Dear Hank & John - 204: Quiet, Subdued, and Possibly Illicit

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

How do I make this flesh-eating bacteria sound safe? How do I tell my housemate not to get a crockpot? Am I as unlikeable as the character I wrote? Does my friend live with a ghost? How did conspira...cy theories spread before the internet? Why are the most-viewed vlogbrothers videos about giraffe sex? How do I stop my favorite movie from being my whole personality? How would fandoms respond to the apocalypse? John Green and Hank Green answer your questions from the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, but shhh. 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)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Of course I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. We are here on a rooftop deck in Madison, Wisconsin. We're actually at the Madison Contemporary Art Museum, which has it. Excellent shows if you happen to be in or near Madison, Wisconsin, we're on the road right now, but we're not going to let that stop us
Starting point is 00:00:23 for making a quiet and somewhat subdued and possibly elicit version of Dear Hank and John. At some point, we think a security guard is going to come up here and kick us off of the roof deck, but in the meantime, we're gonna start out here on the roof with a sculptor garden. John, how do you kill an elephant? With an elephant gun. How do you kill a blue elephant? out here on the roof. With a sculptor garden. John. Yeah. How do you kill an elephant?
Starting point is 00:00:46 With an elephant gun. How do you kill a blue elephant? I know all of these jokes. I have a child. Two of them, in fact, with a blue elephant gun. Yeah. How do you kill a red elephant? You have to choke it till it's blue
Starting point is 00:00:57 and then you shoot it with a blue elephant gun. How do you kill a green elephant? You have to embarrass it until it's red, choke it till it's blue, and then shoot it with a blue elephant gun. How do you kill a yellow elephant? I don't know. There are no yellow elephants you idiot.
Starting point is 00:01:14 That's good. It's good. How do elephants hide in cherry trees? How do elephants hide in cherry trees? And they have to paint their testicles red. What's the loudest noise in the jungle? What is the loudest noise in the jungle? What is the loudest noise in the jungle? What is the loudest noise in the jungle? Monkey taking a bite out of a cherry.
Starting point is 00:01:30 This is definitely appropriate conversation. How do you, Madison Contapere, our museum? How do you know that there is an elephant in your refrigerator? You can't. Feel footprints in the butter. Footprints in the butter. That's't. Fill footprints in the butter. Footprints in the butter. That's one of my kids favorite jokes.
Starting point is 00:01:49 They just, they can't get enough of it. They say, they can barely get out the words, footprints in the butter before they start laughing. Oh, there's a truck that's coming by. I don't know if y'all can hear that. And it's playing, too. It's both a truck and a plane. We're being attacked from above and below,
Starting point is 00:02:04 not to mention the nearby crickets. It's both a truck and a plane. We're being attacked from above and below, not to mention the nearby crickets. It's a sound scape, it's what they call and the radio business, the sound scape. I don't know if you can hear the wind, but there's also a very pleasant wind, just wafting past. To hide us. Gentle wind and a cricket nearby as well.
Starting point is 00:02:20 This is the opposite of your usual episode of Dear Hank and John. What we're really trying to get you to do is just calm down. The world is loud and a little terrifying, but there are still crickets, there is still wind on the face, and there are still apparently abandoned public spaces where you can just sit and see no one. This is a really good art museum, and I'm kind of bummed out that there aren't more people here right now. It seems like the time, it's perfect time for this. Please come to the Madison Contemporary Art Museum, it's great.
Starting point is 00:02:52 John this first question comes from Kyle who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm studying chemistry at university and I love it. Especially when I got to talk about my research with others. My parents both work in marketing and have accepted that much of what I'm studying goes clear over their heads But nonetheless, they're generally interested in what I do when I tell them about a new project I'm working on Every time they ask without fail are you safe? Yeah, there are many systems in play in my lab to keep me safe All I work with my nasty little friends But I worry that the words flesh eating bacteria will override my parents interest in my work
Starting point is 00:03:25 I worry that the words flesh eating bacteria will override my parents interest in my work. Yeah, I mean they certainly override my interest in your work Kyle. I was all on board with an answer where I was going to say, oh Kyle, your parents love you and they just want Kyle get the hell out of that lab. Kyle actually came to see us in Madison. So oh, thanks. Thanks for coming. Nice to see you last night, Kyle. I hope that you had a good time.
Starting point is 00:03:48 Is there another way to communicate the gravity and excitement of my research on flesh eating bacteria that won't cause my parents worry? Well, you got to carry out a euphemism for flesh eating bacteria, just like skin-munching bacteria. I was gonna say something that's adequately technical that your parents won't also want to understand what it means.
Starting point is 00:04:04 Yeah, that's not the technical name. Necrotic fesiosis. Oh, God, that also, that's worse. It does sound bad. Is necrotic fasciosis a thing? If it is. It's similar. You know about a thing called necrotic fasciosis. The words ring a bell in my head, but I don't know exactly what they mean. You know? Yeah. I've done a lot of googling over the years. Yeah, that is it one day.
Starting point is 00:04:28 Yeah. And you were like, I know. And there aren't a lot of disease processes I haven't researched. At least a little. So Kyle, the answer to your question is that you've got to talk about your work in a way that's adequately vague. So when I ask Hank to explain concepts to me in the sciences, which I genuinely have a third or fourth grade level understanding of. But also an interest in.
Starting point is 00:04:57 But also an interest in. It's the same way I feel about skateboarding. Very interested in it. Not a lot of talent for it. I usually ask Hank to simplify more, and then if I need him to simplify less, that makes me feel good. So I would start with being like, so listen, mom and dad, there are, believe it or not, things that are alive that are too small to see. And just go from there. Or Kyle, maybe you can convince your parents
Starting point is 00:05:27 that you don't have flesh. And be like, no, I'm immune. No, don't worry about it, Mom and Dad. I am, as it happens, an artificial intelligence. When you sign up to work in this lab, they replace all your flesh. That's the first step. They took out all my parts.
Starting point is 00:05:42 This next question comes from Elliot, who writes, dear John and Hank, I live in a small house with six other college students. We love each other a lot. And I'm very grateful to this found family that we've built together. Oh, that's great, Elliot. However, one of my housemates really wants to get a crock pot,
Starting point is 00:05:55 an idea that I hate. I have no idea why I can't stand the thought of having a crock pot in one of our cabinets. How do I tell my housemate that they cannot under any circumstances purchase a crock pot in one of our cabinets. How do I tell my house mate that they cannot under any circumstances purchase a crock pot? I think that you may be confused about what a crock pot is. It's not just like the shoes.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Well, I just pop for those crock shoes, the sandals. Oh, yeah, it's not just for cooking crocks. No, it's for cooking lots of different things. The other thing that I'm concerned about, Elliott, is that you might think that a crock pot is some sort of like a very small nuclear weapon or a drug thing or a meth. Yeah, it's not. It's not. A crock pot is just a wave, just an item for cooking food.
Starting point is 00:06:36 Maybe is it better if you call it a slow cooker because they started doing that? They were like, I don't think people like the word crock pot. I think people are upset by the word crock pot, the crock pot people. Yeah. And then the people are like, I don't think people like the word crock pot. I think people are upset by the word crock pot, the crock pot people. Yeah. And then the people are like, I know what's up. We should call it a slow cooker. Which to me is like, I also hate this because I want food pretty much immediately. The moment I start to cook it.
Starting point is 00:06:55 Well, the great thing about a slow cooker though is you just like put it in the slow cooker. You go to work, you come back, and it's all whatever. Cooked. People who can think that far ahead astound me. Oh, I can think that far ahead. I love to plan out what I'm gonna eat in a day. It's one of the highlights of my day. Oh man.
Starting point is 00:07:12 All right, so what you're gonna do, Elliot, is you're gonna let your house mate get the crock box. Because you're being the weird one here. Because no offense. Don't ruin your amazing found family over a crock pot. Like I can't, I literally can't think of a worse reason. Yeah, you seem really into your found family. I think that you support them.
Starting point is 00:07:32 I feel like I can't get much further from the mic than me. I feel the opposite. Let's just have some quiet time. Real quick, let's just listen to the sounds. Yeah. You know what I was thinking about? Hmm. I was thinking about how this place must have been amazing in full of bird song before
Starting point is 00:07:51 people ruined it. I was thinking about how the cricket was listening to us and was like, okay, I will also be quiet. I got the message guys, we're having quiet time. I mean, I like it. I've been working so hard all morning. Thank you for five minutes off. Alex says, dear Hank and John, I finished the first draft of the first novel
Starting point is 00:08:12 I've ever written about a month ago. Congratulations. And this novel, I'm this novel. And I'm this novel. Oh God, wait, this person is inside of the book. Hank, it's happening. He met himself in. The meta-fiction has gotten so meta-fictional that now somebody is trapped in there.
Starting point is 00:08:30 And they can email those, so that's nice. Well, yeah, of course, they have access to text, but that's all they have access to. Good self. I think what they mean to say is, in this novel, I've based the main character off myself, because why wouldn't I? Almost immediately, I sent it to my best friend. She told me that she loved the book, but hated the main character of myself because why wouldn't I? Almost immediately I sent it to my best friend. She told me that she loved the book but hated the
Starting point is 00:08:47 main character. I should I deal with this information. Does she secretly hate me? Or is it just the way I've portrayed myself? Pumpkins and Penguins, Alex, I think many different things could be happening here. One is that we imagine ourselves differently than people around us imagine us and you tend to be more negative about how we imagine many people, probably most people, tend to imagine themselves more negatively than the people around them do. I think that's fair to say.
Starting point is 00:09:11 I think that is probably going on. I don't think that your friend finds you annoying. I think your friend found this character annoying for the character's choices. And even a lot of times, at least in my early experience, writing when I wrote sort of autobiographically, even when I would write about characters, I felt like I knew intimately
Starting point is 00:09:33 because I felt like pretty closely connected to them. They would still make different choices from the choices I would make because they would make like narrative choices. Right. Because it would be important to the plot. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:46 And so like, they would do things that I wouldn't do that maybe weren't likable. Yeah. Because I wanted the character to come across a certain way. The real question is, did you intend for the main character not to be likable? Because if not, that may be a problem. Or it may just be one reader read it that way.
Starting point is 00:10:03 Yeah. I also think that we sometimes hope for more out of book characters than out of real people. That's true too. And then when book characters act like real people are like, well, that I'm analyzing that in a way that I wouldn't with a real person. And I find oftentimes when characters are portrayed realistically
Starting point is 00:10:25 they start to be like people say like that was an unsympathetic character and I'm like, well, I mean like we all make bad decisions. Yeah, I don't know when we introduced this idea that character is exists primarily on a likeability, unlikeability spectrum. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I don't find that spectrum that interesting or that important, like, is Hamlet likable is not the most interesting question that Hamlet has to offer us. Yeah. I think that there's a lot of sort of superheroes
Starting point is 00:10:57 and fiction and when it's when the person isn't Jason Bourne, it's like, oh, well, I kind of want to see like an ideal person, not like a real person. Yeah, and that has its place. I just think that- Absolutely, that's important. I want room for lots of different kinds of reading and lots of different kinds of storytelling.
Starting point is 00:11:17 And I worry that when we put everything on that axis of likeability, unlikeability, we lose a lot of the richness of what story can do for us. Yeah. This next question comes from Veronica who asks, Libet Grünbrüder. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. German. That would want me and it was the best I got. Are you fluent? I moved out of my best friends. Do you know what it means? I imagine it says, it means dear green brothers. I think it means hello idiots. Do you know what it means? I imagine it says, it means dear green brothers.
Starting point is 00:11:43 I think it means hello idiots. I moved out of my best friends and my shared flat last year because I had the chance to get my own place close to my work. So I did. My best friend was fine with it, saying that she'd just get another roommate. And sometime later she told me that a girl called Katrin would move into a mild room.
Starting point is 00:12:02 However, I've never seen Katrin at the flat or any proof of her existence. I've even asked my friend if her roommate was a ghost and she only laughed a bit too loudly for my taste. Ghost roommate. So does my best friend actually live with a ghost? Of course. No, what's happened is that your roommate has cracked
Starting point is 00:12:22 the ultimate roommate code, which my friend Shannon and I cracked in the year 2002. I still remember the day. We were interviewing potential new roommates and Dan, the architect came over and he interviewed. And I hope I hope Dan you'll forgive me for telling this story. He said, listen, I am Catholic and my girlfriend is Catholic and our four parents are Catholic. And therefore, I need to rent a room in an apartment. And we were like, my parents, look at my finances. And we were like, so you're saying that you're going to use this room. Oh my god. Only when your parents visit and he was like correct and I was like welcome to the family.
Starting point is 00:13:16 You still have to do the dishes once a week though. I mean Dan spent maybe five nights in that apartment in three years. Holy crap. And he paid his, we felt bad charging him a third of the rent, but he was like, Well, that's the thing. You could have somebody else paying a third of the rent. You need that third of the rent.
Starting point is 00:13:34 Right. You have to. Yeah. Oh my God, I love it. Yeah, so that's what's happened. She cracked the roommate code. She cracked the roommate code. Or, well, the thing about ghosts is they never pay rent.
Starting point is 00:13:44 No, they're terrible with that. That's at like a hundred percent of the time. Or when they do they pay they're like oh I only have ghost currency on me. Right. Absolutely. I've just like heard that before. They just like pay it all in pennies from the 1800s. Yeah. Oh no. I don't have cash for you but I do have this 19th century blood spatter dress. Great, thanks. I've got this out of tune piano. You know, take that to the pawn shop, see what I can get for it. Just drop it from the ceiling every once in a while for you.
Starting point is 00:14:15 Can a ghost be like my roommate in college and accidentally leave a piece of chicken between the newspapers and the recycling for three months? Hmm. I mean, no is because they don't exist. Yes. Yes. And.
Starting point is 00:14:35 Sorry, I won. Okay. Yes. Ghosts can leave chicken and I hate improv. Both are true. I had a Big Mac under the bed of my freshman dorm that arrived under the bed of my freshman dorm in October and departed from under the bed of my freshman dorm.
Starting point is 00:15:01 The day that I moved out of that dorm in May. It was a seven month big Mac. That's amazing. It was a dark time. I am so glad you made it through, John. Oh, that me. What a weirdo. All right, let's answer this question from Sydney.
Starting point is 00:15:21 I don't know if this is our mom, or a different Sydney. But Sydney writes, dear John and Hank, how did conspiracy theories get created and circulated before the internet? Like now we have Reddit and Tumblr and fake Instagram videos for it. But how did conspiracy theories get bigger
Starting point is 00:15:36 than a few people before the internet? P-Sharmon 42, well, he'll be way, Sydney. So it's a top class finding Dory joke. Oh, good. So I was just at the farmers market here in Madison, Wisconsin. And they were a number of people who wanted me to stop by their booths. Talking, they weren't really booths.
Starting point is 00:15:55 I think that they are sort of free speech in it down there, talking about one thing or another. And that's not really an internet activity. They were really, there was a dinosaur found at the bottom of the deep sea that disproves evolution. They wanted to know about it. Right. So there's that strategy.
Starting point is 00:16:12 There's a phrase called getting on your soapbox that comes from people really standing on soapboxes and saying whatever they wanted to say, which sometimes would be like people need human rights, including the right to free expression, and sometimes would be like people need human rights, including the right to free expression, and sometimes would be like the moon landing was fake. Yeah. And so in a world of free expression,
Starting point is 00:16:31 you have all of those voices together. And then once information started to be distributed differently, all of those vehicles were used for disseminating incorrect information. That was the case in newspapers. Many newspapers foster conspiracy theories. It was the case in on radio. Like you can early radio. Oh, same radio.
Starting point is 00:16:56 Yeah. AM radio during our childhoods. That's how you found out that Nixon was married to an alien. And Nixon's daughter was half alien. And it's funny to be like, how did ideas spread before the internet, the same way? Books, people wrote books about how the Kennedy assassination was faked, and people talked about it in like information spreads.
Starting point is 00:17:17 It doesn't, like information spreads more efficiently now, yes? We're always spread. And the story of the human is the story of being able to spread information more efficiently and quickly. Right. And that's really the thing that freaks me out about right now, the most. You can say that weapons technologies are kind of the scariest thing, but communications technologies are the thing that shifts society the most. And we've never had a revolution in communication technologies like we are having right now
Starting point is 00:17:46 I think we have had one before but it was also very very destabilizing and it was when the printing press was introduced Yeah, I mean within 50 years of the introduction of the printing press the number of books Went up by like a factor of a million or something. Yeah, crazy like that and it was very destabilizing I think that we are going through a weird time and it is partly because our ways of technology are changing and that means the systems that we've built up over the last few centuries to kind of deal with incorrect or misleading
Starting point is 00:18:18 or sensationalized information, those systems aren't working very well right now because those systems are built for communication strategies that most people aren't using. I remember when I was a kid, somebody gave me, like I was walking around Lake Eola. Oh yeah, that's happened to me too. In Orlando, and somebody gave me a book
Starting point is 00:18:39 that was essentially like a book of conspiracy theories. Yeah. And 12-year-old me, just eight, it up. Like I remember, one of them was that Stephen Hawking, the physicist, had actually died in 1972 and had been replaced with a different physicist. And the evidence for it seemed so overwhelming and obvious when it was presented in this conspiracy theory format.
Starting point is 00:19:03 And you see how, especially in a world of lots and lots of data, you see how you can find data points that support your feeling that there are like big forces at work in the world trying to make things bad for you. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like it's very appealing to be able to think you know something big that other people don't.
Starting point is 00:19:27 It's sort of like a shortcut to being powerful, or at least in your own sort of like comfortable in your own power and it's sort of a shortcut to feeling smart. Yeah, well you're in on something that other people don't know about. The phrase in our childhood was sheeple. You know, like, yeah, they still use that one. They still say that. Sorry, I haven't. I'm not familiar with what the kids are doing.
Starting point is 00:19:54 This is a really important question, John, that I don't think that we have really covered. I had to quit late. That people, it probably, many people have, a deer, Hank, and John. I was recently scrolling through your most popular vlog where there's videos, and notice that nine of the 14 of your top videos have to do with giraffe mating
Starting point is 00:20:08 or another type of animal. I found this particularly odd as you have both made, in my opinion, much more interesting content. So I guess my question is, why are your most viewed videos all about giraffe sex? Who finds that appealing? Giraffes and geraniums, Christina? Who finds that appealing? Giraffes and geraniums, Christina. Who finds that appealing?
Starting point is 00:20:26 First of all, giraffes are fascinating. And giraffe mating habits are especially fascinating because male giraffes hit female giraffes in the bladder and then drink their pea to find out if they're ovulating. Like that's the kind of stuff that in 2007, America's 14 year olds found irresistible. Yeah, no, not just America either. We were, that video is huge all over the world.
Starting point is 00:20:47 It's true, it's really our only global hit. It's the only time we've really broken out of the English speaking world. So Christina, one of the things that you'll notice if you look at a giraffe is you'll think to yourself, wait, how? Yes, right. And so I think that's part of it.
Starting point is 00:21:00 People sitting around a table, just like we are right now at a contemporary art museum will talk about your apps and be like, wait, but no, how does that work? And then they Google it and our video comes up. Right, and it's the same thing with the other animals. So back when Hank and I were trying to get lots of YouTube views, it was very interesting to try and do that.
Starting point is 00:21:23 Yeah, it was exciting. It was a good game. Yeah, it felt like it felt important in a way that frankly today it doesn't. But back when we were really obsessed with that, we noticed, of course, that people responded to these videos and the videos that they responded the most to were the ones with weird mating habits.
Starting point is 00:21:39 But more than that, the ones with like anatomies that would make you say, how? Wait, how? Wait, what? Is that like tortoises, et cetera? Yeah, and also there was a time when YouTube rewarded a click much more than it rewarded a watch. So a lot of people clicked on the thumbnail
Starting point is 00:21:55 just because they wanted to watch a giraffe do it. And then they were like, oh, this man is talking about giraffe sex, not really interested in the details. I just want to see it happen. Right, right really interested in the details. I just wanna see it happen. Right, right, that's very true. The other thing though, is that there is a small subset of viewers of those videos. One of whom left a comment that is seared in my memory
Starting point is 00:22:17 in a way that no other YouTube comment ever has known. Can you please do more videos of animals kissing and other? It's the and other that I can never forget. I really like it. The last thought I'll ever have will be and other. All of my other memories will be gone. I'll be alone in a nursing home and my eyes will flash open
Starting point is 00:22:43 and those will probably be my accidental last words. And other. And other, actually pretty good last words, but not an act context. No, no one will know. Well, everyone will have forgotten, and someday someone will listen to this podcast and be like, oh, you guys thought it was some deep thing.
Starting point is 00:22:57 No, he was thinking about drafts boning. Right, yeah, it'll be like the rosebud of my life. By the way, I just want you to sit us in Cane. I know that it's the best movie of all time, but it is very good. Like everybody talks about how it's the best movie of all time. And so I assumed that it was going to be kind of torture to watch.
Starting point is 00:23:18 But it was great. It was really, it is really good. I get why people are slouching. Oh, it's really good. I get why people are so much about it. Oh, it's really good I've had the things foiled. It's not like the it's not like the six Harry Potter movie or anything like the spoilers to citizen Kane or are not especially devastating which reminds me actually Hank that today's podcast is brought to you by citizen Kane citizen Kane John recommends it This podcast is also brought to you by your ghost roommate
Starting point is 00:23:42 John recommends it. This podcast is also brought to you by your ghost roommate. Always a little bit late with the rent. Always late on the rent. And also inflation is so much that they just can't get it together. Yeah, there's just been a lot. What do you need? I got 12 cents. That's a lot, right? And my day, that could buy you a Model T and a Picasso.
Starting point is 00:24:00 Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the unwitting hosts to our episode of Dear Hank and John. And this podcast is brought to you by Skin Munchy Bacteria. Skin Munchy Bacteria, it's cute! The crows this. John, this question actually comes from our show last night we didn't get to it, but it was somebody in the audience who sent this one in. It's from Trisha, who asks,
Starting point is 00:24:27 Dear Hank and John, Mama Mia is my favorite movie. And it's slowly becoming my only personality trait. How can I stop relating every situation in my life to the plot or songs of Mama Mia? That being said, my ambulance song would be SOS by ABBA. Okay. Here's the thing. This is actually a pretty easy one to solve because I've been in this boat before where you love something so much that it becomes difficult to talk or think about anything else.
Starting point is 00:24:53 Yeah. So the key to this solution is watching the movie Mama Mia 2. Here we go again. Because then you'll never, you'll never talk about Mama Mia again. I like, is it here we go again? Here I go it here we go again here I go here we go again. I believe it's called mama Mia to here we go again. Here we go. But the subtitle should have been mama Mia to all the dad is read that. This subtitle should have been it mama Mia to Hank actually didn't realize that the
Starting point is 00:25:19 dads were going to show up and that 100% surprised him so much and he cried. I'm concerned that I might have I might have stolen that joke. Okay. I'm searching for Mamma Mia to all the dads and I'm not seeing anything but if I stole that joke I'm sorry to whoever I stole it from. But do you have this in your life sometimes where you get so into something that everything seems to relate to it? That's the music video for Smash Mousal Star.
Starting point is 00:25:43 Of course for me it's usually a breakup. You know, like, I'm sure you remember this, hey, like after my big breakups for six months to a year, no matter what someone said, I would be like, oh, that reminds me of my heartbreak, which is ongoing and omnipresent. One time, I saw someone open a car door, and I thought to myself,
Starting point is 00:26:04 she opened a car door just like that. Oh my God. So that's the key though, is just get your heart broken, you'll stop thinking about Mama Mia. Yeah. As we have said before, diversify your identity. diversify. More in the world than Mama Mia.
Starting point is 00:26:24 This next question comes from Iris. We did meet last night, I remember. Yes, they were nice. Iris, it was great to meet you. Who asked, dear Hank and John, how would fandoms and online communities be impacted by a devastating worldwide apocalypse level event?
Starting point is 00:26:37 Oh, that is a great question. That how would different fandoms respond to the apocalypse? Yeah. So I'm gonna reveal my bias here and say that I genuinely think the Harry Potter fandom would come together. Come together and like work. They do this, they do this spell that goes up into the sky and they'd be like, everybody gather around.
Starting point is 00:26:58 Yes. I think it's called Periculum, which is something that I... That's shouldn't know. That's a deep cut. Yeah. Then you gather at Joe Rowling's house. Hey, we're big fans. We hear you have stuff.
Starting point is 00:27:11 We believe you have resources, which are now in short supply. Then there's the contemporary, young, usually shirtless YouTuber. I don't know. Where the guy was like, so y'all, wild day yesterday, right? So many people died, it was like super sad. Hey everybody, what's up? Really, I mean, half the human race gone in one, yeah, it's crazy.
Starting point is 00:27:38 So merch link in the bio. But man, I just, it's a tough day for everybody. But you know, if we're looking at it honestly, also kind of a great day, right? Maybe a good day to get today is a great day t-shirt. I think the AM radio fandom would do really well. Oh God, they would, I mean the AM radio people would just be, they would get on A and Radio and they would be like, I told you so. Oh my God, I've been talking about this for 50 years. It's like, they would have that like weird glee that sometimes people have when bad things happen
Starting point is 00:28:14 that they've been predicting. Oh yeah. That's the worst thing about thinking something bad is gonna happen is that when it happens, you're like, see, and it's like, I shouldn't have a good feeling to that. No, you don't want to be, you never want to be gloating in the face of tragedy. No, never.
Starting point is 00:28:29 It's the worst book. Yep, but no, I think the AM radio community would crush it. Also crushing it, of course, the survivalists who would live an extra three weeks, but then still die like the rest of us. Yeah. I think that Iris, you are optimistic about the ability of internet systems to survive
Starting point is 00:28:49 on apocalyptic events. Yeah. The cloud would cease to be cloudy very rapidly. Right, one of the weird things that would happen is that the last YouTube video, it's very possible that the last YouTube video would have absolutely nothing to do with whatever the cataclysmic append was. The last YouTube video ever uploaded might be somebody like, hey, you'll never guess what my cat did today.
Starting point is 00:29:16 And then click. Well, I think that we're not gonna go extinct as a species. Yeah, I do sometimes feel like I need to reassure people about this because there is this eschatological anxiety that I remember happening before. I remember it happening in the 1980s when I was a kid and we would have to do these drills where we literally got under our desks
Starting point is 00:29:42 to prepare for a nuclear bomb attacking Orlando, Florida. Yeah. And there was an expectation that at some point in the next few decades, there would be a cataclysmic nuclear war. And there was a lot of anxiety about the end of the human species and people feeling like they didn't want to have kids when the human species was about to end. And now we are facing a lot of that same anxiety, and I do not in any way want to minimize our problems
Starting point is 00:30:08 because I think our problems are real, and in some cases they are existential. But I also think that we are not about to go extinct. Civilization is not about to end, barring something very unforeseen, like a yellow stone, or a yellow stone super volcano, or a, you know, yellow, or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or superhero or a or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or superhero or a superhero or superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or a superhero or superhero or a superhero or superhero or a superhero or a superhero or superhero or a or a superhero or a people thought the world was about to end, and they have thought it many, many times. They have been wrong. Now eventually, they will be right, but not today.
Starting point is 00:30:48 So the wind, the wind starting to pick up, as you may be hearing, and that means that it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Hank, I'll go first, AFC Wimbledon, played maybe the only team in League One that's definitely worse than us. AkinConsidantly got a red card and we tied. We tied.
Starting point is 00:31:08 We got our first point of the season. There's two ways of looking at this. One way is that after three games, we've only got one point. Another way is that we are in 18th place well out of the relegation zone. In no small part, thanks to Barry and Bolton Wanderer is having respectively
Starting point is 00:31:26 negative twelve and negative eleven points a fc wimble then not doing well definitely o'arm bells going off i i would say at this point we're looking at a level nine crisis it's not catastrophic it's not cataclysmic but boy boy, I want to stay and leave one for one more season. And a news from Mars, John, Elon Musk, really apparently wants to nuke Mars. It's back. It's a sign of the tremendous stability he has as an executive and as a person.
Starting point is 00:31:58 He just tweeted nuke Mars with an exclamation point. It's got 209,000 likes, so apparently that's how you get big on Twitter. It's just you want to nuke Mars. Of course, the plant and nuke Mars is to introduce a lot of energy to the system, potentially evaporating a lot of the carbon dioxide ice, which would create a larger greenhouse effect, which would increase the overall warmth of the planet and also potentially atmospheric pressure, which would make it easier to live on the planet. It certainly wouldn't make it so that we could like walk around or anything. That's the idea. No one
Starting point is 00:32:33 has any idea if it would work, but there's only one way to find out which is to Newk Mars. I mean, can I just say on a personal note that if we nuke Mars before sending people to Mars, that will be the most, both the most Elon Musk thing imaginable and the most human thing imaginable. That like, all right, we do, we do want to settle this planet, but first, nuke. I understand the reasoning behind it, but it just seems to me like we don't have nearly enough information to make that even a remotely good idea.
Starting point is 00:33:09 Yeah, well, we've never engineered a planetary system, except for the wants we're doing it a little bit right now here on Earth, not on purpose, but it's happening. My worry is that if we nuke to Mars and it worked, we just nuke everything else. I can nuke Jupiter. I should have nuke Jupiter. Nu do it. I should add new Jupiter. I should add new Tesson. It worked on Mars. Maybe we could live everywhere.
Starting point is 00:33:32 How? Hey, come over to say hi. Podcast. Yeah, so that's the news from Mars. We've just been spotted by some friendly people who I think are gonna come over and say a quick hello hold on Come say hi. What's your name? I believe old Taylor. Hey, we're nice to meet you. How's it going? Monica nice to meet you. How's it going good? Good. Good. I was the art music. I feel like I've seen your necklace before oh I mean I know where it's from actually.
Starting point is 00:34:05 Oh, it's cool. Well, we're making it out. I haven't really got to, I'm excited to see that. It's really cool. Oh yeah, you're not allowed to take it in there. Do you think we should nuke Mars? Oh, Elon Musk.
Starting point is 00:34:17 Yeah. Yeah. He's informed. I don't think it'll work, because I think it'll evaporate over time, and it won't actually form the atmosphere. It's tight, so I read on it. Oh wow, he's up to date. We've got a week.
Starting point is 00:34:30 Taylor knows way more than we do. We're in a hurry. Maybe we should replace Tank with Taylor. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. We don't meet then or up in the ass.
Starting point is 00:34:39 No, well, it's great to meet you. Really a pleasure. Yeah, nice meeting you guys. Yeah, take care. Thank you. And with that, John, thank you meet you. Really a pleasure. Yeah, nice meeting you guys. Yeah, take care. Thank you. And with that, John, thank you for parting with me today. It's been a pleasure. And also thanks to Taylor and Anika for dropping by.
Starting point is 00:34:52 Yeah, absolutely. If you want to send us your questions, you can do that at hankinjohnatgmail.com. Thank you to everybody who sends them in. We had a great show in Madison yesterday. That'll come out as a podcast sometime in the future. We're doing a Minneapolis tomorrow, and that also will be a podcast sometime in the future. And we're going to be doing more of this touring over the next year to support our community's projects to reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. So look for tour dates coming up.
Starting point is 00:35:22 Thank you again for listening. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish, our head of community and communications in Victoria, Bonjona. We're produced by Rosiana Halserohas and shared in Gibson. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're listening to right now
Starting point is 00:35:36 is by the Greg Van Arola. And as they say, in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. Don't forget to be awesome. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

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