Dear Hank & John - 345: Did He Have Rats?

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

What's up with Ryan Reynolds? Why do green anoles like singing more than brown anoles? Is stomach acid inside our bodies or outside our tubes? How do bats aim poop? How do La Croixs get their flavor? What is the beer of champagnes? Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or is I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be a advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. You know, when we were kids, parents would sometimes, when one kid had chicken pox, they'd bring a lot of other kids over so that everybody would get chicken pox. This is a real thing that happened. Yeah, pox parties. Like chicken pox, they'd bring a lot of other kids over so that everybody would get chicken pox. This is a real thing that happened. Yeah, pox parties.

Like real pox parties. Did you know that? But obviously, so the kids can have pox parties, but adults, they got to go to the shingles bar. Oh, I thought you were going to say they got to do shingled digs, shindicles, shindicles, shindigles, Shindigles, Shindigles. They go out of the shingles bar. I have shingles.

Hey, guys, shingles and goodness gracious. I know that, hey, guys, shingles, and I do feel really bad for you, Hank, I know that it's extremely painful. Yes. What? I feel like you're gonna say a butt. I am gonna say a butt.

I am the sick brother. Oh God, I've been so sick lately. I am the sickly one. Yeah. And I don't think it's cool of you to try to move into my territory. It's been my whole thing though. That's what I've always been doing.

Like you get into the Mr. T experience, I get into the Mr. T experience. You get into online video, I get into online video. Like you love Zef Frank, I love Zef Frank. This is how it is, I'm a younger brother. You write novels, I write novels, you get sick a bunch and are a hypokontriac. I get sick a bunch and now there's a lump on my arm

and I asked the doctor about it and he was like, that's a lump and I was like, but like, how bad is it? No, man. Now I'm worried. Now you got me worried. It's okay. Hank, I don't want to hit you while you're down. But before we get to questions from our listeners, I think it's important to discuss an issue.

Uh-oh. Which one? I have so many. We have declared that this podcast will be renamed Dear John and a Hank. If no human steps foot on Mars by the end of 2027. Can we do that moon instead? Can we just change it? No. And recently somebody wrote in to say, he wrote in to say, now we will know for sure that a human is not going to step on Mars. Irrelevant. I was just going to stop you right there.

Irrelevant. That's not the bet. The bet is not whether it's when it's when that year arrives. So your argument is that it's not until December 31, 2027 that we renamed the podcast to Deer John at Hank. My argument is that in fact, whenever that launch window closes in 2026, you don't know. You don't know. I do know.

History is full of surprises. One of the benefits of having done this podcast with you for 10 years is that I actually do know how long it takes to get to Mars. You don't know no one expects the Spanish Inquisition John. You could we could invent a thing right on right at 1158 that's like oh oh we could just uh tell if I just if I just like shove this sharpy up my nose in at the right place in the right time and the right way, boom, I'm a Mars. You don't know.

I'll be honest with you, Hank. No one's trying that. It feels like you're playing for time. Yeah, that's right. Of course I am. Well, it's not even playing for time because playing for time is like maybe this was the way that we will win, but I don't expect to win.

I'm just holding on to what I have for as long as I can. It's just because if it's the launch window, then it might as well be now. And now it's 2022. Right. Right. If it's the launch window, then that at some point you might say, right, but realistically, when could we get humans to Mars? And the answer is not 2027. So we might as well just start calling it dear John and Hank today. That

I actually find that argument more compelling that we shouldn't call it dear John and Hank simply because it's this thing that is inevitable is inevitable, but it won't become official until January 1, 2028. We're talking about things. We're not talking about things that will be were things how come about things that are? Yes. Because if we were going to do more of. Because if we were going to do more of, oh, that is so true. That's so true. Wow. Wow, you stumbled into a deep one. Well, he's a deep well when he gets, when he gets shingles.

I mean, I wasn't when it was bad. When it was bad, I was a very shallow well in every way. I could not think straight. Yeah. My temper was extremely short. People like any, like so much of my consciousness was taken up with like trying to not feel the pain or trying to sort of like mentally wall off the pain or just sort of experience the pain on the side of consciousness. Yeah. That I like anything that was extra hard, I just gave up.

And that was everything from work where like any extra challenge, I was like, I'm not handling that. General motivation, but also like temper, like Orin doing something even a little bit normally I'd be able to handle. I just, I was so, I snapped so fast. Chronic pain is so debilitating and like I am just so happy that it was as short-lived as it was for me. Yeah, so I think that's really true. We think of our personality as being completely separate from our circumstances somehow, but in fact, they're that's really true. We think of our personality as being completely separate from our circumstances somehow,

but in fact, they're also interdependent. I mean, I wanna believe that about myself, right? That I'm like, I'm very motivated person. I can work through this, but it's just not true. Like when I was sick with COVID, I could not do good work. When I was experiencing severe shingles pain, I could not do good work.

Yeah, so I'm feeling much better though. I'm glad that you're feeling better, but I also really appreciate the empathy that you've long shown for living with pain. It is really hard for people who have to do it. You've helped any of them out with that. Thanks. Let's answer this question from listener Eli. He writes, dear John and Hank, what's up with Ryan Reynolds and his new show about AFC Rexham? How do you feel about it? Did he betray you?

Did he copy off of you? Thanks for the dubious advice. Eli. All right. Here's the thing Eli. Ryan Reynolds stole our idea. I mean, I think he did. I know we didn't. We had him on the podcast, but I didn't like what like, I just seems really unlikely to me that

more than one guy like us, like American, well, he's Canadian, isn't he? Well, first off, like half of all English football teams are owned by Americans. So that falls apart right there. I don't know anything. To me, it's the weirdest character trait a person can have. So explain to me, John. Yeah. Explain to me how any of this works.

I got an email recently from my mother-in-law who was like a group of people in Birmingham, Alabama, here just bought a fourth-tier English soccer team. Isn't that the league that Wimbledon play in? And it wasn't Ryan Reynolds. It was other people. So anyway, Ryan Reynolds did call me when they first had this idea before they decided to do it, before they decided anything else when the idea was first happening. He called me when they first had this idea before they decided to do it before they decided anything else when that when the idea was first happening. He called me 100% on board. I think this is lovely. And he said, I know that you've had this experience for years with AFC Wimbledon, my friend Robyni are thinking about buying a football team and making a show about the experience of that first year

together. And I was like, I really can't really be betrayed because like, you were pre-trade if anything. Yeah. He called me and he was like, do you have any advice? Do you have any thoughts? And I was like, this is such a great idea. It's going to be incredible.

I don't really have any advice except that it's going to be incredible. I don't really have any advice except that it's going to be awesome. And remember that some people who play for the rival teams or support the rival teams might like you a little less as I am indeed not the best selling author in Milton Keynes. But the show that they have made is wonderful. It's so beautiful. It captures everything I love about soccer and you don't have to care about football to love the show because it really captures how of all the unimportant things football is the most important. How it brings communities together. All that stuff that we love about Wimbledon is true for Rexham as well. And the show is amazing, not always the show amazing, but I'm in it.

I'm in this week's episode, Hank. I do a little crash course on the history of Wales. It's so great. And complexly got paid for that. So, no, we definitely did not get stolen from. In fact, if anything, we did steal. Well, look, it was a collaborative effort and everyone provided value and received value.

And that's the way that things should work. So the show is great. Watch, watch me in it. I'm so excited that my, really my debut in some ways as an actor in a proper program, proper television or movie experience is in a Rob McElaney and Ryan Reynolds production. It's incredible that I've never appeared in any of the adaptations of the movies of my books, but I, it's just, it's just incredible. I'm thrilled, Hank.

I have a face for small screens. I haven't seen it. Is it out? No, it comes out on Thursday. Amazing. Okay, but it's not by the time this is out. It's okay. It is out. So that's why it's just not for me.

Right. So yeah, the show is called Welcome Directsum. It's so good. It's so good. I'm, I just, I think Ryan Reynolds is the real deal. I just think he's also. He seems like a cool guy. All right, John. This next question comes from Lamp, who asks, I think Ryan Reynolds is the real deal. I just think he's awesome. He seems like a cool guy. All right, John.

This next question comes from Lampe, who asks, Steeringhank and John, I live in an area where there are green and oils and brown and oils. These are small wizards, if you don't know about them. When I grew up, I grew up before it, and we called them anoles, but now everybody tells me they're its pronounced anoles. Hmm. Anyway. Wait, are the regular wizards in Orlando?

Are those anoles? They are. Oh, I just called them lizards. I called them lizards, but I know of the green and the brown lizards. They're sort of two basic genres of Orlando lizard. That's right. Yeah, there's green and brown. There's the big old browns and the kind of cute little greens. Right.

And the green ones are a lot faster and the brown ones look more like dinosaurs. Yeah. Yeah. They could even have like a crest on the back. They definitely look like they could come get you. And they will sometimes. No. The green and oles, well, they will bite you if you let them. Yeah, but it's not going to hurt. Okay. Continuing. The green and oles love to listen to me sing. Every time I see one, it just stares at me, like it's expecting something. And then when I start singing, it closes, it's cute little eyes, like it's listening.

And then more of them start gathering like I'm doing a concert. But this only happens with the green ones. The brown ones just run away. The green ones listen every time. I even had one crawl onto my hand. Due to brown and Oles being an invasive species in the green and all population having been dwindling But for some reason they crowd around like friggin paparazzi and it's only me too every time a friend or someone else comes by the lizards

Run away. Of course, I love the lizards and I always am kind and respectful to the green and brown and oils But why do they love me singing so much? You know what, Lamp, I don't care why they love it, but I do wanna do science on you to find out. But more than that, I wanna explore what kind of superhero you are and how you can use your powers for good. Yeah, like it's like the Pied Piper leading the children's crusader with everything.

There is a whole thing. What did the Pied Piper do? I don't know, did he have rats? I think he had children. I don't remember. What followed by Piper Google? Children is children. It's definitely children.

Before you get to your scientific analysis of this phenomenon, I also want to point out that Lamp offered us an illustration of the giant cloudor and Mary Janet. It's pretty epic. It's pretty epic. It was like the low of the page break because it's big. Oh, yes, nice.

The giant cloudor is kind of looking up at Mary Janet, who is seated atop the giant cloud or and it's really good. We're gonna post it on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John. Mary Janet in this in this image is looking really like what would you say? A little bit drowsy, but also just like I float around on a cloud. It's my boyfriend. It's got a big deal. Yeah, I would describe this Mary Janet

as Jessica Rabbits seen it all. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Wow. It's a niche joke, but it was perfect for Hank. This is a great, yeah.

This is an amazing question. And the fact that it came with an illustration is really quite remarkable. Hank, yes. Do lizards like music or do we not know? I have no idea. I know. I know.

I know. I don't know. We weren't able to do any research on this for this like in a scientific way and it turns out that you have absolutely no scientific answer. I have a scientific answer, John. And that scientific answer is we don't know many things about our universe, especially the living things in it. And the only way that we find those things out

is people know this stuff and then they test it. So, Lam, you need to do some science, like to try and remove your bias from the situation, maybe blindfold yourself, I have someone lead you to a lizard, do this in all kinds of different ways. Do a recording of your singing and haven't happened without you. Have someone who's a better singer and a worse singer than you sing different songs, etc.

You need to figure out like if there is a repeatable effect here, also you could try it on different green and all populations. Go try and find some other ones. You could reach out to some unologists, which is the actual name for people who study in oils and be like, Hey, I've noticed this. Can you adjust for fun, Z's? What would you suggest I do to learn more about them, et cetera? I love it. There are also lots of other species of anoles that you could try this on. They're just not in Florida. I love the idea of lamp devoting themselves to trying to understand this phenomenon.

And it eventually ends with the global human realization that the little green wizards in Orlando have been making music all this time, just that a frequency we can't hear. Yeah. All right, this next a frequency we can't hear. Yeah. All right, this next question comes from Sage. You're right, Steer John and Hank. Recently, I had a concussion and I've been relistening to the whole podcast. Sorry, that we're not better, Sage.

I feel bad. I can't remember which episode it was because I'm concussed, but at some point you discussed how the human body is basically just a big tube circulating the digestive tract. Oh, that was in all the episode. That's a many of them. Yeah, we're just tubes that have flesh and limbs.

Anyway, this got me thinking, is the stomach acid inside of our bodies or is it outside of our bodies because it's inside the tube? But my brain hurts so my advice won't be very sage. It's pretty good pun given the situation in sage. Hank, of course, the concept of inside and outside of the body is a linguistic construct,

not a real thing. But I think stomach acid is outside of the body. I mean, so in the same way that you sweat onto the outside of your body, you excrete stomach acid onto the outside of your body, you excrete stomach acid onto the outside of your body. If we're going through the dear angonjohn definition of outside, which means that everything from the mouth to the anus is just a tube of outside that runs through the inside, which I don't see. I don't see where else you draw the line.

Don't see any human against it. Exactly. So you're basically sweating out acid and actually what that leads me to realize, what I've never thought about before, that there's no reason that you couldn't excrete acid from any other part of your body. That's biological reason. Like if it's possible in one group of cells, it's possible anywhere else. It sounds like a terrible superpower. anywhere else. Sounds like a terrible superpower.

What is your superpower? Oh, I can melt my own skin. It's kind of a butter actually. The acid sweat or? Yeah. It's not great to be a acid sweat or the giant cloud or a sidekick. Yeah, I don't do a lot of good for the world, but I do like him. He's a f**k guy.

He's a f**k guy. His main responsibility in life is to never sweat. Yeah, the giant cloud or just keeps him cool. And he also has to keep him like, relax too. He can't get nervous. Yeah. It's typical sidekick stuff where the sidekick contributes absolutely nothing except for a new problem for the superhero to solve.

That's right. Oh God, it is hard being the superhero with a younger brother sidekick, but I do manage. Um, I do suddenly have a lot of problems to solve. I'll say that. I think the other nice thing about thinking about the inside of the tube being the outside of the body is that then I don't actually eat food so much as I have food run through me. So much as I have food run through me and and and I have my body kind of take what it needs and the rest of it actually never Enters me. It only enters the tube

Which is not me Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that that does make a lot of sense that there's never like poop in your body Not unless you have a level one emergency Yeah agreed there's never like poop in your body. Not unless you have a level one emergency. Yeah, agreed. Hooray! This next one comes from Alyssa, who asks dear Hank and John, when bats poop, while hanging upside down, does the poop

hit the men like the face first or something? Great. A group of 30-year-olds are wondering this while also discussing the best Tupperware on a Saturday night. But we need to know, bat poop and pyrex Alyssa. First of all, Alyssa, can you email us and let me know what the best Tupperware on a Saturday night, but we need to know that poopin' Pyrex Alyssa. First of all, Alyssa, can you email us and let me know what the best Tupperware is

because I'm not satisfied. I'm satisfied with the Pyrex I have, but the Lids last a maximum of a year, and then I gotta buy a bunch of new Lids, or I don't, and they're just like cracked and grunting air in, which is not what they're supposed to do. Why can't a Pyrex thing have a lid that lasts more than a year? It's it's Pyrex. The glass that will last forever.

That's all. So let me know what you think. John, tell me about that poop. Well, I don't know anything about that. Tell me about it. I'm aware that John. The mo I don't know. So I don't know anything about that poop. Tell me about to have a word in John. I don't know the answer to this question, but the moment it was asked, I was like, I know that bats poop while they're asleep, or at least while they're hanging upside down, because I've seen a lot of bat poop and then like looked up and seen a bat. Yeah. I know that's more of a correlation than a causation thing, but it's a strong correlation. Strong correlation. And it never occurred to me if the head is

below the butt, the poop must hit the head. Yeah. Do you know what bat poop looks like? I do. I've seen it a good Gillian times. Why do you see so much Batpoop? Well, Hank, I own a lot of 145 year old structures. Oh, right. You have those like barn. I have a, I have an, I have an uncommon number of 145 year old structures to most people. Tell me about that poop, John.

It's a little and it's hard. And there's a lot of little hard pooplets. Yeah. So they poop out little rice grain pooplets. I would say for the record, they're big rice pooplets. They're not little, but they're little compared to human pooplets for sure. Yeah. So bats, bat poop is hard and dry, and if it does hit them on the way down, it doesn't

do the many damage. Now there's would be a problem with pee, but they P while they're fine, which is, I don't know if they like do it right as they're leaving or if they do it like whenever, but my guess would be like you've been holding it all night the moment you're like not upside down anymore, like worried about peeing on your own face, use a P on the way out of your cave.

Yeah, or it could be that like as you get older, you do have to pee while you're sleeping. So you just kind of like get up fly around for a minute to pee and then lie back down. You know. Has anybody ever done research on whether other animals have this like as they get older they have to pee in the night more? Or is that a human thing?

At any rate, we're going gonna learn at the end of the podcast that people do research on things that you would not ever imagine that people do research on. The poop question is answered. Baths do poop on their own faces. It's just not a problem. The Tupperware question is not answered Alyssa.

I want you to let us know what conclusion you came to. Having said it's not a problem. And I don't want to overanalyze this. I am now imagining myself as a bat. And I think that it would be a problem. Here's what it is. Here's what it is. It wouldn't be a problem for me on the scale of of peeing, obviously, because I understand they're very hard, they're very small.

It's not sticking into the, it would still be a problem to have over the course of my, of my sleep period, a certain number of poop pellets from my own body roll past my own face. You know, and I don't know if they actually hit. I just, I don't know, if you're a bat biologist, I don't think that the people have paid much attention to this. Now, are you imagining that they like shoot out their poops, like red green into the Nintendo that they like fire at them?

What I'm imagining is the worst case scenario where the poop comes out and on the way it hits several times and then like the last hit is straight on the nose, you know? And I think aren't, aren't there, aren't there heads kind of the smallest parts of their body? So actually, I think it would like roll across their stomachs or their wings and then not hit their heads. I think for it to hit their heads. But I'm imagining, I'm imagining the worst case scenario because I want to make the case that it's not that bad. Because I think it is. I think the worst case scenario would be, Hank, if I told you like, hey, so you're gonna have a nice long happy life.

The only thing is that you're gonna sleep upside down and all the way long you're gonna poop on your own face. But don't worry. You're gonna poop on your own face. It's really hard and it won't stick. I think you'd be like, I don't love it. Yeah, well, first of all, I'll be on two cases. First, you're going to agree with one and not the other. The first is that in this situation, I'm a bat. And bats are different.

And if it's not a harm to them, like it's not gonna impede their reproductive success, there's not, like they will learn to not mind it because it won't, like just like we learned to not mind all kinds of things that might objectively be a little bit gross. Second, you'll disagree with this one. If you took some of those bat poops and threw them at me

and hit me in the head, I would be like, ah, John, I would not be that upset. That's something that does. Like, I mean, it's a human. I can't even respond to it. I'm not even, I can't even indulge that. That is such a fringe opinion. You know, that's like, that's like if you said JFK Jr. is alive and well, that's how

fringe your take just now was. I don't mind getting healthy in the face with Bat Poup is a fringe opinion, Hank. That is a hard, like that's one of those opinions. Like if I'm at a cocktail party, Hank, and somebody tells me that don't mind being pelted into the face by bat pooflets. Well, if you just pre-ing it up at a nowhere, a chance. It's a pretty good chance. The next thing they're going to say to me is something along the lines of, and as you know, Hillary Clinton is a reptilian. Well, look, I'm not gonna, I'm not

gonna volunteer that. I'm just saying like it like I wouldn't be the way you said well. The way you said well, they'd be think that you were gonna say well, where's a lot we don't know about Hillary Clinton. I really did. I thought you were gonna be like, I don't know. I've never personally tugged on her face. I don't know if a lizard would appear. Anyway, anyway, anyway, all that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's fringe opinions. Hank's fringe opinions. He genuinely thinks that a lot of you out there are going to hear the sentence. I wouldn't mind being pelted in the face by bat pooplets and just be like, oh yeah, no,

that's a good take. This podcast is also brought to you by the bat pooplets themselves. Larger than a grain of rice, but not like by a lot. And dry. And don't worry. Yeah. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by the bats that poop out the bat pooplets

that Hank Green doesn't mind getting pelted in the face with. The bats that poop out the bat pooplets that Hank Green doesn't mind getting pelted in the face with. They transcend all of this. They're above it, literally and figuratively. The podcast is brought to you by me covered in back. Hedito swimming in it like I'm Scrooge McDuck. I got a vault full of it.

I love it. I'm in love with Bat Pooplets. That's what I say. Oh, they call him the guano king of Montana. Bring your Bat Poop to me. I will turn it to gold. Hank doesn't want to sell it. Oh no. He doesn't want to sell that guano. It provides value to me. He's got, he's, he does stuff with it. You don't need to know about what. No, we have, we have snowball fights.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, Godspeed. Oh, God bless you. We also have a project for awesome message from Brandon and the good newspaper crew. We want to say thank you to Hank John and all of Nerdfighteria and a world of cynicism were incredibly inspired by this community maintaining a meaningful sense of radical hopefulness while also acknowledging

the heartbreak pain and injustice of the world. People who are able to do both are the people best equipped to make a positive difference grateful to be in this community. So thank you, Brandon, and the whole good newspaper crew. That's lovely to hear, especially after an extended conversation on the topic of Bat Pouplets. John, this is nice question. It's very important to me. Yeah.

From Jupiter who asks, dear Hank and John, how do lacrois get their flavor? The only ingredient that isn't water is, quote, naturally essenceed. Yeah. And I'm confused. It's not even grammatically correct for it to be a verb there. What's happening? Help Jupiter. Jupiter, I'm literally drinking the La Croix right now and I'd never noticed this before

and I was like, this can't be true. That doesn't sound legal to me, but it says, only carbonated water, comma, naturally essenceed. That, how do they get away with that? Well, that's not really interesting. It's a verb. Yeah. It's a thing that happened.

Well, here is a, an actual newspaper story on the topic. For years, the croix lovers have been faced with a mystery. What are natural essences? Well, I do class action lawsuit filed against the brand's parent company. Oh, wow. Claims that the crois all natural claims are false and that the natural ingredients are actually synthetic. In fact, as the filing states testing reveals

that LeCroix contains a number of artificial ingredients to which natural beverages responded in a statement that it categorically denies all allegations and says all essences contained in wakroy are certified by our suppliers to be a hundred percent natural. Now what is an essence? It's a clear concentrated natural chemical. Okay.

What does that mean? Nobody really knows. Yeah, you can, you can get a lot of chemicals. It's a big nature. It's a big nature. It's got a lot of chemicals in it. Well, if it's clear, I guess that's the only thing you need somehow for some reason. It seems like a glorious quality to me.

And anything can be clear if there's a small enough amount of it, but so on. Here's the process. Essence is created. This is from a business insider story by heating items such as fruit and vegetable skins and rinds and remnants at high temperatures, which produces vapors. And then those vapors are condensed and sold by the barrel. And they are inserted into the croix.

So it's basically vaporized lime rinds. And that's it. I still, regardless of what's happening, I still take a medical concern. If it said natural essences, I'd be like, ugh, not like, but you've naturally essenced the water? Is that the, is that, that's no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because you made that up. That's not a thing that existed before a La Croix can. So nobody knows what that means. Right. Well, I don't think they want to say, like this contains tangerine rinds and other leftovers that we've vaporized.

They can say, it's natural flavorings is what every other thing says. Mm. I really am excited about this class action lawsuit. It sounds like it's going to be a barrel of naturally essence laughs. All right, I think we have another question from Matt and I really want to answer this one It sounds like it's going to be a barrel of naturally essence laughs. All right. We have another question from Matt.

And I really want to answer this one because I just went to the champagne region of France. And so I feel like I'm a newly minted expert in champagne and the way you only can after three hours of education. Dear John and Hank, if Miller Highlife is the champagne of beers, what is the beer of champagne's met? I had a, I had what might be a beer of champagne recently. You're going to know more than me, but it was just a, it was a Belini in a bottle. So a Belini is champagne and like fruit juice and fruit puree. It's amazing.

Very good. Yeah's absolutely delicious. That felt like a the the the lower-rung champagne experience. It was like whatever was in there was not the highest quality champagne because it mostly tasted like peaches. Well, it probably wasn't champagne at all because it probably is not perfectly wine from the champagne region of France. Right. Uh-huh. But, but I think that we can all agree that when we talk about champagne, what we mean is sparkling wine. Yes. And when we talk about the beer of champagne, what we mean is Andre. Andre is this amazing brand of sparkling wine that takes everything that is great about wine like

grocery store products like Strawberry Hill from Boone's Farm and makes them sparkle. It is not good, but it is available. I mean, you can buy it almost anywhere. It's easier. And so, and so I think that is the beer of champagne. But then there is a great sparkling one that I love that cost $10 called fresh and a fresh and a yeah, it's spelled like F RE-N-E-T. Okay. You drank it at my wedding. And I believe you. It's great. It's great. Tell you what, this Andre is inexpensive.

Oh yeah, it's like four bucks. You know what we ate in college all the time? What did you eat in college all the time? We drank Prosecco. That? Yeah, Prosecco was a huge range of wine. Oh, okay. God bless him.

That was like another brand. Yeah, no, just seal him up. Just put him in a trophy case, cover him in bubble wrap, make sure that the gods protect him forever. We liked it a lot. It's very tasty. This bethurt bubbly is two dollars and 49 cents. There's two per secos and there's bad per secos.

It's like saying like, I love soda. And now get it down to Diet Dr. Pepper. Yeah. There's a bottle of barefoot bubbly here. Extra dry California champagne, American sparkling wine. For $2.49, which seems like less than the bottle would cost. Yeah, I mean, yes, wine can be very inexpensive, but it can also be not very good. I like inexpensive wines, and I don't want to learn enough about wine that I only love expensive wines

That's one of my big goals in life We gotta stop talking about wine, but I do want to tell you the top review on the barefoot bubbly Page here. It's please do forced forced our review. It says as expected I love you which is so much of what we want out of life. You know, like if I could give one review to every McDonald's hamburger I've ever had, it would be as expected. Which is an achievement. Yeah, for sure.

It is not easy to deliver the product as expected over and over and over again. Yeah. Bang. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC, well, then I want to let you know about a couple things. First off, Mark wrote us to say, dear John and Hank, I come to you today, not with a question, but instead of the fun fact during a recent episode, you discussed the idea of how Superman should be a cloud instead of an attractive man,

since he's an alien and whatnot. To my knowledge, there is no cloud Superman, but there is a sentient solar system Superman called superstar who patrols the Milky Way galaxy. He is mentioned in a single issue of a comic from Mark. And then he includes this mention. and that is really extraordinary. I love the idea of a sentient star system patrolling the Milky Way galaxy Magnificent. I love the idea that too bad with it. That's like the most important scientific discovery of all time. And it's like two frames of one comic. And then they're like, move it on. But we've got earth problems.

The other thing for super like eight supermen in this picture. Why are there so many supermen? I don't know. Couple couple of other things I want to bring your attention to. First off, 50,000 different speech therapists and linguists wrote in to let us know that there is a letter that means the TH sound. Yes. One was Anne who writes, I'm sure I'm one of the speech language pathologist who wrote to tell you this,

but there are letters for the TH sound. In fact, there are different letters for when it is voiced differently, which I thought was wonderful. So it turns out that the name Nathan, if written in the right alphabet, is a paladron. Aondron. Massive relief to Nathan's everywhere. Finally, Sarah wrote into say that she is a PhD student studying psychology and philosophy. And some of her research is about how potlids become symbols. Oh, like, like this was a thing that happened in the past or potlids are symbols. And when potlids are symbols, Sarah writes the answer in my analysis is no. Potlids are not symbols.

If, say, John were to use his potlids once as symbols, but if John, Ancerra, and Alice and Henry all started using some particular potlids as symbols and collectively agreed that they are usually used for symbols, then the potlids are symbols because collective recognition of a whole community can change something's purpose and thereby change what it even is. Wow, it's beautiful. So much fascinating research happening, Hank. So this isn't like about whether or not potlids became symbols historically, but about how we come to define things as the things that they are when they transition from being one thing to another thing. Yes.

Wow. So, potlids can be used as symbols, but potlids can only become symbols if over time we collectively declare them to be primarily symbols. The dear Angajan inbox is one of the best places in the universe. It really is. I mean, it is an endless fount of fascinating information, almost none of which we share with the public. Because we're not very good at our jobs, but we do share news from AFC Wimbledon. Now Hank, I don't know if you heard this in the news, but the Queen of England died. Yes. And this led to the postponement of AFC Wimbledon's game versus latent orient, probably a blessing for AFC Wimbledon as we've been losing game after game after game and an extra day of rest and preparation probably

ain't going to hurt us none. But that's the update for me. FC Wimbledon, all the football was canceled. And among the football was a FC Wimbledon's game versus late Noreant. You know, I kind of felt like and don't take this the wrong way. Going down a league would mean that you would be like one of the best teams in the league. I also kind of thought that yes. I think a lot of Wimbledon fans kind of thought that, but instead we are enjoying weeks off. I'm sorry. I'd like to see you win some more games. You and I are on the same page.

What's the news from Mars? Well, on board, the Preserverance Rover is a lunchbox sized device. It's called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. Better known as Moxie. And researchers have been testing out Moxie's ability to produce oxygen by trying out seven experimental runs

by the end of 2021 under different weather conditions and different times of day to see whether they are able to make oxygen. The device works by just taking air from Mars, running it through a filter to clear out contaminants, and then Moxie pressurizes the air and heats it up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit to break the CO2 in the air down into oxygen ions and carbon dioxide.

Then, that separates the oxygen ions out to combine them into O2 and then it measures the quantity and purity of that product before it then just releases it back to the atmosphere because they don't need it for anything. And they found that Moxie was able to make around 6 grams of oxygen per hour, which is about the same as a small tree can do on Earth. And that is great for the future of Mars missions to, for, for people, because it will have astronauts breathe stuff and help missions.

Wait, how many grams of oxygen per hour do I need? Oh, well, a lot more than six. I thought so. It feels, it feels like that, right? Like I don't actually know how much six grams of oxygen is, but I feel like I need more than that. It seems low. Yeah. Let me see. I don't actually know. 8.4 kilograms per day per human according to NASA. Okay. So six grams per hour, not enough, but you can make a bigger moxie than the one that we put on the back of the curious or perseverance rover. Okay, so I'm just going to tell you, I need the bigger moxie.

And secondly, I'm not sure, and I know that we've been here before, but this planet doesn't seem great for us. Look, it's not about, we definitely don't put it in your head that we go to Mars for a better life. That's not, we're not making, we're not doing Earth to here. We're not going to Mars for a better life. We go to Mars.

It's not a backup Earth to understand, that is the critical thing. It's not a backup Earth. We are going to Mars to understand the universe in our place and it better. There is no backup earth. No. And to the extent that people talk about backup earth, I think they're talking on the scale of tens of thousands of years, which I'm not comfortable talking on.

But interestingly, Moxie isn't just so that we'll have stuff to breathe. It will also potentially be part of how we fuel the missions that return the astronauts to Earth. So we don't have to bring all of the oxidizer with us because that stuff's very heavy. That's kind of cool. So you need that. You don't want to bring all the oxygen with you. If you can make it on Mars, you got to make it on Mars, which it looks like we can definitely

do. Look at us. So I guess the concept then is that in 2024 we're going to send a lot of moxies to Mars in an unmanned mission. And then in 2026, those humans are going to follow up that those moxies. It's all right around the corner, Hank. It's all about to happen or not. corner Hank, it's all about to happen or not or or not or maybe some grand revolution in physics. We'll just let us teleport straight there. Oh, I do love a grand revolution in physics. It doesn't really happen for for clarity. We've had like one think you mean it hasn't

happened yet. There it is. There it is. Well, Hank, thank you for pauding with me. Thanks for overcoming the discomfort of shingles to make the pod, and I hope you feel better soon. Thank you, John. It helps to have something to do.

This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune of Manish. It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Troc-Ravardi. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, it's to be awesome.