1 boys, that's you got to live with that shame forever. And I feel like that's also new lore that I didn't know.
Yeah, that was, I mean, that was a tough job.

Speaker 1 I wasn't good at it. It was the rare, the rare, uh, unpleasant combination of

Speaker 1 not, not being, not being graded a job that also is a tough job.

Speaker 1 But yeah, anyway,

Speaker 1 I did not faint after that. That was the only time I fainted.
There are

Speaker 1 five organs that are definitely necessary, brain, heart, lungs, liver, and kidney. Liver and kidney.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. I really thought your pancreas was necessary.
It's really, really important.

Speaker 1 But yeah,

Speaker 1 pancreatic cancer patients often have their whole pancreas removed and then have to have a bunch of stuff. Like, obviously, it makes you variously diabetic because you don't produce your weight.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm glad we took this turn. We were having such a good time.

Speaker 1 This podcast contains multitudes, y'all.

Speaker 1 Sometimes it's red, green, and blue-green. Sometimes it's John having flash memories of being a chaplain.

Speaker 1 Let's answer another serious one before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

Speaker 1 All right, John, this next question comes from Raquel, who asks, Dear Hank and John, what would happen if the oceans were 50% less salty?

Speaker 1 High energy, but low sodium, Raquel. No, this is the kind of serious question i've been after hank because

Speaker 1 i think that life would be dramatically different well what are we talking about are we talking about like it happened all of a sudden yes like tomorrow we wake up and the oceans are 50 less salty we made a terrible mistake and we removed half the salt from the oceans i'm a little worried that uh that that that um the earth would end yeah that's what i'm saying that like complex life on the planet would collapse really

Speaker 1 i'm worried that that there might be like atmospheric effects

Speaker 1 Maybe not.

Speaker 1 So, like, one thing that's going to happen is all of the animals in the ocean are going to die. Really bad for the wind.
That's going to be very bad. That's going to be bad for everybody.

Speaker 1 It's going to stink.

Speaker 1 It's going to smell so bad. A huge number of people are reliant on ocean life

Speaker 1 for

Speaker 1 their survival. Also, maybe a lot of zooplankton will die.

Speaker 1 And what would that mean? I don't know what a zooplankton is. Producing oxygen.
Oh.

Speaker 1 And zooplankton actually produces a lot of the oxygen. Well, no, yeah, actually, it is, in fact, not the zooplankton.
It's the okay. That means like living plankton.
Like,

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 1 It is the other plankton. It is the ones that do the photosynthesizing that would be the concern.
But like, maybe not.

Speaker 1 Maybe they'd all die and just like the cycle would shut down and it wouldn't affect atmospheric chemistry too much.

Speaker 1 It feels like if we stopped pumping a bunch of the oxygen in the air into the air, that would be a big problem.

Speaker 1 There would also be fewer things absorbing the oxygen, like the photosynthesizers wouldn't be absorbing it. So it might stay.

Speaker 1 But like, I think also that changing it would make the ocean less effective at absorbing CO2.

Speaker 1 I mean, if it happened all of a sudden, basically you're talking like a civilizational collapse. I don't know that humans would survive.

Speaker 1 Now, there's another version of this question, which is like, what would the world have been like if the oceans were half as salty? Which is like probably

Speaker 1 not that different. Still would have had life on land, still would have had life in the water.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You got everything you need for chemistry. Stuff probably would have been a little easier because going from freshwater to saltwater would be easier.
Right.

Speaker 1 It's just a reminder of how fragile. And

Speaker 1 I don't mean to get existential on you, Hank, but like this whole thing is so fragile.

Speaker 1 We think of civilization and

Speaker 1 our current situation as being so inevitable, but I don't think it is so inevitable. No.

Speaker 1 I think it was like required a lot of luck and good timing and that like a bad luck and bad timing could could could be pretty bad for us. Yeah, it could still happen.
It will happen.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, I don't want to get ahead of us, but like it's going to happen. It's like eventually everything happens.
Yeah. Thanks for coming to our party.

Speaker 1 I wonder what the worst things about Earth are.

Speaker 1 Great question. So like, obviously, great planet.
Really good. Size.

Speaker 1 Yeah, best planet in the known universe. Very underrated, has both water and land.
A lot of people are like, wow, a water world. But like, I think, I think most water planets that we find, if we

Speaker 1 and are looking, I bet they won't have land.

Speaker 1 is actually probably pretty important for things to have gone the way that they did. Yeah.
Because their life in the water way longer and none of that stuff figured out how to do technology.

Speaker 1 Unless it did and then was like, forget this, this is a bad idea. Well, there are little octopus towns.
So there's

Speaker 1 kind of cephalopods, I think, maybe figured it out and decided

Speaker 1 it wasn't worth it. I wonder about that.

Speaker 1 I do too. I sometimes have thought about what would a civilization that happened underwater actually

Speaker 1 look like.

Speaker 1 And I like run into physical barriers. It's just really hard to do a lot of stuff.
Yeah, it's hard to build monumental structures.

Speaker 1 You can't do fire, so it's hard to control energy.

Speaker 1 You have to have pots of gases instead of pots of liquids, and that's just much harder. Yeah, or you take advantage of the tides and use that to create energy.
Maybe you get it. No, I hear you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I hear you. It wouldn't be.

Speaker 1 But if it's a pure water world, then like, what are the, what are the tides even? I don't know. I guess they could.
But you're talking about what's good about Earth.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm interested in what's bad about Earth.

Speaker 1 So, like, there's all this good stuff.

Speaker 1 What's the stuff that's bad? Like, plate tectonics is really important, probably, for life. Yep.
But, but also, like, we have plate tectonics, but like, we have a pretty mild volcanic situation.

Speaker 1 Right. Compared to what, again, this is

Speaker 1 good about Earth.

Speaker 1 So, that's not, like, I was thinking maybe volcanoes were a bad thing, but like, actually, you kind of like, if you're going to have plate tectonics, you're going to have volcanoes, but our volcanoes are, frankly, pretty insignificant on the global scale of things.

Speaker 1 Right. I'm going to say dip and dots.

Speaker 1 If we're going to go to human-created things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why not just have ice cream? I probably would have moved beyond dip and dots. Yeah.
I like Dippin Dots. They feel so weird.
Oh, what a bad take. It's like all the people who wrote into me mad.

Speaker 1 Yeah, bad take, man. Bad take.
Pro-Dippin' Dots is a bad take. I'm sorry.
Everything that I'm ending up with is like the worst thing about Earth is that we could lose it. Oh.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, let me put it in a different phrase. Okay.
We will lose it. Ah, f ⁇ you.
Jesus. You made me make Ben bleep something.
Sorry, Ben.

Speaker 1 All right. It's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
I'll go first since Hank has no news from Mars. Hank.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The news from AFC Wimbledon just keeps getting better. It's not just that we keep winning football games, it's that we're securing our future.

Speaker 1 We just signed Isaac Ogandhera, who's played for us since he was a kid, to a new contract. And we signed AFC Wimbledon manager Johnny Jackson to a contract extension.

Speaker 1 And Ashley Bays, Bezo, our goalkeeping coach, who's one of the main reasons why we've developed so many great goalkeepers over the years, He signed a contract extension.

Speaker 1 And when I said, Thank you so much for signing a contract extension, he smiled at me and said, You're welcome. So there you go.

Speaker 1 I'm very excited about the future of this football club. I feel like we're really securing it.

Speaker 1 One contract extension I would love to see is Craig Cope, the head of football, the guy who's organizing all of this behind the scenes, who's responsible for our incredible recruitment and everything.

Speaker 1 I'd like to see him sign to a lifetime contract. But in the meantime, AFC Wimbledon, securing the future of our football club.
That kicks butt, John. It's so glad.

Speaker 1 Is this the transfer window that people talk about? No, the transfer window opens up on January 1st. So I'm trying to accrue some capital between now and then.

Speaker 1 Oh, like you're like, you're trying to get money? Yes.

Speaker 1 Spend? You?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wild.

Speaker 1 How do you accrue capital? Well, Hank, there's a number of ways to do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, who knows? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sign a book deal. Signing Signing a book deal is the obvious one, yeah.
But let's move on. Okay.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 in news from Mars, as I don't know. Yeah, you don't have to have news from Mars.
That's okay. It's a rock, man.
I mean, it had the same week this week as it had last week.

Speaker 1 I think that there were some scientists that were doing some simulations on what it'd be like to dig under Mars to build down there.

Speaker 1 That's a great question.

Speaker 1 What are we talking about? Are we talking about drills? Like, do we, would drills on Earth work to get down under the surface of Mars?

Speaker 1 It seems like Mars has a lot of sedimentary rock, which is pretty easy to dig through. Okay.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 but also indicates just sort of an astounding amount of water happened for quite a long time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it was a water world. Oh, God, it was.
And probably also had land, which makes me think maybe my take about how most planets would be just water is probably wrong.

Speaker 1 So yeah, they could definitely dig down there, but I think that they want to kind of see, because, you know, you want to have a mix of the rock being not too hard, but not so soft that it's going to cave in on you.

Speaker 1 Right, especially when there's all these volcanoes and Marsquakes and whatnot. Mars is actually much less quaky than Earth, so that is.
Oh, really? Oh, good. All right.
Well, see, there's one thing.

Speaker 1 We're a little too quaky. But they don't have plate tectonics, which ruins things.
We need plate tectonics. That's a huge part of the reason for our success.

Speaker 1 They also don't have the spinning core, which protects you from the electromagnetic rays of the sun.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm very grateful for that because I stress out enough about radiation without having more of it.

Speaker 1 Radiation is so good.

Speaker 1 I got to classify visible light as radiation, and then it all gets much more chill. I appreciate that reframing.
Thank you. And thank you to everybody for listening to our podcast.

Speaker 1 You can email us at hankandjohn at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Ben Swordout.
It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Menish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

Speaker 1 It's produced by Rosiana Hall's Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley.
Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti.

Speaker 1 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.