Dear Hank & John - 349: The Rooster Gauntlet

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Did people used to die of old age earlier? What would happen to a dead body on the moon? Where could I live that is furthest away from venomous creatures? How do we know that smacking an asteroid would keep it from hitting Earth? How do I be brave in the dark? Hank Green 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

called open because the normal release day for dear hang in john it came and went and you are like what happened and we were like what happened to well turns out I sent to a file that was a total of one second long. And then we had to go through a whole bunch of work thank you to somebody on twitter who helped me with with with a little bit of tech support to extract the file from garage band and the episode is saved. But I also wanted to tell you that the subscription window for the Awesome Sox Club is open now and will be closing on November 14th. The Awesome Sox Club is an opportunity to get a delightful pair of socks delivered to you once every month, designed by a different independent artist. We were really hard to make these socks really lovely. We now have both ankle socks and crew socks, and also a hundred percent of the profit goes to charity.

It goes to Decrease, Mentional, and Job Mortality, and Sierra Leone, because here's the situation. You're going to have to buy socks from someone, and is that somebody going to be some stranger who's going to get the profit, or is it going to be in a way where a hundred percent of the profit gets donated to charity? It's a really lovely experience. Once you just get to be happy, you can cancel any time shipping is free. It's at awesomesaxt.club.

And if you go to awesomesaxt.club slash DHJ, do your handker John DHJ. I just wanted to make it short for you. You'll get $5 off your first month. That's a deal. It's a deal. So go to awesomesaxt.club slash DHJ right now. Well, you're listening to us have a spooky extra spooky episode

and also not know what the future holds for Twitter.com. Though you know that future, but we in the past did not. Anyway, awesomsocks.club slash DHA. Let's continue with the podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Doors 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 did you know that in Florida, alligators can grow up to 26 feet? Is this a Halloween joke or is this a socks club joke? That means they have to get 13 subscriptions to the awesome socks club. I should have seen it coming. Can alligators really grow up to 26 feet or did you make that up? Like in length?

Yeah, I just picked the number. Oh, okay. I was like, that seems way too long. Because I've seen the world's largest alligator, and I don't think it was 26 feet long. You have also seen the world's largest alligator. It surfaced directly next to our canoe in child. Do you remember this?

I do remember that, yes, I don't think it was. The longest, the Florida state record for a crocodile is 10 feet or 14 feet. So they only need a crocodile. Well, no, that can't be, I don't know why I said crocodile, John, a men alligator. Yeah, I'm offended as a Floridian. And very rarely do I identify as a Floridian, let alone get offended.

There's gotta be a bigger alligator than that. So the Awesome Sox Club is taking memberships now. Awesome Sox Club.com is the URL. Nope. No, Hank, it is the URL. Well, that's one of the one of them. Yes. For for an amazing reason. The reason awesome socks club.com is the URL is because fan of ours buck noticed that it was redirecting to an unsavory site awesome socks club.com and so he bought the URL and gave it to the awesome socks club. 100% of the proceeds go to support stronger healthcare systems and empowers communities. You can learn more at awesomesauks.club or awesomesauks.com.

Also, we have two announcements. One, it's Halloween. They're so cute. They're so cute. They're so sweet announcement. They're two sock things that we're doing. I don't even know if you know about this, John. Great. One, we're doing ankle socks. So you can choose between the socks that go up high and the socks that stay down low. A lot of people were like, we want those socks that stay down low. And we listened. That's what they always say. We were listening to our custom. We heard you. We heard you said that you are dishat liking the lack of a dislike button. and that you are dis-hat liking the lack of a dislike button.

We can't bring the dislike button back, but we can make shorter socks. And so we've done that, and I've put them on my foot and they're nice. I like them. Great. It's not for me, I feel rather scanned as having that much of my ankle out. Oh yeah, no, I definitely want the lower calf socks.

Yeah, but for many people, this is the ideal sock. And second, we are now shipping out of the European Union, which means that you can get the awesome socks club in Europe and not have to worry about weird customs charges. Hooray! Hooray! That's great.

Sign up and in Europe, they will ship from the Netherlands. So it's Halloween. We're going to ship to the part of the podcast where we answer questions from our listeners. And we're trying to focus this week on some spooky questions, some fear based spooky spooky questions, although our producer Rosiana wrote, I tried to focus on questions about fear, but then I realized that almost all questions are about fear. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Except for questions about socks,

which is just be delighted once a month for getting a delightful pair of socks. Yeah, that's not fear-based. Arriving just like to make you happy once a month from a different independent artist. Maybe we should make it fear-based. If I've learned anything from American politics, it's to make things fear based. Like, do you know what will happen to your naked feet if you don't become an awesome

socks club subscriber? It will be brutal. It's a horrid out there. It's a terrible world for feet specifically. And, uh, and, and our socks will make it so that you are not socially ostracized by your in-group. Do you want to feel part of an affinity community? If so. I mean, never feel alone again at awesomsocks.club.

One of my favorite things about the socks is that when I see people wearing the socks, I can be like, hey, and I put them into my socks. And then they're like, hey, I know it's great. It really, I was, I just, I just spoke at Harvard, not to brag. And one of the students I met with before my talk, you know, like did the, did the subtle pants leg raise? And they were like, and I got my, I got mine on too. Don't be caught without them. All right. This first question comes from Alicia, who writes, dear John and Hank,

I know we talk a lot about how human life expectancy has gone up in recent years. It's gone up so much and not just in recent years. In fact, in recent years, it hasn't gone up as much. I'm curious, is this because we just managed to stop dying of disease and starvation so much or were people actually dying of old age at 30? Always aging, Alicia.

Alicia, you've asked my favorite question. Thank you for allowing me. You're gonna talk about it. Step up. Forever. On to my soap box. Can I tell you what I think? Tell me what you think.

People did, it was not like, there's two different things. There's life expectancy and there's life span. So life span is like how well I'm just I'm going I'm not saying I know what I'm talking about. I'm just talking great There's a there's an amount. There's like a length of time that a human can live Which is? Uh-huh based on a number of things, but one of the big ones is pure dumb luck So so you can be in a society where like the average person dies at 50 and someone

makes it to 90 just because they didn't get hit by as many trucks or trains or wagons or whatever, people got hit by back in the day. Right. Sort of. And but like people always lived a long time, but they just like the things that could get them along the way, they had to be lucky or to get that far. That's largely correct. So for a long time, like when I was a kid, I was taught that basically old age was 40 in the old days. Like the old days were never quite defined, but that was the definition of old age.

Like if you lived to be 40, it was some kind of miracle. Right. And that's not true, but the sort of popular belief that has replaced it is equally untrue, which is that if you survived to the age of five or ten, you were likely to live a long life, like you were likely to live to 70 or 80. And neither of those is quite the truth. So the main reason life expectancy was actually below 30 for all of human history until the last couple hundred years was because of Incredibly high rates of child mortality probably over 50%

And so for instance from what we can tell in Iron age France Life expectancy was probably close to 10 or 12 so it France, life expectancy was probably close to 10 or 12. Oh, God. Because your chances of dying before the age of 10 were probably significantly above 50%, but certainly not much lower than 50%. And so that is the main reason life expectancy was low. And if you live to adulthood, you had a reasonable expectation of living to be 60 or 70 or 80.

However, it is also untrue to say that life expectancy has not changed since 1800 for 10 year olds. It has changed a lot. Like even if you survive childhood, life expectancy has gone way up. One of the main reasons it's gone way up is that until 200 years ago, from like 1700 to 1800, around a quarter of all people died of tuberculosis. And they died of tuberculosis generally in their 20s or 30s. And so that

was a huge strain on life expectancy. Yeah. You know the guy who developed blood transfusions, he was experimenting on himself and he was trying to figure it all out. And like they didn't know about blood types. So he was rolling the dice a lot. But he died probably because he took blood from a person who he knew had tuberculosis and put it into his own body. Well, he probably didn't know that tuberculosis was an infectious condition. Yeah, exactly.

He did not. Well, it was believed to be inherited by a lot of people. Somebody actually listened to this podcast recently sent me a fascinating, fascinating data set and presentation about the debate over whether tuberculosis was inherited or infectious. And it totally makes sense that people thought it was inherited. Like, wilds did all the Brontesisters die of tuberculosis, but like, you know, somebody living two doors over, that family never got tuberculosis. It was a weird and remains, a really weird disease.

So anyway, it's both that we've gotten better at treating diseases and healthcare has gotten better and that we have gotten vastly better at preventing child mortality, although it's still much too high. It's all of those things. And it continues to be like, people are living longer now on average. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even in the 60s, in America, because of like better treatments for cancer and

hard disease. Yeah, that's it. You know, like stuff that like we've been alive to see happen. Absolutely. I mean, child mortality globally has fallen by more than 50% since I graduated from high school. Yeah. So these are big changes and globally, despite the challenges of COVID and the setbacks associated with it, which aren't limited to COVID, life expectancy has continued to increase over the last three years and long may that continue. This next question comes from Diana who asks, dear Hank and John, but mostly Hank, probably, what happens to a human body if it gets buried on the moon? That's a good question.

Some, some day soon we'll be having people living on the moon. So probably they will die on the moon. I'm guessing there aren't all the usual creepy crawly things that help decompose bodies on Earth and no oxygen to help out all those icky processes. So does the body just hang around like normal, like forever? A woman wondering, but not a wonder woman, Diana. Wow. Well, Hank, yeah. Is it a mummy situation? It's a mummy situation. It depends what you do, what kind of mummy situation you get yourself into.

So if the body was just on the surface, it would very quickly dehydrate and it would become very much that kind of mummy. But I think there's probably a depth you can get it at, where it's far enough outside of the sunlight that it's gonna freeze before it has a chance to throw all that water to get to get out. And so it'll be down there, it'll be hard for the water to get out. So you'll just be a frozen body popsicle. But in either case, it's going to be either

too dry or too cold. So if you're in the sunlight, you can stay warm, but you will lose all your water. If you're buried, you'll be too cold, and you'll keep your water. But either way, the microbes will not be able to do their microbe thing, because they will either be dead and desiccated or frozen and waiting for some future where they would get warmed up.

All right, so either way though, it would be bad, just to be clear, you don't wanna die on the moon. You wanna die here? Well, I mean, it's equally bad. No. For me. No, no, no, it's way, how are you gonna get buried at Crown Hill? There is no Crown Hill on the moon.

Yet? Well, I don't wanna be. You get, it's yet up to you, John. The whole joy of being buried at Crown Hill is getting to join all of the people whose tombstones have walked past Lothis many years. If I just die on the moon, I'll be dying with strangers. Here's what we're gonna do, John.

Yeah. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go with a, a, a Coring Rod. Mm-hmm. Uh, and we're gonna core every grave site in Crown Hill. And then we're gonna move just the, like, bits of the core that went through the part where the coffin was. Oh, wow. We're gonna take those all up to the moon. We're gonna recreate Brown Hill on the moon and then all future of vice presidents have to go to the moon before they die. That's the hell. Once you're not a vice president anymore, you go to the moon. It's like we don't trust you to be here on earth,

getting involved in our business. You're a vice president, you can get up to all kinds of nonsense. Just go to the moon. The vice president of America, after leaving office automatically becomes the vice president of the moon, but there's a bunch of vice presidents of the moon. Right now, they don't have any power.

They don't have any power. It's a purely symbolic role. It's like being the Duke of Wellington or whatever. At the monarchy. Yeah. And yeah, I love that idea. And also, I think the idea of moving 80,000 coffins to the moon is just, it's the kind of thing a billionaire would love. Like that's the most inefficient use of capital since Elon Musk tried to buy Twitter. I mean, John, by the time this podcast comes out, the deadline will have passed. And so we will actually know whether or not that happens.

And so to all of you in the future, honestly, right now, we're not even thinking about it. It doesn't seem that important anymore. But I'm sure it will then. It will totally seem important. I mean, it's the best way I've ever heard of to turn $44 billion into zero dollars. I mean, like, less than zero dollars because it's like, you just bought something really annoying.

It's like buying a $44 billion rooster and putting it in an occasion in your house and you can't get rid of it. It just... I'm sorry. It doesn't even lay eggs. No, it doesn't, it's not the best scream. It's upset, it's sexually frustrated.

It's angry, it's imprisoned. Yeah, it's in a permanent state of outrage. It cannot believe the horror, the existential horror of its situation. And you know what's funny? You agree. Everyone's on the same page. You are completely empathetic to the rooster's position of like,

I don't want to be here. Why am I here? This is weird and none of your business. Nobody wanted this rooster. Nobody like woke up in the morning in 2006 and said, I think I'll create a situation in which a human has to cohabitate with a miserable rooster and yet And yet we can't find a way out of the bind rooster. Yeah

Yeah, I mean, yeah, the strange thing is that every morning I wake up and I turn on the rooster The first thing the first thing I do is morning is check to see what the rooster crowed overnight. Yeah, what is the rooster? What is the rooster? Have to yell at me right now. Well, the great thing about this analogy is that in the analogy, I am equally the person who is confused to be living with a rooster and I am the rooster who is confused to be living with a rooster, and I am the rooster who is confused to be living with a person.

I am both people. Like I get on, I get on drudder, and I, and I, and I crow all kinds of, all kinds of panicked outrage. And then I look at other roosters, and I'm like, why are they crowing so much? Why can't they, why can't they just be quiet? But at least I am wise enough to

know that I don't want to own all of the roosters. Like I don't, I don't, I don't think it would be better if only I was in control of the roosters. You know, like, it would, exactly. If I was to fix this problem, if I was the dictator of this rooster farm the world would not be better Exactly he was like I real I want to pay 44 billion dollars to be the dictator of the world's largest rooster farm and like What a bad deal once again? They don't lay eggs. It's not a farm John. It's a community. It's a community of roosters and none of them are happy. They all choose to be there. But that's right.

They wake up in the morning and they leave their like comfortable rooster lives to live inside of like a tiny, miserable rooster fence. I'll all be inside of you on Muffx House. Like it's so bad. Don't do that. I don't know. I might not. I might. It might be difficult. I mean, I have not thought hard about this because I don't know whether or not it's the thing. But I don't know how I will not be about my supposition. It will not be about who owns Twitter. It will be about how that person's decisions impact the experience and how I think that it is affecting me in the world.

And so I guess I have to see. But I don't know. I don't think that I'm being well-served by Twitter. Yeah. Being a part of my life. No, one of the weirdest things about Twitter is that everybody on Twitter knows how terrible it is. Right?

Yeah. Twitter is a huge problem. TikTok, on the other hand, that's going to solve all our problems. No issues at all. I love every time I believe this, though, hang like every time I'm like, this one's solved to the major issues. And then about six months in, I'm like, now B-Real has its own problems. Well, oh, really?

B-Real has its own problems? Sure. That one did seem like it would mostly be okay. God, I haven't used it. It's got its own issues. All right, but I don't need to know about it. Here's in reality, fun time over. No more new rooster fun.

God, that was great. Why don't we go back to the bit? I think that we solve a lot of problems and that in the process of solving then we create a lot of problems. And I think that there is obviously value being delivered to me and others by social media platforms

or else we would not use them. Now, is that value commensurate with its costs? I don't know, especially when we look at the costs on society as a whole, I don't know. I don't know. A lot of people, there are people, a lot of different theories about why we are, where we are. And I think that's probably not just Twitter.

No. I got one of the emails we got this week was from somebody who was like, Hey, I'm listening to old episodes of the podcast. And I noticed that John made not being on Twitter his entire personality for about a year and a half. Why is he on Twitter again? And to that, I can only say what you don't seem to understand is that I am a rooster. And every morning, I wake up. And for reasons that are mysterious to me,

I begin crowing. And I cannot stop. Now we can move on to the next question. This question is from Mary Beth who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm wondering where in the world I could live that would be farthest away from any venomous creature. Not Antarctica, that would not really be viable for me. Is there anywhere else where I could live without fear of venomous creatures? I guess I'm not so concerned about poisonous things,

though if I think too much about it, maybe I should be. Yeah. Watchful and waiting, Mary Beth. So poisonous things are things that hurt you when you eat them. Venomous things are things that hurt you when they bite you. Right. Just for clarity. Right. Or stab you, otherwise.

Poisonous things, it feels more like a mistake or a choice. Whereas venomous things feels like you have a complete lack of agency. Yeah, just in your bed one morning. And I think the lack of agency is a big part of what freaks us out. Yeah, I think that's a huge part of all fears. This is why we are constantly trying to impose thoughts of agency on to our lives, which when we do not have them, but we like to impose them. Right. So this question reminds me of when my daughter was younger

and we would be like, where would you like to go visit and she would be like, well, not Hawaii. Yeah. And I would be like, well, Hawaii's great. And she would say, yeah, but the volcanoes. And also, I don't want to go to California because of the earthquakes. And I don't want to go to Florida or the entire East Coast because of the volcanoes. And also, I don't want to go to California because of the earthquakes. And I don't want to go to Florida or the entire East Coast because of the hurricanes. And

at some point, Indiana starts to look pretty darn good. Suddenly, you're like, hey, do I live in the best place? They're like, hey, do I live in the best place? There's no fire season like there is in Mizzoula. It's not bad here, but anyway Hank, and by the way, relatively few venomous creatures, very few venomous snakes. Nice. No scorpions that I know of. I feel like we don't have tarantulas.

Well, I think the answer could be Indiana. It's not, but I'm sure that you're doing great on the list, but Deboki did a bunch of work. And Deboki has come up with a place that does not have mosquitoes. It does not have ticks. It does not have snakes. Whoa.

Oh. Any venomous snakes of any kind. Wow. And this place is a lovely place that you have been to. Yeah. And then many people like to visit. Oh. But that does experience a fair amount of inclement weather. It is Iceland.

Iceland. Yeah. The home of the world's greatest hot dog and the fewest venomous animals. I was shocked. I was like, no mosquitoes everywhere as mosquitoes. But apparently the way that they're... Well, to be fair.

What? It is. The fact that you were... I'm not surprised to wear it. They don't have mosquitoes because when I visited there in August, and the tour guide, without a trace of irony, said in their sweet, athletic accent. As you can see, Iceland should be called Greenland and Greenland should be called

Iceland because as you can see, the weather here is quite nice as the like 40 degree temperature was made well below freezing by a 50 mile an hour wind that was causing rain to hit us completely horizontally. Like it appeared that the rain was coming from the ground and this woman's face was being like completely distorted, like a hundred meter runner going 30 miles an hour or whatever and with absolutely no self awareness was talking about how great the weather is in Iceland. Well, apparently it's not just that it's cold.

It is, so it is. Although it is. It is, but in Alaska, for example, lots. Lots in mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes. The world's capital with mosquitoes. So it is that they have several large freeze-thaw cycles throughout one year. So what what moon mosquitoes like happen to find themselves in Iceland, they it gets cold,

they lay their eggs, and then it gets warm and the eggs hatch, and then it gets very, it gets extremely cold again. Yeah, yeah, there's like one of those August freezes. Yeah, they've never been able to figure out the weird freeze-thaw cycle of Iceland, and so it doesn't have mosquitoes, which sounds lovely to me. And Iceland seems quite nice. I loved it.

I think it'd be a tricky language to learn, and but, you know, there's 300,000 of them. So you could basically hang out with everybody. Yeah, I feel like you can get by in English, but it would probably become an impediment to intimacy at some point. Yeah. To close friendships.

Right. So world's greatest hot dogs, no mosquitoes. Not bad. Not bad. This next question comes from Rado who writes, dear John and Hank, how do we know that knocking an asteroid as NASA's dark mission recently did? Would for sure make the collision with Earth less likely? Like due to the huge distances involved, surely we don't know 100% if and where the asteroid

would hit us, only probabilities. Isn't there a chance that had we not messed with it? It would have scraped by, but because of the intervention, the asteroid would hit the Earth full on without further ado. I think that this is the best way, narratively, for humanity to end. What? Hahaha.

It's, we calculated that there was a 98% chance that this was going to save all humans, and a 2% chance that it was gonna kill everybody. And we took the gamble because it was the right choice. You got a roll of the dice. You got a roll of dice. We made the objectively right choice,

but sometimes you roll two ones in a row. Sometimes that house loses, you know, I mean. Yeah. So is this a possibility, Hank? Because obviously I love humans. I think we are profoundly underrated species, but we are gonna go out at some point and this would be a hell of a way to go out.

So we do know, well, first of all, this particular, the Dartmouth Mission in particular, was designed to understand this better. So the Dart mission was designed to protect us from an asteroid. That asteroid was never going to hit us. It's still never going to hit us. What we wanted to hit on asteroid was something and see how much its direction changed. We know the mass of the Dart probe.

We know how fast it was going. We know roughly the mass of the dart probe, we know how fast it was going, we know roughly the mass of this asteroid, and we know where it would have gone. But we don't know how it's going to respond to being hit by a thing because asteroids are, like they're still a bit of a mystery. They're made of like sometimes they're like a pretty loosely like held together pile of rubble. That's just like the gravity and electrostatic forces are making it stick together.

But like, is there something strong and hard deep inside or is it just like loosely held together rubble all the way through? Those things behave differently in different simulations, so you wanna try it out, just do a real life mission and see if it works and that's what the mission was designed to do. But, and is there something strong and hard deep inside?

We don't know yet. The data is yet to come. You know, making it easier. So, but we are aware that this asteroid, like, there is some variance. It's not 100%, but we have a really good idea of where things in space are heading because there isn't that much that changes their direction.

It's not like they're in an atmosphere where the wind is blowing a different way every moment. There are some gravitational thing, like effects out there that are gonna have very small impacts and at a very long distance, that matters. But as they get closer, we have a really good idea of where these things are going to head. And we do know that nudging them could, like, would decrease the odds at the same time, even going very fast, an object the size of Dart, which is not very big,

isn't going to have a huge impact on the direction an asteroid is going, but we do want to have a better idea of how that is going to be affected. So that's why we did the mission. And we're still waiting to see how much it did change the trajectory of the asteroid. But we're not in any imminent danger of a asteroid apocalypse. No, in fact, we are in less danger right now than any moment so far in human history in that we now know where all the big asteroids are. Right, so we're in the same level of danger,

we just didn't know. Now we know that we're not in any danger. Follow-up question. In terms of non-asteroid apocalypse, where are we? Well, in terms of from space, comments are a whole different story and could and could be a bigger could be a bigger deal because they come kind of out of nowhere. Thanks for that because there's so much farther away. Sure. And but then in terms of various other non-space-related apocalypse, things inside the atmosphere, where's your vibe for that? Yeah, yeah.

I'm pretty optimistic about humans, but less about any individual institution these days than I was once. Right, yeah. A lot of things felt really solid, therefore a long time. Things felt so solid in my life and it just feels a little bit, a little bit more up in the air at the moment. You would wake up in the morning and you would get out of bed and there the floor would

be and you would be like, oh, just like always, there's the floor. And then as Emily Dickinson put it, a plank and reason broke and I dropped down and down. Here's another question. I've always been afraid of going outside when it's dark, says Rebecca. But now that I'm moving into my own place for the first time, I need advice on how to beat this fear. As a wheelchair user, I constantly feel vulnerable

and worried that I could easily be kidnapped or something. How do I make myself brave enough to leave my front door after dark with love, Rebecca? Rebecca coming to the world's number one source for advice on going outside in the dark as a wheelchair user. Do you're Hank and John? Well, yes, obviously, Hank, we're not qualified to answer any of these questions. You're also not an astronomer. But that's good point.

I do have advice here. Number one, bring your phone. I'm a big believer in accommodating fears. Yeah, and share your location with a friend or loved one. That's the other thing I was gonna say. I do that. Share your location with a friend or loved one, or several. I have three people who can find my location

at any time. And so I have backup sank. It's like the, you know, like how there's the president and the vice president and then the speaker of the house in case anything goes real, real south. Yeah. God, I'm gonna check and see if I can see where you are right now.

It's very possible. I'll share my location with you. I definitely should. Thanks. But I have to say that is, that's like way more intimate than giving someone a key to your house That's weird sorry Sorry, hang up on your ass. Did you hang up on did you just hang up on me while you were trying to find a fight?

I did. I was trying to find your location So I'm an Indianapolis spoiler alert, but The other thing but the other thing that I, so there are those just functional things, but when it comes to the fear itself, like obviously I'd encourage you to talk to a therapist or some professional like Hank and I are not

psychology professionals, but I can say one thing that works for me with fears, which is, oh my God, he did it again. All right, that's the last time you get to hang up on me. I'm sorry. I was in the middle of saying something important. I know, just stop working. You can figure it out after the podcast.

I did it. Can you see me? I did it. No, but you can see me now. Great, okay. So those are like practical things, but the other thing is that if you're concerned about it, I would really encourage you to talk to a therapist or a professional about it like Hank and I are not psychology professionals.

I can tell you something that works for me, which is instead of denying the fear or saying like this is a silly ridiculous fear, acknowledging the reality of the fear and that like the thing that you're afraid of is scary, it's just not likely. And that there's a difference between the size of the likelihood and the size of the scariness. And if I can be aware of that, I find it a little easier to keep from catastrophizing because like your fear is real. It's rational. And sometimes like I can get down on myself and feel like a lot of my fears are just like crazy and irrational.

And the way they express themselves or like the size of them is often not rational. But the underlying fear like is real. It would be a huge bummer for me if Earth got hit by a comet, which I just found out as possible. We'd probably spot it. Like, he couldn't just happen right now, the way I gamma ray burst cooked. Oh, so I'd have like, I'd have like a week notice. That's my dream is to have a week notice that everyone on Earth is going to die in the same boat. Well, I agree that that would be bad. What I'm saying is like, you don't have to worry about being obliterated right now, this very moment by a comment.

I would think that would be fine, obviously. I guess you're right. What? I'm not afraid of being obliterated instantaneously without any warning by a comment. I'm literally afraid of warning. Well, if I, if, look, if I'm ever in a position where I know you're about to be obliterated, I won't tell you. I don't know. Maybe, maybe I, maybe I want you to tell position where I know you're about to be obliterated, I won't tell you. I don't know. Maybe, maybe I want you to tell me actually now that you're putting it like that.

Well, I don't want like important information kept for me. Well, if, okay, if it's more than a week, I'll tell you. If it's less than a week, I'll just let you live your life and we can play fall guys until the end. I like how you're imagining that in this hypothetical scenario, you're the only person I speak to regularly. No, no, no, no. I'm the only one who knows in this scenario. Oh, okay. Okay.

So I won't have a hint except that you're going to call me up and say, hey, I'm going to need you to play fall guys for the next three days non-stop. Oh, as John, I'm coming to Indianapolis. I'm not going gonna tell you why. I'm on the next flight. I wanna spend a little time with you and mom and dad. And it's just because I love you. That's gonna play fall guys, no big deal.

Like that's gonna be that Spider-Man game. If it's the last thing I do, and it may be. It might be. It might be. It might be. It might be. Oh, golly, that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Fall Guys. Fall Guys, it's apparently the thing Hank would do if he only had a few days to live. He would just be like, shut it all down.

It's time to play Fall Guys. This podcast is also brought to you by the the plank in reason, the Emily Dickinson's plank in reason. Get it at home depot today. Oh, it's gonna break. It's already broke. Yeah. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by Elon Musk's rooster. We are all about to be Elon Musk's rooster. Oh, and also this podcast is brought to you by Vice President and saw in the moon. The Vice Presidents on the moon, they disagree with each other about everything and have no power. I love the idea of like a house of warrants that's just the old Vice Presidents and they meet

every now and again and they hub up about stuff and then they issue statements. Yeah. Oh, that would be a powerless royal. The dream. All right, hey, let's do a thought experiment real quick. If we owned Twitter, first off, I would hate you so much if we still owned Twitter. If we'd started Twitter and you made me still own Twitter, I would be so resentful. That's the first thing.

It would devastate our friendship. Because every time you talk on the phone, I would be like, how's the family? Also, more importantly, when can we sell Twitter? Why are you forcing me? But imagine if we owned Twitter and someone anyone came to us and said, we will give you a billion dollars Which is one forty-fourth of what the company is apparently worth and in exchange you don't have to own

Twitter I would I would be like oh wait, I don't understand I thought I would hate you for that question. It's like one of those situations where you really have to like try and pretend like you're still negotiating. Right, right, yeah. Yeah.

All right, Hank, that is the last time that we mention how much we don't wanna own Twitter on the podcast. Okay. Today. Today. Look, look, 10 years from now, when Twitter like doesn't matter anymore and is completely culturally irrelevant, then I would find that's when Hank and John snap it out. I would buy it.

Yes. And it's just a sock sales platform. That's all it does. Absolutely. There's your only allowed to tweet about the awesome socks club. Yeah. There's an auto bot that's been trained by late stage artificial intelligence

that if your tweet is not about the importance of sock subscription services, that generate money for charity, it just gets deleted instantaneously. What, I feel like we could already do this with some already defunct. Like could we get asked Jeaves and name it, like ask Jeaves socks.

Ask socks Jeaves. Ask Jeaves anything about the awesome socks. Come on. How much, how much could it possibly cost to buy asked Jeaves right now? You know how much it cost to buy my space like two years ago? It was incredible. So first off, who do cost to buy my space like two years ago? Ah. It was incredible.

So first off, who do you think owns my space? If you had to guess who owns my space today? Isn't it like some, some like music company owned by Justin Timberlake or something weird? Okay, so it was first bought by Justin Timberlake for $35 million. Wow. And then in 2016, it was sold to time, time ink, for $87 million.

Now, I know you're wondering, Hank. What? Oh my God. What happened to my space between 2011 and 2016 that made it worth twice as much money? And the answer is nothing. That's horrifying. And then eventually time was bought by another media corporation and then spun off to a holding company that then sold it to a related holding company. And so we don't know how much it's worth today.

But the fact that in 2016 it was purportedly worth $87 million is a shocker. Oh boy. I mean, it's here, it's hanging out. What year can we buy my space for less than $1,000? Less than, I mean, because of inflation, probably never. Maybe in 20, maybe in 2,200, you know, when after the collapse. Oh, be worth it. I won't be meaningful then. maybe 20, 200, you know, when after the collapse.

I won't be worth it. I won't be meaningful then. I love the idea of Hank and Johan crawling out of the rubble at the age of 78, you know, post-apocalyptic. It's like, I just wanna keep goofing. Let's goof. Let's get my space and name it my socks. The first thing that we do is we connect one computer to another computer

to make what is technically an internet. And then the first thing we do on this new internet is register inside of this new internet, a web domain, MySpace.com, which redirects to the AwesomeSox.com. Look, there's always another group. I want our third act to be so weird. That's my biggest ambition. Like we've had a great, we've had a wonderful career. It's been beautiful. But the only thing that hasn't been yet is as weird as we set out for it to be. It hasn't been truly, truly pure goofs. Right, we haven't adequately committed to some of the goofs. Like, there's a world where our third act

is literally running racks. Ha ha ha ha ha. Is that like we go to racks? It's like, what would it take instead of visiting racks? To bring racks back. We decide to call Mr. Beast and say, It's like, what would it take instead of visiting racks? To bring racks back. We decide to call Mr. Beast and say, listen, if we got an idea for you,

it's like Mr. Beastburger, but it's about my childhood. I don't know if you've read Gatsby, Mr. Beast, but you can go back to the past. And we are going to get in our little row boats, and we are going to be just row and row and row until we can get back to racks in 1987 in Orlando, Florida. Can you make this happen for us? And he'd be like, yes, with 0.05% of my net worth,

I can buy every racks. Because I'm now Jimmy President of America, a richest man in the universe. Yes, and we'll be like thank you God King Jimmy. And that seemed to be where the arrows pointing. And then on and then on our way out we will, uh, ceremoniously bow to the corpse of Elon Musk in the Antichamber

Oh God God King Jimmy's office and Then we will retire happily to Raxe management Right. Yes, but in order to leave the Antichamber you do have to walk past eight million roosters And they're all very loud. The only way to like ask a question directly of God, King Jimmy, is to run a rooster obstacle course, where you have to run right through 8 million roosters and anyone who can make it to the door, gets to ask for one thing and most people ask for a billion dollars Or they ask to live forever they ask for a beautiful spouse and we ask for six rakses

But if you don't make it the roosters are very hungry Well, they haven't eaten in years anything other than human flesh Well, they haven't eaten in years anything other than human flesh. No, I can't. Very spooky episode of Dear Hank and I. That's Halloween. This is my favorite one we've ever had. Oh, all right. Before we get to the all-important news from Mars and Anzu, I have no idea how long we've been recording.

I have no idea what's happening. I tried to look up idea how long we've been recording. I have no idea what's happening. I tried to look up at how long we've been recording the podcast, but unfortunately, you've hung up on me so many times. I have no idea. It's time to move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first because I have good news. So I went to AFC Wimbledon's game. I got to see Plow Lane.

My kids got to see Plow Lane. It was incredible. It was, I mean, the fact it's an amazing stadium. It really is, like, especially compared to Kingsmeadow. It's just incredible what has been built. It is a world-class stadium. It seats 9,000 people. It was packed. It was packed. It saw the pictures. It was a sellout. And it was just an awesome experience. Going to the pub was amazing. The food was really, really good.

It was just awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. I cannot, if you live in London or go to London, I really recommend going to Playa Lane. You'll have a great time. Tell people that you're a nerd fighter, and you'll have an awesome time. We lost that game. We lost one meal. We played horribly.

It was terrible. Alice just yesterday, Alice, and I went to see the Art Local College Butler, their women's soccer team play. And afterwards, I was like, how does that compare to the AFC Wimbledon game? see the art local college Butler, their women's soccer team play. And afterwards I was like, how does that compare to the AFC Wembleton game? And Alice said, Oh, those girls are much better. And they certainly keep it on the ground more. It was it was not a good performance is what I'll say.

Even so, at the end of the game, at the end of the AFC Wembleton game and like getting to see Plow Lane and knowing that, you know, those players had signed her birthday cards since she was two years old. Alice, Lyktopan, she said that was amazing. And it really was. But unfortunately, we lost. And however, our next game, we won. It was a big day, it was a big game against Rochester or possibly Roachdale. Nobody knows for sure. And they're at the bottom of the table. We're a little closer to the bottom of the table than I would like for the fourth tier of English football. And we really needed to win that game. And we won two one goals from a Ubisoft and James Davison and looked pretty good. I mean, not great, but looked steadier.

So, when you weren't here, John, we had Mark Watson on. And he's a big follower of a not great football club that is I think a tier two ahead of A. F. Swimbleton. Sure, but he looked at your situation. He was like, oh, they're doing great. That's great. They're fine.

Yeah. That's how he felt. I'm glad that he feels that way. It is critically important not to get relegated out of league too, because there's only two relegation spots. It's so hard to get back up. It's the bottom tier of professional football, like full-time professional football. So like, it's really, really important.

So I'm sympathetic to Wimbledon fans who are really, really scared because it would be so bad. We have a lot of debt. It would be really bad. So I agree that we're probably fine, but I would rather be fine. Yeah.

So in some games. Yeah, it's a tough situation. And I think a lot of fans feel like we're running up against some of the inherent challenges of fan ownership. And that's a really interesting, complicated, difficult time. For me, fan ownership is essential to what AFC Wimbledon is, but that's also easy for me to say when I don't have to go watch us lose every week. What's the news from Mars? Well, NASA wants to save money by crashing into Mars. The idea involves a device called Shield, which stands for Simplified High Impact Energy

Landing Device. It looks like a collapsible upside-down pyramid. It would absorb the energy from a hard impact on Mars. If Shield works, it would make landing on Mars way cheaper, possibly open up a bunch of landing sites for future missions. The idea is that you land your craft on Mars by just crashing it into Mars. Now, it's not gonna work for a number of different kinds

of things, but for some, maybe it will. The design is based on NASA's Mars Sample Return campaign, which involves future spacecraft crash landing on Earth with samples from Mars. Scientists wanna see if they could use the same idea, but in reverse with a shield system that would protect all the necessary electronics during landing.

And they tested a full-size prototype, made out of metal rings set up in an inverted pyramid shape by taking it out to a 90-foot drop tower that has a launch system that can send things to the ground at the same speed that they would hit Mars at, which is around 110 miles per hour because of atmospheric drag slowing it down

from the initial speed of 40,000 miles per hour. And they use the drop tower to launch into a two inch thick steel plate, just to put it through conditions that would be harder than crashing on actual Mars, which is softer than a steel plate. And it worked. Using a high speed camera,

scientists were able to see that the impact, the shielded a slight angle, it bounced three and a half feet into the air, and then it flipped over. The bounce was probably caused by the steel plate because it didn't happen in other tests that used dirt instead of a steel plate. Importantly, the shield was able to protect

the electronic devices on board, the prototype, including a smartphone. So if your iPhone can survive it, then a Mars probe can survive it too. Wow. So we're just going to crash stuff onto Mars. No need to worry about landing. It saves so much weight and so much worry if you could just just hit it like a bullet. Wow. That's fascinating. It is. So it would be a way to get rid of the parachute, get rid of the, you know, all the

retro rockets, get rid of all the like sequence of which is a lot of the, yeah, a lot of the weight. So a lot of the weight, it's also a lot of the worry and it's a lot of the engineering that you need to do. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. It's awesome. That's opposed to my mind. That's pretty great.

Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening and for your questions. You can email us questions at Dear Hank and John. And of course, most of all, thank you to our God Kings, whoever they may currently be, for their grace and beneficence. Or in the future, also for may currently be, for their grace and beneficence. Or in the future, also for future God kings, we also appreciate you.

We love you. And all we ask God kings of the future is, I just want to be able to sell my socks. Just let me sell my socks. Oh, I want to do anymore. I don't need to do that. I, I, I, or go, God, hang on. What? What?

Go, I, I want to apologize to the future God queen for speaking of God, King. Yeah, you, we, we got in a really, got ourselves in a lot of trouble here, didn't we? Massive mistake. I guess she's gonna send us, she's gonna send us to Iceland. Ha, hooray! That's makes! No, John, we're gonna be on the moon with the vice presidents and you know it. Oh God. That's true.

My nightmare. We're just living on the moon with Dan Quale. This is close to hell, so I can imagine. Oh, it's an honor, Godquay. To be on the moon for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for not separating my head from my body. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune,

a medish it's produced by Rosiana Hallsruha. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. All of these people are really, they have to, they have to deal with our bull, bull, I'm grateful to them. They have to deal with our BS.**t. I'm grateful to them. They have to deal with our BS. And we're very grateful to them. Yes. Don't curse, Hank.

Thanks. That creates more work for two notes. True. Editorial assistant is DuPokey Truccivardi. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome. Don't forget to be awesome.