DHJ434: Curt’s Fleas

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,

do you know how an elf blows out a candle? I don't. Just going.

Why is that funny? I didn't have a joke ready. Oh, it was absurdist humor, like Dadaist.
I don't know. I don't think it was.
Yeah. I don't think, if anything, it was.

Oh, Marcel Duchamp would have been doubled over with laughter. Well, yeah, it was inverting the frame of the joke by elves actually, of course, blowing out a candle in the only way that one could.

Yes.

This reminds me of my all-time favorite joke. It's a knock-knock joke.
You start it.

Zagood knock-knock. Who's there?

That's it. I put that joke in Looking for Alaska.
I've always thought it was such a funny joke. And I first heard it in high school.
And so I thought it would be appropriate for Looking for Alaska.

And I cannot tell you over the last 20 years how many emails I have received from people who are like, I do not get the joke. Please explain the joke to me.

And I'm like, well, I guess it doesn't work that well over text. Maybe I should have considered that.

There are a number of things I regret about my previous novels, but that knock-knock joke is definitely on the list. No one

had gotten in touch with me before publishing a book about how mad I'm going to be about certain parts of the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That you're really going to want to take it back and you can't because it's out and lots of people have read it.

And if you take it back, it almost makes it weird because then, like, once you take back one thing, people are like, why don't you take back other things?

And you're like, well, because if I took back everything I regretted about the book, I would have to unpublish the book. There wouldn't be any book left.
Man, would I rewrite that first page? Really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, people love it. People love it.
Well, sometimes people like stuff that you don't like, and that's okay.

Like, you know, ultimately, the job of the book is to resonate with an audience more than it is to resonate with the author of the future.

So, like, if parts of those books don't resonate with me anymore, as long as they're resonating with an audience, that's all that matters.

I was just listening to an author talk about being an author, and they were talking about the

feeling of,

you know, knowing the ways that people are going to critique your book, even before you publish it. Yeah.
You're like, I know what people are going to say. Right.

And like, and there's like, there's like either a limitation, like, there's a reason why I can't solve that problem, or I don't want to solve the problem because I'm doing something else, but you know, it you like are putting it out, knowing exactly the criticism you're going to receive.

Teenagers don't talk like that. Oh, yeah, really? I didn't know.
Thanks for the info. Thanks for the heads up.

Do teenagers talk like in Romeo and Juliet, where their first 14 lines or whatever are just a sonnet back and forth to each other? Do they talk like that? How do they talk?

Is Romeo Romeo and Juliet bad?

Then there's the metacriticism, which is fair, which is, did John Green just compare himself to Shakespeare? Nah, nah. Look, Shakespeare was just a man, you know,

or possibly several people. Oh, he was just a man, but one, one heck of a, one heck of a writer.
I don't know. I've never, I've never really resonated with it personally.
Are you serious?

For clarity, I definitely want everyone to interpret that as a criticism of me, not

okay. There's a lack of generosity in the reader rather than a lack of generosity in the writer.
I like it. Well, it's just, it seems to take a lot of work.

Well, it's a lot of work because it was, yeah, it was a different, it was definitely a different time.

So if that's your concern, you should read Marlowe because Marlowe sounds even more dated. What's Marlowe?

Never change, Golden Boy.

It's not what I went to school for, okay? Clearly.

Is Marlowe a Shakespeare play? I have not heard of that one. No, it's a writer.

It's a writer who is a contemporary of Shakespeare. Oh, there was another person doing it back then? And who got murdered in a pub, if I remember correctly? Did he get a death note?

No, I don't think so. I'm not sure how that works.
Okay. He probably knew it was likely.
I mean, it's never that far away from a possibility, is it, Hank?

Let's move on to some questions from our listeners. Let's do it.
Let's start with this question from Grace, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm wondering why you guys don't live in the same state.

I understand John loves Indianapolis and Hank lives near the DFTBA warehouse, but wouldn't living close together outweigh these pros long term? Is it something you've never considered?

Thinking about shared space, Grace. Well, John, I think it's very important for us to not murder each other.
See, this is Hank's take all the time.

He'll be like, the reason we can't live in the same place is that we would murder each other. And what he means is that he would murder me.

I like Hank a lot. I could hang out with Hank like twice a week and be very happy.
Hank would not have me. No, I mean, we hang out twice a week already.
And, you know, not in physical space. Yeah.

This is one and then there's probably another, you know? Yeah, we have a conversation twice a week. That's not quite the same thing as a hang session, but I hear you.
I agree. I agree.

I've thought about it. I thought about especially like living in Indianapolis for like a while every year.
Yeah. And then we could.

Oh, man, we would crush the amount of content that we could make together.

It would be good for the content. Great for the content.
I mean,

think about like how good retin link have it you know living in the same town as they do you know another thing that i like about this i was just thinking like indianapolis needs the love it does i'm about to hit you with an idea here it is are you about to run for governor of indiana despite never having lived here no i'm going to move to indiana so i can become the vice president oh of the united states yes because that's where they're all from no that was not my idea especially if you don't want to become president because we had an astonishing run run of six consecutive vice presidents from Indiana who did not become president.

That's great. Yeah.
That's very Indiana. Well, I'm being a little presumptuous about Mike Pence, but I do think that we can rather put him in the past category.

That would be a weird direction for the Republican Party to go. Technically, I think Dan Quayle is still alive, so he could also

run for president. Yeah, I mean, look, we've only ever elected boomers in my life except for Obama.
So that's true.

John,

the idea is this. We have people come in and then we like create, we create like an experience.
Uh-huh.

And then part of the experience is that like you give a, you give like a little lecture downtown in Indianapolis. Yeah.
Like an artist and writer's residency where you do a public-facing thing once.

Yeah, you do. But then there's also like a bunch of like really nice,

you know, other things that happen to you. You do realize that this is what Sarah and I are starting, right? Yeah, but okay.
I just wanted to make sure you knew that we were doing that.

I didn't know that there would be a public facing part of it.

But

then also I think that like

it can be at a, you know,

a thinkers and intellectuals and a YouTuber's and all

that. Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, I'm all for that, Hank. That's a good idea.
Mostly because it would mean that you would move to Indianapolis, which would make me very happy.

Like, I don't really want to move to Montana because of the sky-high housing prices combined with the complete lack of inability to get anywhere other than Montana.

It's lovely there. That can be a huge perk sometimes.
Do you have non-stops to New York? We have lots of non-stops to New York. Do you have non-stops to LA? We do.
Do you have non-stops to Europe?

We have one non-stop to Europe, yeah. Where does it go to? Dublin.
I'm in! I know. It's pretty good.
It's not bad. It's pretty good.
That air lingus, they've got a good flight. Air lingus.

What does lingus mean? Time? I think it means air,

air, air travel. Oh.
Air language. It means fleet.
Oh, so it's their air fleet. That makes sense.
So, anyway, point being, I would love for you to move to Indianapolis.

You're very welcome here anytime you want to. Full disclosure, I might leave for part of the year at some point.

We've kind of got all of our systems set up in the places where we are, you know. That's true.
And deep roots.

I mean, the real answer, Grace, is that once you have deep roots and like once you have your people, it's very hard to move.

It's very hard to move and dislocate your kids from their school and leave behind your dentist. I mean, I love my dentist.
I don't love my dentist. In fact, I don't have a regular dentist.

I was like, man, it's going to be a bummer when your dentist listens to this podcast. What a way to find out.
I keep going back to the same dentist that I ultimately do dislike. No.

Okay, so you just don't

shop around for dentists. You really shouldn't use Indianapolis.
I've got a great dentist for you. I go to whoever's available on the day I'm available.
I know what school Oren would go to.

You'd have a great life here. And

your cost of living would cut in half, and you could fly to New York or LA anytime you want, and anywhere else for that matter. Yeah, but I do not trust that they will be serving me good coffee.

Well, there is that. The coffee situation is not as good in Indianapolis as it is in Missoula, but on the upside, you do own a coffee company.

Yeah, I can make it good at home, but I do love a nice coffee shop. Yeah, I get it.
We have a nice coffee shop now.

We got one at 54th in Illinois. It's quite, quite nice.
Just there this morning, actually. Oh, good for you.
All right. So we're going to move to the same state, Grace, all because of you.
Thank you.

Hank's moving to Indianapolis. This is an announcement.

This next question comes from Cherise, who asks, Dear Hank and John, every night I put on chapstick before I go to sleep, and when I wake up, my lips are dry and chapped.

Where does the chapstick go? Autumn leaves and morning dew, Cherise. Can I guess, Hank? Yeah, you can.
I think it goes into your lips. I

don't. I think it goes into your mouth.
What? What do you mean it goes into your mouth? You think it crawls up and floats its way into your mouth? No. Could you think of another way it might happen?

No.

Your tongue. Your tongue.
Oh, you don't. You kick your lips throughout the evening? No way.
No, that's wrong. When you're sleeping, you pub them in

and like things happen. That's wrong.
I think that's what happens. Nope.

What I will say, Cherise, is in looking at this, there are actually some ingredients in lip balms that can dry out your lips. Oh.

So you want to. That's how they get you.

It's addictive They always need to put on more It's a bit of a fool's game the chapstick can be poisoned chalice So what you want to do is start out with the real basics So move from whatever's in whatever you're buying that's fancy and and nice and smells good to something very simple that's just like you could just use Vaseline

no

I'm a no on that one aqua for then. Really?

Yeah.

Oh, but I like my Bert's Bees. Of course you do.
But you know who owns Bert's Bees?

Like Unilever or something? The enemy, John.

Big, big lip chap? Yeah.

Big lip chap owns all of the big ones. Who owns Bert's Bees? I'll tell you who doesn't own it anymore is Bert.
That guy's living the dream. Oh, oh, God, Bert's Bees is owned by Clorox.
Is it really?

Yeah.

I thought, I would have thought Clorox was owned by something else, but no, Clorox is its own company with 8,000 employees worldwide, based in Oakland, California. Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah.

They've got 420 people there at Burt's, so that's a sizable portion of Clorox. Wow, they make a lot of stuff that people use every day, like the Brita water filtration system.
The Clorox company does?

Yeah. And Formula 409.
That like cleaner? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
They make cat litter.

Sometimes sometimes people are like i can't believe that you're in the sock business and the household cleaning products business and the soap business and the coffee and tea business and i'm like have you googled corox because yeah corox makes casey masterpiece the barbecue sauce and they also make liquid plumber

yeah i don't i actually don't want that to be the same company

Like what if there's a mix-up at the factory? Are you guys more in the mood for sort of a Hidden Valley Ranch dressing or more of a pine saw?

Because we got both here at the Clorox Company.

Do you want some glad trash bags or some Kingsford charcoal?

It's good. It's good.
They got everything, man. It's what they call consumables is what they make.
Well, Wikipedia only has their net sales up to 2020.

So somebody's not on it at the Clorox Company updating their own Wikipedia page. Their revenue in 2025 was $7 billion.

And if we could get Goodstore there, I think we could call it a success. We could call it a day, Hank.
I don't know why we can't. I just don't, am I not ruthless enough?

I don't know what the issue is, but Goodstore is very successful in the sense that it's given over $11 million to charity, but it's not nearly as successful as Hank and I think it should be.

It's a little bit like Vlogbrothers in 2007, where we were baffled that we only had 86 subscribers after 85 videos.

And we were on to something with Vlogbrothers, and maybe we're on to something with with Goodstore, and it's just going to take some time. But yeah, how big was Clorox when it was eight years old?

You know, that was in like 1910, so I don't know. But all your holiday needs can be met at Goodstore, where we do not sell bleach.

No, and we don't sell lip balm yet, but maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and make a very simple lip balm that is a single ingredient.

That all it does is make sure it prevents evaporation from the lips. Can you make it smell better than Vaseline? Vaseline does not have a smell.

I mean, you have never in your life said something more wrong. Aquaphore does not have a smell.
Okay, maybe. That's what I use.
I use Aquaphor.

And there are other very low-ingredi lip balms that you can try, Cherise, is all I'm saying.

But I do think that as time goes on, like the lip balm stuff does not evaporate. And I don't think that it, maybe it does.

I didn't look into this, but I don't think that it gets absorbed into the body. I think it does.
I think it absolutely gets absorbed into the skin because the skin dries out over time.

Yeah, but it's not water. it's the lip balm stuff is very specifically.
I can't wait for a lip balm scientist to write in and say that you're wrong. I can't wait to issue this correction.

And honestly, if you do know what you're talking about, maybe we can make a product together. I got

thanks getting into a new business, everybody. Look, look, if Clorox can do Bert's Bees,

what's it going to be called? So it's not Bert's Bees, but it is a man's name and an animal. Everybody, write in your suggestions.
I think it's Kurt's D's. Kurt's D's nuts? Yeah.

Doesn't that sound like a wholesome, low-ingredient, eco-friendly new poem?

Kurt's D's nuts.

Hey, I really like this.

I really like Kurt's Flip home. Where'd you get Kurt's fleas? Where'd you get it from? Oh, I got it from Kurt's Fleas.

You know, it's like Burt's Bees, but it's actually lower ingredients and better for the environment. It's called Kurt's Fleas.
It's called Kurt's Fleas.

Oh, man. Oh, we could bring back Kurt the Punk Rock Nerd Fighter to be the spokesperson.
We could. He's probably not never had fleas.

We could bring him back. That's a good thing.
I mean, that's a deep cut, Hank. That's a 2007 cut.
Yeah. All right.

Let's go on to this question from Caroline, who asks, Dear Hank and John, or dear John and Hank, rather, I just accepted a new position and will be working from home for the first time.

I have a good desk set up in our guest room, but it still doesn't feel like a workspace. You two seem like work from home guys.

Are there any home office recommendations that could help me get in the work mindset? Home suite, Caroline. You got to get the thing that feels most worky, yeah, and put it in a frame.

Oh, like a picture of your dog or whatever? No, oh, like a picture of your printer,

exactly, yes.

Print out a picture of your printer on your printer, so you can look at your printer all the time while you're at work and be like, Well, this definitely ain't home,

yeah. Any accolades, you know, your degree,

uh, a picture of your degree antiperspirant. Sure.
That's a good one. Your degree next to your degree.
Yeah. Yeah.
Make it meta. I

mostly work from bed. And so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this, Caroline.
I can transform any space into a workspace just by being anxious. I am the opposite.

I work mostly in the office where I am sitting right now. And it is like, it feels like a workspace to me, even though it does not, of course, look like a traditional workspace.

And I think that that is simply because it is dedicated for work, which is a luxury. Like, it's not easy to have that.

And I have my fidgets. Is that a weird thing to say? That helps.
Yeah. And by fidgets, I mean these nail clippers,

my Alan Wrench set. 99% audio podcast, Hank.
Nobody can see you. They know what nail clippers look like, John.
They're not unusual nail clippers. Yeah, I don't.
I have aphantasia.

I can't picture anything in my mind. John, when you see a tree,

do you think the word tree or do you have a feeling? I have a feeling of the tree. I have a feeling of the tree.
Okay. I'm just trying to figure out how inner monologues work because I don't have one.

I have an experience of the tree. You don't have an inner monologue and I don't have an inner picture producer.

Between the two of us, we are pretty, pretty, pretty

cold to the world, pretty far away from being able to engage with the universe as we find it. Yeah.

Another thing that you might want to do to make your office feel more like an office is just like stuff a bunch of pantyhose full of cotton and then form it into the shape of a co-worker. That's just

there.

You know, and they're always there. And eventually, like, you could install

a Raspberry Pi connected to a fart sprayer. Right.
So that every

like three weeks, it'll fart and you'll be like, oh my God. That's a good idea.
That really it really feels authentically like having a coworker. That's going to feel just like having a coworker.

I think the other thing you can do is invite one of your friends over to work next to you from nine to five. You know,

just do that. That way you don't have to do code a raspberry pie.

Still get the pleasure of the fart smells, but without having to do any coding.

Without all of the code. Yeah.

Yeah.

But you could have like a snack drawer. Yeah.

that was kind of a nice way i actually have a snack drawer do you really i do maybe that would get me out of bed because i definitely don't eat snacks in bed that's one of my only rules this do you see what i got for you john no i don't i don't look at you when we make the podcast it's this it's i look at the question document turkey sticks oh gross

oh that's in my snack drawer just in case you know just in case turkey sticks yeah sure that's what our turkey stick brand is going to be called a good store actually just in case just in case can't wait till we make turkey sticks to go along with our soap.

That would be amazing. I'm going to throw it out there that I don't love being in the meat business.
Yeah, I'd rather not be in the meat business, honestly. Yeah.

Hard to do well. Yeah.

I think we should. I like the hard pivot to lip balm, though.
I think that's a good hard pivot. What about

would it be, would it feel more like a workplace if you did like a 15-minute stand-up? You know what a stand-up is, John? You're not very corporate. No, what's a stand-up?

This is where you have a quick meeting where everybody's standing. You know, like you go into like a person's office and there's like six people and they stand there and they.
Are you allowed to sit?

Yeah, you can sit. Okay.
Well, that's nice. As long as you're allowed to sit.

I remember when I worked at Booklist, I would drop by someone's office and stand and they would sit and we would chat for a minute. Is that a stand-up?

Yeah, usually it's a bunch of people get called together, but you're allowed to. Oh, so it's a scheduled meeting.
It's just a shorter meeting. It's a short meeting.

And the idea is that nobody sits to keep it brief.

You can't keep it brief enough.

It should be shorter than it is. That's the only thing I know about stand-up meetings, just like sit-down meetings.
I've been at some good stand-ups.

But you're going to have to do this by yourself. So what you're going to want to do is

do it like happy slip,

where you play all the different parts of the different characters in the office. Yeah.
Yeah. Like Natalie Tran used to.

Yeah, this is, so we're doing more YouTube deep cuts here for people who've been around forever.

But yeah,

and go around in a circle circle, and you're going to want to create a bunch of office personas. And you can base them on like your favorite sitcom or something.

And you're going to go around in a circle and you're going to talk about all the things that everybody's going to do that day. And then you're going to record that.
You're going to record that.

You're going to edit it together.

And you're going to upload it to YouTube. And then you're going to quit your job and become a YouTuber.
Absolutely. And then you're going to find that you, wait, wait a second, still work at home.

Still work at home.

Still need to, still need to gaze longingly into that picture of your printer.

Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by that picture of your printer that you keep next to your desk to remind you, this is work.

This podcast is also brought to you, of course, by Kurtz Flea's, Kurtz Flea's lip balm, all-natural, low-ingredient.

And today's podcast is brought to you by Indianapolis, Indianapolis soon to be the hometown of Hank Green.

And this podcast is brought to you by everything I'd like to change in my two novels. Everything I'd like to change in my two novels.

Not an insignificant number of things. Yeah, but you just got to let it go, man.
I just got to let it go. I mean, the truth is those books will be out of print eventually anyway.

Look, yeah, the sun's going to explode, John.

Yeah, no offense, but your books are going to go out of print before then.

I hope so. Dear Hank and John, what I've always loved about laptop computers is that you can use them immediately after plugging them in when their batteries die.
Why don't phones do this?

Electricity and elephants, Aiden, Aiden, I love this question. This is super weird, and I had never thought about it.
This is my favorite kind of question, John.

A thing that is a normal part of my life. Yeah.
That is, there's obviously a reason, but I've never even noticed it's a thing.

So, if your laptop runs out of battery, you plug it in and you just like turn it back on and it works again. Your phone runs out of batteries.

You plug it in, and you go on it like some amount of time.

Five, sometimes like 10 minutes. I'm going to like weird.
And I'm like, Can I please?

I need to finish watching that reel.

Give me that juice.

How am I going to survive for 10 minutes without my binky? And that's what they should do, Hank. I'm just going to stop you right there.
You should be forced to call your phone your binky.

You should be, that should be like a criminal offense if you don't call your phone your binky and see if that, see if that affects your phone use at all. It's got to be something.

Something's going to make this embarrassing. No, I need my little passy.
I'm sorry. I can't, I can't go on for 30 seconds longer without my passy

yeah all right go back go back to what you were saying so it it seems and i would love again if there's experts who know more about this but it seems that it is totally possible for a phone to do this but it requires extra circuitry so it the way that a laptop works is that it can charge the battery and run the computer at the same time through that power port there's enough power coming in and the electrical system is set up in such a way that it can route that power intelligently so it doesn't overcharge the battery and it doesn't send too much power to the other thing.

Or if the battery is done charging, it can

stop sending power to the battery and it can send it just one place. It could do all this stuff.
And that just requires circuitry. It requires systems.

And phones are so packed full of stuff that that circuitry isn't worth the space that it takes up in the phone for it to be able to run the whole phone from the power port.

And so all of the power, the systems is only dedicated to getting power into the battery. And then the phone only can use electricity from the battery, not from the power port.
Wow.

I mean, that's not what I would have guessed. So that is really interesting.
Did you have a guess?

Just because the phone's a little crankier. Just

a little more temperamental. A little piece of crap.
Yeah. Yeah.
But that's a better answer than the one I was going to proffer. So very impressive.

I was like going to a very short, not quite as good technology connections video. Indeed.

All right, we got another question from Rachel, who writes, Dear John and Hank, when people write in for advice, you sometimes talk about how none of us are going to be fine in the long run because eventually the sun will die and make life on Earth impossible.

Sometimes we do do that. Rachel, it is kind of my

comfort answer. You know, like we're going to be okay in the long, long run, just in the sense that we won't be here.
My question is, what would remain to be discovered by others?

If space-traveling alien archaeologists landed on Earth long after the sun has died, would there still be signs of former human life that would be discoverable?

My name is Most of the Letters in Archaeology, Rachel Y.G. Rachel, I have terrible news.

We

are very likely going to be engulfed by the sun

before it dies. Yeah, so we'll become part of the sun.

We'll get baked into little bits. So I made this podcast.
called The Crash Course the Universe with the great astrophysicist Katie Mack.

And in the last episode, she talks about the long-term long-term future of the universe, which also is in trouble, just for the record, Rachel. It seems anyway.

And she talks about how there's a very old star that she saw once that had a weird chemical signature in one part of the star.

And how that weird chemical signature, there was this paper that argued that weird chemical signature was probably a planet that the star had swallowed when it was a red giant.

And how, like, that's what's going to be left of us, is a weird chemical signature in a dying star. Yeah.

Ew. Thanks for coming to the party.

I mean, is that a bummer to you, Hank, or is it kind of to me, it's not necessarily a bummer because we aren't working for forever anyway. Like,

I guess, like, my ambition doesn't extend to forever. My ambition really extends to now.
Like, I'm very worried about now. I'm so worried about now, I don't have time to be worried about forever.

I think that if I look at myself, I think that now is a kind of forever. Like I don't actually distinguish those things in my monkey brain.
Like I get it. I get that those things are different.

And then when I am confronted with the reality that they are different, that is the uncomfortable thing.

So this is a thing that I have with philosophy in general, where I just, I think that we mostly don't operate with truth in mind.

you know, with like, with the, like, the, the truth of the structure of reality in mind. We operate with like our biology in control where it's like you know i love these people and these things

because i do not because of any

structures or systems or like deep understanding but i have found a lot of joy and inspiration and connection and excitement around

the weird thing that is life and the weird thing that is humanity. Yeah.

And so because I have that affinity and that amazement about that very long history of chemistry that I am part of,

I am kind of loath to think of it being finite. I hear that.
And I can definitely empathize with it. But I guess the reason I'm not as concerned about it being finite, I mean, there's two things.

One is that it's very strange. I mean, we are the only creature probably on Earth and indeed in the known universe that is finite and can conceive of infinity in a meaningful way.
Yeah.

And can even kind of describe infinities and describe the strangest thing of all, which is that there are different sizes of infinities and so on. Yeah, and just being aware.

Just being able to think of the infinite from within a finite space is a very strange and to me lovely thing. And I guess I don't need it to last forever as long as we can conceive of forever.

I certainly don't need it to last forever. Well, good, because it ain't gonna.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm comfortable with that. But there's just something,

I think the universe is better with life in it than without.

Yeah, there is something sad about thinking about the universe itself dying, much more sad than thinking about any of us dying or thinking about even humans dying. Right.
Yeah.

It's not just that the universe is better with life on it, right? Like Earth is so much better with life on it. Earth is so blisteringly, stunningly, constantly alive.
It's

the overwhelming process that Earth is undergoing all the time. And it is strange to think about that being a chemical signature inside of a dying star.
Yeah.

Yeah.

We have like a word for when individual things die and we have a word for when a species dies. Yeah.
But like the idea of like the whole system

dying. Yeah.

Like that's, that's the big one. And like it may have happened on Mars.
You know, like we may, like our solar system have may have already seen that thing.

It seems likely that it happened on Mars, albeit in a less dramatic way, maybe. Yeah, I'm not ready to give likelinesses to it.
Maybe I am. I don't know.
It's exciting. It's exciting times.

It's pretty exciting. This is an interesting thing to me.

I've gotten some feedback from folks that are just like saying, hey, you know, you're talking about life on Mars and that's great and everything, but that's not really what we're interested in.

We're interested in aliens. You know, we're interested in

life that like has trombones, you know? So-called complex life. Yeah, well, it's a different thing.
Cultural life, technological life, you know, life that does the things that we do.

And what I didn't realize that I would have to kind of make the case for why a second system of chemistry would be a very big deal.

Well, here's the way you made the case to me early on in the podcast that really resonated with me. You were like, look, either it evolved in exactly the same way.

with DNA and RNA, which is very interesting and very strange that it would evolve separately twice with the same chemical structures, or it evolved in some other way,

which is very, very strange and exciting. Yeah.

Yeah. Or there's a third thing where it could have, if it's Mars, it could have come from Mars to Earth and we are the same system or from Earth to Mars and we are the same system.

Yeah, which is also really beautiful and exciting. It means we're already a multi-planetary system.
Yeah.

And also like that, that it isn't probably isn't difficult, though this would just be kind of an N of one, but it probably isn't difficult for life to travel between planets. Yeah.

Strange.

Regardless, all three of those possibilities are incredibly exciting. Yeah.
And

basically, two of them would mean that life is plentiful in the universe.

Which is exciting in its own way, and also a little terrifying, but encouraging ultimately because it means that we are not alone. Yeah.

Well,

here's the thing. I mean, there's so many different worries here, but

there are people who think that it would be very worrying for life to be common because it would mean that what we are is very uncommon, which means that what we are is probably very fragile. Yeah.

Well, I mean,

I already knew that.

You know what I mean? Well, I actually don't. Like,

I'm not there. I think that like we, we may be way more resilient than we think.
And, and there's, there's arrows pointing in that direction, but there's arrows pointing in the other direction too.

I mean, we've had about 80 80 years maybe where we could cause the extinction of humanity ourselves. Yeah.
That's not that long of a run. That's not that big of a sample size to be like, we're good.

We did it.

We made it. We made it one human lifetime.

So

I continue to be pretty worried about our fragility. I think we are a very resilient species.
We've proven that over 300,000 years, but this is a very precarious situation.

There's no getting around it.

And I think to pretend otherwise is to lose a little bit of what's beautiful about it.

And also, if we think that it's easy, then it is more likely that we'll suffer the consequences of that, you know? I mean, think about it.

There were hundreds of millions of years of dinosaurs where there is no evidence that they meaningfully used technology. Yeah.

Hundreds of millions of years. We've been around for 300,000 years.
And for most of that time, we use stone tools. Yeah.

Look, I actually am getting really interested interested in the extent to which we overweight

the stone tools because they're the ones that stick around. Right, as opposed to wooden tools and stuff.

There's wood,

there's a huge amount in cordage and textile and fiber and

all that stuff that doesn't last. Sure.
No, a lot of innovation goes there as well. We were very sophisticated, but we did not have nuclear weapons.

Well, no, but I think that we were kind of advancing the whole time. And I think the biggest way we were advancing was communication.

So language didn't start like it is now.

It was an evolution. It had to evolve on its own as well.

And possibly along with physiological, well, definitely along with physiological changes in our bodies and probably physiological changes in our brains.

So that took time, though that work was all done by the time anatomically modern humans showed up, we think. Yeah.
Yeah. That was done 300,000 years ago.

And I agree that we've been advancing the whole time. And I used to believe that the rate of change is changing argument was ludicrous and involved a lot of recency bias.

I've changed that perspective over the last 10 years. I think the rate of change is changing.
Maybe you're just getting old. Maybe I'm just getting old.

You're just thinking about that rotary telephone you had when you were a kid. I am thinking about that rotary telephone I had when I was a kid, for sure.
For sure.

Well, Hank, we've spent so much time talking about the end of the world. Yes.
And thank you, Rachel, for allowing us to indulge our eschatological anxieties.

We've spent so much time talking about the end of the world that it is now time to transition to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

First, can we read this from Wren, who says, Dear Hank, John, I understand Hank has made the hard pivot to balls, but consider

longest chains, longest chain of paperclips, longest chain of twist ties, longest chain of zip ties. Each person who visits gets to add to the chain, or maybe it becomes like a curtain of sorts.
Yeah.

Yes, they love this because it's going to have to go up and down and you can walk through it.

Though, I don't know. We got to make sure that people don't vandalize our chains.
Balls are hard to vandalize, whereas chains could maybe be easier. Each edition can be different colors, sizes.

People could add more than one if they like. And I'm going to add to that, you got to make a donation to Partners in Health to add to the chain.
I love it. It's a great idea.
It's a really good idea.

It's a million-dollar idea that also would be a beautiful expression of human compassion and collaboration. Yeah.
I don't know.

Someone should do it. It's not going to be me.
I'm not having people over to my house. It's not going to be at my house.
No.

No, but there's got to be some warehouse somewhere where people can start out and chase. Well, you know what Indianapolis has, Hank? A bunch of those rooms.
A bunch of them. Abandoned rooms.

Indianapolis is going to be the world's largest ball of balls.

The world's largest chain of chains and the world's largest ball of balls. Visit Indianapolis.

Take that hard pivot to balls.

All right, John. What's the news from AFC Wimbledon? Oh, it's terrible, Hank.
We knew that this couldn't last.

We knew that AFC Wimbledon's amazing start to the season, being in fourth place or whatever, was totally unsustainable. But also, we dreamt that it wasn't unsustainable.

We dreamt that it could somehow be sustained, as one always does. You know, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
Yeah, togetherness. Togetherness.

We believed that through togetherness, this was possible, that we would continue on the rocket ship that only went up. But it turns out the rocket ship also comes down.

And AFC Wimbledon just lost to the worst team in League One

five to nothing. What?

What happened? If anything, that scoreline flattered us.

We played like the worst team in League One. You guys lost your togetherness.
We lost our togetherness in a big way. Now, some would say it's because we had a couple of injuries.

Miles Hippolyte's been out of the squad.

Of course, up front, Matty Stevens is injured. He scores most of our goals, but moo boy, we looked bad.
We looked awful.

We also lost to 21st place Burt Nalbion, which is not a great sign either.

But it's still early in the season.

The Wombles are still in eighth place, and hope is the thing with feathers. So we continue to believe that things can turn around.
Yeah, you're only three points out of first place, John. That's true.

After all this, we're only three points out of first place. We are, however, out of the FA Cup because we lost to a team in the fifth division.
So there's that as well.

I will say, everybody lost their last game. Everybody in the top of the table.
It's true.

It's a very strange season in League One where, like, the top of the table and the bottom of the table are not separated by as many points as we're used to,

which is good in the sense that Wimbledon has a chance, but it's bad in the sense that Wimbledon isn't actually that far away from relegation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You could be in seventh place and still be quite close to 20th place. Exactly.
Exactly. So nervy times, but we persevere.
How's Mars? Mars also had a little bit of a hiccup.

So we talked recently about the Escapade mission, and it was going to launch. It was going to launch.
Yep. This is going to date the podcast.
You'll see how long.

I don't know exactly how long it takes between when we record and when they go live anymore.

But

if you were able to catch some northern lights recently, that was because the sun went kind of nutty and gave us a big burp.

And that big burp was such a big burp that they were not able to launch when they wanted to. Wow.
Yeah.

The sun got in our way. The sun was shooting out too much energy for it to be a safe time to put that boy up into the air.

And that's great for us here in Montana. We've had some great auroras.
Just last night, honestly, I was looking at auroras,

but that launch has been delayed because of that solar activity.

And interestingly, part of the Eskimade mission is to see how solar wind and other space weather might have affected mars so uh it is the the sun's like no i don't want you to know my secrets trying to keep us here on earth but the this is a concern because every every chance you miss increases the chance that you'll actually miss this whole launch window right and if you miss the launch window it's like a year and a half right yeah yeah yeah yeah so you have to wait until mars and earth get close together again right which only happens every once in a while okay so how worried should we be?

How likely is it that it'll still happen? I don't know. I don't know.
I think that we're okay right now. Okay.
Like, I think as long as there's like no technical problems or no,

you know, if the sun needs to chill out, but usually it does. I've been saying that about the sun.
Like, first off, stop trying to eat Earth.

I actually would

get into this, but

there is some thinking. There's quite a bit of evidence pointing this way that the sun is exceptionally chill.
Oh, yeah. No, I have heard that before.

As far as stars go, the sun is less violent than many stars. Which is another thing that's like, maybe our solar system is just like real good for life.

Well, I mean, I would argue that it's definitely real good for life, but maybe it's like borderline, uniquely good.

I would, I only say borderline because one of the things I learned from Katie is that 275 million stars are going to die today.

that's how big the universe is yes that's how big the universe is yeah it's a big old it's a big old wacky universe it's a big old wacky universe hank thank you for podding with me thanks to everybody for listening we always appreciate your questions you can email them to us at hankandjohn at gmail.com this podcast is edited by ben swordout it's mixed by joseph tunametish our communications coordinator is brooke shotwell it's produced by rosiana halsrojas and hannah west our executive producer is seth radley our editorial editorial assistant is Daboki Chakravarti.

The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.