Dear Hank & John - 193: It's Like a Pool of Liver!
Episode Date: June 10, 2019Why do I cry more easily as I get older? What is SPF? What are healthy methods to combat loneliness? What should I do if I busted a hole in the wall while bonding with my sibling? How do I be less ...curt in texts and emails? Where does John consume his hot takes? How do I stop being bad at cooking? How would John and Hank have met if they weren’t brothers? How do I make this locker room my new home? John and Hank have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at hankandjohn@gmail.com. Join us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello and welcome to Dear I Get John!
Or is that for the think of it, dear John and Hank?
It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your questions,
give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC with Milden John.
You know, I recently decided that I can no longer trust sailboats.
Why's that?
I just think they're rigged. I love it.
What a great joke.
I love it.
It's beautiful.
Oh, it's great.
It's great.
It's a great pun.
I'm sorry that I didn't like,
set you up with a soccer pun,
because I'm pretty sure that you're gonna wanna talk about
how Liverpool has won six Champions League trophies
in the 9,000 years that that event has been happening.
We won it six times.
So, God, I'm gonna be honest with you.
Liverpool!
It's like a pool of liver!
It's been about 60 hours since the end of the game,
and I have a little bit of a hangover.
Yeah, I would say that my hangover is like 80% emotional,
but there is the 20% of it that's sort of a lingering physical issue.
Why does this happen as we get older?
Can my body just keep up, please?
Two-day hangovers is a thing that I used to think that hangovers in total were made up.
Yeah.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and blame this not on my body, but on my choices. So, after Liverpool won the Champions League,
their sixth European title,
I went to Liverpool Bar in New York City
with the amazing Achila Hughes,
who had just moderated a panel that I was on at BookCon,
and I mean, it was pure, unadulterated magic.
Oh, I don't have anything like that in my life.
Like, I regularly start crying thinking about it.
Like I've probably started crying today four or five times.
Think about Jordan Henderson and his dad.
Think about Muhammad Salah.
Think about Jeannie Wainaldum.
Think about Daniel Sturridge.
Daniel Sturridge.
Daniel Sturridge and Jeannie Wainaldum and Yergen Klopp.
Oh, Yergen Klopp is a meme factory.
And you know the other thing I think about Hank?
I think about how all the fans
of the other teams in the Premier League,
especially Manchester United fans,
before the game they were like,
if Liverpool win this game, their fans are gonna be so unbearable,
and I am gonna be so unbearable for like five years.
I already have a collection of gifts and or gifts
depending on your world view that I like,
I just look at them myself.
I'm not sharing them on the social internet.
There's just things that I look at to enjoy.
So John, since Liverpool is so amazing,
six European titles, how long do you think
it is until Liverpool wins the World Cup?
It's 2022, Hank. We're going to win it in Qatar.
One of Liverpool's slogans, like one of the slogans of the fans is we're not English, we're
scous. So there it is. I mean, we sort of are a nation. All right representing Scouseland
I mean in Qatar in 2020 the liver puddle 2020
I mean Hank doesn't even know where the next world cup is what is that like?
It's probably about the same as your life
Except without that one thing all right. Let's answer some questions for our listeners this first one comes from Aiden who writes
John has it feel that Liverpool just what their six-year-old title?
It feels great. It's not a god. I can't get over it. I read the whole thing and not once
was that a question. My brother and I listened to the bond and he heard
you say that the best way to spend family time is to build a shelf and he asked me to do
it with him. I said yes and long story short. We ended up busting a hole in the wall
at the bottom of the stairwell after we dropped it
and my parents don't know that this happened
because they don't ever go to the basement
and what do I do?
Pumpkins and penguins, Aiton.
Hank, what a terrible idea to tell people
that the best way to become closer
as siblings is to build a shelf together.
Look, Aiton, you made a huge mistake, which is for clarity.
Listen to the podcast, not the advice.
That's the tagline of this advice podcast.
I think technically the tagline is listen to the ads.
Then the podcast.
Yeah.
Don't listen to the advice.
First and foremost, Aiden, the good news is that you've got an incredible opportunity.
I actually, I stand by it.
Damn it.
I think you should build furniture with your family.
Doing unpleasant tests together is a bonding experience.
No Hank, I think that we were just really close
to good advice and now we get to give good advice.
Oh, you think we're almost there, we have to hone it?
Actually, the best thing that you can do
with your sibling to get closer is figure out
how to like drywall over holes in the wall.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Crisis, solving crisis is together.
Yes.
You've obviously got some time to do this.
Yeah, thankfully your parents never come down to the basement.
Yeah, you got to match that paint if there's paint.
Oh, yeah, that's important.
It's got to be a whole process.
You're going to learn a lot.
Yeah.
You're going to be contractors by the end of this.
You're really only one project away from being a professional.
That's what Malcolm Gladwell says.
10,000 seconds.
How are you feeling, Johnny?
You still sort of having that emotional feel?
Yeah, you know what I'm thinking about right now,
to be honest with you.
Probably something to do with Liverpool.
I'm thinking about Bobby for me now.
It's Bobby for me now.
He's our Brazilian striker.
He's so underrated
We call him Bobby Chompers because he has very very white teeth
And I'm thinking about Bobby Chompers just amazing smile
I'm thinking about the song that we sing about Bobby Chompers
Cease and your give the ball to Bobby and he will score to the strikers ever go on strike
Sir has been a striker strike. Ah Philip Coutinho kind of went on strike
He faked having a back injury so that he could get transferred to Barcelona and so we
sold him to Barcelona because he quote wanted to win the Champions League.
Well, suck it, Philip Coutinho.
Oh my god.
This next question comes from Callan who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm from Orlando, Florida.
Hey likewise, and I use sunscreen quite a lot.
But I have no idea what SPF is.
I know it hires, it's less burned, but what is it?
Is it a chemical or a super powerful agent in a cream?
It's like agent smith from the matrix, but in cream form.
Please help me feel less embarrassed to call myself a Floridian.
SPFity Biffity, Kellan.
It's a rating.
So it's got the actual answer, John.
You can have whatever answer you want to this,
but it's not the actual answer, John, you can have whatever answer you want to this,
but it's not the actual thing in the cream.
Yeah.
SPF is like a unit of measurement.
Right.
How much solar radiation passes through something.
So in the same way that like kilograms
are a unit of mass, SPF is a unit of like transmission
of solar radiation.
So like shirts can have SPF, like every shirt has an SPF factor.
Clouds have an SPF factor that's just a way of us
being able to quantify how much certain wavelengths
of radiation can be blocked by anything.
I thought it stood for,
Sodio performs fantastically.
That of course being Sodio Mane are incredible.
Other striker.
You tell me when you've had enough
because I can keep going.
Yeah.
Dissocker players,
we're at a sunscreen genre, do they just crisp up? I think that some of the must wear sunscreen because I can keep going. Disgocca players, where are sunscreen genres?
Do they just crisp up?
I think that some of the must wear sunscreen.
For instance, our left back, Andrew Robertson,
he has to wear sunscreen because he's so pale.
I mean, he's almost translucent.
He's Scottish and you can see right through it.
He has an SPF of zero.
He does.
You can see all of his veins and hearty and stuff.
And oh my God, his crosses.
Good Lord.
All right, I think we have another question.
This one comes from Amelia who writes,
dear John and Hank, my mom says,
I'm too curt in texts and emails.
How do I not do that?
Thanks, Amelia.
That's actually quite a curt email.
Yeah, I mean, frankly, I love it.
I do too.
I love it.
We've done it.
We've done the question and now it's time
for me to talk again. If anything, I feel it. I do too. I love it. We've done it, we're through, we've done the question, and now it's time for me to talk again.
If anything, I feel like people are not nearly
curt enough in texts and emails.
I think that there is some element of people
from different periods of time
or also different places, like they're just
different social norms.
Obviously, when you were writing a letter,
it was like, I have to invest a lot into this.
So yeah, I have the whole process of starting the letter.
And now, oftentimes I will send an email
and it doesn't even have any text in the body.
It's just like, hey, can you do this
and in the subject line?
And I'm sorry.
I know that I just used email like a text message,
but maybe I don't have your phone number.
I feel like the right response to when your mom texts you
and says, you're too curt on email and text is just to write,
okay.
I think the actual thing is like,
your mom might be feeling like you're being rude to her,
or are you, is there a piece of you that's like,
oh my gosh, I don't wanna be texting my mom right now
and so you are kind of short.
And sometimes it's not about the length of the message,
it's about how you present the message in a way
that is part of the maintenance of your relationship
with someone that you care about.
And that can be as much as like,
the smiley with the bluschy cheeks.
If you give a bluschy cheek smiley,
everybody's like, oh, we're on good terms.
Everything's fine.
It's true.
A couple of emojis go such a long way.
Yeah.
When Catherine sends me a hard-eised emoji face person, I'm just like, oh God, we are such a good couple.
Don't maybe not send that one to your mom,
but there's lots of like,
mama-properate emojis out there,
and maybe your mom isn't super emoji-literate,
which is apparently a thing that you can and can't be in the world,
but you're gonna help her on that process,
and also like a lot of these things are pretty self-explanatory.
Also, you should call your mom, I think, if you can, because sometimes like, you're
curt on email and text because you have to be, but then if you can find like time and
space to actually talk and chat, that can make you both feel kind of filled up in a way
that in my opinion, at least text messages just can't.
Yeah.
And let's use the best emojis, but those ones are secrets. So you might not know about them.
Oh, come on.
Don't tell us that they're a secret emojis.
There's no secret emojis are there.
Of course there are secret emojis.
When you get a million subscribers,
you do get that one emoji.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
When you get a million subscribers on iMessage.
Yeah.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
When you get Apple Famous,
the most valuable fame of all.
Yeah, I've got so many contacts.
No one knows about this kind of fame.
That's actually kind of a weirdly
interesting observation.
I've been thinking about how like,
it used to be that social interaction
was an extremely personal thing.
And like, it was only done in private.
And now we have made it so that social interaction
is such a public thing.
And it is, it's performative.
And it is done with the goal of ideally having
the most people possible see the social interaction.
And how deeply different that is from how social interaction
is kind of designed to work.
Maybe like is probably the best way for it to work
for our sanity.
And that makes us devalue the interactions that we have in private, which hurts.
And I am frustrated by it.
And it's just something I was thinking about this weekend.
That's all.
Yeah, it can start to feel like the private interactions that you have aren't really real in the same way,
or they aren't valuable.
Like, they literally aren't valuable in the sense that they don't get you likes or retweets or money
or whatever it is that you get from your public interactions.
Yeah.
Not to bring it back to Liverpool again,
but in that bar.
He, guys, John just had like the perfect opportunity
to talk about the fact that he wasn't on social media.
He didn't do it because he wanted to talk more about Liverpool.
Is the only thing in the world that I'm more passionate about than not being on Twitter.
When I was at that bar, though, I was with almost entirely with strangers.
A couple people knew who I was, but almost all of them were strangers who had no idea who I was.
And yet, because our love was turned in the same direction, like our passion was turned
in the same direction, we were so deeply connected to each other. And I know there is a version
of that that I would have had on Reddit or on Twitter, celebrating with the other Liverpool
fans on Twitter or Reddit, but it just wouldn't have been nearly as deep for me.
Like, I know it wouldn't have been.
And I did miss Twitter and I did miss Reddit.
I really wanted to post.
I really wanted to celebrate with my friends on Twitter
and Reddit, but I just knew that it wouldn't be as real.
Like, it wouldn't be as intense.
And in fact, in Indianapolis,
where I desperately wish that I could have been
at the Liverpool bar in Indianapolis,
like they were lighting off like red flares
and somebody sent me an email of like all these people dancing
together and crying together.
And I was in New York like dancing and crying not
with the people I know, but with people I you know,
share this intense love with.
And so I don't know, I really do think
that we have dramatically undervalued
private real life interactions,
which actually brings us nicely to our next question,
which is from Bailey, who writes,
dear John and Hank,
I often find myself going to the social internet
when I am feeling lonely
because I think hearing from other people
in any capacity will make me feel better.
However, I am a college student and scrolling through Twitter and Instagram just makes me
feel more alone.
On top of my loneliness, I now miss a past and a school that I've completely romanticized
in my mind and I never come out feeling less lonely.
My question is, what are some healthy methods to combat loneliness that don't include social
media, nerdfighters in nostalgia, Bailey?
I'm not going to assign this to Bailey, but a thing that I have is that it's the easiest
thing to do.
Right.
And it's designed to be the easiest thing to do.
And even if we know that it isn't a solution to anything, even if we know that it's not
going to provide us with any actual value, and like sometimes it does, and so it's important
to know, like, recognize that.
But when it isn't, it's still the easiest thing to do.
They've made it so that you can unlock your phone just by pressing your finger onto the
back of it.
They've made it so that everything is extremely fast and it loads and immediately you see
something you've never seen before.
It's always there because it's so easy.
It's what my mind immediately goes to when I'm having any negative emotion.
It's like, oh, distract that from that quick.
So the thing to remember is that like,
a lot of the things to do are harder to do
than to look at Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.
That's true, but I also think there might be
something else happening.
And this is something I think a lot about
because it's related in its thinking pattern
to my obsessive-compulsive disorder
and so it might be specific to me
or specific to a pretty small subset of people.
But I think a lot of times we try to treat the thing
that we're trying to solve for in a way
that makes us feel immediately better
and long-term worse, right?
Like, in the immediate moment, being on Twitter
is hearing from other people which feels good.
It feels like connection, but over time, it starts to not feel like connection, and instead
you notice that you're actually withdrawing more from the social spaces that make you feel
deeply connected, but that our more work, are harder to access,
are harder to, you know, are more stressful.
Yeah, and are definitely like scarier.
Also, I don't think that loneliness necessarily has to do with whether you're spending time
with people.
No, that's true.
There's lots of ways to be alone and not lonely.
And so oftentimes I find that if I can just, you know, put in an audiobook that I like
a lot and walk around and that's not gonna be stressful,
it's going to be pleasant,
but it's not going to be social media.
And having a pet or a child
kind of forces you into those kinds of activities.
And I have had one or both of those things for a long time.
And I think that's part of the reason why
having a dog is such a boost to a lot of people's health
because it really gives you a chance
to just be a little bit
outside of your space and inside of the rest of the world.
And that can also lead to social interactions.
But beyond that, ideally, there are also, you know,
activities at your school or activities in your community,
activities that your workplace is putting together
or just opportunities, whether that's volunteering.
And I'm not saying that these things are easy.
They can be super stressful and hard to do that stuff, but those opportunities tend to
be available in one way or another, and they don't always cost money, though they sometimes
do.
And I think it's worth spending that cognitive energy doing that stuff when we recognize
that we're in a place that isn't great.
Yeah, also, if you can make plans, you know,
I find like, sometimes if I like go on a little walk,
listen to an audio book, listen to a podcast, whatever,
I'll feel better enough that I can text a few friends
and try to make plans, like say,
hey, could you, do you want to get lunch next week?
The more specific you are, the better,
the more likely they would say yes.
And that helps me when I feel lonely, which I, even though I do have children, you know,
I still feel a fair amount.
So I can definitely relate to this.
And I think it's really hard.
But if you can just make those small plans, they can get better and better.
And I know, I know that I've talked a lot about Liverpool Football Club, but if I can
give you one small piece of advice, it's love Liverpool Football Club, but if I can give you one small piece of advice, it's
love Liverpool Football Club.
Oh, right.
Well, John solved everyone's problems.
Because, you know, Hank, as I'm sure you're aware of the song that Liverpool fans sing
at the beginning and ending of every game, what does they say?
It's called You'll Never Walk Alone.
Oh, that's nice.
And it's a very cheesy song, but to hear 50,000 people sing it together really is powerful.
When you hear 50,000 people singing walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you'll
never walk alone.
And you know, when you're part of a community, whether it's a football club or something else,
you really do never walk alone.
And I think that's hard to find.
It takes time and work to build, but you're gonna get there.
I don't understand how a bunch of British,
lads, industrial town brits get together
and say something that heartfelt together.
It's like, that is such a foreign idea to me,
like opening yourself up enough to do that.
Like what social space in what world would I be able
to sing a song with people and not feel
totally over the top, sappy?
Hank, you are getting very, very close to understanding the magic of football. You are, you are inches
away from being sucked into a vortex from which you will never emerge. So you're standing on the
edge right now and you
are about to make a choice. Are you going to become as big of a Liverpool fan as I am?
Or are you going to continue down this path of being lost and alone in the world?
This next question comes from Kamaal. Last, Steerhank and John, because I want to keep talking
about social media. In a recent episode, John briefly discussed an episode of Game of Thrones that was too
darkly lit and talked about how the internet was all up in arms arguing that if you couldn't
see what was happening, then your TV settings were incorrect.
Now I don't know if you know this, as John really mentions it, but John is no longer on
social media.
My question is, where does John consume his hot takes?
What is his point of exposure to this sort of internet discourse?
Best wishes, Kamal.
Welcome all, after the Liverpool game,
I did find a way to get to Twitter on my phone.
It is incredibly hard.
I have to go through the podcast app, but I did it.
Wow, it is really not easy, but I did it.
I didn't post or anything, but I did look
because I just, I needed it.
I needed it so, so bad.
And also it was 3, 3, 30 at the morning.
And I hadn't made the best choices, come all.
My inhibitions were a bit lowered, if you catch my drift.
And so I can theoretically do that.
And I have done it several times since I quit.
But the main way I get hot takes is because,
just because you don't use Twitter or Reddit
or Facebook anymore doesn't mean that your information feed
has improved very much.
And there are a ton of Google news stories
that are essentially just collections of tweets.
Yeah.
There will be a headline on Google News
and the headline will be something like Game of Thrones was very dark and people
are not having it.
And I will click the crap out of that headline.
And then I will just, I will ingest all of the hot takes.
Yeah, this generally reminds me of the reality that when we say like, oh, if you don't like
social media, just don't use it, We all still have to live in the world
where everyone else is using it.
Yeah.
News gets generated there.
Like, I don't probably go to my Google Newsfeed right now
and like at least three of the stories
will be about something someone tweeted.
And that other people are really mad about.
Usually the president.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's that.
There's also the fact that we all imagine ourselves
to be somehow immune to the way that the information
feed shapes are understanding of the world, but it is precisely the belief that we are
immune to it that makes us so susceptible to it.
It is because we don't think advertising works on us that it works so well.
It is because we think that propaganda can't affect the way we vote, that propaganda
is so effective at changing the way we vote. We need to think harder about this stuff and
not imagine ourselves as being people floating above a sea of information and instead understand
that we are fish swimming in that sea of information. Yeah, the idea that we are at all separate from any of the things that go on in our culture
is buck wild.
It's part of us we're part of it.
We can't separate ourselves from it.
And just because something happens in a movie doesn't mean that we're going to be that
thing, it's not like a direct one-to-one relationship, but everything we do is informed by culture,
and we cannot escape that, so we have to be aware of it.
Yeah, exactly.
This next question comes from Callie, who asks,
Dear Hank and John,
I've always thought it was weird that all food tastes better when someone else prepared it for you.
My going theory has been, until this past week,
that subconsciously our taste buds appreciate the care and work that another person has put into the food we are eating,
and so it tastes better.
It's always kinda warmed my heart to know
that my friends could taste the love
that I put into the food I would cook for them
on the occasions that they would let me.
Unfortunately, I have since realized that,
in fact, I am just a bad cook.
How do I stop being bad at cooking?
I'm going back to Kali, Kali. That's, I mean, it's the funny thing is that I feel like when Sarah and I cook the food
is much better.
I mean, Sarah is a really, really good cook and I've spent, you know, years trying to
learn from her.
I have a very specific recommendation for this question, which is to buy the book
how to cook everything and use it to cook things for a while, and also to buy the book's
Salt Fat Acid Heat, which totally changed my understanding of food.
I don't know anything about Salt Fat Acid Heat. I saw that it's a Netflix show, and I've
heard people talk about it, but my... Very enjoyable Netflix program.
My suggestion is somewhat related to that, which is salt fat.
I don't know about acid and heat, but in general, so here's a theory I have about when someone cooks for me,
why that often tastes better than when I cook for myself?
It's because when I'm cooking for myself, I'm thinking about how much oil and butter and salt I'm putting in stuff.
When someone else cooks for me,
I'm not thinking about that.
And especially at a restaurant,
you don't have any idea how they made this taste good.
It was probably butter.
And salt, there is a lot of salt in pre-prepared foods.
And there's a lot of salt and butter, usually,
if you were salt to butter.
More salt, more butter. Like that's ultimately, it doesn't have to and butter, usually, if you're a salted butter. More salt, more butter.
Like that's ultimately, it doesn't have to be butter,
it could be salty oil of any kind.
That makes stuff taste better, man.
Right, so you can either read the books
that are recommended or you can just add more salt
to your broccoli.
This next one comes from Mark, right?
Steer John and Hank, why does it seem like the older
I get, the more easily I cry. Biz, Mark.
I've not found that particular thing.
I have.
I go through like waves of crying.
I am less likely to cry for hours,
or to like, sob and sob,
and not be able to return to normal,
but I am much more likely to cry like two tears.
Mm-hmm.
I've cried two tears like five or six times today.
Well, I mean, the Liverpool thing happened.
It has been an unusually good day.
But yeah, I find that I tear up a fair bit now.
I had a right good sob.
I was walking orange to the park
and I listened into a Becky Chambers book
and it's just something really beautiful happening.
I was just like,
oh God, I'm crying on the sidewalk.
And I had another similar right good sob as I was writing this weekend and I was like,
oh Jesus, I'm crying about my characters again.
That's probably a good sign I guess.
Maybe although I do that every time I write a book and I find that there is not a firm
correlation between when I'm writing a really good scene and when I'm crying
really hard.
Like, there's not a negative correlation.
There's just not that strong of a positive correlation.
Right.
I don't know.
I think I might be a little bit more emotionally open now.
And so maybe that's something that's changed with my particular age where I'm open to being
hurt more because I'm more secure in total.
That's probably part of it.
I'm less hiding from it.
I also think that part of it is that I have more
accumulated life experience.
I just think that everything feels a little more
poignant to me than it felt 14 years ago
when Liverpool last won the Champions League.
I definitely cried, but part of what's
made me so emotional this time is thinking about those 14 years, you know, thinking about
my life for those 14 years, thinking about the club for those 14 years, and you just
have a different feeling when you have more accumulated life experience.
I'm sorry, I realized that this started out as a bit me mentioning Liverpool in answer to every question and now it's like not a bit. It's just it's like what's
sincerely happening. It's just happening. And I think it worked as a bit. I don't know
that it's working as a sincere thing, but I can't stop. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't
matter whether it's working. Let's be honest with ourselves. It's not going to stop.
Yeah, I had an interesting experience on Saturday night,
which is that this man was hugging me,
which usually, like when I'm hugging a stranger,
I'm very uncomfortable, but on Saturday night,
it was all good, and we were hugging,
and he started crying, like really hard,
like really started crying,
like feel as like shoulders heaving, you know?
And I was thinking like, why is this guy crying?
And then I started crying, And I was thinking like, why is this guy crying? And then I started crying.
And I realized that like, I understood in a way
that like I couldn't access from language
why he was crying.
And it was just a really, it was just a beautiful,
lovely moment with a person I will never speak to again.
I don't know what to say.
I've never cried with a stranger in my life.
Oh, I recommend it.
All right.
I mean, if it's for a happy reason.
I'll go to the grocery store and let you know how it goes.
I don't know that I recommend it like in the face of tragedy,
but like I really recommend it after Devakareegi scores
a goal to put his two-nil up in the 87th minute or whatever.
Oh wow.
Devakareegi.
I mean of all the people.
Devakareegi.
We got another question for us.
Oh, Devakareegi. Yeah, I have another question.I.s.s, we got another question for us. Oh, Deva Kareiki.
Yeah, I have another question.
Okay, good.
This question comes from Emma who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm just recently married
and I have introduced my husband to the great world of Nerdfighteria and when we finished
listening to an episode of the podcast recently, he asked, so how do you think those guys met?
I laughed very hard until I realized he was serious.
But if you were not brothers, how do you think you would have met?
Or would you have even met at all? Emma.
That's a weird question.
I- oh!
Hey, we wouldn't have met at all.
Why not?
Because that's how the universe works.
I don't know, man.
I've met a lot of people twice.
Everything in my life is so contingent upon Hank.
Because I have no idea what my life would look like
if Hank weren't my brother.
Like, I have a lot of sliding doors moments,
but like the Hank not being my brother,
sliding door is too hard and weird to even think about.
I think you would have written
looking for Alaska with her without me.
Really? Maybe?
We didn't know each other then.
And then so maybe I still would have met Sarah.
Actually, now that I think about it,
I would be the exact same person only without YouTube.
Just much more at peace.
Yeah, I would have less professional stress in my life.
And it would be like when Sarah worked at the museum
and every time I went to an event with her.
Can we rewrite the conversation?
I wanna put a pause and go back to before I told you
that your life would be the same without me,
but better.
I want to take it back.
Yeah, significantly better.
It would not have been better.
I'm very glad that you're my brother.
I'm very glad that we work together.
And I honestly, I don't think I would have written
Lungfer Alaska or any, I just think my life would be
so different, it's hard to imagine.
Yeah.
I'm not saying this just because I'm on an emotional high
and a little bit hungover, but it's like the great joy of my life.
It's an incredible thing to be so close to your brother in adulthood
and the thing that makes it work and makes it special for me
is that in this whole process of us working together professionally
for the last like 13 years,
I know that I can trust you all the way down
and I just can't imagine having that feeling.
Even people I really, really love
who I'm really, really close to.
It's just not the same as somebody
who's in your family who's known you since you were two.
Yeah, there's a lot of sibling acts out there
and I think that's a big part of it.
Yeah, but that reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by brothers.
It's brought to you by brothers. These two brothers in particular, and we're thankful to each
other and to everybody who hangs out with us and listens and watches and etc.
Hey, because it's attempted to write in the podcast notes that this podcast is brought to you by Devakareegi. And I have never seen a worse spelling of Devakareegi. I'm not even gonna, I'm not even going to
recount it. But this podcast is brought to you by Devakareegi. Devakareegi. I mean,
he's a legend. Three shots in this year's Champions League. Three goals. This podcast is also brought to you by Drywall Patching.
Give those 10,000 seconds in while you can before your parents come downstairs to the basement
because you listen to brothers on a podcast, but you should not have done.
And this podcast is also brought to you by Virgil Van Dyke, Joe Maddip and Trent Alexander
Arnold, who I believe are the only three members of the starting 11. I haven't yet mentioned
This podcast is definitely brought to you by them oh
Trenna Alexander Arnold is the 20 year old who took that corner kick really quickly. Oh, yeah, yeah That was fun in fact in my mind over and over again for the last two days. I hear the commentators call of that corner taken quickly
I hear the commentators call of that. Corner taken quickly.
A reegie!
It's just a loop.
It's like a head.
Play it right now.
Let's hear it.
Corner taken quickly, reegie!
Yeah!
Oh, it's magic.
It's magic.
Corner taken quickly.
A reegie!
Oh, we did it!
We've also got a project for awesome message
from Oliver Cosset, from Tempe, Arizona.
Tempe?
Tempe. Tempe. Tempe.
Tempe.
This is the most mind-blowing fact I know.
Every number you can think of, like 17 or pi or the cube root of a trillion and 12 are all computable,
meaning they would be the result of a finite length computer program.
But we know that there are infinitely more real numbers than computable
numbers. So almost every number that exists is one that we cannot even imagine. Thank
you Oliver for that very good fact. I don't know if that's true, but if it is true,
it is really mind blowing. And thank you for donating the project for awesome
to share that fact with us.
Is that true?
I think it is.
I'm sure we're gonna get mathematicians writing us
about this and it may be, it probably is true.
Oliver seems like he knows what he's talking about.
Yeah, I think it's true.
This next question comes from Morgan.
It's wild.
Dear Hank and John, I recently joined a new gym.
It's been approximately 8,000 degrees outside.
So I went for a run on the indoor track, two laps in.
A nice employee waves me down and tells me
that the track is a walking track only,
but I can quote, run on the treadmills
to my heart's content.
You can't say that to a person when they're doing,
you can run on the treadmills to your heart's,
and well, of course I can, that's what treadmills do.
Anyway, nah.
Now I'm hiding in the locker room, says Morgan.
How could I make my new home this locker room
comfortable and or escape without anyone
seeing me much obliged?
It's not more gant, it's more gant.
First of all, you can't have a indoor track in a gym
and then be like, you can't run on this track. That's what tracks are for.
Well, I guess you can because they do. But Morgan,
I know that you feel mortified. I understand why you feel mortified,
but I don't think you should feel mortified. This was not something you could have known.
The human capacity for mortification is totally fascinating to me.
Hank, have I ever told you about what happened to me in the New York Knicks locker room?
Oh, I have a York Knicks locker room?
I have a weird mortified locker room story as well, but you go first. All right, so I got invited to
like sit kind of court side on the Indiana Pacers game, and afterwards I got invited to the New York Knicks locker room. And there is a big spread of pulled pork barbecue. Nice. And I love barbecue.
And so I made myself a sandwich.
And the vice president of marketing for the New York Knicks came up to me.
He was a large man.
Very tall and said, what the hell are you doing?
And I said, just making a barbecue sandwich.
And he said, that is for the players.
That is for the people who make $30 million a year, sir.
If you look around, you'll notice
that the other invited guests are not eating Barbecue Sand,
which is Morgan, that is a moment
where it is appropriate to feel mortified.
Yeah, you didn't do anything wrong unlike me
with the Poltborg sandwiches. So anyway,
flash forward five years, here I am still thinking on a near daily basis about this mortification.
Yeah, I mean, if you had just kept running,
it was like, that doesn't make sense as you walk by. Or if you'd gotten super passive-aggressive,
and you'd be like, okay, well, now I'm a semi-professional race walker and you just tried to like
see if you could walk at six and a half miles an hour, then maybe you'd have
a justification for feeling a little bit embarrassed, but you did nothing wrong,
you saw a track and you ran on it. That seems like a very normal response to
seeing a track. But how do you get out of the bathroom?
In general, there's only two ways to get out of a bathroom
unseen and they're both really bad.
One is to find a chamber of secrets of some sort
fall down kilobassilist.
The other is to Arya Stark, someone's face off
and put it on yours.
Both very bad.
The only ways I know to get up a bathroom and not being seen.
Yeah, I mean, you just got to are you stark this situation Morgan. Kill the guy who said,
everyone in the gym must die now. No, like we have problem with the solve. As a species,
we have got to get more comfortable
with embarrassment and I don't know how to do it.
Yeah, I am the worst advertisement for being okay with
even the slightest embarrassment
just completely overwhelms my senses.
Now I'm imagine Morgan like laying on their pillow at night
saying like a list of the people
that she has been embarrassed.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, like a list of the people that she has been embarrassed. So, like,
I was sparing their names.
You're gonna be okay.
I hope I didn't embarrass you,
because now I'm scared.
What was your locker room store?
I don't know if I've told it on the pub before.
It seems like I probably have,
because it's a pretty good story
that it comes up with very regularity.
I was the mascot for my high school.
I was Willie the Wildcat.
In the very first time I put on the Willie the Wildcat costume,
I carried it with me in a bag and I went into the locker room
and I changed into the Willie the Wildcat costume
in like a stall because I'm, you know,
terrified of my body.
And I come out in the Willie the Wildcat costume
and I am in the opposing team's locker room.
You know, just there to be like,
you guys are gonna lose or whatever.
And I was like, am I gonna get beat up right now?
And I just ran out of the locker room as fast as I could
because I felt like I was intruding upon their space.
But luckily, I had a mask on.
So no one knew it was me.
Yeah, they don't even know who you were.
They thought you were just trolling.
Maybe Morgan, you should carry a wildcat costume
around with you everywhere you go, just in case. Yeah, just become a professional
mascot. All right. Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon,
because there are other football teams in the world, we need to give a couple of updates
from previous episodes. First off, Julie, you'll recall Julie wrote in about spouses only
being invited to a cookout.
Right.
And we speculated that Julie was likely a medical student for a statistician.
In fact, Julie has written in to say that she is a psychology student.
More specifically, I study applied behavior analysis, which by the way,
sounds to me like a statistician.
Yes.
In this case, most of what you do is statistics
and you know it, Julie.
My boyfriend is like, wow, that was a little strong.
You can't come at us.
My boyfriend and I did go to the cookout
and well, no one confronted me about bringing him
tragically we lost in the first round of Cornhole.
You should just dump him.
On the plus side, everyone loved the mac and cheese we brought.
All right, I'm back on board with him.
Thanks for answering my questions, not a cognitiveist, but a behaviorist.
Actually a statistician, Julie.
Oh, it's in there.
Oh, it's a great thing about reading the questions
as I can put whatever words I want in them.
Also, Neseem, who you'll recall,
wrote us about first day work dress codes
our area of expertise.
Wrote it to say, dear John and Hank,
it was a pleasure to listen to you guys answer my question
on this week's podcast
I should tell you that I did start work last week and I did go slightly overdressed with jeans and a button down shirt
Most people there were shorts and t-shirts man. I just cracked me up. Thank you. Nassim it all worked out
Yeah, shorts and t-shirts that place is lacks there is no dress code shorts. Yeah, true. Oh, well, I mean I will submit again
There is always a good true. It's true. John what is the news from AFC Wimbledon? Oh, um, were you able to pay attention
at all? I honestly don't have any. There is actually there's big news from AFC Wimbledon.
There's always news from AFC Wimbledon. The most important news is that Will Nightingale,
AFC Wimbledon's captain, 23 that Wil Nightingale, AFC Wilden's
captain, 23 year old defender has played for the clubs since he was like 10 years old.
Wil Nightingale has extended his contract. He had been offered a contract that he hadn't
signed. There was some back and forth. There was a lot of nervousness. He's very, very good.
And so we would, we are very happy to keep. And we are keeping him. He's also somebody
who just understands the values of the club in the way that you only can when you've played
for the same club since you were 10 years old, like for instance, Trent Alexander Arnold.
So yes, it's a really positive development. Also, there is a big meeting this week about
the stadium, the building of the new stadium,
because if you look at the real long-term,
the way for Wimbledon to progress
is to have the new stadium.
It brings us back home, but it also allows us to be
in our own place that will have all of the modern conveniences
of new stadiums
and we'll also hopefully generate more revenue
allow for bigger crowds, all of that stuff.
So it's very, very important that we get the new stadium
built and to get it built wealth.
All right, well, John in Mars news,
so back in 2012, is when the Mars Curiosity Rover
landed on the planet Mars, planet Mars a long time ago.
Wild.
The mission is still going on and it's still very active.
And actually, the Curiosity Rover has just reached one
of its primary mission targets,
which is amazing to think that it's 2019
and that just happened.
But you can't land a rover on the side of a mountain
because that's unsafe.
So you have to land the rover in the flat lake bed and then drive the rover to the side of a mountain because that's unsafe. So you have to lay in the rover in the flat lake bed
and then drive the rover to the side of the mountain, up the mountain to the part of the mountain
that you really, really want to study. So curiosity's been driving all around Gail creator for years
and years. It's driven miles of distance and now it's headed up the side of Mount Sharp, which is
this big, like fairly tall mountain,
that it wasn't built up by like tectonic action.
It was once a lot of land, and then that was eroded away.
And so this is sort of what's left over as this like chunk of land has eroded away.
And thus, as the mountain was created by erosion, on the side of the mountain, there are layers
that were set down
when this was all part of a lake bed.
And at the base, there was not a lot of lake bed left.
It's all been eroded away in the crater,
where curiosity was.
But now on the side of the mountain,
we're starting to get to layers of actual sediment deposit.
And that is very exciting.
So curiosity has now drilled its first two rocks
in what's called the clay bearing unit.
And we were pretty sure we could tell from like orbiter pictures
and spectroscopy data that this was probably clay.
It definitely is clay.
We now know a lot more about the clay.
The big deal here is that clay only forms
in the presence of water.
So this is like a whole layer of ancient lake bed
that we're gonna to find out more
about. We've already gotten some good data back, but there is a lot more that we're going
to learn from just this and like the papers that are going to be written about it haven't
been written yet. But as Curiosity keeps going up the mountain and taking more data, we're
going to find like it's basically going through time in like the history of Mars. We can learn
a lot about not just this one place,
but the entire history of the planet.
As Curiosity Project Scientist, Ashwin Vasovata says,
each layer of this mountain is a piece of a puzzle
they each hold clues to a different era in Martian history.
Doing a good job, Curiosity, good work to the team
and that little rover is very exciting.
I mean, if you think about how much we know about Earth's history from similar kinds of observation,
it's certainly an area with a lot of potential, right? Like, we could learn a lot about the,
I mean, obviously, we don't have the same level of access. But I feel like we could learn a lot
about the geological.
Is it even called geological if it's a different planet?
Or is that specific?
Yeah, we still call it geology.
Okay.
Geo is like, is Earth, but we call it geology even when it's
on other planets.
We just carry that one forward.
Right.
Okay.
We don't call the dirt Earth on other planets.
Like on Earth, I feel like grab a piece of like a bunch of dirt.
You can call that Earth.
You don't do that on other planets, but that-
No, we call it Mars.
You can just pick up that dust and you say Mars.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Got hold it in my hand.
That's definitely what I would do.
No, look at this Mars.
Look at it, take it home and put it in my child's mouth.
Taste the Mars.
It's got perclerid in it. That would be a very weird thing to do. To like take the year and a half long trip to Mars,
fill up a container with some dirt. Take the year and a half trip back and be like,
here I brought you this, eat it. Eat my dirt, eat my Mars. Very weird.
Oh, John, yes, we can absolutely learn a lot
about the geology of Mars.
Just from this one spot, there's a lot of Mars to see,
but this is why they chose such an excellent landing place
and it really is paying off.
And 2020 is coming up, John.
I mean, 2020 is on its way.
When did Curiosity land on Mars again?
2012.
So that was seven years ago. Yeah, that's the number of Champions League titles will
last year. John can't think of anything else. Oh, Hank, it's been a pleasure to pod with you. The only person
I would have rather podded with on this blessed day is literally any of the 40 members of Liverpool squad.
is literally any of the 40 members of Liverpool Squad. This podcast is produced by Rosiana Halzruha
and Sheridan Gibson.
It's edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish, our head of community
and communications is Victoria Bonjourna,
the music you're hearing right now.
And at the beginning of the podcast
is by the great Gunnarola,
John and I are off to record our Patreon-only podcast
this week in Ryan's where this week I believe
we are covering Grace Hopper.
That is correct.
And you can find out more about that at patreon.com slash deer hank and john.
Thanks again for listening as they say in our hometown.
Don't forget to be awesome.
you